Pointers – I vaguely remember my CSc friends saying that Pointers in C were a pain, today I finally got to reading about them (really) am still wondering why, I presume ignorance on my part and expect one of the pointers to stab me in the back when I am not looking… But once again the architecture of PHP and Zend makes life easier
Been reading the source of the PHP’s EXIF extension. Could comprehend about 30% of the unfamiliar parts.
Yippeee!! Today I compiled and ran my first (and totally useless) PHP extension, It is a stand alone .so file which implements a function called spit(), It just spits back whatever string you pass to it as a parameter. It took me all of 20 min to do it… Now I am kicking myself for not starting at it 2 years ago. It took Rasmus to convince me sheeesh
Well better late than never, now wishing that I have just bit of time free to pursue this as well.
Hmmm… Lets see apart form commercial work what am I doing? Reading, photography, UT2003 with Aasim, enhancing Coppermine, must find some more time
Click here to see the 230 pictures which I took at the LB/2003 Some pictures there have a counter part in other peoples camera like this and this in Jeremy’s album here and here 🙂
There may be more of such out there – if any of you have got them please post URL
BTW I used the following to convert 211MB to 19MB in one fell swoop before I uploaded
jhead -cmd “mogrify -quality 85 -resize 800 -format jpg &i” *.jpg
I am sure everyone has read all about LB/2003 and how wonderful it was here, here, here, here, here and here so nothing more to write about it except my own personal teeny weeny ego trips and treasured moments which I gleaned form the conference.
The most elating moment was when just before the first PHP talk by Rasmus
Talking to Rasmus over dinner at Atul’s place about writing extensions to PHP was most encouraging and enlightening, considering that I don’t know C or C++ hopefully I will have my name in credits of one of the PHP extensions soon.
Then there was this extremely hilarious incident about unzipped pants (not mine 😉
The trip would have been perfect had Aasim not suffered that food poisoning which kept him down for nearly all days… BUT then he took that very bravely as well…
So whatever some of the critics might say the event was a great success for me
Yes there are pictures about 440MB worth of them, will take some time before they are resized and put up…
Slides done and sent
Clients informed for the last time
Packing done – thankfully Swati travels light(er)
Tickets Confirmed
We are already to board the train
No Make-up
No Filters
No Artificial lights
No Posing
No Post processing (nitpick – resized!)
Just a 100% natural candid portrait.
LB/2003 is now just round the corner, stress levels are high, patience running low and things are working perfectly fine as planned 😀
Check out the first schedule of talks. We leave for Bangalore on Sunday, Aasim is excited to travel by train instead of the boring “all you do is – wait” plane…
Finally a somewhat displayable picture which would not have been possible at all using my older camera!!
Surya Kiran the aerobatic team of Indian Air force performed over the city airport as a part of finale for the National Air Race. These shots, an example of extreme zoom, were taken from our roof top. Airport is about 10 Kms away, so these jets were not flying exactly overhead 😀
The 800×600 is achieved by cropping the Hi Res 5MP pictures. The pixelation of sky is artifact of compression needed for the web…
These shots would not be possible with my older Casio8000SX because it is very slow to get ready would have missed the shots before it came on, 1MP does not leave any room for cropping
There are a couple of more of Aasim which I took when he was blowing soap bubbles thinking no one was looking – will post them as soon I get time to resize and upload
In other things we have just returned from a day out with Aasim and are again going out to get some clothes for him – some guys gave all the fun.
Finally grabbed enough time to read through the complete manual of my new camera.
Till now I have managed to take usual pictures (read mostly auto settings) with success BUT have not been very successful with macros (results have very poor DoF) low light (results with poor focus and lots of noise).
Tried a bit of fiddling but not much change in results almost feeling that my older cam was better – but I know for fact that this is not true and it is just my inexperience with the options that is the problem… NEED 24 more hours in every day!!!
Yesterday Aasim successfully observed his first Roza.
This was not done by us OR Aasim out of any religious conviction but as a part of the growing up experience for Aasim. Aasim completed it for the sheer fact that he had given his word to his parents.
For a 6 year old who has never really known “hunger” in his entire life this was indeed a creditable feat to go from sunrise to sunset without a drop of water or a morsel of food. He did it in an admirable way. The only sign he showed of real discomfort was that after 1pm he would now and then ask how much more longer…
No promises of gifts / blessing / great food / after life was made to him like are done by several parents – but – that he got cash gifts in the evening after Iftar at my Khala’s place made him feel very happy.
From his 6th B’day we have also introduced him to money management – he gets to keep all the cash he gets as gifts till the sum reaches more than Rs1000/- after which He exchanges it with Swati for an entry in his diary…
Plus daily he is given a Rs1 coin….
Returned today morning from Hyderabad. It is seldom that in India one is impressed by a Govt sponsored setup and more importantly the organization of a Govt sponsored program. At least for me IDRBT was a pleasant change. I arrived in Hyderabad 6am by bus – there was a car waiting for me and I was whisked away to the IDRBT building. The security guy at the front gate there was aware that I would be coming and had my name properly spelled out on a visitor ID tag. Even though I was not staying the night I had a room to my own complete with a hooked up PC, I was later told that these were the rooms where the participants of the various programs stayed…
A phone call gave me my morning fix of caffeine. The program started at 9am – right on time, there were about 20 people and were not “totally clueless” and “totally uninterested”. I discovered that people really can take me seriously and reaffirmed something I knew about my self “I can talk” – SERIOUSLY!!
My sessions stretched into lunch and then spilled into the hands-on lab session.
In short I had fun. I only wish that there were convenient connecting flights and I would have avoided the tiring 8 hour bus ride…