Family


Hello, How are you all?

I am back after my Diwali vacation. Last year, I shared my first poem related to Diwali, New year wishes. Nena Pidheya Modhala Kavana? and also Rangoli This time yes, few Rangolis I will share. However this post is not about that

I visited Bhagawat Vidyapith at Ahmedabad. Let me share a nice picture, from entrance of Bhagawat Vidyapith. Here is a translation for international readers. This poster describe important qualities that one should cultivate in life. These qualities, practices are like our parents, siblings, friends and our real asset. So I gave title to this article Family.



Self dependency (doing our own work), practice (study), contentment, trust, detachment, religion (duty) are as important as our father. Mother: Goddess Sarswati (goddess of knowledge, wisdom and music), Goddess Gaayatri (Saavitri), cleanliness, service and surrender. Discrimination, self control, rules, convincing and discipline (punishment) are like our brothers. Who are our true friends? The scriptures, good company (company of an enlighten person), good qualities, intention to do good work, hard work and physical exercise. With such family members one can earn the true assets like: SAADHANA (regular spiritual practice), good intention, good intelligence, TITIKSHA (burning desire with patience), peace, devotion, faith and forgiveness.

So I pray for you all of the above on this festival of light (Diwali). All the best.

Digital Photography


I attended a 3 days event FOSS-IN 2006. http://foss.in/2006/ One of the sessions was on about digital photography where the speaker Klayan shared his experience, gave some tips and suggested some steps to improve the photograph. Klayn Varma is a wild life photographer. His work can be seen at http://kalyanvarma.net We got year 2007 desktop calendar, which contains excellent wild life photographs taken by him.

He suggested some open source tool Gimp, f-spot, g-thumb etc. He did live demonstration, he took our audience photograph, transfer to PC. He suggested to take the photo in raw format. Never take in auto format. Because, with auto format if camera does some adjustment then it can not be revert back. Gimp has some plug-ins to read row format files. Alas, the entry level digital camera model does not support raw format. Raw format means how the camera sees without any correction or optimization. When we saw on PC. The photo was very ugly. He explained the steps to make it better.

  1. Optimize the brightness. He demonstrated photos with different exposure and advised that in case of over exposed, some portion is saturated and we loose data. It is always better to underexpose and then increase the brightness.
  2. Adjust the saturation.
  3. Adjust the white balance.
  4. Adjust the contrast.
  5. Now adjust color level. Optimize the temperature. The Red and Blue color balance is called temperature.
  6. Optimize the green color.
  7. Last do the sharpening of image if required. The sharpening number should be between 20 to 30 (may be in the Gimp tool).
  8. Save the image as JPEG with compression ratio 96%. The default may be 75%, where we loose some data in the image. The default setting for Nikon camera is 95% He demonstrated that with from 96 to 95% the reduction in file size is very less. From 97 to 96%, the significant file size decrease without much impact on quality of photographs. So thus with trail and error he found this magic number 96%

Few Tips.

  1. He reminded us that aspect ratio for camera is 2:3 Monitor is 3:4 we should keep this thing in mind. One person added for movie it is 16:9
  2. While cropping the image, always maintain this 3:2 golden ratio.
  3. If the original photograph has poor focus, and we want to improve the sharpness, off course we can use tools. However it will increase noise in picture. He suggested one better way. Increase the picture size by several % and then decrease it to its original size with help of photoshop. The decrease size algorithm will try to detect the edge, that will improve the sharpness.
  4. jhead is a command line tool, used to see the meta data of the photographs. One should save the meta data along with photograph.
  5. We have heard about SLR cameras. He suggested one more better lense cost around 5000, it is '50mm Aperture F 1.8 prime lense'.
  6. He also highlighted some issues with proprietary file format and support from the vendor for old cameras.
  7. Yes we do all kind of color adjustment, however when we see the print, the colors are different!!. We did adjustment for RGB, printer works on CMYK. We need to know and apply the printer's color profile, also know as ICC profile. People also goes upto the extent of matching the paper's white color, ink's color etc. He himself bagged to G.K.Wale for ICC profile of the printer, but... :(

At last we had interactive question answer session. We collected his e-mail ID kalian@rtns.com

One person from the audience was from analog photography world. He added some relevant information, like 'dourge and burnt' tool at Gimp, here this phrase originally came from analog photography and what does it mean in the roll development process. Klyan also confesses that yes, he do not know much about analog photography. He himself was carrying big size of cameras. He was explaining its feature, outside of the conference hall. Overall it was quite interactive, informative and useful session.

You can download the slides at : https://foss.in/2006/cfp/speakers/talkdetailspub.php?talkid=58

1 Year of My blog


Hi all

So today, our blog "Express YourSelf!" completed one year successfully. :) It could survive with new articles consistently. Yes, I am not frequently blogging. It is not daily or weekly, may be fortnightly. Let's recall this First Post on my blog. As the name suggests, I started this blog, to express myself.

And I do confine this blog to any specific topics or theme. It has its pros and corns. It is difficult to get advertise, as this blog is about everything. It is easy to attract traffic from Google. As this blog appears in search result for many keyword.
Few articles like FOSS.in 2008, Securing Wireless Cellular System and articles with Art of Living labels are refereed by Google search engine. 362 hits came via Google search engine. An evening with a legendary Yoga Guru Dr B K S Iyenger This article also got enough publicity through word of mouth and social media. Let's look at few more statistics. 27 articles. 1891 hits in a year is 158 hits per month. Recently it increase to 200+ visitors. Average time on site: 2 Min. Visitors from 65 countries, 445 cities. I am leaving in a small global village :)


Writing a blog is a new trend nowadays. So me too.... At the end one year, I can see, many articles about event reports. Yes, I used to write about musical concert to my friends. Later on, I started uploading them at my homepage. Now on blog. Few friends, inspired me to write. Thomas L. Friedman inspired me with his book The World Is Flat. Now, there is not traditional model of journalist, editor, media. An individual can cover any event OR take celebrities' interviews, with his/her mobile, post it at blog and form a community around it.

In addition to event report, I wrote about my poems, my technical learning, my thoughts on science and spirituality, festivals, music, culture, traditions, Google gadgets, book review etc. Much more to come. I am keep modifying this blog's design. On my Birthday, I kept sideshow for B'day pictures. However I avoided sharing about my birthday gifts. I received three unique special gifts, this year on my birthday.

So let me address your feedback. I did it with Aap Aur Ham - 1 After that, not much comments. One day
workhard read many of my articles and my friends' blog also. Sudhir, workhard and Hiral appreciated Concave Mirror. Thanks. It is similar to my earlier article Music of Mind. I covered Hans-Peter Dürr's speech at We Experience More than We can Grasp post. Abhay Suggested it to post at Yes+, while and Parth and Hiral discuss further on the topic.

Suresh and
Hiral appreciated my poem Ashaadhsya Prathame Divase Thanks. I wrote few tiny articles with just a photograph. Best from the waste and Shiva = Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. waaahhh! were such articles. Hiral and Himanshu both liked that butterfly picture from Forum Shopping mall. I wrote about IPSec. It is about security protocols. Technical, datacom and telecommunication. Santosh appreciated but, few readers felt it is over simplified. Well, I am planning one more article on LTE. I will make sure to make it complex :)

So far, you all readers have encouraged me. Thanks to all. Now, let this blog enter to second phase. Now I will make sure, more articles, frequent articles, useful and diversify content. Generally blog provides a platform to discuss some issue/topic and collaborate. I wish to collaborate for writing. I am inviting readers to be author or co-author for this blog. I will also write on other's blog. You will see join ventures very soon.

So keep reading this blog, keep commenting and off course, keep smiling. :)

My Poems



Good Morning, Have a good day, DIN HUVA Begin and Keep Smiling

Let's laugh at some bitter realities of life.....EVU CHHE EM NE? (Oh it is so!! is it?)

Also Let's discriminate between important and trivial matters SUPADU

I have Small Small Dreams...Do u want to know about them??? DIL HAI CHOTA
SA...CHOTI SI AASHA

Let these dreams remain dreams only. Dreams are always sweet if they remain as dreams.
SHAMANU

Faith + Eagerness + Patience = SHABARI (A famous character of RAMAYANA)

Just imagine for a while, if God sitting at temple, can speak....Then what he will say?
GOVINDE MAANDI GOTHADI!!!

CHITKAR !! and Sigma- Our school life, sorry sorry, our college life !! Listen MAADI !!

YAADEN Unforgettable College Life memories of our class IC-98 DDIT

A Rose, Mera Unase Yahee Sawaal Hai..... and Heart Protocol -- Valentine Day Specials

BATEKU CHHOLATI PRIYA - A humorous note. Description of cooking.

Gulab Zal Nu Pani!!! Too much redundancy...A tribute to R.T. Anjaanaa Andekhaa Koi

AB... HAVE...and Move Aah Se Aahaa Tak- Hindi Poems. I recited them at Hindi Kavi
SAMELAN. Watch it.

BreathLess by Shankar Mahaadevan Watch it !!

Just visit My Poems blog for all my poems