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iPhone Photography

tagged  //   photography  
Blurry images. Candid shots. Subpar lens. Convenient ubiquity. Unsatisfactory quality. Great in-phone applications. Listening to an old husband's tale. Letting sleeping dogs lie. Experimenting with light. Playing with emotions. Half an hour of fun. A day filled with joy. iPhone photography.

                         

Comments [1]

Anyone Can Cook

tagged  //   personal  
From Ratatouille:
Gusteau: What do I always say? Anyone can cook.
Remy: Yeah. Anyone can, that doesn't mean that anyone should.
Gusteau: Well, that is not stopping him. See?

               

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My Next Browser Is An App

tagged  //   technology  

A non-trivial proportion of my life is online. My means of communication, information gathering and learning is on the internet. And a non-trivial proportion of the time i spend online is increasingly with my mobile phone. I use my phone to catch up on everything online during my increasingly extending commute to and from work. And lately i have begun to notice that a non-trivial amount of time that i spend on the internet is done with almost no help from the browser. I rarely, if ever, in the last few weeks, have started the browser on my phone.

Pardon the abused phrase, but there is an application for anything you might want to do on the internet and more often than not, the application is better than the ubiquitous browser. A mail client helps me read and send email - with a better editor, offline capability and a faster response time than the browser does. With the plethora of twitter applications, i can't remember the last time i actually visited the twitter website, let alone use my browser. My feed reader lets me catch up on all the blogs and the latest news. And it lets me sync this on to my phone and allows me to catch up with them even if i have a flaky connection. More specifically, my phone has fantastic applications for social networking such as the Facebook app and for news such as the NY Times and Time Magazine ones. The Wikipedia app on my phone lets me favorite articles and lets me search them quickly because of its caching abilities. And this is just the beginning. You can browse photos in a jiffy with the Flickr photo application, watch full screen videos with the YouTube app and even listen to internet radio with, well, a dozen different apps. Don't even get me started on how much better the maps application on the phone is as compared to the one in the browser. Frankly, i think my browser is the most underused function on my phone.

Applications specialized for the content they render have an edge over the browser. They know the content they are supposed to render and can optimize. So, the YouTube app on the phone is so much better at finding and rendering videos than the browser is. Even on the desktop, applications such as Miro and Boxee are much better for watching videos than your browser is. Take a look below: The first image is NY Times on the browser and the second one is from an app dedicated to NY Times. News is so much easier to discern with the dedicated app.

 

Dedicated applications also have other advantages. The biggest ones are offline caching and ad-free content. Look at the below image of viewing a video on YouTube on my phone. (Of course, i can just tap to hide the controls)


No spammy comments, no ridiculous advertisements, no 'featured' videos. Plainly and simply the video i want. Of course, you could have advertisements in the applications, but you always have the option of paying for the app and getting an ad-free version; an option that doesn't exist on most websites today.

I think that the ubiquitous browser is ill-suited for the future, ironically because almost all the content is moving online now. Which is also why i am specially skeptical about netbooks and about the browser being the operating system of the future. I believe the future is personalized applications for specialized purposes. The future doesn't have room for a generalist that does a mediocre job at everything.

No browser was used in the creation of this blog post.

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Twilight

tagged  //   social  
                     

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Building A Time Machine

tagged  //   environment  
Wikipedia tells me:
... in the year 1120 AD, the Chola King, Veera Ballalla ruled the Deccan plateau or the South of India. On a hunting trip in the forest he lost his way. After a long search he met an old lady in the forest who offered him shelter for the night and served him baked beans for dinner. To show his gratitude to this lady for having saved his life, the King constructed a town and named it as Benda Kalooru which means Baked Beans...

I began to think about what Veera Ballalla might have seen. Would MG Road have been a stream, Jayanagar a wooded area and Indiranagar chockablock with tall evergreen trees? More interestingly, what kind of birds and animals might have existed - species that thrived then that we might have lost now or the other way around. Was it a place with tigers lurking around the corner, elephants announcing their mighty presence, warblers darting from one branch to another trying to sell their wares while pink headed ducks calmly waded in the streams wondering what the excitement was all about. Maybe there were racquet tailed drongos imitating and making fun of the winter immigrants just as the cormorants waved their wings in disgust at the pelicans, "These foreigners are spoiling our city!". The woodpeckers would have asked for "one and aff" for use of their tree-holes during the rains and the babblers would gather every evening to gossip about the neighbors, "Did you notice what happened to the oriole that was showing off near the mango tree? He got a white eye! Har har!" The wily dholes would have been upto no good near the race course, while across the street the huge gaurs would be sauntering across the golf course. All the animals would jostle for space on lazy evenings to watch performances by the dancing peafowls, the singing tree frogs (who got booed off stage every time) and the acrobatic hanuman langurs.

Yes, it was a lazy Saturday morning with nothing good on television. But, let's not allow a little weird imagination to get in the way of an interesting science project. Aside from this being a fun project, it could have implications on conservation efforts.

Building this time machine is straightforward on paper, but is incredibly hard in practice because of the lack of information and appropriate maintenance of records. Probably the main ingredient is the landscape ecology data of the area. Another incredible datapoint would be any historic maps made by the Cholas or Hoysalas, the icing would be if these maps are of the natural environment. Co-relating these maps with any existing ruins within the city and entering these in a GIS database would give a fairly accurate picture of what each part of the city might have looked like back then. Now, given that we have specific environment information, we could construct a probability continuum of the possible species and their likelihood of being found in the region given their natural habitats (as a factor of time and space, of course. You can't expect Mammoths because they would not have been found during the time or in the region, even if the environment suited them).

A new pet project, however inane, is always something exciting. Watch this space.

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The Photographer's Journey

tagged  //   photography  

Photography is easy. Almost everyone i know does it. It is probably the perfect thing for a programmer - the general demographic of people i know. A camera is a sufficiently curious piece of technology to tweak around and experiment. With the entry costs extremely low (more so if you are 'onsite') and the desire to get away from town on the weekends, photography is a growing hobby. Stumble into a conversation among a bunch of photographers and you will hear phrases like 'depth of field', 'low f-stop', 'level correction' or '50 to 500 telephoto'; phrases that will make no sense if you aren't in the coterie. Don't be surprised if you find a group of men comparing the size of their lenses. All you have to do is get a hang of these technicalities and you are welcome to the club.

Photography is hard. As is all art. And like any art, there are various levels of proficiency - from journeyman to master. In the beginning, (after having learned the technical details mentioned earlier), the photographer captures images as they are; good non-shaken images at the right exposure. Slowly, she begins to think about composing an image, she realizes what to leave out from a scene as much as she knows what to capture, she understands the rule-of-thirds and she understands when to not use it. The third level is when the photographer begins to manipulate the image to match the picture in her mind's eye. She knows exactly which direction she wants the light to come in from, she can precisely control what aspect of the image is in focus and she knows what angle to shoot from. She captures the dew on the flower and the bird in flight, she captures the city night in all its glory and she captures the monument in early morning light. She captures those magical moments and she inspires awe.

Then, there is the master. Her photograph simply tells a story. It is a zen-like state when the image draws the viewer into its world and yet leaves something to the imagination. It is a state where the technicalities cease to matter. Of course, the exposure is just right. Of course, the light streams from the right direction. Of course, the shutter is clicked at the precise moment. But it is a state when all of it pales into insignificance. She captures photographs that could be epic poems, photographs that break any possible barrier of communication, photographs that, perhaps, change the world.

I would like to believe i am somewhere between the 1st and the 2nd level. I can competently capture non-shaken images and i am beginning to understand exposure and composition. Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, 'Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.' I am halfway through my worst.

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The Inexplicables

tagged  //   personal  
A friend had asked me to take a printout from work. Amazingly, i remembered. I stopped off on my way home to give it to her. I called her on her mobile phone a couple of times and when she didn't answer, i called on her landline. The roommate picked it up. I asked her if my friend was at home and she, after asking who i was, told me she wasn't.

'I need to drop off a printout'
'She's gone out and will be back by 7:30'. It was 5:00.
'I am standing outside your apartment. Can i leave it with you?'
'No'. She refused to take a printout.
'Unh?'. Maybe i heard wrong.
'It would be better if you gave it to her'. Yes, i know that.
'But she is not at home'. Sounding a little desperate now.
'She's gone out and will be back by 7:30'. She reiterated.

I left.

****

I was walking towards my bike when, like it often does in Bangalore, it began to pour suddenly. I decided to take shelter under a large mango tree and wait for the rain to let up. Soon, another man, running with his hand on his shirt pocket, joined me under the mango tree and we exchanged glances like two strangers do when are tied by the same circumstance. He soon started to complain about the rain and began to make conversation. He was 32, worked in a electronics shop nearby and hated what the IT crowd had done to his city. I was 26, worked as a salesperson in a clothes store and hated what the IT crowd had done to my city. We were soon talking about cricket, the latest Puneet Rajkumar movie and the lack of places to get good coffee. The rain slowly calmed down to a drizzle and i took my leave. I began to walk to my bike and he calmly opened his black umbrella and walked away.

****

The bus i am in has been stationery for over 45 minutes. As have all the other vehicles on the road. Someone gives us patchy details of an accident up front. Someone else talks about a political rally. A wise man asks us to get off and go home. Of course, no one does. The opportunity cost of doing so after waiting for nearly an hour is too high. As the bus slowly begins to move, there is a collective sigh of relief. As we inch forward, the reason for the delay becomes apparent. It is a gory collision. A truck filled with more sand than it can handle had collided with an auto transporting more coconuts than it could handle. The truck has toppled over and the sand is all over the road with coconuts strewn all over - it seems a little like a beach. The auto is cut in the middle; both the pieces beyond recognition. The driver has died while still in the auto and you can still see the half-dried blood on the seat cover. Shards of glass reflect the scene a thousand times. There is absolute silence in the bus as everyone's senses are still taking it all in. A few silent prayers, a few open mouths and a few averted eyes convey the emotion.

The man sitting next to me has a pair of ear phones on, is oblivious to the whole thing, and is singing loudly, while bobbing his head back and forth, 'Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me..'

****

Comments [10]

Twitter And Me

tagged  //   technology  
I gave it an honest shot. I really did. I gave it my time, tried to understand it, attempted to see its positives and looked beyond its #fails. I was not judgmental and i did not base my opinion on its looks. It was immensely popular, yet not snobbish. It was the talk of the town, yet not materialistic. Everyone loved it, and it reciprocated in equal measure. But, something was amiss.

Twitter almost never gave me anything interesting. The noise to signal ratio was too high and it was too much trouble trying to find that diamond in the coal mine. The mine was too dark, there were not enough search lights and i didn't really know where to look. Maybe the gems were strewn all around me, but they were just too hard for me to find.

Twitter promised me conversations. It lied. I would reply to someone's tweet and they would only reply to that hours later. By then, i would have lost interest in continuing any conversation. I had painted pictures in my head about conversations like birds chirping in the morning; imagined music in the cacophony; thought about whispers late in the night. Twitter let me down - not only were conversations painful, discussions with groups of people greater than 2 was almost impossible. You picked me up only to crash me down, T.

Twitter was stingy. I could never say anything meaningful in the meagre 140 characters. I had to include a hyperlink to another place. I noticed that almost anyone who wanted to say anything remotely interesting also did the same. Was it a link sharing service? Don't we have them aplenty already? Because of it being niggardly, people misunderstood Twitter. They thought it was a social network, when it was a micro blogging platform. They thought it was a place to meet old friends, when it was actually a place to express oneself. It wasn't facebook, but nobody believed it. And as the world descended into sms-speak once again, it was time to alight.

Twitter was also too demanding. It wanted too much of my time and attention. The more people i followed, the harder it became to comprehend if anyone was real; much less what anyone was saying. Constantly fighting to keep up with all tweets, i found myself exhausted and disillusioned. I wanted my space. I wanted out.

In a different world, at a different time, maybe things might have worked out. Maybe, if Twitter allowed me to actually have conversations, if it allowed me to follow topics i was interested in and not just people i didn't know, if only people took 'followers' less seriously and did not make it an ego trip, if it did not sink into spewing spam and marketing gimmicks, maybe if following more than 20 people did not mean drinking from a fire hose, maybe, just maybe, if there was a purpose to all this.

Till then, Twitter, can we be just friends?

Comments [1]

Rethinking Education

tagged  //   social  
Education is a subject close to my heart and there is no question there is a crisis in the field. We should rethink how we want to proceed and answer fundamental questions like what does education mean and what should it try to achieve.

What is education
All scientific principles can be whittled down to a few basic axioms. Peter Brook, a director, said the following about the most basic elements of theater -
"... a man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and that is all i need for an act of theater to be engaged."
What are the most basic elements of education? You need someone eager to learn about a subject they love and you need someone to help them learn it. To paraphrase Peter Brook,
"... a man studies what he loves whilst someone else is facilitating him, and that is all i need for an act of education to be engaged."
You can take away the designated teacher, the classroom, the examinations, the textbooks and yet, you can have education. Don't bring in language, compulsory subjects, homework or fees, and yet, we can have education. That is a very liberating thought.

What should education aim to achieve
Education cannot work in isolation, of course. It is an integral part of society and it has to play the most important role in employability. Today's education system is based on the industrial revolution and the need for engineers and scientists. It is arcane and doesn't make any sense anymore. The world has changed unrecognizably since then (unlike my aunts who insist on asking me if i recognize them every time i see them) and it is imperative that education catches up. The opportunities for employment in this new world are tremendous - the world of art has opened up, the internet has cut across all sections, sports is under a greater spotlight than ever before and the world is in dire need to inspirational leaders. If education provides a launch pad into new careers like being a musician, a web designer or an entrepreneur, the prospects of making a viable living increase dramatically. Vocation training won't be something a person takes up because he couldn't get into an engineering college, anymore. The real world also works in a manner different from what is taught in schools today. Education should enable one to be a fantastic team player, to interact with and relate to diverse cultures from across the world, to learn to work with schedules and deadlines and to take decisions with systematic thought.

Sir Ken Robinson tells a story about a little girl in a drawing class. The teacher walks up to her and asks her what she is drawing and the girl tells her that she's making a picture of God. The teacher says, "But, no one knows what God looks like" and the girl replies, "In 10 minutes, they will". Today's education system systematically kills the innate creativity that everyone is born with. Education should encourage individualism and creative expression. It should compel children to question the norm and to think independently. It should facilitate original thinking and provide avenues to express ideas.

Technology is omnipresent in our lives today and education has to use it. We have to inculcate elements of social interaction, electronic communication, rich media and the vast resources on the internet while educating children. It is something they have grown up with, can relate to and is something that comes naturally to them. There are already an ubiquity of websites that promote learning through technology - right from open source textbooks to open universities and everything in between. We must be careful to not get too carried away by this though, and must realize that technology is but the catalyst and not the crutch. Technology is not the panacea to our ills and it needs to get out of the way once it has served its purpose.

We always aim to educate children for a world vastly different from the one we live in and it is hard to predict the future. But, basing it on the past is not the way forward.

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Pandora For The Internet?

tagged  //   technology  
Before we get started, if you haven't already, read about the Music Genome Project. I'll wait. Wouldn't it be great if we have such a categorization and recommendation engine for information on the web? The music genome project categorizes music based on nearly 400 attributes. Surely, if we can do it for music, we can do it for text.

To narrow down the task a little, we could consider only blogs and leave out everything else. We can begin analyzing text on two basic attributes - form and function. By function, i refer to the content of the text, the subject that it tackles. And by form, i refer to the structure of the text, the emotion and the style of writing.

Function can be ascertained by diligent categorization based on the words used in the article. The overall content of the blog would help determine the general topic (blogs on technology or entertainment would generally write articles related to those areas). Parsing the text to look for specific terms and applying bayesian filters would provide a probability of the article belonging to a certain narrow topic (programming in python, iphone games or reviews of movies starring salma hayek). Another way of narrowing on the topic is to follow outgoing links and determining the general content of those webpages. The system would also group related topics in hierarchies.

Form is a little more difficult to categorize. We can divide form into two components: structure and sentiment. Structure consists of characteristics such as - the length of the article, the number of words in a sentence, the type of words or phrases used, the amount of dialogue, the density of the text, the use of language constructs like active vs passive voice, 1st person vs 3rd person and so on, the use of punctuation, the number of sentences in a paragraph, the rhythm of the text determined by the syllables - and then derive various metrics from these numbers. This would be one manner of categorization. Sentiment, on the other hand, is harder to determine. It is slightly easier in music (you can determine the rhythm, type of instruments used, the raaga, etc to home in on the sentiment), but it is much harder in english. It is very difficult to determine characteristics such as irony, sarcasm or humor by parsing text. Moreover, different cultures have different ways of expressing sentiments which renders any universal algorithm irrelevant. Having said that, some sentiments can be a trifle more easy to gauge - like anger, joy, sadness or want (by words, phrases, sentence lengths, punctuation used, etc).

How does all this help? It will help one wade through the garbage of the internet to find the little gems that we care about. If you liked an article, it would help you find other articles - perhaps on similar topics and with similar writing style - that you would be eager to read. It would also provide an opportunity to serendipitously discover great articles or pieces of information. Don't community powered recommendation engines already do this? Well, i would argue that they don't. Mostly, the articles submitted are what the original reader liked and not necessarily what you might enjoy (even if you are interested in the topic). Making a fully automated system can tailor content exactly as you would want it.

The system could sneak in a few surprises - like showing you an article with similar style on a completely unrelated topic to gauge your response and learn from it. It could also learn your reading patterns - what kind of articles you like reading in the morning vs reading at night, reading over the week vs reading over the weekend - and tune itself accordingly. It could show you articles based on your current mood. Over time, it would know what you want to read better than you do. As scary as that sounds, i think it's a beautiful thing.

I think it's time we stopped manually adding feeds to our feedreader. I think it's time we have an Internet Genome Project.

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