Art & Photography

Nowadays I'm getting influenced by Art. I have visited a lot of towns all over UK, and they all have great art galleries and museums, most of which have free entries. Initially I only used to visit them because they were free. But since the last few months, this free viewing has actually inspired me, to the point where I re-visited a couple of museums to look at the paintings there.

I look on the internet for help, and try to understand these paintings. They are after all 'photographs' of what the painter saw in his mind. It is then inspiring after interpreting a painting. I wonder how I might paint Vincent van Gogh's Cypresses even if I decide to copy it. Anyways, I don't think now is the time for me to paint.. may be when I'm older :)

With this new found understanding, that I'm a Classical when it comes to art, I reflect on my existing photos and I'm ashamed of what I see. All my work seems so childish... so 'nothing' compared to such great works. I have mixed feelings now.. I'm afraid of taking any more photos, as in my mind I have yardsticks set to great works of art. On the other hand these works of art inspire me to do better. Hope this inspiration translates into better photographs.

What are your thoughts about Art & Photography?

Hello Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing! That's the new buzz word of the season.. the new kid on the block. What is all the fuss about? Here is my take:

Why?
Q: Do most organizations build their own power generators or water treatment facilities? The answer is NO
Q: So why should every IT Organization need to acquire and maintain all the IT infrastructure resources it uses?
Q: Should the organization rather not be concentrating on doing what they do best.. their core business.. instead of diverting resources expanding IT operations?
A: Cloud Computing, where standardized IT services are subscribed from different vendors.

A good example of similar services are utility companies.. say for instance the electric company. They provide to 'subscribers' a standard voltage and frequency. They so this very efficiently, and you don't have to bother about electricity generation any more. We get electricity 'as a service'.

Cloud Computing promises to do the same.. So for IT departments, it means no enterprise hardware hardware costs, no software licenses or upgrades to manage, no new employees or consultants to hire, no facilities to lease, no capital costs of any kind — and no hidden costs. Just a metered, 'pay per use' rate or subscription fee. Everything can be off load 'as a service'

Are we there yet?
Yes, Google documents is a very good example, and so are popular applications like Picasa web and Flickr. Imagine having a lot of commonly used desktop applications 'rented' from vendors.. enterprise email, word processing, document management, storage management, CRM, development platforms, testing platforms.. almost everything under the sun.

Most IT vendors like Google, IBM, Dell, Sun, HP have models ready for implementation. Amazon is ready with a commercial offering the EC2 and S3. Salesforce has already been offering CRM in the form of PaaS for quite some time.

Some associated terms:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)

The Internet is more than ready to handle the heavy load clouds bring on, as essentially the cloud is on the Internet. End uses access resources over the Internet.

So the next step, or rather the first step to reach there, is by offloading computing infrastructure itself. Hiring computing resources, enterprise storage, virtualization is the way to go.

Sun goes on to say.. Use the Cloud, Build the Cloud, Be the Cloud. But there are some who are opposing the Cloud, like Richard Stallman here. According to him, used data should always be under his own control.

So lets wait and watch if the Cloud is welcomed or if it goes puff!

Image courtesy : How stuff works

Data Storage for the Home

My search for a good persnal data storage solution prompted me to write this article. I already have neumerous external and internal storage solutions.. right from the now humble USB 2.0 devices, older IDE's to the newer SATA II-10K rpm-10Mb cache-3GB with PCI-X RAID cards!

As a power user, I'm looking for the below features in my storage solution..

Must have:
-Reasonable data transfer rates, to support streaming music/video; around 20MBps
-Solution should not use proprietary standards, software, drivers or access methods
-Price around 200$ US
-Portability

Good to have:
-Wireless (WiFi) access or atleast Ethernet/LAN access

-USB 2.0, FireWire, eSATA (the more the better)
-High data transfer rates

-Good backup software
-500Gb plus capacity (1TB ;)
-Shared storage (multi use capable)
-Capacity expandability (vis SATA or USB ports)
-RAID

Options:
-DAS (Direct attached storage) via USB 2.0, Firewire 400/800, eSATA
-NAS (Network attached storage) 100Mbps or 1Gbps Ethernet, 802.11 a/b/g WiFi
-Home grown NAS using DAS components
-Open Source Software effort (Linux variants, Ubuntu, FreeNAS)

Solution:

Finally, I found a great deal and settled for the Buffalo LinkStation Pro. The LS-500GL features satisfy most of my criterias, and more.. It has 2 USB expansion ports which can be used for printing (print server option), backups to USB, or storage expandablity (to the existing 500Gb SATA II 7400rpm) by USB add on drives. Its got a Giga bit ethernet port, which goes on into my Thomson Wifi router. It's even DLNA certified to support playback on supported medial players (my Dell Laptop is supported). The best part is, that its got an embeded or stripped down Linux (Debian) on it running on a 400Mhz Marvel ARM CPU.

Having Linux on this means the possiblities are endless. I'm now able to hack 'open' the Buffalo 500, and use it as a full fledged NAS box. This can be easily done by the detailed and well written documents found at http://buffalo.nas-central.org/. But, to do this, one needs to have some form of knowledge of the Linux workings and understanding of its command line or shell.

I have now hacked my Buffalo 500 to run a torrent client for me, besides the other usefull Linux services. I now hardly use the vendor provided access framework.

The only major down side to this product is the lower than average transfer speeds. The max I could get even with a cross over ethernet cable was 8MBps. Strangely I get much higher speeds when there are two more more data copy/access streams.

To conclude, I recomend this product for novice to advanced, home or SOHO use with a rating of 9/10.

Bajaj Pulsar 220 DTS-Fi Elite Club blog lauched

I recently bought the Baja Pulsar 220 DTS-Fi bike. Its India's latest and sexiest performance bike. Available only in limited numbers (50 released to date), and that too only for Pune buyers. Its a great machine, with a lot of new features and technologies being incorporated first time in an Indian bike.

Finally, after some hard work, the Bajaj Pulsar 220 DTS-Fi Owners Elite Club has been launched successfully. Do have a look at it here http://pulsar220club.blogspot.com/

The aim of the club is to write reviews, share knowledge, discuss issues common to the Bajaj Pulsar 220 DTS-Fi or just the P220, and of course brag about the bike. So do have a look and leave a comment if you like the site.

Buying a new Digital Camera | Home or Pro use

Thinking of buying a new Digital Camera? Confused what to look for? Here are a few tips:

Firstly the terms:

Mp = Mega Pixel. Never get anything below 3Mp. Photos using 3Mp can be used to get real, hard, photo-paper copies up to 5"x7" good quality prints. So higher MP is really needed if you want to print. Printing costs for 4"x6" is Rs.6; for 5"x7" approx Rs.10; for 8"x12" Rs.50.
Optical Zoom = Its the level of magnification one can get in the camera, using the optical lens system. Also called as wide angle - telescopic.
Digital Zoom = Don't even worry about this. Its just a marketing gimic; just don't consider this.
Modes = Auto modes are available on all models, gives best results under most conditions. Manual modes are useful to exploit camera features, and get best shots after calculating shutter speeds, aperture, focal length, exposure compensation.

1]Usage: Decide what the camera will be used primarily for.
-Home/People photography
3Mp+, 3x Optical Zoom, Auto modes

-Outdoor people photography
3Mp+, 3x Optical Zoom, Auto modes

-Landscape photography ( National Geographic)
6Mp+, 3x Optical Zoom, More zoom the better

-Birds/Animals (Animal Planet/ Discovery)
10Mp+, 10x Optical Zoom, max zoom is needed

-Professionals photography (fashion/glamor/travel/journalism) (F-Tv/news/magazine)
6Mp+, 3x Optical Zoom, DSLR only which can do RAW images, lenses must be optical elements, detachable/changeable lens kits better.

-Macro (close up of Objects/Products/flowers)
5Mp+, Zoom mostly not needed

-Low light photography (Discovery, spy stuff)
5Mp+, DSLR preferred, higher ISO needed like 800, 1600, 3200.

2]Mp or Zoom: Higher mega pixel or higher Optical Zoom
More Mp is needed if you intend to crop a lot of the frame. In that case 10Mp is the best. Cropping is hardly needed, perhaps for Pro photography.
On the other hand, having more optical zoom is better. You could take closer shots without actually moving close up to the subject.

3]Battery:
Digital cameras suck batteries a lot. Getting a camera with a rechargeable battery is the only viable option. Two choices ..
- Proprietor battery pack (best option ever, bit costly)
- Rechargeable pencil cells (AAA or AA, cheap, but recharging needed very frequently)

4]Movie modes:
For a family camera, having a good movie mode is very desirable. That way a handy-cam is not needed. Look for 640x480 with minimum 24FPS modes (VCD quality). Higher the better. Any lower than this, the video will be jerky and grainy. AVI or MPEG video formats are preferable, and easy to edit and burn on DVD. MOV/quicktime may not so edit friendly. Also, DSLR's wont have movie modes.

5]Others:
LCD, don't get anything less than 2". Now a days 2.5" is standard and most desirable.
Memory, buy as much as you can afford. Minimum needed now a days is 512Mb, 1Gb recommended. But then you can always add more memory cards later if needed.
Size, now a days the slim models look great, and still perform very well, but are costlier. Do have a look at a camera in you hands and get a feel.
Shake reduction, or Vibration reduction. Not a must have, but good for first time users, and ya it also helps when you zoom a lot.
Brand, I recommend Nikon and Canon. Sony and Kodak, are good too.

Want to check the internet for good deals and specs, click here and search in the customized Google search there. For buyers in India, I suggest you check prices and models on the JJmehta site too.

I own a Nikon D40 DSLR, a Canon A530, a Kodak CX6330 point and shoot (3Mp 3X, with video mode), an Acer 300 (300K pixel, 1st generation).

Let me know if you need any more info. I also recommend the Google Picasa photo management software. Also do visit my 365 Days Photo Project.