Internet Censorship in India

Couple of days ago, Indian internet users woke up to something unexpected – A whole bunch of websites such as Vimeo, Dailymotion, Pastebin and popular websites that share torrent files were blocked from all major ISPs in India. Anyone who tried to access these sites directly was greeted with this simple error message:

This was similar to the censorship imposed in 2006, where the Government officials decided that a few websites weren’t of use to the general public and imposed a generic ban on domains that hosted them, to stop terrorism. The new censorship was confusing, since the categorization of websites blocked did not appear to seem something that could have come from the Government.

Upon a bit of digging, someone on Twitter came up with this link that identified one Chennai based company named CopyrightLabs with their CEO making a public statement as to the reason behind the ban. (At the time of writing this, the website remains ‘closed for maintenance’). Apparently, the company specializes in preventing movies from being pirated.

The company advertises themselves as someone who specializes in preventing movie piracy, something that threatens the movie industry. From what I can remember reading, they list file sharing servers (Rapidshare, Megaupload, …), video sharing services (Youtube, vimeo, dailymotion, …) and torrent sites as reason for piracy and loss of crores of rupees for Indian movie producers (!!). Do note that website never mentioned the use of a torrent client or the protocol itself, but just targeted torrent file distribution sites. The language used throughout the site was, at best, mediocre and was not proofread (To whomsoever wrote it – if you’re reading this – Sorry, I know that hurts, but that’s what it is!)

To anyone who’s spent enough time on the internet – the website speaks for itself – it does not come across as a technology company. Unfortunately, we are not whom they’re trying to market themselves to, and they seem to be doing a good job in that division – hit the nail right on the head. Instead of using technology, like what this company did recently, CopyrightLabs uses a more basic approach – they file a court case and order ISPs to block the mentioned websites (a copy of the court order is available in the link mentioned above).

There was a lot of hue and cry on twitter, to which the following responses were issued by the CEO of Copyright Labs and someone posting on behalf of Copyright Labs:

I’m not sure whether these statements about blocking individual links is true and I cannot verify, since the court order *does not* mention individual links, and it was issued well in advance. Perhaps if you have some information, you could help me out (I’m a curious person, I do not benefit in any way out of this).

Several tried to reach out to their ISPs, but the response from them was pretty much standard, that stated that the websites were blocked due to a court order. This article has some details of how to sue RTI to get that information, along with responses from an ISP.

The current state of affairs is a shame – looks like anyone can get a court order and block any website that they would like to. Shame on companies that do this, shame on those who use their services and shame on the court for encouraging such demands, instead of asking them to really invest time into developing the required technology.

Nevertheless, no one was impacted directly – if CopyrightLabs was into technology, they would have known that the ISPs methods to ‘block access’ wouldn’t be as effective as they though. Even the Great Firewall of China has not prevented people from accessing blocked websites. Oh well, they may have succeeded in blocking out the average user from accessing vimeo, or a torrent file sharing site, but then …

I can only chuckle at their ignorance, and hope they learn. And as someone rightly pointed out on Twitter (sorry, I can’t remember who it was) – the producers employing these methods don’t lose money to piracy, it’s just that they make bad movies and people don’t want to watch them.

Experience with a courier service

Today I had the good fortune of interacting with a courier service agency who has, for a while, had a questionable reputation. For the sake of protecting their name and identity, I will not mention their name. What kind of questionable reputation, you ask – don’t ask me, ask the one who knows everything about the internet, and right from the fourth link as of writing this, you get all the answers. And since the ordering may change, check this, this and this among the few links that are spat out.

Some of the problems mentioned on those links are very similar to what I’d experienced, and being the self proclaimed out of box thinker that I am, I decided to think it through and figure out what exactly was happening.

Problem Statement
Package shipped successfully from source to Bangalore on the 23rd – took it took one day to arrive in Bangalore (no problems there) – very prompt service. Internal shipping to the appropriate office in Bangalore took one more day (blame the traffic and road conditions – anyone who’s been driving around in Bangalore can understand why it took that long) and the package reached on the 24th. According to the logs, the delivery executive attempted to deliver the package twice, once on 24th, and once on 26th – both times, the consignment was returned stating ‘Door Locked’ (Henceforth, referred to as Problem #1), when in fact, there was someone available at the mentioned address day and night (I personally can vouch for this). Innumerable number of calls to the numbers mentioned remained unanswered (Problem #2).

The problem was solved by the recipient (me) tracking down the delivery executive, and procuring the package at the dispatch unit by myself, when the dispatch unit was just around 2 minutes walk from the destination address.

Problem #1
Whilst a large number of people seem to have similar complaints, I do not agree with their opinion that the service provider is cheating or dishonest. Any self respecting person who’s being paid to do his job would never do something like that – would they? Then what exactly went wrong? Why would the delivery executive (DE) state on record that the door was locked when it wasn’t? A few possibilities:
1. The DE was not trained to recognize a ‘locked’ door – He/she could have been trained to understand that a closed door could be a locked door.
2. DE does not know how to ring the bell since there was no training imparted on how to ring the bell on the door.
3. In the rarest of rare cases, the door was actually locked.

But you ask again “Why didn’t he call the phone number that’s written clearly on the package?” Are you sure your number was reachable when he tried calling? Absolutely certain? If not, you ought to take it up with your mobile service provider, or maybe the executive’s since his mobile phone may not have had signal reception. Or yet again, there comes the possibility of not being trained to do that – after all, which self respecting employee of a courier service will not be ready to do his job? Knowing the standards that the company has maintained, it is hard to believe they would recruit candidates who’d behave that way.

Problem #2
Plenty of complaints on the internet that no one answers the phone numbers listed on the company’s website. There is nothing wrong with the phone numbers listed here – but aren’t you missing out on the possibility that you simply may have called them up during their off-working hours, or their break time? After all, who would answer the office phone during off-working hours? After a bit of digging (to be read “monkey clicking on links on first page of google search results”), I found this number – I was very angry at the website for posting a number that wasn’t working which ended up discrediting the esteemed courier company. I can only think of the number of people who would have read that article, called up and cursed the courier company who has not posted details of it anywhere on their website.

From some more querying on the “Ask-me-anything” site, I came across this post (at the time of writing this article, the website was down) – I can only imagine the pain it must have taken the poor chap to acquire that number since I couldn’t find a mention of it anywhere on the company’s website. I blame the website maintainers for that error – I believe that the company must have submitted the new contact information, the coders were lazy and they’ve not updated the website with the new information. Also, the company makes it a bit interesting for people who seek challenges, like me to go through a series of clues to figure out how to reach them. Fun, isn’t it? Teaches you to deal with pressure as well, since you’ll need to keep your calm when tracing a package whose state is currently unknown, calling a gazillion phone numbers that no one answers, but you know that the door at the recipient’s address was locked.

Oh, before I forget, that number in the link, that is a 24 customer care number operational from 10 AM to 4 PM. And they should rename the service to ‘Read Tracking Status from the Internet’, meaning, if you give them the consignment number, someone will read out whatever’s visible to you on the website. It kind of failed to make the point considering I was already looking at that on my desktop and my mobile phone. But think of what happens when you are not sitting in front of a computer, do not have signal on your phone, and need inputs on where your consignment is, this is the number to call.

Problem #3
Plenty of people complain about bad attitude of the employees as well. When I first visited the branch office, I was guided continuously by four or five people to talk to someone else – Understandable, since some of them were very busy standing at random corners without doing anything and the other was just about to take off for his tea break. One gentleman was kind enough to give me the mobile number of the dispatch unit that was handling my particular consignment and promptly guided me on how to get there with detailed instructions that eventually ended up being absolutely incorrect. I requested him to speak with the delivery guy, but of course, he was busy and scooted off for his cup of tea with me running behind requesting him to help. I called the delivery guy who asked me a barrage of questions without listening to me – of course, he was extremely busy figuring out how to get to houses on his list whose doors weren’t locked and in that process, stopped answering the phone after a couple of minutes. He had a standard template which needed answering that cuts out any questions you may have, which includes ‘Do you have my consignment?’

Bad attitude? What bad attitude? You should be happy that these people take time of their busy schedules for mortals like me and you and help you with.

And if you’re interested reading further on what happened – In my search for the dispatch unit as it was no where to be found in the area that the guy had mentioned, I almost gave up and accepted defeat in the game of treasure hunt, and then by a miracle, the sign board for the dispatch unit was right there in front of me, about 200 meters from the house where the package was to be delivered. I walked in to the shop, gave the details and picked up the package – all without a single identity verification because they trust people. How nice to work with a company that has so much of faith in people!

Jokes apart, it is a shame that a business with service like this has thrived. They are paid by customers to do their job (which they don’t), do not bother answering the phone, responding to eMails addressing concerns or even address a distraught customer in person who’s trying to trace a consignment (which, IMO, they should trace the package, not the customer). People like you and me are the ones who let this business grow big. Whilst it’s not in my interest to see this company go down causing unemployment to so many people, I’d certainly want them to improve their service and fire those who don’t do what they’re paid for (those do not deserve a job anyway). As of now, the only way I can think of is to tell people (friends, relatives, colleagues or anyone who intends to use their service) NOT to use their services at all.

Amazon Kindle Touch : My Review

A couple of months ago, a colleague at work asked me about eBook Readers – he was planning to get one for his wife. His requirements were something that was primarily an eBook reader, with a color display interface, could handle a bit of multimedia, and was inexpensive. He had narrowed down on the Kindle Fire that was launched fairly recently and wanted my opinion on it.  For his requirement and use, it seemed fine. I was looking up reviews and product information about it on the internet, and I got very strongly tempted to pick one for myself, but my requirements were slightly different – I wasn’t too concerned about a color display or the ability to handle multimedia – I just wanted something with which I could read eBooks (which wasn’t very expensive), and the Amazon Kindle Touch seemed to fit all those requirements very well.

Now came the problem of sourcing what I needed – the Kindle Touch wasn’t available for delivery in India, however, the new Kindle priced at $79 was. I figured out it would be a pain to enter text with something that didn’t have a keyboard, and that didn’t have a touch interface, and decided to stick with my decision to by the Kindle Touch.

I asked around, and a friend was just about to travel to the US and graciously offered to pick one up for me. I asked him to order Kindle Touch [Ad Supported version] and Kindle Zip Sleeve [Charcoal color] [I notice that the price of the Zip Sleeve has fallen down by $10 now ]. Now remember this if you’re asking someone else to order and buy the Kindle – ask them to mark it as a gift, else Amazon automatically registers the Kindle to their account before delivering so that you’re all set to go. Deregistering and changing the account settings isn’t that difficult, but when it’s just a check box away and costs you nothing, as compared to doing it on the new device, may well be worth it.

A few weeks later, when he was back, I had my Kindle and the sleeve.

[Excuse the quality of the photograph - shot with my mobile phone]

The last few weeks, I’ve been regularly using it and here’s what I feel, along with a few things that may be of use to someone who’s planning to get a new Kindle. 

The Good:

1. Length and width are just about the size of an average book – it comes equipped with a 6″ display. Thin enough to easily hold – 0.4″. At a little over 200 grams, weighs a lot less than the average 300+ page book too.

2. Amazon boasts that they use the revolutionary E Ink technology for display, which is appears looks like real paper – I agree. Except for the part where you feel (or smell, for those who like the smell of paper), they’ve got it right. There is no strain on the eyes when reading for long duration. Do note that there is no backlighting, and you will need a source of light (just like a paper book). This also means you can read the book even under direct sunlight – something that you can not do with devices that have backlighting.

3. The manufacturer claims that the battery is built to last for two months on a single charge (with Wi-Fi turned off). I have been unable to verify this claim at the moment – but I can safely say that after a month and a half of use, with Wi-Fi on and off intermittently and 2-3 hours of reading a day, there was enough charge left to support this claim.

4. The device comes with 4 Gigs of storage – Imagine carrying 20 books with you when you’re traveling and you will realize how big a boon this is. (Personal experience – when I visited China in 2010, I was warned that it is difficult to get English books, and I carried a few, left some of them back there. This device would have saved so much of space in my luggage and the pain of leaving books behind)

5. Neat, uncluttered and easy to use interface – You do not need to be a gadget wizard to start using this device as soon it is out of the packaging.

6. Integration with Amazon Store – this is a huge boon. Once you register your device, you can buy stuff (not just books) right there on the Kindle. You can also browse on a computer, and buy eBooks which automatically get delivered to the Kindle when you sync-up using Wi-Fi (or 3G, if you have the 3G version)

7. Additionally, it comes with an experimental Audio player, and a browser – I have no idea how good the audio player is, since I am already equipped with enough devices to deliver music. However, for those who like audio books, this could be useful. The browser is quite decent, but remember that this device does not display color.

8. If you already have a collection of eBooks, this device can be used to read them as well. When you plug it in to the computer, it uses a Mass Storage Media profile. To read your personal files, just copy them to the /Documents folder on the Kindle and you are all set. As such, the Kindle supports a wide variety of documents. If you need a document converted, Amazon’s WhisperSync feature allows you to eMail the document (or documents bundled together as a Zip file) to an eMail address. If you use 3G for delivery, Amazon will charge you for it. If you use Wi-Fi, use the eMail address <your_user_name>@free.kindle.com and the Kindle syncs only when connected to a WiFi network – and there’s no charge.

9. Any document that you request to be converted stays on Amazon’s Cloud free of charge, accessible to you anytime. Amazon allows you to store up to 5 GB of data. This is applicable for documents that you convert. If you buy a book, it stays in the cloud and does not add up to this space. You can delete these book on your device and my understanding is that they will still be accessible.

10. Selecting a word will look it up on the in-built dictionary. The dictionary, by itself, is available for use.

The Bad:

1. As with all products that use software, there are bugs. My Kindle was responding very badly after 3 weeks of keeping it powered on – it was way too slow to operate and needed a reboot to get back to normal. There could be a memory leak that may need fixing.

2. Not a real book – This is not my complaint, but I’ve read this complaint on several forums. If the way a book feels is important, this may not be the best choice.

Amazon publishes a list of eBooks that they provide for free for a short duration from time to time on this RSS link. You’ll have to use your discretion on what to get, even if it is free

For my personal use, this has been a big plus – I’ve been reading more, it’s a lot easier to carry books when traveling, and when time is right, the Amazon Book Store gives me a great deal on books that I need. I can also read other books that I already have (PDF, mobi, epub, doc formats to name a few) on this device and the storage it offers is good enough to carry more than what I can read.

If you have an eBook in a format that is not recognized by the Kindle or WhisperSync service, you may find this software (which is free of cost) quite useful to convert books to a format that is recognizable by the Kindle.

If you have any other questions, ask them in a comment.

Addendum : Almost missed mentioning – it’s very easy to perform the basic operations with one hand, which is a big plus. I’ve read about a lot of people complaining that most of the older eBook readers are a pain to use since you can’t go to the next page without holding it in one hand and using another to navigate – that operation, is easy. For word lookups, using the menu, annotating – you will need to hold it with one hand and use the other.

Why I don’t like the new Google Reader Interface

Goodness, this is becoming a habit. I draft out a page when I get pissed, and don’t publish it. Anyway, here is something that pissed me off this morning, and I am publishing it.

The Culprit : Google Reader‘s new ubercool interface upgrade (Yup, got that right)

The most popular use of Google Reader is to subscribe to RSS feeds, as most of you who use it would know. It integrates neatly into my mobile phone, allowing me to read whatever I want, wherever I want, whenever I want to. Apart from subscribing to RSS feeds and sharing articles that I like, I also use it as a lovely bookmarking service. The ‘Note in Reader’ feature that is subtly present, that most folks miss out on, was a blessing in disguise for me. Prior to ‘discovering’ this feature, I used Instapaper, and once I found it, I realized I didn’t need to have another account with yet another service when I already had service from Google that did it. So there you go – two features that I loved about Google Reader – reading articles and a Read-it-later service.

This morning, when I logged into Google Reader, I noticed that I’d gotten the ‘Upgraded’ interface. Frantically searched for the ‘Notes’ tab and couldn’t find it. Now I have over 60 bookmarks in the notes section, including a few that I couldn’t read yesterday, a few pages that I read once in a while for inspiration, and some quick references. Imagine my state when I couldn’t find it. Among other changes the ‘Share’ button has been replaced with ‘+1′, but the ‘Note’ feature was missing.

I did a little bit of digging within Reader settings, and found that they allowed me to Export my notes as a ‘JSON Activity Stream’ or a ‘Reader JSON’ . The JSON Activity Stream, as per what’s stated, is an industry standard. But now I needed a bookmarking service that would allow me to Import the file. The file is an XML file containing details of the website, and the note. Being curious, I opened the file in a standard text editor, and found contents like this :

{"published":"2011-10-30T15:52:03.572","actor":{"objectType":"person",
"id":"tag:google.com,2005:reader/abcdefghijklmnopqrst","displayName":"GoogleUserName;"},"verb":"noted","object":{"id":"tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/ac6a1d9f8cdcd2b1","url":"http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/stream/items/contents?i\u003dtag:google.com,2005:reader/item/ac6a1d9f8cdcd2b1","content":"\u003cp\u003eOmmwriter is a simple text processor that firmly believes in making writing a pleasure once again, reinvindicating the close relationship between writer and paper. The more intimate the relation, the smoother the flow of inspiration.\u003c/p\u003e",
"displayName":"Welcome - Ommwriter","objectType":"post"}},

Note : Content above edited to protect privacy

Yup, doesn’t make much sense at first glance (but it does if you know what you’re dealing with), and imagine having to deal with over 60 notes like this. Oh well, it isn’t that difficult to understand, but here was the problem – I couldn’t get the link I had bookmarked – in some cases, the URL was present as part of the note, and in others, I couldn’t find it. Gave up.

Next – checked Google Reader on the mobile, and I found that the ‘My Stuff’ tab contained some of the articles I’d bookmarked. Whew, relief. But wait, it didn’t have all of it. Salvaged whatever I could, and went ahead with ‘discovering’ other ways.

Some basic research searching on Google gave me this a reference to this thread – http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/reader/thread?tid=3039452d99060eb4&hl=en which states you can access all your notes using this link – http://www.google.com/reader/view/user/-/state/com.google/created – That link gives you a list of all your stared items irrespective of what version of Reader you are using. Standard technique of copying and pasting the links works well. I moved all my notes to Read It Later, which has a nice client for a mobile phone as well – but the free version of mobile client can display only 10 bookmarks at a time. I could get the ‘Pro’ version of the client, but I would like to try it out for a while before taking any decisions.

With that little activity, I ended up spending an hour of my time that I’d have otherwise spent doing absolutely nothing. Among other inconveniences, I’d set up my Google Reader account for sharing an article very quickly. I am not sure if I can setup RIL to do the same.

I hope this helps those who have been using Reader’s ‘Note in Reader’ service. Though my mingration is complete, I’d be interested in knowing if you have any other better ways of doing it efficiently.

Fighting Fairly

Blast from the past. One of those moments that taught me about fighting fairly. This happened when I was in college, my classmates, if any, read this may be able to recollect the moment.

We had a lab session, and generally, lab sessions are for 3 hours. This was in the afternoon, and I was busy coding away problems to glory (which roughly means solving other problems that were of interest to me since I already knew the solution). The computer lab was fairly large, and could accommodate at least two batches – there was another class of students with ours. A lecturer for one of our classes (Mr. L) also happened to play the role of the lab in-charge, which meant he was the person of authority as far as anything with respect to the lab. During the time we were supposed to work out solutions, other folks came in to use the spare computers to get some urgent work completed. There were two groups of students from two different classes, and they were using whatever computers were available on a time sharing basis. Things were OK till the evening, when the administrators in the lab realized that one of the computers was not where it was supposed to be. Now, we are talking about desktops here – even at that time, I knew that it would have been impossible for *anyone* to carry one in whole or in dismantled form (which would have been very unlikely since it would have drawn attention, and furthermore, these were the older models which had screws, nuts and bolts – if you know what I’m talking about). Following a frantic search, the computer was found safe in another location within the lab – one of the mischievous students from the 4 batches that were present in the lab decided to pull a prank, and did it very successfully.

Next day, in class, Mr. L bestowed some harsh words on us for quite a while. Mr. L was one of the more feared lecturers in our college and no one (including me) wanted to mess around with him. I was getting agitated with his speech for there were mistakes that had happened from the administration too. When I felt I’d heard enough, I stood up and raised my concern. This was the conversation that followed (the words may not have been the same – it’s been a while):

Me : Sir, excuse me for interrupting.
Mr. L : Yes, what do you want?
Me : There were 2 batches scheduled for the lab session yesterday. Is the other batch being questioned too?
Mr. L : What?
Me : There were 2 batches that were scheduled to use the computers in the lab. Apart from that, there were 2 more batches of students.
Mr. L : So?
Me : How can you be so sure that the person who pulled the prank is sitting right here?
Mr. L : [Brief silence]
Me : I feel it there was a mistake on the administrator of the lab in letting the other two batches without prior permission – the students just came in and went. I agree that something went wrong, but it is not correct to assume that one of the students sitting right here could have done it. You will have to question the other 3 batches as well.
Mr. L : Why haven’t you shaved?
Me : [Sputter, and realization that I hadn’t shaved in 3 or 4 days] I will do that today.
Mr. L : You’re in an engineering course, shouldn’t you shave everyday?
Me : I will do that today.
Mr. L : I do not want you in my class till you’ve shaved. Leave now.
Me : But sir..
Mr. L : Leave.

I walked out without speaking another word, which happened to be the first time I got booted out of a class in college. The mistake I’d committed was that I had not shaved in a few days. And no, I wasn’t upset with being booted out – I went to the canteen, had a snack and a cold drink, and was in time for the next class. The next day, Mr. L made me stand up and checked whether I’d shaved my stubble off or not before starting the class.

This incident taught me one thing – to fight fairly. Mr. L didn’t. When he didn’t have a reply to my question, he used his power and booted me out of the class. I’ve met several people since, who’ve abused their power and overruled an argument simply because they didn’t have an explanation to offer or they didn’t think of everything before a confrontation. I’ve forgiven most of them, since I know that this is the environment we are brought up in. I have no hatred for Mr. L either, in fact, we had a very good relationship since that exchange. Unknowingly, Mr L also helped me learn something that I did not know about before, and instilled it in me never to do what he did to me – so I have to thank him for that.

If you are in a position of power, fight fairly, and you will earn respect of those who work for you / with you. If you are a teacher, never, I repeat, never do this – most of my classmates lost respect for him after that exchange, which wasn’t my intention. It also instills an idea in the students that it is all right to use power to divert the subject of a conversation and throw someone out who’s been raising genuine concerns. On the other hand, if he’d acknowledged my questions, accepted the flaw in his argument and backed off from accusing us, I’m quite positive, if not everyone, I would have had a greater deal of respect for him.

And if you are curious, I eventually found out that it was indeed one of my classmates who’d moved the computer. Mr. L had, to this date, as far as I can say, has no ideas about who, from which class, did it.

“Digital SLR Camera : Which one to buy”

Once in a while, people ask me for my opinion on what camera they should be buying. Some ask me for my opinion, others want me to agree to theirs.

These are the questions I generally ask people when they ask me for my opinion:
1. What do you want to shoot?
2. Why a dSLR and not a good P&S?

The most common answers I get:
1. “Everything” followed by “I’m a photography enthusiast, and I love good photos. I want to take good photos”
2. “I already have a P&S and am not happy with the images”

dSLRs are an expensive investment – pick one up if you have time & patience to learn. Most of the point and shoot cameras these days offer excellent image quality, and some of my friends make excellent images with those. More importantly, you will realize that the kit lens that you get for ‘for’ free can not zoom as much as your 12x P & S camera, and to get that range on a dSLR, you’ll have to shell out a fortune. Yup, lenses cost a lot of money, and good lenses cost even more. Barring human error in using the right settings, good lenses play a key part in making good pictures.

Most folks want to immediately jump into Semi-professional or Professional models right away, without testing the waters. Their reasoning for this is that good cameras give good images. I read somewhere an apt response for this statement – “If I got you the Ferrari, can you win F1?” I’ve also seen several people buying expensive professional models and then eventually selling them for cheap because no one will want to buy it.

My first dSLR was a Canon EOS 350D, and I bought it for cheap. It was one generation old at the time when I bought it, and was about to become two generations old, but heck, it was cheap, and I wanted to figure out if I could sustain picking this up as a hobby. The intention of this article is just to show that a basic outdated entry level dSLR camera can be used to make good images, if you know how to use it.

[Click on the photos below to view it large]

Lens Used : Canon EF 70-200 f/L USM

Lens Used : Sigma 17-70 f/2.8-4.5 DC Macro

If your reaction is – “These kind of pictures are easy to shoot with an entry level camera. I want to shoot animals, birds”, hold your horses.

Lens Used : Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 USM L IS

Lens Used : Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 USM L IS

Lens Used : Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 USM L IS

Lens Used : Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 USM L IS

Lens Used : Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 USM L IS

Still think it is impossible to take good pictures with an entry level camera?

It is important for one to understand the limitations of the gear that they use. Here are a few photographs that I shot with a different camera body (Canon EOS 1D Mark III), and an explanation as to why it would have been difficult to get the same shots with an entry level camera. I’ve also offered alternative methods to get similar pictures.

Lens Used : Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 USM L IS
This wouldn’t have been impossible, but rather difficult to accomplish with an entry level camera. This photograph was done with ISO 640 – it may not be possible in most to increment ISO at 1/3rd stops either – so one would have to use ISO 800 (at which most entry level cameras exhibit visible noise, or rather, used to exhibit) or ISO 400, which may not have been sufficient. High ISO noise control and 1/3rd stop increment of ISO is a key feature that most semi-professional / professional offer. These days, as I am aware of, you can decent ISO performance even in entry level cameras. It is possible to clean up the noise later on a computer using software.

Lens Used : Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 USM L IS
I found this shot in the middle of a 10 frames per second burst. Most entry level cameras do not offer anything more than 4 frames per second. Still not impossible to get similar photographs with the element of ‘luck’.

Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro
Once again, this is at ISO 1250, and shot handheld, and shot with manual metering, completely ignoring what the camera’s light meter was telling me. At this ISO range, most entry level cameras will exhibit noise and render the image unusable. It is possible to use stabilization mechanisms to use a lower ISO and get similar exposures.

If you know your camera well, and understand the ‘technical’ capabilities, you will be able to make good images even with an entry level camera. If you’re new to photography, and are keen on buying a Digital SLR, but not sure how it will end up, buy an entry level dSLR camera, and invest in some good lenses. Good lenses are key to making good images. Good images make you happy and keep you going. When you are at a point where the camera’s limitations really limit you from making good images, upgrade. For specific requirements, there exist rental services from whom you could rent the camera body for a few days.

Specific questions or remarks – please leave a comment.

Note:
I hold the copyright to all images/text presented in this article. If you would like to use the contents or a part of it, please contact me.

Android Tip : Moving applications to your SD card

One of the best things that could happen to a smart phone owner is the variety of applications (both paid and free) available. Android Market has a huge catalogue of applications that fit your every need. The bad part is running out of space on your phone – most of these applications directly install on to the phone memory and not to your memory card.

A few applications provide a feature where you can move them to the SD card [Application Manager, Select Application, and Select 'Move to SD Card'] and free up space on your phone memory. Some of the applications can not be moved, as the button is not disabled. If your phone runs OEM firmware, it will have a lot of crapware that you can’t uninstall or move to SD card. Also, one has A2SD (Apps 2 SD), which involves creating an EXT3 partition on your memory card. Though rooting is easy, most people don’t do it. So here’s a simple trick that you can use, without rooting your phone, to move all your applications to the SD Card, and this also ensures that whatever new applications you install, go directly to your memory card, thereby saving precious phone memory.

First, you would need to Download the Android SDK kit and tools. This is free, and don’t worry – we will not be writing any code. The kit contains a few essential tools that we need to set our preferences. Extract the contents of the ZIP file. Now here are the steps:

1. Set your phone on USB Debugging mode [Settings, Programs, Development Settings, USB Debugging - Select this option if it is not selected already]
2. Open a terminal shell (On Windows, open a command prompt session), and navigate to ‘Tools’ folder in the extracted contents.
3. Type “adb shell” (On Windows) ["./adb shell" on Linux/Mac systems]
4. If you set the phone in the correct mode, you will get a ‘#’ prompt.
5. On the prompt, type

pm setInstallLocation 2

6. Wait for the ‘#’ prompt to appear. Type ‘exit’ to quit adb prompt. You can exit the shell window now.

You’re done. You will be able to move most of the applications to SD Card now. All new applications that are installed will go directly to the SD card.

A few things to take care of:
1. If the application provides Widgets and you use them, DO NOT move them to SD card – the widgets will not function correctly if you move them to the SD Card. If it provides Widgets, and you are not going to use them, or the app does not provide widgets, it is safe to move them.
2. If you’re planning to root your phone using Unrevoked Forever, you will have to reset the default install location to phone memory (Details on that below).

Restoring the install location back to phone memory:
Follow the steps listed above, when you get to Step 5, use this command instead:

pm setInstallLocation 0

This will not void your phone warranty, your phone does not need to be rooted. I’ve checked this with FroYo (Android 2.2) and Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and it works beautifully.

Notes:
1. I did not discover this method. Most websites talk about moving apps to memory card, but do not talk about how to restore it back in the same page. Also the note on being unable to use Unrevoked Forever for rooting is missing. It took me a while to figure it out that I couldn’t root my phone because the apps were being installed on my memory card, and to use Unrevoked Forever, you have to reset this.
2. I’ve done this several times, never facing any problems. If you do follow the steps mentioned here to the ‘T’ and end up screwing up your phone, I can not be held responsible.

Handy script to rename multiple files on a Mac / Unix-based system

As a photographer, one of the frequent operations I require to do is to rename multiple files in a directory – I generally add date and the location where I took the photograph as part of the selection process.

For Windows users, the wonderful Irfan View’s batch rename feature can perform this task very quickly, and one does not need to know much of scripting / tweaking. Just select the parameters, hit the button and you’re done. I couldn’t find a similar application that could perform batch renaming operations on a Mac with ease. It can be very frustrating to manually rename a bunch of files.

I came up with a script that one can run on a console, that performs batch renaming operation. Pre-requisites are that you would have to manually sort out the files into folders based on your requirements and all files should have the same file extension. For example, if you have a bunch of files to whose names you would like to add ‘Bangalore’ and another set to which you would like to add ‘Mysore’ – you have to keep them in separate folders, and all of the should have ‘.jpg’ (or any other type) as their file extension. You can check the file extensions quickly by issuing a ‘ls’ command and checking if the characters after the last ‘.’ are the same. You can have multiple ‘.’ in the file name, but the characters that follow the last ‘.’ should be the same.

Open ‘Terminal’ application [Application -> Utilities -> Terminal] or press ‘Command (Apple key) + Space’ and type ‘Terminal’ (without the quotes) and press the Enter key. Navigate to the folder using ‘cd <<Folder_name>>’ command, and type this:

for file in ./*; do mv $file <<DATE>>`basename $file .<<FILE_EXT>>`”_<<LOCATION>>.<<FILE_EXT>>”; done

Replace <<DATE>> with date (or anything else you’d like to prefix) and <<LOCATION>> with location name, <<FILE_EXT>> with the file extension and press enter. This will rename all the files present in that folder.

Example: If you have the following files in ./tmp folder:
IMG1.jpg
IMG2.jpg
IMG3.jpg
IMG4.jpg
IMG5.jpg
IMG6.jpg

Use the following set of commands:
cd ./tmp
ls

IMG1.jpg IMG3.jpg IMG5.jpg
IMG2.jpg IMG4.jpg IMG6.jpg

for file in ./*; do mv $file 2011_07_02_`basename $file .jpg`”_Bangalore.jpg”; done
ls

2011_07_02_IMG1_Bangalore.jpg 2011_07_02_IMG3_Bangalore.jpg 2011_07_02_IMG5_Bangalore.jpg
2011_07_02_2011_07_02_IMG2_Bangalore.jpg 2011_07_02_IMG4_Bangalore.jpg 2011_07_02_IMG6_Bangalore.jpg

There, that’s done.

For the curious, here’s what the script does:

for file in ./*; do mv $file 2011_07_02_`basename $file .jpg`”_Bangalore.jpg”; done

This executes three commands, one after the other. Let us go through it one by one:

for file in ./*

This statement is an iterator – it populates the variable file with the name of every file present in the current directory, one after the other. [Current directory is represented by ./ and the * is a wildcard that stands for all files]

do

Indicates the start of the iterations

mv $file 2011_07_02_`basename $file .jpg`”_Bangalore.jpg”

This statement is the logic behind renaming the files. This statement uses two native commands:
mv is a command that moves files from one location to another. We are using this command to rename files, since some distributions do not support a native command to rename files.
basename is another command that extracts only the name of a file, if we provide the extension. The iterator will give the full file name, which means the file extension will be present in file variable. ‘.jpg’ is the extension that we are attempting to remove from the file name. As an example, if we have IMG1.jpg basename IMG1.jpg .jpg will print IMG1 on the console.
If your system does not support these two commands, you will have to find equivalents that get the job done.

Now that you know about mv and basename, it should be fairly easy to understand the rest of the statement. $file will fetch the value that the variable file contains. basename command extracts only the file name. We are essentially moving the file whose name is present in file variable to a new file name as specified by the second parameter, which will be concatenated. The diacritical marks tells that the shell interpreter will have to take the output of what’s between them (Please note – it’s diacritical mark, the key above the Tab, to the left of 1 key on your keyboard, and not a single quote). Our format here specifies the interpreter to insert the date, file name & the location with the file extension. Not so complicated, isn’t it?

done

This closes the iteration sequence and the for statement will fetch the next file name into file variable, the sequence is repeated till the iterator runs out of files to process in the current directory.

And if you are asking how the statement doesn’t run into an infinite loop since you will always have files in the directory, the iterator statement will consider the names of the files when you first executed it, and does not scan the folder for changes.

Hope this helps. And as I mentioned earlier, this script is not subjected to renaming images – you can rename any group of files with a slight modification of this script.

Enhancement options: Extract the file extension so that the user need not worry about entering the correct extension – I’m a little too lazy to work on that now.

And if you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll respond to it. And if you also have other ways to do the same operation, do let me know – I would be interested in knowing how to do this efficiently.

PS : This script was put together with ideas from various forums and other blogs that I went through in trying to find a solution for my problems. You are free to use it, enhance it, redistribute it without any acknowledgement whatsoever. This is safe to use, and I’ve been using it for a while now without any problems. However, I will not take responsibility for any problems that come out of using this script directly or by modifying it.

Album Review : Radiance – The Burning Sun

Short Version:
You will like this if you like any of : Meshuggah, Gordian Knot, Cynic, Devin Townsend Project, Spastic Ink, Periphery, Scale the Summit, Spiral Architect, Fredrik Thordendal, Blotted Science, Xerath

Top notch experimental progressive metal (with clean vocals). Mind numbing guitar riffs, drumming.

Here’s the title track (split into three)
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Check out Part 1, if you don’t like the first 120 seconds, you’re better off not listening to the rest of the album or reading the rest of the text.

Long (er) version

I am writing this because I couldn’t find a review of this album that did justice to what it is – a masterpiece of technical progressive metal. A project of Sami Raatikainen, whose previous work I have not heard. [As I understand, a lot of fans of his work with the current band may not like this album] Sami writes about the difficulties he faced in getting the project completed on his website – www.radiance.fi. You can also stream all the tracks for free here.

As mentioned, the entire album is just one song, but has been split up into 7 tracks. The complete track listing:
1. Lambda 475 01:42
2. The Burning Sun 18:41
3. Lambda 610 03:05
4. 0 03:19
5. Downward Spiral 14:23
6. Lambda 690 02:23
7. Conclusion 05:14

The song is centered around three sections that are aggressive and hard hitting – The Burning Sun, Downward Spiral and Conclusion

Lambda * – All the tracks starting with Lambda are ambient music, that set the mood for the next track.

The Burning Sun – The longest track off the album. I can not find the right word to express the creativity that has gone into crafting this masterpiece. Check out the song from the links posted above – and you will know what I mean. The opening riff is a killer. Very appropriate lyrics and the voice of Mats Levén add brilliance. The song is a mix of powerful rhythm and softer sections where one gets to hear ambient sounds with soft sung / spoken words.
Sections that I love :
First 2 minutes
6:30
11:06

0 – A short ballad.

Downward Spiral – This is my favorite track off the album. Some of the rhythm sections, solos, chord progressions, lyrics are really deep and very well received. [YouTube link]

Conclusion – The final track that closes the album beautifully. [Youtube link]

Yes, in all, three songs that are super brilliant. As I understand from the details written by Sami, he handled most of the instruments and editing work. Quite possible that a lot of music was electronically edited as well – the brilliance is undeniable. There’s only one thing that I didn’t enjoy too much, and that would be the synthesizer parts – sometimes they are too loud and I felt the track would have been all right without those parts. It’s a minor gripe, and does not overshadow what I’ve said above. I’d recommend this album very highly – I’ve been listening to this one for quite sometime, and absolutely love it.

Summary:
Music : Top notch technical progressive metal with complex guitars & drums
Vocal style : Clean, whispers

One More Day in Hong Kong

Before you read this, please read my first post about spending a day at Hong Kong.

There were not many places to go to after my first visit as a tourist to Hong Kong. I’d visited HK a few more times for shopping, but there was not much for me to see. I had a few days time off, and I decided to go to a few more places. Lonely Planet’s comprehensive guide gave me a few pointers here. I decided to visit the following places:

1. Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery
2. Man Mo Temple
3. Tian Tan Buddha
4. Victoria Peak

Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery

As usual, I took the most comfortable route out of Shenzhen to Hong Kong, the metro. I got down at Sha Tin station and walked the rest of the way. The directions are fairly clear, and there are distinct route markers to the place. The ‘monastery’ is located behind a couple of large buildings, at a dead end, and for first time visitors, this can be a little confusing. This is not an actual monastery as there are no monks living there. Instead, you get to see statues of Buddha with different expressions and postures. Photography is not allowed in some areas.

The stairs to the monastery have sculptures of Buddha on both sides.

There is a small restaurant on top of the hill – you get water, soda and some snacks over there. I went at around 8 AM, and as I recollect, they were not serving any food at that time.

Honestly, there’s not much to see here. One can think about skipping this place if there’s a lot to do.

Man Mo Temple

I walked back to the metro station, and went to Sheung Wan station. I should add that the inspiration for me to visit this place was a picture on the guidebook which showed incense coils hanging from the roof – not one, not 10, but a few hundred. The temple on Hollywood Road, is the largest Man Mo temple in Hong Kong. There is no objection to photos being taken – you are expected to remain silent since most of the people visit to offer their prayers.

The Hollywood Market is quite close to this place, where you can spend some time shopping if that interests you. The world’s largest outdoor escalator system, The Central-Mid-Levels Escalator is also at a walkable distance from the temple. You can take the escalator and avail a HK $2 discount for metro system if you have an Octopus card.

Next stop, Tian Tan Buddha.

Tian Tan Buddha

The place is accessible through taxi, but I would recommend taking the Cable car. You can take a metro to Tung Chung station, and the cable car station is right next to it. Here are a few images that I got on the way to the island:

I also noticed a few people hiking to the monastery. As you can see, there is a path to walk / climb. You could try this out if you have a lot of time – I didn’t

And here’s another photo from the cabin – the buddha statue is visible now. We were still a good 15-20 minutes away from the monastery, which should give you an idea of how big the statue is.

Here are a few images of the idols at the monastery – unfortunately, light wasn’t too very helping. I shot what I could and here are some of the photos.

Took the cable car back, and was off to Victoria Peak.

Victoria Peak

Only accessible through the Peak Tram, this place has a shopping complex, Wax museum, and a lovely platform for viewing the rest of the city. To get to Victoria Peak, you can take the metro to Central station, and take a taxi or a bus from there. I chose to walk, and it took me around 10 minutes to get there – there are plenty of route markers guiding you, and eventually, you are greeted by this sign.

Once inside, you will have to wait for the tram to come. Here’s the scene when it arrives:

The tram ride is probably one of it’s kind. It climbs the hill at an obscene angle. I was quite scared thinking what would happen if something went wrong. A while later, we did end up alive on top of the hill. I picked up a few souvenirs for friends at the station, which happens to be the lower floor of the shopping mall, and headed to the terrace right away. The place was insanely crowded, and it was extremely tough to get a spot from where I could see the city without obstruction. Finally I did manage to do that, and the view was magical. Here’s what you get to see:

The sun had already set, and it was getting dark.

Here’s a picture of some of the skyscrapers and the approaching tram.

And then, it was time for me to head back to Shenzhen. Took the tram down, couldn’t get a seat, so stood (they do allow passengers to stand) holding whatever I could. The trip down was more crazy. Took the metro back to Hong Hum station, switched to the East Rail Line, and headed back to Shenzhen.

I’m not sure when I’ll go to Hong Kong again, but am looking forward to it. Beautiful place, a tad too crowded for my liking though, nevertheless a great place to have fun.