becomes…

This does not mean the feet are dirty, this just amplifies the difference in the skin color of different areas of the feet. Look at the details showing up on the pebbles and the floor.

Another example of HDR creation is:

This pic of the dilapidated bungalow was taken somewhere in the Camp area in Pune.

And this is for 2009…

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before? So much shopping?

2. Did you keep your new years resolutions, and will you make more for next? I dint have one but I will make one for 2009.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Yes.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Yes.

5. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? November 24.

6. What was your biggest achievement of the year? I did not achieve anything this year.

7. What was your biggest failure? Health.

8. Did you suffer illness? Yes.

9. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Idiots :).

10. Where did most of your money go? Shopping!

11. What did you get really, really, really excited about? My Honda Activa, and the Canon EOS DSLR!

12. What song will always remind you of 2009? Speedy Gonzales.

13. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder? Happier.

14. What do you wish you’d done more of? Traveling!

15. What do you wish you’d done less of? Eating!

16. Did you fall in love in 2009? No.

17. How many one night stands? Let me have one please!!!!

18. What was your favourite TV programme? Indian cricket!

19. What was the best book you read? It is a magazine: Down to Earth.

20. What was your greatest musical discovery? Coldplay.

21. What did you want and get? Bibimbap!!!!

22. What did you want and not get? Some more happiness.

23. What was your favourite film of this year? UP! Snipe Snipe, Nice Snipe, Clap Clap Clap!

24. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I do not remember what I did. I was 24.

25. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? I do not know what would have been that one thing.

26. What kept you sane? My hobbies.

27. Who was the worst new person you met? There were a few.

28. Who was the best new person you met? None.

29. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009. A blog post on the same is coming up shortly.

30. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
I was just guessing, at numbers and figures, pulling the puzzles apart…

The above wallpaper is for widescreen monitors (1280 x 800p). Those who wish for a regular (1024 x 768p) click here.

You may find it sad, but that is how I am feeling right now~
Happy November.

Dynamic range of an image is the difference in exposure between the darkest and the brightest part of an image, without losing any detail. Over-exposure often leads to very bright or shiny white skies and under exposure often leads to dark or grey objects. To achieve a photograph closest to the real scene, multiple images taken at different exposures need to be put together. High Dynamic Range Imaging tries to achieve the perfect picture by either computer rendering or putting together multiple photographs.

The Canon EOS 1000D can well take Auto Exposure Bracketed (AEB) images, but I’d rather buy a tripod before attempting that and then using Photoshop. There however are some ways to achieve similar effects using Photoshop on normal images. I tried my hand on one of the pics from my basket.

The results are as follows:

   Fake HDR effect

    Original Image
Location: Shaniwarwada, Pune

The following tutorial was used to achieve the above:
http://www.nill.cz/index.php?set=tu1

Well, I was busy blogging photos on my photoblog… http://photos.aditto.info

But did I tell you about the new dSLR camera that I got? Its a splendid entry-level digital SLR, the new Canon EOS 1000D, also known as the Rebel XS.

Came with an EF-S 18-55mm kit lens (f3.5-f5.6), although without the Image Stabilization that ships with the 1000D in other countries. Has a 10MP CMOS sensor, live-view, ISO range upto 1600 with noise reduction, complete manual operations with a bunch of good automatic modes, playback zoom upto 10X, 7 pt auto-focus system and 3 different metering modes, plus a lot more…

I used the Sony DSC-H1 digital camera before this one. H1 offered a very good range of manual controls, excellent zoom and even an SLR-like control wheel! It was just a 5MP camera, and picture quality at high ISO was ordinary. I had to buy my first good digital camera, and an entry-level dSLR was the best deal I could settle for. The image quality is excellent, better than 99% of point and shoots any day. Images at high ISO are amazingly clear of noise, even without noise reduction enabled. Images straight out of the camera are slightly soft with the default settings, but bumping up the sharpness by a couple of points puts the image quality right up there with the best in class! For a complete review of the 1000D, click here.

Costing me Rs 27,000 I think this is the perfect camera for anybody looking for excellent image quality and almost complete manual controls… or somebody looking to upgrade from a point-and-shoot to an entry level dSLR. It beats Sony, Olympus, Nikon and Pentax at the entry-level.

Here are the first few images…

View Full Album

To see all photos visit the photoblog: http://photos.aditto.info

It was the last day of May and the end of a not too hot summer for Pune, when Rahman and his troop of 70 performers landed here to kick-off the Jai Ho World Tour! Twitterer AParanjape (@aparanjape) estimated there were more than 10,000 people. After the concert ended, one smart guy walking behind me with his friends, apparently from IIT Bombay, estimated there to be 15,000 people. In his own words “there would be 500 rows with 300 seats per row, makes it 15,000”. I wondered how, cause my mathematics told me that multiplication leads to 150,000! Anyway. I believe there would have been something between 20,000 to 30,000 people!

The concert was anchored by Radio Mirchi RJs and the sponsors were Times of India, Venky Eggs and MIT (Maharashtra Institute of Technology, Kothrud, in front of Durga!). All you could hear during the first 30 minutes or so were just “boo”s from the crowd, for the terrible remarks, and speeches by the organizers and the hosts! I would really not like to write more on that! However, entry into the stadium was made really easy and was quick enough. Atleast for those who had purchased tickets worth Rs 1000 and above. Parking was a hell. The organizers had definitely not expected the tons of cars and two wheelers that eventually turned up! Obviously the Balewadi Stadium on Mumbai-Pune-Bangalore Bypass Highway is not well connected by Public Transport! It took me 45 minutes to find my Activa after the concert. There were absolutely no lights and no markers in the parking lot!

The concert however, was brilliant! Absolutely. This was the first full scale concert I have ever attended! Some other small scale ones were during college social festivals at IIT Kharagpur and IIT Bombay. Enough would be written in the days to come and more than enough would be talked about the most wonderful musical experience that lasted almost 3 hours. Rahman got Hariharan, Sadhana Sargam, Roop Kumar Rathod, Rashid Ali, Raja Hassan, Rekha Bhardwaj, Shraddha Pandit and a few more… Dil Se, Humma Humma, Roja, Tu Hi Re, Kabhi Kabhi Aditi, Khwaja Mere Khwaja were soul touching…
Almost all songs from Delhi 6 were performed on stage. Brilliant voices of Shraddha Pandit and Rekha Bhardwaj together with a few more gave a wonderful rendering of Genda Phool! The crowd was up on its feet!

The best part of the concert was when Rahman was on the Piano and Hariharan, Roop Kumar Rathod were beside him with mikes, singing Tu Hi Re…!

We had all thought that the concert was over when the anchors called everyone on the stage and Lata Mangeshkar handed a Puneri Pagdi and Shawl to Rahman… but it was not to be so!

The show started again and this time there was the best mixing ever of almost all of Rahman’s compositions…Rahman came back to sing Khwaja mere khwaja and also played the harmonium along with it. That was followed by Humma humma… and finally Jai Ho, that everybody was waiting for! Just as Jai Ho was about to get over, the music was fantastically morphed into Vande Mataram from Maa Tujhe Salaam to conclude what was a wonderful evening! The concert was totally worth the money and maybe many times over! I just forgot to mention that the visual graphics on the stage were absolutely mind blowing and something I had never seen before!

There were however things which appalled me! For a crowd of well over 20,000 people there were only about 15 portable toilet cabins, out of which 4 were definitely not functional! The traffic and parking management was terrible. Cops were still on their way to the venue an hour after the concert was over! Quite a few people AParanjape (@aparanjape), myself (@aditto), Veda (@vedaaggarwal) twittered almost throughout the concert. Today’s Pune Mirror reported on the front page about Tweets from the concert and it was most shocking to find only one person (Veda) in the report. Almost all her tweets were listed down. I quickly logged on to the net to check the person and soon realised that the account was perhaps created only to tweet about the concert. That account has only 50 Twitter Updates so far. Compare that number to 2475 (Paranjape) and 6463 (me). I really wonder why Pune Mirror needs to “create news”. What sense did it make to have someone create a twitter account only for the concert and then claim in the newspaper “Balewadi Tweets”. This is appalling!

I believe the reporting of Pune Mirror is almost terrible and makes no sense to read it. It has more news from around the world than of Pune. It has more on Paris Hilton than on local Punekar! Anyway… me and my flatmates have decided to go for Indian Express from June. The concert management could have been better, the anchors should have been some better professionals, and the promotional advertisements (the way they were shown) could have been totally eliminated!

However, it was Rahman. There could never be anything better than the ‘Mozart of Madras’ performing live. His humility and brilliance put everything else in the back seat and at the end of the day, the smile on everyone’s face was all thanks to the first Oscar Winning Indian Mr Rahman!

After the concert, SA, sitting in the Rs 5000 section, sends me the following SMS –
Awesome! Rahman is the man! and I am the man too! :) :P

Kindly excuse the grammar and tone of the article.
Miss Veda has clarified that she used Twitter as the medium to compose the article as she would not have had the energy to come back after the concert and put together an article. Justified! However, I would still not agree on the title and the way it was portrayed. Also, those tweets missed pointing out the mismanagement by the organisers!

Since the first semester, almost every semester we had a subject of the department where we had to attend a 3 hour lab per week. At the end of the lab course they would invariably take a viva and a lab test. Sometimes even at the beginning of the experiments they would take sort of mini vivas. In many of those, books flew, sheets were thrown out, F grades given, or students asked to go back to their rooms and prepare themselves for the viva before performing the DANGEROUS experiments. Our seniors used to tell us that the profs would throw the sheets out of the lab and would ask the student to “follow the trajectory”. Fortunately nothing like that happened with me.

This time it was the Grand Viva… supposedly the last Viva I’d be facing as an undergraduate student.

They tried to ask me a few questions and I tried to answer fewer. Fortunately or unfortunately, it wasnt anything like I had heard it to be. It was not by any means a grueling experience. It was calm, composed and in an air conditioned room! The professors were cool and while we were thinking about the questions they were busy discussing about pens, food, countries (note: USA, Japan and Korea). They also offered us sweet, aloo pakoda (common name: chop)… All in all it was a very different sort of viva for me, where I was guilty that I cudn’t answer much, but I dint feel that uncomfortable.

The fact that it is over now, is what keeps me happy. :)

The next few days, I shall be a bit busy… and I really don’t know when next I would blog after this. A lot of things to look forward to.

I’ve been updating my site lately to major extent and testing a new blog on another host. Keeping my fingers crossed till then.