Ashutosh Nilkanth's Blog

Conditions are never just perfect

Note to myself:

Conditions are never just perfect. People who delay action until all factors are favorable are the kind who do nothing.

The wishbone can never replace the backbone.

The Tilt-Shift Illusion

Couple of weeks back, I saw a sample video which had an impressive mix of time-lapse and tilt-shift effects. The tilt-shift technique allows to depict a very shallow depth of field. It creates an illusion of a miniature model. Here’s an example of a photo with tilt-shift (from 50 Amazing Examples of Tilt-Shift Photography):

While its been raining out here today, I thought I’ll play around with tilt-shift faking in Gimp. Based on some nice tutorials ([1], [2]), here’s what I came up with a photo that I took on a trip to Dalhousie:

Btw, here’s the original photo for the photo I processed above. Not too bad eh? I guess this technique works best with aerial photos/videos.

Briefly, here’s what I did in Gimp to achieve the tilt-shift:

1. Play with the photo’s color curves, brightness and contrast
2. Activate Quick Mask
3. Reset colors in toolbox with the ‘d’ key (so that FG = black and BG = white)
4. Select Blend (Gradient) tool
5. Set Gradient to FG to BG (RGB)
6. Set Shape to Bi-linear
7. Think of a focal point in the photo (i.e. where the key subject is based)
8. Use the Blend tool from your focal point on the Quick Mask (you’ll have to play around with this a bit to get the right size/shape)
9. Deactivate Quick Mask (you’ll see the selection outline now)
10. Apply Gaussian Blur (or Focus Blur for an even better outcome)
11. Invert the selection
12. Sharpen (Enhance) the inverted selection

I’d like to try out this technique on a video sample as well, but for that I’ll need the right tools (or an expensive lens).

Where is the “Common Man’s” Mobile Application?

Half of world’s population has a mobile phone, yet, only 21% of the world’s population uses the Internet.

On my last visit to India, I was not so astounded to see the milk-man or the rickshaw driver to have a mobile phone. What I was astounded with was a lack of a “value-added” mobile phone application in such a widespread market.

Try counting (on your fingers if you may) the applications/websites you use on the Internet, and then count the ‘applications’ you use on your mobile (including stuff like SMS, MMS, Mobile Cam, MP3 player etc.). Considering the average person doesn’t use a Blackberry or an iPhone, I bet your computer-driven Web usage will win over your mobile phone-driven Web usage.

So, even though, there are more mobile phone users than Web users, the applications on/for the mobile phone are too limited for the common man. Of course you can browse the Web on your mobile phone. Heck, my sister even checks her Gmail and Facebook profile on her mobile phone. But what else? Maybe manage some simple things like a synchronized (across devices and computers) to-do list, or reading news, or say, writing a short letter? An average mobile phone today has everything to manage such simple things, which can increase our productivity and even entertain us a bit. Still, in general, not many of us use any of those applications.

Technically, the mobile web has taken off in a big way. But, for the common man, the mobile phone is still primarily a mode of verbal communication. What I’m waiting for is the killer mobile phone application (Facebook? Wikipedia?), that will change the way we use a mobile phone. Twitter, for one, has made a difference to the conventional trend by allowing anyone to post short updates from their mobile-phone. And Netbooks are already being seen as a consumer-level gadget. Maybe its the assimilation of the netbook and a mobile phone that will drive the future of mobile applications.

First look at Windows 7

At PDC 2008, Microsoft gave the first public demonstration of Windows 7, its next generation operating system.

I’ve been following the state of engineering behind Windows 7 for a while, both architecturally and UI, and after looking at the simplistic look, I hope it delivers a more secure, more stable, and less fussy OS.

Update: Windows 7 Walkthrough, Boot Video and Impressions

Embrace the new .NET Logo

With PDC 2008 coming up, Microsoft’s .NET Framework gets a refreshing new logo.

Yesterday, Seth Godin also wrote about the importance of a good logo in branding. As much as I liked the simplicity of the old .NET logo, I do like the energy of the new one. Silverlight-ish?

I’m On Twitter

Now you can also join me on Twitter, a social messaging service.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

I’ll be posting quick thoughts and small rants on Twitter, while the bigger articles and other opinions will be posted on this blog. Stay tuned!

BarCamp, New Delhi

As Paras Chopra informed me, the BarCamp Delhi conference is coming up in October. BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences, often focusing on early-stage web apps, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

Paras mentions:

BarCamp Delhi - 11th and 12th October 2008 at IIT-Delhi

“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together”, said Eugene Ionesco. Only if he were alive today, he would definitely have been one of the speakers at the upcoming BarCampDelhi, where dreamers and entrepreneurs from all across India will come together this October to celebrate human ingenuity. To accommodate people like Eugene, we are redefining the agenda of BarCampDelhi completely. We adore discussions on technology and we love hackers but we would like to open this even up to a wider range of thinkers outside of just technology. We would like to include topics which are intellectually stimulating, irrespective of whether they are tech oriented or not.

As we’re looking for great thinkers in many domains outside of tech, we are asking for your help in reaching out to people in areas such as law, culture, health and wellness, art, finance and any other topic that would help spread the spirit of knowledge sharing that BarCamps are all about.

For more information about BCD5 either visit http://wiki.barcampdelhi.com and http://blog.barcampdelhi.com or email back to us. We promise to reply to you as soon as possible. You are, of course, welcome to email us back directly as well.

Regards,
BarCamp Delhi Team

PS: Aza Raskin (Lead UI, Firefox) might be at BarCampDelhi too.

Content, not Chrome

Today, most of what we use the Web for on a daily basis aren’t just web pages, they are “applications”. These applications, which run inside our Web browsers, are increasingly becoming more advanced in their functionality and more interactive in their usability.

The Web browser acts as the core container for these applications, and it is critical to any Web application in terms of security, stability, speed, and operability. In the Web browsers space, the much speculated launch of a new browser from Google, called Chrome, marks a very important step in “remaking” the Web. I’m overwhelmed with what Google Chrome offers as a product, and excited too, because this will open up doors to even more advancements in the Web application space.

So, what’s so special about Google Chrome, that’s not already there in existing (and time-tested) Web browsers like Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari etc. I downloaded Chrome (it is open source) and played around with it for a bit, and let me put it this way - Google Chrome is not about what’s there, but about what’s not there. For the Google team, the mantra became “Content, not chrome,” which is sort of weird given the name of the browser. It’s incredible that something as potentially game-changing as a Google browser has stayed under wraps for two years.

With Chrome, the Google team has really worked on two most crucial aspects in any piece of computing software: simplicity, and speed. The interface is darn simple, a true minimal design, and streamlined for power usage as well. In terms of speed, Chrome outperforms any modern Web browser. See, today’s Web applications are powered by client-side scripting and asynchronous client-server operations, all utilizing the JavaScript engine (pretty much). Scripting engine performance benchmarks have indicated that Chrome is at least 10 times faster than Firefox and Safari, and a staggering 50+ times faster than Internet Explorer. Chrome’s V8 scripting engine (written by a small team in Denmark) actually complies the JavaScript code to machine code for faster execution. Moreover, every tab or window in Chrome runs isolated (sandboxed) in its own process (not thread), which means that even if a web page crashes, the rest of the web pages in view are not affected. Chrome is secure too. It is based on the Webkit rendering engine, which powers Apple’s Safari browser.

Google amazes me. I sit here and wonder, isn’t this how it all should have been in the first place. Having looked at Chrome for just a few hours, I can easily say that even in its infancy, it is the most promising Web browser aimed towards the future of Web applications.

Olympics Galore

India has reason to celebrate. Abhinav Bindra claimed the men’s 10-meter air rifle shooting title at the Beijing Olympics. India’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in an individual event.

The state of sports in India has been on a downhill path. More than a billion people, but a small 56 member contingent in Olympics, gives a clear glimpse of that illness. The eight Olympic gold medals it has, were won years ago in hockey. Even in that sport it has faded away - its hockey team failed to qualify for Beijing.

Some may blame the infrastructure for this poor sporting culture in the country. Some may question the sporting interest and dedication in the youth. But I guess the biggest factor for it is the lack of sponsorship and endorsements, without which even the best of the sportsmen will be left stranded. The Indian masses fail to see anything beyond Bollywood and Cricket it seems. What a shame.

Never-the-less, Bindra’s win is a huge step, that should inspire the youth to take sporting more seriously.

The other day I was browsing this really neat visualization of Olympic medals won by participating nations over the years.

I noticed that during the early years, the games were dominated by the host country. Considering some other factors, like:

• Population (ref) - we should see China and India pretty much swipe the tally, but unfortunately that’s not the case.
• Population Normalized - this one might go to Australia, for the medals-won/population ratio.
• Nominal GDP (ref) - US, EU, Japan, Germany, and China dominate the world GDP. The medal tally looks quite similar. And it brings me back to my theory that ‘rich’ nations ‘invest’ more in their sporting culture.

Update (26/08): Here’s the final medal tally adjusted by GDP and Population.

Vidvaan Sarvatra Pujyate

What is power? Is it wealth, is it affluence, is it assets, what is it? Philosophers have thought about this, [and] they have found the seat of power — knowledge!

“A king is honoured only in his own kingdom, but a man of knowledge is honoured everywhere.”

Filmmaker Ashutosh Gowariker, the director of Swades - one of my favorite films, on why it is time to end rural alienation [in India], and how if at least one person in each family becomes computer literate, India will be transformed.

A simple ideology, that applies to many other developing nations as well.

Snails in the Internet Wormhole

In his recent (and apparently his last before blogging retirement) article, “A Brief History of Dangerous Ideas“, Reg Braithwaite wrote about the dangers associated with technology (ideas). Reg’ article also draws a reflection on how the Internet has become a dangerous idea for corpocracy.

Web applications are dangerous. Never mind the fact that they make desktop applications obsolete. … But … web applications just might make venture capital obsolete! When you don’t need hundreds of programmers and distribution channels and all the other friction-managing elements of a company that ships old-school software, you need a lot less money to start a business.

And on to media. You know that the web is busy putting newspapers out of business. … But the web lets us choose what we want to watch (or read), when we want to watch (or read) it. The network can’t put their up-and-coming show on right after their hit to give it a boost. The new show has to compete on its own merits. That puts users in control, and that’s dangerous.

… similar thing about pricing all music at 99 cents a track: it means the labels can’t kill an artist by sticking their CD in the $3.99 crapola bin. Users choose what they want to listen to. That’s dangerous, again because users are in control.

While I agree with all such hypothesis about the Internet killing a lot of “traditional” models, including media. But I also feel that the Internet’ rippling transformations have subdued our culture. All this advancement may actually be making us stupid.

Scenery on a Detour

A happy person is one who enjoys the scenery on a detour.

Are you, enjoying, the scenery? Watch out for the Rabbit in your Headlights.

House of Cards

Radiohead just released a new video for their song “House of Cards”. It’s a ground-breaking experiment with capturing 3D images.

Forget about your house of cards
And I’ll do mine

Fall off the table and get swept under

Denial, denial

The infrastructure will collapse
From voltage spikes
Put your keys in the bowl
Kiss your husband goodnight

Digital lives where apostasy has become a pensive meditation.

Jeopardy of Knowledge

Once Einstein was on his way to deliver a speech to university students. His faithful chauffeur not only drove his car, but was always present amongst the audience during all his speeches. Einstein had delivered this particular speech so many times that his chauffeur had actually memorized it. On that day, Einstein, while on his way to the university, said aloud in his car that he felt tired. So his chauffeur suggested that they switch places, and that while he delivers the speech, Einstein could drive them back home.

Their identities wouldn’t be a problem because Einstein’s chauffeur looked somewhat like him and no one in that university would recognize him. So he agreed, but he was a little thoughtful about what his chauffeur would do if he was asked any difficult questions by the students.

However, the speech went well, but a student came up with a question. Einstein’s chauffeur said “that’s simple, even my chauffeur can answer it”, and gazed towards Einstein, who was sitting at the back of the room. Einstein stood up and answered the question, much to the amazement of the audience.

Its a funny anecdote. But it also questions the core difference between knowledge and intelligence in human psychology.

Justin Menkes wrote in his book, “Executive Intelligence”:

The distinction between knowledge and intelligence is frequently blurred. For example, most people are familiar with the popular television show Jeopardy!, on which contestants are rewarded for the amount of knowledge they possess of a wide variety of topics. Often the winners are referred to as “exceptionally smart.” But the truth is that they are exceptionally knowledgeable. Successful Jeopardy! contestants haven’t really proven anything about their intelligence. Joseph Fagan, chair of psychology at Case Western, has done research focusing on racial differences in test scores, and his experiments found that measures that required certain kinds of academic knowledge, such as vocabulary or complex math, yielded significantly different scores between racial groups. But tests focused on reasoning or processing skills, such as picture and spatial pattern recognition, showed no such differences.

Knowledge without intelligence, is as good as, intelligence without knowledge. While knowledge can stem out of books and school, real intelligence can only step out of experience, a desire to question, and an uncanny ability to take risks.

Solarium

As much as I like thought provoking films, I also like thought provoking animations. Yesterday night, lying in bed, I was pondering over how the day went, and what I have for tomorrow, for the weekend, for the next few months. Caught up in the loop of thoughts, while randomly searching Vimeo, a slick video website like YouTube, I stumbled upon a short animation titled “Solar”. Solar pulled me back from my comatose. It gripped me, and left me orbiting on a different line of thought.

Solar is a tale of the sun, the moon, and two characters who inhabit a world that relies on day and night perhaps more than it would seem. It is one of the best short animations I’ve seen in the recent past. The CG work is pretty cool, but most importantly it has a subtle yet intriguing concept.

Watch this award-winning short on its official website, or on Vimeo.

Some other noteworthy short animations that I’ve liked a lot are:

• Balance, by Lauenstein brothers
• Father and Daughter, by Michael Dudok de Wit
• Harmonica, by Leevi Lehtinen
• The Box Man, by Nirvan Mullick
• Falling in the Woods (live action short)
• Reflections (live action short from India)
• Match (stop motion)
• Android 207, by Carrotkid Films (stop motion)

Enjoy!