Get better with Flickr

Capturing the water drops has always been a to-do thing for me since I caught a glimpse of it in some magazine a decade ago. Never really bothered since I had no good camera to do that.But once I got to lay my hands over the S5 IS(thanks to my friends!!!) I though I should do it ASAP. There were a million snaps of them by then over the internet, but I was still wondering how this could be done. All I knew was I had to click a million and one to get it the way I wanted.That is when I came across this small yet wonderful thing called the EXIF details !!

Flickr says - Almost all new digital cameras save JPEG (jpg) files with EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) data. Camera settings and scene information are recorded by the camera into the image file. Examples of stored information are shutter speed, date and time, focal length, exposure compensation, metering pattern and if a flash was used.

All you need to do is fish for a good photo that makes you think, how the hell did u get this one in Flickr. If luck favours you the Additional Information section of that photo might have the "More Properties" enabled. If that is the case you can get to see details like shutter speed, aperture settings, exposure settings etc. Not a big deal for the pros. but for people who are just getting started like myself, this is a good start :) At least it reduces the need just a million :P.

Check out the ones I took.

IPod Home Theatre

ipod touch receives what i broadcast on my PC!!!

Struck me when I saw this really cool Panasonic home theatre system in Kou's place. You should check that out, its amazing ! The radio receiver which had a range of 10 mts. caught my attention. Have been meddling with my Ipod touch (thanks to my friends) and thought i should make use of the Wi-Fi capability to stream the songs and video.

The idea is simple enough, play any movie on your PC. Find out a way to split the audio into 4 channels, 2 front ones that would come out of the speakers connected to your pc and 2 rear ones that would be connected to your Ipod Touch placed aesthetically.

Hardware:
PC, ethernet card, wifi router, iphone/ipod touch(jail broken) and the speakers!

Applications needed :

Winamp (I got the latest one v5.541) + Shoutcast DSP plugins both the server and the winamp plug-in. These would go into your PC.

You would need the MNPlight radio app on ur iphone/ipod touch. Visit MNPlight website and follow the instructions there to get it installed on your Ipod.

Setup:

1. Install Winamp and the Shout Cast plug-in.
2. Install the Shoutcast server.
3. Open "Edit SHOUTcast DNAS configuration" from start menu.
4. Set the password to null.By default it was "changeme", I just removed this string alone.Save your changes. Once done start the server by clicking SHOUTcast DNAS (GUI) from start menu.
5. Open Winamp and go to preferences and open SHOUTCAST plug-in and go to the output tab.
6. Set Connection Properties by pressing the Connection Button. Set Address to your PC IP. Port number is 8000 by default. Clear the password column(since we set it to null). Leave the Automatic Reconnection property checked.
7. Click the Yellowpages button.Leave the Make Service public option checked. Give some description and type the URL as your PC IP preceded by 2 back slashes(eg: \\192.168.x.x). Clear the ICQ and IRC fields.

8. Now Press the connect button and start playing some media on your Winamp. The connection says how much of transfer happens.But the listener is still 0.
9. Now open the MNPlight app from your iphone/ipodtouch. Go to Radios.Choose the Manually add option and add the PC IP along with the port number(eg: 192.168.x.x:8000).Press "Done" button and then save.

10. The station appears below. Choose the play button, Safari opens the quick time player for streaming in audio. Press the play button and connect your rear speakers.
Your server would say 1 active listener.

There is a bit of lag in the audio (as expected). There a few plug-ins for Winamp to reduce this.

Sit back and enjoy the 3D music !!!

Ambitions

Just another rainy afternoon in Madras, I am home having an apple, in front of my computer searching for some nice movie to add to my "Hey I have watched that, its good" collection and to think of ways I could have made the film look better. I have got nothing else to do, feels so good I am here, that too after all those days in Bangalore. It used to be a lot more different during my internship a year ago, most of the days were fun. I would wait to get out of the place in the evening to go meet my circle of friends, or set up a date with my girl and take her to some expensive restaurant or just a walk down the M.G. Road or just an ice cream at Corner House. Things were very different at the work station too, there always was a scope for me to learn and do stuff and that I was working on some hi-fi technology and that I was given the whole responsibility of building the stuff from scrap, every thing was exciting 'bout the project. But now, work life sucks I get out of office having nothing to do at home either. life's become mechanical. I wish to spice up my life and when I think of ideas, I am not able to narrow in on one. I have a lot of passions, wait I think I am passionate 'bout those things. Photography, movie making, maths & physics and lots of other things. There would have been a point of time in life when every guy whose employed in a software company feels this way about his life, that he is leading a mechanical life and that he needs a break and that if he works for a couple of more years or switch a couple of more companies he can get a job abroad and that he can earn lots and finally there will come this time when he can do all that he ever wanted to ! cool !!! Truth is with time you forget about your passions at least until you raise a kid and then when everything comes back to you, he is there to do what you have always wanted to ! Or when you are there where you wanted to be, suddenly you really don't know what you wanted to do because you are way beyond the point where you wanted things for yourself and now you want things for others, call it maturity or responsibility you have lost your identity. Now that I have taken my readers a little too off-track, the question is how many of us get to do what they really want to in life. But for that we need to know what we want in the first place. I remember the first time I got introduced to the word "Ambition", my aunt once asked what my Ambition was, can you believe it, a five year old being taunted with such a question. poor me I did not know what the word meant and I was blinking for some time then, ingenious me, I came up with an answer,I said P.S.Senior Secondary School!.I crossed my finger hoping I got it right. Sitting next to me was my cousin, she was a year younger to me then, bright(er) one though answered she wanted to be a doctor, and her reply left me even more puzzled. What did I want to be ? I decided okay 'Doc' sounds cool but my "cool" feeling went off as soon as I heard my brother say that he wanted to be an 'Engineer'. I decided I had had enough so I decided to call the interview session off, I ran across the hall crying. My brother was taken aback when he saw how sad it makes me to see an engineer in him, he took up commerce in his high school. Though I had at the tender age of five was able to shape to my brother's career in such a fashion, have not been able to shape my own life into a something. From that day to this I have not understood what the meaning of ambition is. At different point of time I have wanted to be different people. I remember how all I wanted in my life was a well and pulley to pull out water when I saw this picture in my EVS textbook. A guy who smokes sitting in a chair with the worlds funkiest lighter, the LPG guy, Auto rikshaw driver, the Mahout , cattle rancher, Discovery Channel Photographer and a million other "The person to be" have been on my list. And to this day I have been just thotak who has not figured out what I want to be and is what I am because of a million other things and me!