My first Photoshop edit of Scenic Kharghar

This is the first photo that has been edited using photoshop by me. The original photo is the upper one. This photo was taken from the Kharghar mountain top.

Notice that the central part of the picture showing the buildings has been enhanced to show greater detail. Whereas, the farther buildings were not much in detail and hence were left so. Alongwith that, the middle and lower part of the image was 'Hard Light'ed to increase the darkness.





My Flickr Page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/varunchaudhari/

Roman Masterpiece

Roman Masterpiece
Originally uploaded by imapix.

The Pont du Gard (Roman Aqueduct), in France, was built shortly before the Christian era to allow the aqueduct of Nîmes (which is almost 50 km long) to cross the Gard river. The Roman architects and hydraulic engineers who designed this bridge, which stands almost 50 m high and is on three levels – the longest measuring 275 m – created a technical as well as an artistic masterpiece.

Windows vis-a-vis Linux for me...

Mood: Geeky
After having used Windows all my life till now, its now almost sudden and strange that I shifted to Linux. Not that I was not a geek (atleast self-professed) in the use of Windows itself. I always tried hacking into the registry making subtle changes which made me control one or other aspect of Windows' working. It made me a sort of control freak wanting to be in charge of whatever and however my PC works like. Having known and used Windows to whatever imagination (and allowability limits) I decided to explore Linux. (Explore as in 'Determined to Explore' in the theme of Age of Empires III)

The whole thing about Windows is that it is, in a nutshell, closed. They close ranks behind every new product they launch and take care even not opening the slightest information on the previous version. For eg., the DOC format of the Microsoft Word software is not open making it impossible for other office software vendors to read and process a MSWord document. And the fact, that they always try and walk in the opposite direction of the standards set. For eg., a recent move by a consortium of office vendors for making ODF as the standard defacto document format for a certain state in the USA was trampled upon by Microsoft, instead lobbying heavily for their proprietary XML based format. One of the biggest reason for people using Windows (apart from the easiness agreed) is that everybody uses the same.

Yet times are changing. Coming to IIT I realised and was astonished seeing the extent to which they have implemented the Linux OS in the entire IIT network. There are many many great utilities available for engineering and programming use available in the open source world. Hail GNU! Apart from the anti-incumbency factor working in favour of Linux, the sheer amount of basic facilities available in linux simply makes for a great work experience.

However, this doesn't mean that I hate windows altogether. Also my experimentation with Windows continues along with Linux, but more emphasis on the latter currently. In fact, I am a 'Multiple OS' freak. I like to keep as many OSs on my box and keep running them successfully.

My First Blog

This is my first blog

Varun Chaudhari