Guitar notes

I had all but stopped playing. But this guitar piece has changed things a bit. As I try to play and improve, I find myself going through the same thought processes which I went through a few years ago. I wish I had them noted somewhere. The next time I play after a break, I am going to read this.
1. Concentrate. Clear the mind of other thoughts (including vacuuming your messy room)
2. Listen hard to your playing
3. While listening don't forget to think ahead, of the next chord.
4. Before performing a troublesome chord shift, look at the frets you want to be at before your hands go there. The hands should follow the eyes. Not go together with them.
5. For classical pieces like this one, walk into the chords. i.e. Not all notes are plucked together so focus on the notes which are played first before getting the whole chord position right with the left hand.
6. Left hand improvement is like exercising in the gym. You can do a lot for a few days and burn yourself out or do a significant amount regularly and build lasting strength.
7. Enjoy what you are doing. Or stop.

Why GMail-in-a-browser is better than MS Outlook-on-your-desktop

1. Search actually works quickly. Or should I say, it works at all.
2. Threaded conversations are way more intuitive than RE: and FW: style psuedo-conversations.
3. In spite of being in a browser, it actually has better keyboard-shortcut support than Outlook. Try moving emails into folders in outlook using only the keyboard. Now try applying labels in Gmail. Way easier.
4. In spite of being in a browser, its actually faster than the bloated desktop Outlook client as far as I've seen and used.
5. I don't want to install 200MB worth of bloat to just check my email!
6. I don't have to re-install the bloat if I use multiple operating systems.
Too tired to think now, but I have a feeling there are many more.

HorrendousPasswordCriteria

Saw this on a website :

Please make sure following criteria are met while entering password :
> New password and confirm password should match

> New password should contain atleast 1 uppercase , 1 lowercase,
1 numeric , 1 special character and minimum 8 characters

> Current password must be correct

What???
If only I could provide feedback, it would be thus -
1. I have enough passwords to remember, thank you. I don't want to create a new password so obscure that I will never be able to remember it.
2. Are you generally this insecure about life? Given that you don't really store creditcard numbers or any such confidential info, do you seriously think someone is trying to hack your passwords? GMail doesn't have that strict a criteria, and theres way more confidential information in there.
3. You have just dissuaded me from registering on your website. Ever.

From prosumer to SLR...

So why do people go from the world of compact cameras to the bulky SLR ones? Having been bitten by the bug very recently, I am compelled to articulate.
Simply put, its the desire to take better pictures irrespective of the situation you happen to be in. I quite liked my prosumer Lumix FZ-18. I captured some pics, especially landscapes in broad daylight, which I still feel happy about. But once I took the next step and started to use the manual controls more, the deficiencies started showing. Every so often, while taking a portrait against a not-so-plain background, I'd think - oh how I wish I could throw the background out of focus like the pros do. Or, while shooting indoors, I wished I could do it without using the flash and destroying all the ambient light. And when focussing on thin, delicate objects, I wished the manual focussing was a little more usable. And the list went on.

So now that I have one, how is it different?
Having a DSLR is a lot different from having a consumer/prosumer camera. When I was still living in the 'compact' world, I had little idea of how these differences would affect how I took pictures.
The first and the most tangible difference is really the speed. It takes sub-second time to startup and start clicking. Saving pics to the card is pretty much instantaneous too. And manual focus is a breeze using the lens' focussing rings. Where it slows u down is while changing lenses, if you have to. But then most of the time, you have a good general idea of what kind of shots you'll be taking in a given situation, so the need to hurriedly change lenses shouldn't really exist.
Next, and very importantly, is image quality. The automatic white balance is more accurate in general (if you don't prefer to set it yourself), you can achieve beautiful bokeh (blurring) of background in portraits (depending on the lens you've got), easier focussing means that you capture exactly what you want, how you want.
There are a few things I miss from the Lumix though - the compactness of course... and the fact that the lens cover is not attached to the body of the camera but has to be (clumsily) handled every time I want to go into photo-taking mode. Minor annoyances.
So if you are at (what I call) the threshold of your compact camera, like I was, maybe it is time.

Digital SLR

After tinkering with my prosumer Lumix FZ-18 for a couple of years, I have finally decided to take the leap and get a DSLR. Having said that, the Lumix has definitely performed to my expectations. I still look at some of the pics I took with it and think, thats not bad for a prosumer camera.

The first choice was of course which system to buy. I asked a few people, the local camera-shop guy, and of course, dpreview.com and concluded that it had to be Canon. The best DSLR body within my budget was the Canon EOS 550D (or the RebelT2i in the USA). Another reason for this choice was that it allowed me to save enough for the lenses. The whole point of getting a DSLR is to have good lenses, after all.

When it came to buying lenses, the camera-shop guy's advice was loud and clear. Pretty much everything you'd want to do, as a beginner DSLR user, can be done with the twin-lens-kit which one can get with the 550D. But I checked the reviews and found that the 18-55 mm lens included in the kit isn't quite that great a choice. After checking out a few other canon lenses, I found the 85mm f1.8 prime lens. This lens is primarily for portraits (and specialises in indoor and lowlight situations) and had consistently positive reviews.

For the second lens, I decided to go with the 55-250, as it seemed to give good bang for the buck.

So then thats the combo I've gone with. Now I need to find a good case, maybe a lens hood and a SD card. More about that later...

How to configure TogaII chess engine for Raptor on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Yesterday I was trying to configure a chess engine for my FICS client, Raptor. My first attempt was to download Rybka, as a lot of people in the FICS community seemed to use that engine. Well, I soon realised I couldnt; Rybka only supports Windows platform. Second crack - Toga II. And thankfully, it was a breeze -

• Download the mac binaries from the toga website.
• Go to Raptor preferences -> Chess Engines and select the downloaded (and extracted) file.
• Enter a nickname for the engine and click Apply.
• Now bask in the glory of a 2900 something engine's analysis :)

Why should one archive old emails in Gmail?

One very good reason is that when you try to use an external client (like the one on my MacBook), it doesn't start downloading 10,000 items.

Not to mention the warm, fuzzy, i-have-nothing-left-to-do feeling of having an empty inbox.

The Vs and Ws. Pronunciation of Indians

It wasn't long ago that my girlfriend pointed out that I pronounce V and W in some English words incorrectly. After a feeble attempt at denial, I realised that indeed, its quite accurate. I tried to trace the root cause in Marathi (my mother tongue). Marathi has a single letter which denotes both W and V sounds depending on the context. Moreover, its fairly common, and quite acceptable, for people to use one sound instead of the other. Hindi, the national language, and Sanskrit, the language of ancient India and the origin of many Indian language, share the same (Devanagri) alphabet. So its hardly surprising. She even pointed out that most Indians (even those who use English everyday) are blissfully oblivious of this problem.

A few days ago, I noticed the same mistake in pronunciation in a SriLankan colleague at work. I don't know Sinhalese, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't distinguish between V and W either.

Luckily, its not hard to correct. All it takes is some conscious effort to touch the front teeth to the lower lip while saying V (like we do when saying F). Ws, on the other hand, call for the lips to form a circle (like the one while saying O).

I think I've fixed my problem. Of course, she disagrees.