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.

Where are computers leading us?

I spend pretty much all of my 8-10 hours at work looking at a computer screen. I then come home and check my personal email, pay bills, check the news etc. All while staring at a computer screen. The internet allows you to do so many things from the comfort of your home, but the caveat is that it involves the discomfort of staring at a screen. An iPhone screen is still a screen. I go to bed feeling exhausted from all this staring.

I have a bad feeling about this. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but is this modern-day geekery keeping me from seeing the "real world"? Will I forget how it is to queue up to pay a bill? To take a walk and buy a newspaper? To even actually talk to people? True, there is nothing which actively stops me from doing all these things without using a computer. But I think the convenience of not having to step out of the house is just too much to forsake. And then we have to go to these gyms to get the only exercise we ever do.

Something is not right.

Respect the user's bandwith

The quintessential internet surfer does what he knows best - unearths an obscure webpage from the bowels of the internet. He is impressed by the content - its a subject he is deeply interested in. But then suddenly he is disturbed by the sound of music emanating from his measly laptop speakers. Yes, the page contained a youtube video which auto-started on page-load. The content of the video has nothing to do with the subject of the website. The surfer loses concentration, nervously glances at the video (which is embedded in a tiny 100x100 px frame btw). He has long lost the context of the real content of the website. He frowns in dismay when he realises that the video is almost 10 minutes long. He hits middle click on the tab in the browser. The music stops. He is no longer thinking about his subject of interest. He thinks, why. "Why should I be forced to download a video which has nothing to do with the real message of the website? Why is that video started automatically on page-load, thereby nullifying any chance of stopping it from being downloaded by the browser, apart from completely leaving the website itself? Why can website designers not be more bandwidth conscious?
He stops and starts writing this blog. Every new technology can be abused.

Just using cool new technologies doesn't solve the problem

This point is missed too often. So I just wanted to say it out aloud again. One can write clean code using good old Java and messy code using Groovy (or Ruby or whatever). I have a feeling this is common amongst ResumeAdorners. I'll leave the details of that word for another post.