Bhuvan: India’s Answer to Google Earth
Aug 14th
I am big fan of Google Maps. The sheer amount of time I can spend on maps planning routes, looking at landmarks and generally loitering about, is simply astonishing. If I am still not satisfied I can continue to waste my time on views from Google Street View, which is just an amazing way to while away a few hours. Bing maps also deserves an honourable mention here for their implimentation of Bird’s Eye View.
But these two tools are soon going to be looking for takers in India due to the launch of Bhuvan (meaning: Earth). Bhuvan has been developed by More >
Deadpool Spinoff Expected
Aug 13th
Xmen Origins featured the motormouth katana slinging character Wade Wilson (played by Ryan Reynolds) who goes on to become Deadpool as part of the Weapon X program and tries to take out Wolverine. The character has earned its own movie which is currently looking for writers. The movie will give the real picture of Deadpool and not the warped one shown in Xmen Origins.
Google Chrome Linux – Developer Release
Aug 9th
As soon as Google provided the developer release of Google Chrome for Linux a few weeks ago, I have been using it regularly as a replacement of Firefox 3.0 that has been my main browser on Linux Mint. Right from first use the speed of Chrome blew me away without even conducting any benchmarks. Chrome is visibly faster than the other browsers that I have installed on my Mint system. In spite of the developer’s warnings of not using Chrome on daily use systems,I have been using it regularly. Till date I have had only 1 crash and even the More >
Exposure Blending in GIMP
Jul 24th
Exposure blending is a good starting step to create realistic and also not so realistic HDR images. Getting an image that has an enhanced dynamic range has also given me better tone mapping results. Having spoken about using the Advanced Tone Mapping plugin for GIMP in another article, I figured that it is only logical to talk about exposure blending also. The GIMP is a Photoshop clone that works under both Windows and Linux. So you don’t have to worry if you are not using Linux. I carry out exposure blending with the Exposure Blend Plugin (convenient, isn’t it) for More >
Online Filing of Income Tax Returns
Jul 22nd
The Indian income tax authorities have tried to make life simpler for tax payers through online filing. The online filing can either be done from the website of the income tax department or from the websites of 3rd party service providers. I would advise that you use one of the 3rd party service providers. The websites of the 3rd party providers are easier to understand and use.
Tone Mapping in GIMP
Jul 5th
Ever since I read about manipulating images to display them as HDR images, I have been playing around with various tools available for the Linux and Windows platforms. It was quite difficult to find a free tool for Windows for this purpose and I finally used a trial version of Photomatix (a very well known HDR creation and tone mapping application), which leaves a watermark on all the images that you create. For Linux, I found qtpfsgui.
Photmatix was easy to use. Requiring little or no experimentation to be carried out and gave good results. The software was powerful and easy to More >
Tilt Shifted Fake Miniatures
Jun 27th
After my first trials with fake tilt shifting with tiltshiftmaker.com and GIMP, and the second post with my Toronto trip pictures miniaturized, this is the third set of images that have qualified to be miniaturized via fake tilt shift effect.
Granular Linux
Jun 27th
Granular has been my first successful tryst with KDE and E17. I have never been a fan of KDE and really didn’t like it this time either. Enlightenment is a different story altogether. It is slick and light and just so different that you actually feel that you are using a different OS. Although there is a slight learning curve to E17 and there is a lot of tweaking to make it look and feel exactly like you want it to. My first tryst with E17 was quite disappointing mostly because of the fact that I has used it on More >
