Prashant's Weblog

yepeee…at last proud owner(going to be) of photoshop CS4

Posted by Prashant - 16/12/09 at 01:12:10 pm

Photoshop CS4 is downright one of the best software for image editing and in some days I will be a proud owner of a licensed copy of not just the Photoshop CS4 but the entire web premium suite and that too at a throw away

All this thanks to a fellow trekker who works in Adobe. They get employee discounts and was kind enough to purchase one license for me. Like the saying “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” goes this throwaway price comes with a caveat and that is I cannot use any of the web premium suite products for commercial use. But then its not that much of a handicap because I don’t think I have the necessary skills to make serious money with photography and Photoshop. So it will always be for personal use.

So the next obvious question is why the hell would I want to pay a non zero price when you have Gimp? Make no mistake about it Gimp is one hell of a image editor and if that is not good enough its FREE. Well I myself dont have convincing answer for that, but I guess its because;

• Its GNU
• Its slow compared to photoshop
• I can afford photoshop (the discounted one)

I don’t know how the upgrades system would work for the personal license. Next version sounds really interesting.

Death of relationships

Posted by Prashant - 14/12/09 at 03:12:17 pm

What started as a simple jungle civilization around 300 AD in the backdrop of rain forests in the Mexico region, Mayan civilization lasted until close of 900 AD. In between these 5 centuries, also referred to as the classical age, Mayan civilization rose to improbable heights marked by architectural brilliance, unparalleled splendor and magnificent display of art and culture. But as everything that has a beginning has an end and as we read on, the history book of Mayan, one page after another  reveals this gut wrenching story of how that  splendor turning to dust. But like every other civilization, long before history composed the elegy for the Mayans, there were clear harbingers of  approaching doom and as in every other civilization people either did not read them at all or were late to react.

Its amazing as to how striking similar the patterns of this beginning-glory-doom-dust life-cycle of civilizations are with that of human relationships. Both display telltale signs long before they start going downhill. Most often then not, by the time one correctly interprets them, its late, very late. The fine fabric of relationship would have been strained beyond repair. From then on it downhill all the way culminating in the death of that relationship.

Some of the telltale signs that mark the impending doom of a relationship are;

Communication:
An ongoing communication is one of the healthiest sign of a good relationship. Put the other way, when its not going too well, its like magically some one has pumped in vacuum between the two.

“NO” option:
Another sign of a healthy relationship is being comfortable in saying NO to the other person.

Person 1 – Hey, can we catch up for lunch?
Person 2 – No. Not today.

Neat, short and simple. Person 1 understands.Person 2 understands. Done.
But then things are not all that great

Person 1 – Hey, can we catch up for lunch?
Person 2 – Looks bleak..too many things to finish. Sorry.
Person 1 –

That comfort level with other person which you enjoy in a good relation no longer exist.

Terse replies:

Person 1 -
blah blah……………….
……………………………………

blah blah
Person 2 – thanks
Person 1 –

shucks!! I am pretty bad at this, I better stop. This is what happens when you are great fan of blogs like PhyBlog (Understand your mind with the science of psychology) but don’t have the necessary skills nor expertise. Anyways, decided to stick on to travel stuff, speaking of which Orissa-Kolkatta-SandakPhu Phalut trek is happening this month end..Yepppeeeeee. Expecting to see lots and lots of snow, it will be bone chilling cold. Very excited. Will talk more about that later.

Does it make sense to buy high capacity CF card for your camera?

Posted by Prashant - 01/12/09 at 01:12:15 am

There are few trips whose itinerary is enough blow you away. National Geographic expeditions are one among such trips

If 12 UNESCO World Heritage sites, one private jet and 22 days does not make it a trip-of-a-lifetime, what will? You are almost tempted to click on “Request a reservation”..all this until you scroll down to a point in the webpage where the cost for this once-in-a-lifetime  trips becomes visible. Then its like popping “blue pill”, you are suddenly ejected out of the holodeck  of your fantasy world in to the real world. 55K USD!!! OMGH!!

While the private jet and the UNESCO world heritage sites are not affordable, at least for now, a plan to trek the north east India this winter is brewing. It will be freakingly cold. It will be beautiful and it will be one amazing journey(hopefully). I had prepared a check list and last week end was going through it and was checking items off the to-be-purchased list. One important item on that list was the camera memory card and for my camera its the CF card. Currently I have 4 GB Sandisk III Extream CF card. Till date it has delivered awesome performance on my Nikon D300. Even in the fast continious mode. But with the trip lasting for close to 15 days, I would surely need much more memory than that, especially when I am planning on shooting in RAW. So the question on my mind was what should be the ideal capacity of the memory card that I need to buy?

I checked couple of places and they were selling upto 32GB CF card for close to INR 7000. A normal NEF  (Nikon’s RAW file) has an average size of 12-14 MB. So if I buy a 32 GB CF card, I can take close to 2600 photos in RAW format ( 32000/14) which I guess should be more than enough. So choice is obvious, I should go for a 32GB CF card right? Nope..not so soon. Now lets calculate the cost per MB that I am paying for CF card. Fairly simple arithmetic;

Cost per MB for CF card = 7000/32000 = Rs. 0.22 per MB

Now in market you get these devices called “Protable photo storage devices”, these devices have inbuilt card reader and a portable (generally 2.5″, similar to a laptop HDD) hard dirve. So you can plug in any CF card and trasfer all your photos to the hard drive with one click of a button. Generally most of these devices support virtually all types of memory cards. We have several players in this market including, Nexto, Jobo, Sanho, Digital Foci, Wolverine etc.  Now it gets interesting if we do the above math for some of these devices. For example for a Sanho hyperdrive Space which comes with a 40GB capacity and sells for Rs 8109 the math would look like;

Cost per MB = Rs. 8109/40000 = Rs. 0.20 Per MB

I know Rs. 0.02 is a meager amount, but heck its still less than Rs. 0.22

Nexto Extream 160GB model sells for close to Rs. 16000

Cost per MB = Rs. 16000/160000 = Rs. 0.10 Per MB

A Wolverine Picpac 80GB sells at Rs. 5640

Cost per MB = Rs. 5640/80000 = Rs. 0.07 Per MB

All these costs include the customs you pay when you buy then in India. So if you directly purchase it in US it will be even lesser.

So does it make sense to buy a high capacity CF card? Before you make that decision, lets see what are the other advantages/disadvantages;

disadvantages:

• Even thought it fits in your palm, its not as easy as carrying a CF card - True, but common, we can let this go. dump it in a corner of the backpack it should be fine.
• You need to worry about another additional source of power – Yes, while traveling with every additional power source you need to worry about, your pain increases 4 folds. But most of these devices have a really decent battery life. So even this should not be a challenge.
• Its not very fast – Yep, transferring photos from your card to the device is relatively slow. To transfer 4GB of photos from a CF card in the worst case might take 20-30 mins, but while traveling 30 mins should not be a big concern.
• Safety against HDD crash - This is a very genuine concern. As per the reviews, people have had bad experiences with the hard drive in these devices especially the low cost devices like Wolverine and Sanho.

So if you;

• Travel frequently, take lots of pictures, experiment with you camera a lot
• Ready for slightly higher risk

then a photo storage device makes more sense else a high capacity card should work just fine. Also with the cost of the netbooks falling with every passing day, it would be interesting to compare photo storage device against netbooks. The other day I saw a pocket size netbook costing INR 11K. Did not check the specs but if this comes with a 160GB HDD and a CF card reader, then that opens up lot more options.

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