Unamed Poem.. written in Class 11.. I guess

She walked into my life like rains in hot summer,
brought spring in mid of the cold winters.
Days got lot cooler, nights became lot warmer.
All i felt was pleasure in my heart, which melt like a cheese.
Is this magical thing called love? If yes, I love love.

Until one day, she walked out without any warning,
like Tsunami taking everything away with her.
Leaving my heart in pain, leaving lonely and distressed.
Is this what you call love?If yes, God save me from love.

--found it while cleaning my room..

Eclipse not able to Update/Install new softwares.

This is one problem which I have been trying to solve for a real long time with my Eclipse 3.5 Galileo. The problem was that I was not able to connect to the network to get the repository for the plugins. For long I have been doing the manual install of the plugins but it does not always works out. Like when I wanted GWT Designer plugin, I was unable to find the .zip file for the same.

So, the solution:

1) First go to Windows->Preferences->Update/Install sites and for one of the sites click the Test Connection tab on the right.

2)If it takes long and does not connect to the repos site, that means there is something wrong with your eclipse setting or the the test site. Here, we assume that there is something wrong with your eclipse settings and try to retify it.

3)There must be a proxy server which your company must be enabling, so u need to give proxy data with Manual mode in Windows->Preferences->General->Network. Give it for all 3, HTTP,HTTPS and SOCK.

4)Again, go to step 2 and try it. If it still does not work then in Step 3 just clear the SOCK proxy details. Because your company might not be enabling a SOCL proxy and eclipse first check for SOCK and then HTTP.

5)Again try Step 2 and it should be working.. Congrats!!!!

4)Again repeat

How to use Rupee Font.

Government has done its part…..Now it is our turn to make it a success.

New Rupee Symbol of Indian - How to use in Computers?
Download the attached font. -->


save to "fonts" folder of your PC : Location : C:/Windows/Fonts and then go to the C:/Windows/Fonts location and install(double clck)

Open your word processor and select the "Rupee_forindian”.



Just select "Rupee" font from the drop down list of your fonts in your application
and press the key just above your tab button. It will display the new rupee symbol of India. Try it.

It also work with open office in linux(ubuntu)... just download it n click on it....

Download Rupee Font here

Tab browsing in Micromax Q7 EZPAD

Recently i got a new Micromax Q7 EZPAD Phone and found lots of bug with the inbuilt Opera browser and found it irritating... so what i did was to upgrade it to a new Opera Mini 5.1 which supported Tabbed browsing an very cool interface. It was a lil slower but much better then inbuilt Opera which came.

To install it just point ur browser to http://m.opera.com and install the jar files. Its working fine for me till now. Just only problem which I saw ws the sensitivity of trackball. If you move the ball slowly then it responds well. If you move it very fast then the browser slows down.

But like PC we always want to have more then one browser on our phone. So i found another cool browser after lots of searching. This one is called UC Mobile. To download just click the link here from your phone browser.

I have installed many other softwares which are good and would share about them in upcoming posts.

A life in a Day: Youtube Movie

I usually don't write much here, but recently when I came across the movie by Amit Agarwal for a life in a day, Youtube project, I was not able to stop myself. It was mainly due to few reasons, one being that it was his blog, Digital Inspiration that inspired me to blogging. So would like all of you to watch this one first:

Now, what is this Life in a Day project. Its an initiative by Youtube to gather all the videos generated by users on and around July 24th and make a full feature length documentary film from it. One can get more infomation about it here.

What makes this project so inspiring? The experiment is to do with User Generated Content and it reaffirms my belief that future lies in User Generated Content. Does that mean production houses who roll out so much money to produce such content would go Bankrupt!! Obviously no!! They would need huge server space and intelligent softwares to figure out the type of Content people would like and it would be hosted on their servers, because once there is a huge content out there, it would be really messy to find the one which would suit my mood. Lots of investment would be made on it and the need of a Video Search Engine would surely arise, not only based on the metadata(text attached with the video) but also basd on the objects inside the video(A MPEG7 specification). All these developments again reaffirm my belief the future is going to be a CREATIVE Economy. Machines are there to take care of the methodolgical work and Humans are just born to be creative.

I know, I have thrown lots of ideas in this post.. But these are the few things which were going on my mind.

Converting an image to Statue/Stonify using Gimp!

Here's a tutorial on how to turn a person into stone using GIMP. This cool effect lets you create a statue out of any person's photograph. It's not as daunting as it may seem. Try it out and let your creativity flow.

How to Turn a Person into Stone

Yeah, you can now petrify anybody you like, and it won't take you more than an hour to do so! Learn how to turn an image of a person to statue with this simple GIMP tutorial.

Because this tutorial uses GIMP, you need to have either the Windows or the Linux version of GIMP installed. I did this using v2.3, though I guess the basic steps would remain the same irrespective of the version you have installed.

Step 1: Choosing the Image

It's not that easy to convert every possible image using this method. The best images are portraits with consistent background. If you don't have such an image, you can try removing distracting elements from the background and then apply this technique for the statue effect. The above image has been sourced from Lina's photostream.

Step 2: Layers

Open your target image and duplicate its background layer. You can call the new layer 'Stone' or 'Statue' or something similar.

Step 3: Desaturate

This means to turn the image into a grayscale one. To do this, click on Colours>Desaturate. You can choose between the various options and pick the one which gives best contrast. Contrast can then be altered by Colours>Levels. Tweak it until you're satisfied with the way the image looks. This step is not necessary if you choose a grayscale image to start with.

Step 4: Draw a selection path

Now we need to draw a selection path to select only the subject. Take care to leave out all background elements in this step. To do this, the Magic Wand tool from the toolbar can be used. If there are areas where the colours are similar in the background as well as the subject, use the path tool to select only the subject. Here you'll have hold down CTRL and click to set points all along the path you desire and finally join the last point to the first one and hit ENTER.

Once the path is drawn, use Select>From Path to turn it into a selection.

Step 5: Invert

Next invert your selection (Ctrl+Shift+I) and delete to remove everything else except your subject.

Step 6: Applying the Stone Effect

Finally we will apply the stone effect to the image. This is done using the 'Bump Map' filter. Go to Filters>Map>Bump Map. A dialog box with a preview window and lots of sliders opens.

In the Map Type drop down box, select either the Sinusoidal or the Linear Maping mode. Move the slider for 'Depth' till you're satisfied. the 'Azimuth' and 'Elevation' sliders control lighting and you can play with that to alter the shadows and lighting in your statue. Try out various combination and apply them till you're satisfied with the effect you get. The previews sometimes may be brighter than the actual photo, be aware of that.

Step 7: Final touches

Go to the Path pane and select 'From Path' and 'Magic Wand' to again select the subject. Create a new layer, setting its mode to 'Overlay'.Fill this layer with a stony colour, either grey or dull brown, depending on the effect you want.

Sit back and enjoy your art!!

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/multimedia/photography/articles/48089.aspx#ixzz0sQSpX3P9

Rain!!

Walking in the rain, to free my soul of all pain.
Tears roll down, with smile on my face...
Was it you who inflicted this pain,
Or its my fate that defunct my brain.

Thoughts, remembrance, whatever you might say..
Have made my body numb...
Or is it the chilly rain water that had its way.

Honking of the cars, abuses from rick drivers..
I hear nothing as I walk down the memory lane...

Waking in the rain to free my soul of all pain...

How to selectively change colour of an object in GIMP?

A very useful skill in Photo manipulation is the ability to selectively alter an area. If you can selectively colour an area you can use the same technique to apply a whole range of effects to very precise aspects of your pictures.

Here we are going to use the Path tool to create a very precise selection and then use this to demonstrate how we can change particular aspects of an image using these selections.

In this particular instance we will be changing the colour of an object, but the selection of precise objects is a very important skill to have when you are editing pictures; and the better you get at it the better you will be able to change photographs in more elaborate projects.

Here we are going to colour the hydrant and leave the chains the original colour, using the Path and Layer Mask tools.

Step 1 Duplicate the background layer and rename it ‘Hydrant’ or something similar. Now, zoom in very close to the image, I’m going in to about 200% here, and select the Path tool (press ‘B’) and click somewhere along the edge of the object you want to select, here it is the fire hydrant. Then, click another point a little way further along the edge of the object, a straight line will join the two points, however it is very rare that a straight line will follow the edge of an object perfectly so we must curve the line slightly and make sure it hugs the object closely. There are several ways to do this, so here’s a quick run through how to do this:

The first way to curve a line with the path tool is to hold the left mouse button down when you click the next point and drag it around. Two boxes attached to the point by dotted lines will move, with the front one following your mouse; the box between the new point and your previous one determines the shape of the curve and the front one will determine the apex of the next one, but concentrate on getting the previous line right before worrying about the next one. Once you have the curve following the edge properly you can click the front box of the newest point again to drag it to the place you want your next bend independently of the other box. You can edit both boxes individually like this at any point by holding control while you click one of them.

Another way is to click a previous point and drag it around, this will move the line around maintaining the same apex as before but warping the line according to where you move it. This method is far less accurate but can be useful if your line is just a little off the edge of the object but doesn’t need too much adjustment.

A third common method to adjust a path is to grip the line in the middle by clicking and holding the left mouse button and then moving the mouse. This will move the line whilst keeping the two corresponding points as they were, allowing you to drag the bend as you like to fit a new shape. The boxes responsible for that line will be shown again, so you can re-adjust these if you like to customise the line further.

Step 2 Draw all the way around the hydrant, ignoring the chains at this time, so follow the edge of the hydrant itself and imagine where it would be behind the places where the chains cross in front of it.

If at any point you click to add a point and no line appears, hold control and click the point you want it to be joined to whilst the new point is active.

Draw a path all the way around the hydrant sticking as close as possible to the edge of the object, and when you come to the point where you are back to the first point you drew, hold control and click it to close off your path.

Step 3 Now your path is complete, open Select>From Path and you should have a selection that fits the hydrant perfectly. If you lose your selection at any point, don’t worry; the path will have automatically been stored in the Paths pane, and all you have to do to get it back is to right click the path and choose ‘Path to Selection’ once again.

Press Ctrl and ‘I’ to invert your selection then press the delete key to remove the surrounding part of the layer so you are left with just the hydrant. Invert the selection once again and equip the Paintbrush tool and select a large brush and a colour of your choice. Fill the selected area and you should have something that looks like a complete fiasco.

Step 4 In the Layers pane, just above the list of all the layers in your image, there should be a drop-down menu currently displaying the value ‘Normal’. Click the arrow in this menu and a long list of choices will appear, each of these is a Layer mode that governs how Gimp will display this layer over the top of layers beneath it.

Each mode has its advantages and disadvantages and is suited to different tasks, so have a look at all of them by all means, but here we are trying to colour an object so the usual choices would be the hue, colour, multiply or overlay options, or sometimes soft light.

The overlay and multiply options only really work for colouring greyscale images however, so it’s a choice between hue and colour. Pick whichever you prefer the look of really, it’s a matter of taste at this point, and select that before pressing ctrl, shift and ‘A’ to deselect your hydrant.

Step 5 Finally, to reveal the red of the chains and the rings connecting them to the hydrant, we will use the Layer Mask tool. In the Layers pane right-click on the layer you have coloured blue and select ‘Add Layer Mask’, stick with the default settings and choose a small, soft-edged Paintbrush.

Then put black at the front of your colour choices by pressing ‘D’ and paint the areas of the layer you want to make transparent.

Change the brush size on the fly by pressing the left and right square brackets to more accurately paint the chains and press ‘X’ to swap between white and black as your foreground colour to paint over any areas you make transparent that you do not want hiding.

Step 6 Right click the Layer Mask in the Layers pane and select ‘Apply Layer Mask’ to flatten it to the layer and make the changes permanent, the right click the blue layer and select ‘Flatten Image’ to make the image into one single layer. Your picture is now ready for exporting as a Jpeg.

How to do intelligent edge detected select in GIMP?

Following steps are useful to define edge detection using GIMP.

1. Use scissor tool(i) 
2. Continuously  click on the the edges.
3. At the end click on the starting point. 
4. Then finally click inside the perimeter to convert ur points into selection. 
5. And you are done.

TIP: You can invert your selection using the Select->Invert.

How to make cartoons Using Gimp?

I am starting a new tutorials as i plan to learn gimp myself.. will share with u guys what i learn....

Today, let me talk about how to make cartoons or cartoonize an image using gimp...

Layer->Duplicate LayerSelect the new layer, Filters->Edge-Detect->Edge, select Sobel, Amount should be 2.0, and Black should be checked.Invert the edge-mask layer, it’s in Layers->Colors->InvertBack in the Layers Dialog, change the Layer Mode to DividePlay around with Layer mode settings, desaturate the top layer, blur or otherwise mess up the bottom layer

I did multiply for Overlay and Divide for bottom layer...

Untitled poem

Living on a hope,

Hanging by a rope.

My life is full of dope.

Oh! God give me strength to cope.

Oh!! God??

Does God exists or its another big hope..

Its something which i would have to miss,

else my life is another big piss.

Death is my last wish.

Joomla Module JTweetSearch.

I recently created a Joomla Module to search Twitter for a particular configurable query and display all the results of the matching query but without tweets having any link on them.

The module is available on the link http://biplav.saraf.googlepages.com/mod_jtweetsearch.zip

Its easy to install. And uses Jquery to give a nice fade and sliding effect.

The demo of this module can be seen on http://www.vtunews.in. with the module on the right named VTU Tweets.

This is just the version 1.0 of the module. Incase you find any bugs please report. Feature enhancement request can also be reported on the comment section of this blog. so happy tweeting or i can be reached on twitter @biplavs