in retrospect…

now, what is wrong with this picture?

i was driving along Market Market when i saw this poster along a wall of a construction site… i have been seeing this for the past couple of weeks or so, but it was only today that i stopped in front of it…

there is a new building behind a student wearing a hard hat, and there is BSCoE [Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering] in big bold white letters, and… wait… what?? a student [or graduate of CoE] wearing a hard hat?? ow, c’mon… really??

for one, CoE graduates don’t really need to go in a construction site, ergo, no need to wear a hard hat… second, CoE in a hard hat??

c’mon, guys… fire your marketing people and get a better advert next time… tsk tsk…

Ciao, sweetie…

a question was posed by Yuga in his blog and he asked “Is technology slowly enslaving us?”

for the longest time ever, i always find myself with one gadget or another that i definitely cannot live without… back in college, all that i ever needed for school was my scientifc calculator… all the calculations that i need to do for my BS in Geodetic Engineering classes can be done by this small calculator, and my notes, if ever i need to jot them down, are in small pieces of paper borrowed/stolen from classmates and can be found in the nook and crannies of that calculator… it’s sort of a personal digital assistant [PDA], or at least, close to it…

then, i also had my taste of my first ever computer… an IBM PC-XT [who can remember those??] which had about 16K of memory, no hard disk, green monitors, and a cluinky [read: very big] keyboard… no mouse, yet, then… and all i used it for was to run Wordstar or Lotus 123 for the work i was doing with my uncle in his brokerage firm… as for communications, i was using those large bulky cellphone-types, much like what the military in the field was using… made my back ache lugging them around that’s why i threw them out the window after some time…

after graduating from college, my needs also graduated to more newer stuff… i basically got to use all kinds of PCs from the AT to the newest model today… as for cellphones, i got my first taste of a *really* portable lightweight cellphone in the late 90’s when then Bayantel offered me a Motorala phone for about P1750 a month, i think… i also graduated from that to Sony Ericsson T-series to newer ones K-series about 2 years ago…

as for other gadgets, i still have my Palm T5 which i cannot live without as it has my personal planner, datebook, hundreds of contacts, and several books in digital format i am reading at the moment… i have a portable USB card reader for my Pentax K100D dSLR camera, a set of rechargeable batteries with charger [opkors], a USB fan, a bluetooth earphone connecting to my SE K700i, several hundred charges and whatnot lying around the house, and a score of others i don’t know [or forgot] the use of… haaayyy…

and no, i am not a slave to my gadgets, though i definitely cannot live without them…

Ciao, sweetie…

WARNING: a loooonnnggggg post… really…

i am sure, after my post on how to set up a blog using free providers like Wordpress and Blogspot, thousands of you trooped to those sites mentioned and created your own blogs… i am also sure that, by now, you’d have learned the limits of these free blogging sites… like, you can only customize the theme so much… like, you have a favorite plugin but you cannot install this in your new blog… like, you created a photoblog, only to find out that your particular blog has a limit in terms of hard disk size… or many others that, although you can live with them at the start, but you find restricting as you go along…

so what do you do?? well, for a little amount of money and a little patience, you can now start your own blog using your own domain, can have as little or as large hard disk space as you’d want, and put in as much content as you can think of…

how do you go about doing it?? read on and find out…

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY, everyone!!

don’t do what i wouldn’t do…

…not my words, though… that is the title of TechRepublic blogger Steven Warren’s post, and he hit the nail ight on the head when he quoted that “The majority of the world’s population is lazy, Microsoft is easy, Linux is a mystery!”… it is true, though, Microsoft is really relatively easier to use… all you need to understand is how to use the mouse to point and click [or double-click, as the case may be], and your keyboard to type in…

Linux is not for the following kinds of people:

• faint of heart
• without patience
• stupid

don’t get me wrong here… i am not saying that Windows users are stupid, ok?? all i am saying is that if you have no time and patience to spare, or you are easily susceptible to heart attacks when things go wrong, or when you don’t have the learning capacity to learn Linux, you might as well stick it out with your trusty ‘ol Windows box…

I do not believe either Gnome or KDE is easier to move around than Windows.

this is true, Gnome or KDE cannot compare to the ease-of-use feature of Windows XP or Windows Vista… the buttons are where they were yesterday, and you are sure that there is where it will be today… and tomorrow, for that matter…

Gnome and KDE applications are wont to crash whenever you use them, spoiling the hours of work done… but hey! isn’t this the same for Windows?? or maybe, i am wrong?? hmmm?? :s

Linux overall lacks standardization. How can you create a community of users when nobody can agree on the standard?

this one is true, too… it was Unix who created the Internet standards, wasn’t it?? not even Microsoft can claim that fame… what Microsoft did was use these same standards, change them a little around the edges, called them their own, patented, and created a community around it… thereby creating a closed-group of people who cannot communicate effectively within a diverse community… it is much like reinventing English and forcing other nationalities to use it… or more commonly know as vendor lock-in…

Most people do not want to use the command line and there is no reason in this day and age to have to be forced to use it.

yup, also true… but where did Windows start off with first?? anyone?? [i feel like a college teacher again... ]

Microsoft started creating a command line interface for the IBM-PC early in 1981, and they continued upgrading that until Microsoft came out with it’s first version of Windows in 1985… users back then, including this author, also started with a command-line interface very much similar to that of Linux… that was why i am at-home when i am in front of my Linux console…

There are too many weird names for things in Linux. THEY DON’T MAKE ANY SENSE. Gimp, Yast, Yum, oh my! It’s insane.

of course!! that’s the way it should be, right?? please remember that these FREE applications were made by a bunch of college-geeks with nothing better to do [no dates on Saturday nights]… they just whipped up a few thousand lines of code together, have a few beers, and calls it the frist thing that comes to their minds… geeks are not known for being creative, anyway…

giants, like Microsoft, hire an advertising agency to come up with a nice-sounding name like XP or Vista, whereas kids who only have a few bucks to their names cannot afford to… that’s why the names… but, really, so what?? if they work as they were advertised, i don’t care about the names they carry… right??

—-

now, i wonder what the author of that post would feel when i tell him that he was working on an application born out of Linux?? yes, mister author, you, or your server, were using Apache to show this rant to the Internet… it was easy, right? because that was pre-configured for you by people who know more than you, using the command line interface, and not being bothered by it…

but again, i just got myself baited by another useless trolling… when will i ever learn??

i can tell you a long list of items about Linux that Windows doesn’t have… but then again, that is for another post…

Ciao, sweetie…

finally, haravata.com and apples-pie.com now has a new home!! and with their new kid, kubiertos.com, it is now one big happy family!!

in this post, i listed all that i need for the new webhost… and what i found does all of it, and more!!

read and weep:

and there’s more yet!!

but don’t take my word for it… go to BlueHost.com and read more about it…

and best of all?? it is just $6.95 a month [or a measly Php340.55 a month] with dedicated 24×7 technical online support!! neat, no??

[and, no... i am not being paid... i wish i was, though... hehehe...]

though readers can still use the old URLs, like http://blog.haravata.com or http://pictures.haravata.com, the new URLs [as you see them in your browser's address bar] are better… right??

Ciao, sweetie…

the wife and i were googling for Philippine webhosts last night but we cannot find anything that will serve our needs… our requirements are the following:

• high disk space [at least 10GB]
• high bandwidth [at least 2GB/month]
• MySQL
• GD or ImageMagick for our Gallery
• an SSH connection [no FTP please!!]
• and of course, Apache and PHP

suffice it to say that all of these must be running in Linux [any flavor will do, really...] and most important of all, it must be dirt cheap!!

any ideas?? hmmm??

Ciao, sweetie…

if you have noticed, this blog, and others that is connected to it, has been going on and off for the past weeks [actually started the 3rd week of December 2006]… well this is due to a really old and dying server that is co-located with one of my clients who has a big bandwidth [and doesn't really need it]… and with all the traffic going into it, no wonder it is already coughing up…

but then again, it just have to hang on a little while longer because i don’t have any money to give it a rest…

that is why, for photoflicking, i’ve decided to take out the photos and just put them in separate pages for you to view… still viewable, but you’d have to click on links to get to them…

so, anyone has any spares out there? hehehe…

Ciao, sweetie…

i found this site which is a collection of photography [my current hobby] tutorials for n00b’s like me… it offers a great store of photography tips to hlep starting photographers [and digital artists] that i have bookmarked it…

anyway, one trick it taught was the creation of a monochromatic picture [black & white] with just a dash of color… examples of what i’ve done are the following:

this effect was done using Photoshop CS2… so, how to do this?

1. you will need a colored image that will make an impact in black and white, and has a defined area that you’d want to bring back in color [in the 1st photo above, the background are b&w while my baby is in full color, and in the 2nd picture, my baby is in b&w while the background is in color]… the area you’d want to bring back can be anything, so don’t fret if you can’t find anything to bring back in…

2. open this full color image in Photoshop, and select Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate. this will turn your color image into black & white.

3. next, using the History Brush from the Toolbar [left side, circled in red], select the brush size from the Brushes Pallete… brush sizes can be as small as 1px to as large as 2500px.

4. then, simply “paint” over the area or object you want to bring back the color to… in our case, i’ve painted over the toy cars of my kid… continue with this until everything is back in color… then save as new filename… oh, and remember to always keep a copy of the original file in case you want to do anything else with it… sometimes, you may want to zoom in real close to get those hard to get areas to paint in…

and that’s it! the final product will now be this:

nice no? and it is so easy to boot!! and no, this is not doing an Angelica on my pictures… this is just simple image manipulation to bring out their best effect…

[click on the images for a larger picture]

Ciao, sweetie…

Brian White of Background Exposure.com commented on my last post and sent me this link of retouching images… it shows how, with the proper tools, one can make a veritable goose into a very beautiful swan…

i have been an avid reader of FHM Philippines and Maxim Philippines… both have high enough appeal to me, or to any hot-blooded male [and female], that i have been buying it eversince its maiden issue…

but i have now been disillusioned into buying these magazines for the simple fact that i feel like a fool drooling over those semi-naked women when, now, i know for a fact that what is being shown is not really them, but a perception of what they [magazine editors] really want us to see, an image… a fake… aritificial… invented… an illusion… A FORGERY!!

and we have been eating it all up!! yes, you, you, you, and, sadly, me…

i have nothing against the use of tools to retouch images… but only when you see a smudge or dirt which is the photographer’s fault… i’d rather show all the imperfections of my subjects than do an Angelica on them… and by that, i mean the wholesale changes they made simply to make their photos more beautiful… more appealing…

i am a photographer myself, though still an amateur, but all of my pictures are real… nothing was done to them at all… yes, maybe a little retouch on the color scheme [to sepia or black and white], but that was all… oh yes, people have asked me to wipe off the pimples on their faces, or make them a little thinner [or fatter]… but those are what, to me, make them intereseting subjects!! because they’re real… no imagery… real…

and that is what i’ll strive to be… to capture images that show the real person behind the scenes i take… i won’t feel a real photographer when all i do is take the pictures and retouch them to come out with a totally different picture… they do not become my own anymore…

i will now be looking at pictures of models on billboards, posters, and most of all, magazines, in a new light…

Ciao, sweetie…