Tea Break

Prof. David Koilpillai

provides refreshments in between his two hour lectures. Period.

 

View from Inside

How many of you have been lucky enough to catch this view?

Wish you never get to do this? Well, this is fun after all. Once inside this vehicle, one feels as though he’s of great importance. Perks include salutes from personnel on the road.

How did I get to board this vehicle? No, I’m not a criminal. Just that I’m part of the Music Club, IIT Madras. And occasionally, I get to go and pick up the artistes for their concerts. And what IITM sends them is this.

As I said earlier, it’s fun to travel in this contraption. It is also fun to see the artistes’ reactions. they shouldn’t be expecting this, right?

 

Yelagiri Skies

I had gone to Yelagiri this weekend with some of my friends at IIT Madras along with Dr. Suresh Mohan. We were joined by the guys from Bangalore Astronomical Society at Yelagiri. What skies! People living in Chennai MUST visit a place like that to get a feel of what we are missing! Simply stunning.

I initially started off into a Messier Marathon. I managed to get a glimpse of at least 30 Messier Objects, 20 out of which I found myself. But a few hours into the night, I gave up the marathon and shifted to photography. I don’t own any high-end Astrophotography hardware. Nevertheless, it’s great fun to capture the night sky in my Canon Powershot A540. Below is Orion, the Hunter though my camera. Easily the best photo that I’ve taken till now.

Details: Canon Powershot A540, f2.6, ISO 800, 10 exposures of 15 seconds each. Aligned and stacked using Registax4 running on Wine

 

Besides, I got to meet many amateuro-professional astronomers and astrophotographers. The highlight of the night was Mr. Hemant’s photos of Eta Carinae and the never disappointing Omega Centauri.

Night was great fun, but we ended doing college assignment work in our resort in Yelagiri during the daytime A weekend that I’ll never forget.

Some shots of the equipment:

Hemant’s Meade 80ED APO, Arun’s Maede 10 inch

Hemant’s 12 inch telescope, Dr Suresh’s Orion 80ED, 80 mm Guidescope

 

Joking ??

B. Tech Student : (To himself) What??! Who has set up this experiment? Voltmeter in series and Ammeter in parallel ? Standards of the insti are falling monotonically. Sigh.

Ph. D Teaching Assistant : Hey why are you fiddling with the circuit? I have got everything ready for you. You just have to take readings and show them to me.

B. Tech : But the circuit is messed up! Let me just swap the Voltmeter and the Ammeter.

Ph. D. : You don’t understand basic electrical sciences! Tell me if I give five amperes to a resistor, how much current will I get out of the other end?

B. Tech : (Completely blown off) Ummm .. Five amperes?

Ph. D. : No! You’ll get something less than five. That’s why it is called a resistor! Sigh .. the standards of the institute are falling badly.

And that, my friends, is the best joke I’ve heard for a long long time.

 

Night Skies ..

Can you guess the time of the day when the above photo was taken? (Click on the photo for a bigger version). Would you believe it if I said 2 AM? Oh yes, 2 AM it is! Maybe the stars in the photo can convince you

We, Astronomy Club, IIT Madras held a session yesterday night at the Sangam Grounds. I tried out some shots of the sky using a Canon Powershot A540 with its shutter open for 15 seconds. And in the wee hours of the night I get photos like the one above! Clearly, this was my first time in taking such long exposures!

I managed to capture Ursa Major (which came out very well). That’s the one below

I also captured some afocal shots of the moon.

My (alomst) first shot at Astrophotography!

Aside: my Hackergotchi Tutorial is first on google! <Search>

 

Scary?

We share our hostel with the man below.

And him too??

 

Hackergotchi Tutorial

I’ve put down few steps to make your own Hackergotchi in less than 10 minutes. I’ve used the GIMP. Nevertheless, it should be easy to use these steps in other Image Editing Softwares as well. (Click on the thumbnails to view full size)

1) Find a good photo of yours, preferably with a plain background. If you can’t find one such photo, you’ll realize the power the Fuzzy Select tool (also called Magic Wand by some others). We start with this photo (Google was generous enough to find a picture of a baby this purpose ).

2) Now, use the Fuzzy Select (Magic Wand) Tool. Play around with the option called threshold. You always have Ctrl+Z to go back. Select any region which does not fall under what you define as Face and keep deleting them. ( Process can be made faster by holding down the Shift key while selecting. This will keep adding all the selections)

Be sure to have the Feather Edges option checked. We don’t want rough edges.

3) Now use the Free Select Tool (Lasso) to select and delete the areas that are still left over. Magnifying the image will be of great use to remove unwanted areas very close to the face. Edges of the selection come out better when the image is magnified.

There, we have the face. To get better edges, we could do a few more things.

4) Select the white region (area other than the face). This can be done by clicking on the white area with the Fuzzy Select Tool.

Now, do Select -> Grow.. and grow the selection by 1 px. Delete.

5) The edges should be better now. Select the white area again using the same method described above. A good idea is to make this area transparent. Select Colors -> Color to Alpha. If you can’t find this under the Colors Menu search somewhere else. Basically, we want to make the white region transparent. Select White in the Color to Alpha dialog box and press OK. We just have to drop a shadow and we’re done.

6) To add a shadow, select the face. For this, select the transparent area using the Fuzzy Select Tool just as we did for the white area. Invert this Selection by doing Select -> Invert or Ctrl + I. We now have the face selected. Now select Filters -> Light and Shadow -> Drop Shadow. Again, if you can’t find this option, search somewhere else.

We’re done!

 

Guess Where?

Any idea where this photo was taken ?

Update: Photo taken at the IIT Madras Oxidation Ponds, not a beautiful lake

 

Naakka Mukka

‘நாக்க முக்கா’ வா! அப்படின்னா ?

சமீபத்துல ஒரு நண்பன் சொல்லி ‘நாக்க முக்கா’ என்ற பாட்டை கேட்டேன். அட! என்ன சொல்ல்றதுனே தெரியல. கேட்ட உடனே ஒரே டான்ஸ், கூத்து தான்! அதை பாடிய பெண்மணிக்கு அப்படி ஒரு குரல்! அப்போதுலேர்ந்து மனசுக்குள்ள நாக்க முக்கா ஒடிட்டே இருக்கு. ஆனா நாக்க முக்கா – னா என்னவா இருக்கும்னு ஒரு கேள்வி எழும்பியது. அதுக்கு விளக்கம் எதுவும் இல்லை என்பது தெரிஞ்ச விஷயம் தான். இருந்தாலும் ஒரு கை பார்க்கலாம்னு தொடங்கினோம். காமெடியா போச்சு!

நாகேஷ், பழநி மற்றும் கார்த்திக், மூன்று கல்லூரி பசங்க இதை பற்றி பேச்றாங்க -

நாகேஷ் : டேய் பசங்களா!‌ இந்த நாக்க முக்கா பாட்டை கேட்டீங்களா ?

கார்த்திக் : கேட்டேன் டா! என்ன கொடுமை சரவணா!

பழநி : டயலாகு லாம் விடாதே. பாட்டு சூப்பரா இருந்தது.

நா : ஆமாம் டா! என்னால டான்ஸ நிறுத்தவே முடியல! நாக்கமுக்கா னா என்னவா இருக்கும் ?

கா : இது நல்லா இருக்கு! டேய்! முக்காலா சொக்காப்புலா -க்கு மட்டும் அர்த்தம் இருக்கோ ? எதுக்கு டா வீணா டயத்த வேஸ்ட் …

ப : நாக்க அமுக்கு!! ஹா ஹா ஹா… கார்த்திக்கு நல்லாவே பொருந்துது (ஆடிக்கொண்டே) நாக்க அமுக்கு!! நாக்க அமுக்கு!!

கா: உன்ன நாக்குல குத்த்டா மூக்குல குத்தடா ?சொல்லு சொல்லு நாக்கா மூக்கா … ம்ம் ??

நா : சூப்பர் டா! ஆனா இப்படியும் இருக்கலாம். ஹிந்தில ‘நாக்’குன்னா மூக்கு! அதுனால இதை எழுதிய கவி indirect-ஆ நீ வடக்கிந்தியனா தமிழ்நாட்டுக்காரனா – னு கேக்கறார்.

கா : போட்டு தாக்கிட்டே டா டேய்! நாகேஷு ! ரொம்ப நாளா எதோ அரசியல் கட்சி ஆரம்பிக்க போறேன்னு சொல்லிகிட்டு இருந்தியே! நானும் இப்ப உன் கட்சி .

நா : வெரி குட் டா! என்ன பெயர் வெக்கலாம் ? நா. கா . மு . க – னு வெக்கலாமா ? நாகேஷ் கார்த்திக் முன்னேற்ற கழகம் ! நல்லா இருக்குல ?

ப : நல்லா தான் இருக்கு. அப்ப நான் உன் கட்சில இல்லயா ? கைவிட்டுடியே ?

கா : போதும் டா. நாக்க அமுக்கு!

 

Type in Indian Languages

ನಮಸ್ಕಾರ வணக்கம் सुस्वागतम्

Recently I got this urge to type in Indian Languages on my comp. And so I came across SCIM and m17n. I use Debian GNU/Linux and the GNOME Desktop Environment. Getting this to work was a cakewalk!

Here are the steps to follow.

• Open a terminal. And install the following packages.

sudo apt-get install m17n-db m17n-lib-bin
sudo apt-get install scim scim-m17n scim-gtk2-immodule scim-modules-socket scim-modules-table

• That’s it! You now have everything needed on your computer.
• Run scim . You’ll notice a keyboard-shaped icon on your GNOME Panel. Right click on this and go to ‘SCIM Setup’. Play around with this. There are lots of interesting features like Keyboard shortcuts which you can configure to make life easier switching languages.
• Now right click on the area where you are typing and Select SCIM Input method.
• Once this is done, you can Left Click on the above icon, select your language and start typing!

Mac OS X users could try this. Others, maybe you could try this.

ನಮಸ್ಕಾರ வணக்கம் नमस्कार