For the heck of it

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Make Your Own Pinhole Camera

A pinhole camera is a small, light-tight can or box with a black interior and a tiny hole in the centre of one end. It is essentially camera without a lens. You can design it to accept roll or sheet film. The two ends of the camera are parallel. The end opposite the pinhole is flat so that the film is held in a flat plane. The pinhole has a cover to prevent light from entering the camera when you aren't taking a picture. Pinhole cameras are used by many photography enthusiasts around the world.



In order to produce a reasonably clear image, the aperture has to be a small pinhole on the order of 0.5 mm (0.02 inches) or less. The shutter of a pinhole camera usually consists of a hand operated flap of some light-proof material to cover and uncover the pinhole. Pinhole cameras require much longer exposure times than conventional cameras because of the small aperture; typical exposure times can range from 5 seconds to hours or days.

Linatree.com has a pdf file which contains the design of a pinhole camera. All you need to do is download the pdf file and print the image on a card paper or stronger paper if you like. Follow the instructions on the site to create your very own pinhole camera. And if you are an aspiring shutterbug, you might just want to show off your talent by heading to the Pinhole Gallery.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

BusinessWeek Links Me!!

It was about a year ago that I added a web counter to this blog, to check out the profile and the kind of visitors landing onto my blog. However, I had forgotten about it all this while, simply because I was busy with other stuff. Today curiousity got the best of me and so I decided to check out the statistics of visitors of my blog.


Click for bigger image

Amidst the visitor details, I was surprised to see one visitor coming from BusinessWeek's web site. I was curious. I checked the web site and realised that Olga Kharif, one of the writers at BusinessWeek's web site, had linked my blog entry about search engines that use diagrams to show off search results, in her article. That's really great. My blog IS going places :)

Don't believe me? You might then want to check this article titled "Web Search's Future: Anything but text."

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

No One Messes With Mumbai

This is a letter I got as a forward from one of my friends, which shouts "No one messes with Mumbai. If you think Mumbaikars get frightened by such antics, you are terribly mistaken."



Image Courtesy: Xinhua.net, Indiavarta.com, Webulagam.com and Rediff.com


Dear Terrorist,

Even if you are not reading this we don't care. Time and again you tried to disturb us and disrupt our life - killing innocent civilians by planting bombs in trains, buses and cars. You have tried hard to bring death and destruction, cause panic and fear and create communal disharmony but everytime you were disgustingly unsuccessful. Do you know how we pass our life in Mumbai? How much it takes for us to earn that single rupee? If you wanted to give us a shock then we are sorry to say that you failed miserably in your ulterior otives. Better look elsewere, not here.

We are not Hindus and Muslims or Gujaratis and Marathis or Punjabis and Bengaliies. Nor do we distinguish ourselves as owners or workers, govt. employees or private employees. WE ARE MUMBAIKARS (Bombay-ites, if you like). We will not allow you to disrupt our life like this. On the last few occassions when you struck (including the 7 deadly blasts in a single day killing over 250 people and injuring 500+ in 1993), we went to work next day in full trength. This time we cleared everything within a few hours and were back to normal - the vendors placing their next order, businessmen finalising the next deals and the office workers rushing to catch the next train. (Yes, the same train you targetted)

Fathom this: Within 3 hours of the blasts, long queues of blood donating volunteers were seen outside various hospital, where most of the injured were admitted. By 12 midnight, the hospital had to issue a notification that blood banks were full and they didn't require any more blood. The next day, attendance at schools and office was close to 100%, trains & buses were packed to the brim, the crowds were back.

The city has simply dusted itself off and moved on - perhaps with greater vigour. We are Mumbaikers and we live like brothers in times like this. So, do not dare to threaten us with your crackers. The spirit of Mumbai is very strong and can not be harmed.

With Love,
From the people of Mumbai (Bombay)