In defense of being really bored.

Remember a time, when you said, "Ah! I am bored of this book." or "This game is so boring" and you will just sit in your chair and look at the wall not knowing what to do for hours. Even your parent's constant nagging to move your butt or go outside and play would not seem to matter. Because you are just so bored of everything. Again it is not a nostalgia post, i.e., ah the 90's were so much better. 

To come to think about it, today the whole system is designed around us to entertain us constantly. We all are addicts, addicts to entertainment, addicts to keep our minds busy with new information all the time. Think about it, at the slightest inkling of getting bored, we switch to do something about it, call someone, go to youtube rewatch clips from the old movies, watch the top ten lists of everything on this earth, keep scrolling on facebook, buzzfeed, buy things on Amazon and ebay, buy things we may never need (or may just write blogs :))

If you tell people that you are bored. Everyone around you will come up with an instant solution. Oh here look at this cat video, or watch this movie, play this game, why don't you go out ? Why don't you meet new people who can effectively suggest you more things to do. The point I am trying to make is that the society thinks that getting bored is a bad thing. As if it is something unnatural and a sign that you are going to be moping and sad in some time if you are not entertained immediately and put out of your misery that is boredom. This is also reflected in a day to day conversation with most people. It has become more of a competition to constantly be saying interesting or funny things. However, as a human being you can practically come up with so many interesting things at regular intervals of time. 

An addiction:

Being entertained is addictive. I think it is almost as bad an addiction as any other drug. Maybe the idea of being entertained constantly is a precursor to drug usage. We are heavily surrounded by the next most super awesome amazing thing in the world which you can enjoy right now on your finger tips and not a minute later. We feed our reward center of the brain by entertaining ourselves constantly to such a point that it becomes numb. At this point we need more and newer forms of entertainment, which is not bad, but again there is something called indulgence. It seems like we can never satiate our quest to be fully entertained.

Being bored can be a wonderful thing. It is a time, when one can think about new ideas or maybe not think, just being in the moment of time. Being bored is the cradle of creativity. It is the time when we can reflect and create something out of thin air, come up with interesting ideas and learn to appreciate the little things around us and feel truly entertained. Being bored also gives the time to take a step back and look at ourselves from a different plane, feel empathy towards others. Its a beautiful thing. 

There was a time not too long ago, when if you want to watch a play you really need to travel to that distant village where it was being performed, if you heard the most beautiful song in your life at some place being played by some musician, you actually need to travel to a place where he/she was playing. There was a huge price tag attached with the idea of being entertained. Today we have the luxury of listening to the same song again and again if our heart so desires. Entertainment is cheap, but it comes at a heavy price of indulgence. 

So, next time you feel bored, do not pick up the phone and dial your friend just yet  or go to youtube to re-watch the same thing you watched a million times before in attempt to chase the first high. Just let it sync, be bored more often to enjoy the things that really matter.

Why the Indian government has their heads up their asses? The curious case of India's daughter

Recetly, the British director Leslee Udwin's documentarty India's daughter is looming under shadows of controversy and the Indian government and the Supreme court is "trying" top ban the above mentioned documentary. Well to the people sitting in the parliament and the old judges in the court, I have one small advice for you, in case you already didn't know: YOU CANNOT BAN ANYTHING ON INTERNET. THE MORE YOU TRY TO CENSOR IT, THE MORE IT WILL BE WATCHED.

You have to understand how the internet works, the more you try to hide something, the more it will be exposed. Honestly speaking, if the documentary was not surrounded in so much of controversy, I would have not know anything about it and its coming from a person who actively follows news atleast 1 hour day (I know its a waste of time, because nothing interesting happens most of the time except one political party blaming other party about things that they both did). One of the recent examples was the movie "The Interview". It was a below average comedy flick (I say this even when I love the other movies done by James Franco, Seth Rogen and others). It was on my watch list because I like those guys and I was going to watch it anyways sometime. But, since there was so much controversies surrounding it and the movie theatres denying to screen the movie. I was curious and I watched it on streaming from one of those corners of internet where you can watch almost anything on streaming and I watched it a day before it was supposed to be released. So, you get my point "Mr. I want to ban the movie."

Well coming back to the point, I watched only 20 mins of the documentary (because I was really busy and then I couldn't handle it, it was too painful to hear these people talk). And now you, who is reading this blog want to watch this documentary right ? Because I said, "it was too painful to hear". It is because "We all as human beings morbidly curious". There is a VSauce video about it. If you do not have time to watch. I would like to quote Michael that "we find uncertainity more unpleasant than pleasant certainity." So, that kind of explains why things which are supposed to be not seen/banned go viral.

Coming back to the hippocracy of the government, if you didn't want the director to make the documentary, you should not have allowed  the interview to happen. What were you thinking when Leslee asked for the permission to interview the rapist ? Was she going to have tea with him ? Ofcourse, she was taking an interview to make a documentary. It must have been written in the consent form, though I do not have any first hand knowledge about it.

So, question is why the government and relgious fanatics wants to ban the documentary? No matter what they say, the truth is that it shames them and mark them as a faliure to ensure security of women and people in general on the streets of Delhi and surrounding areas.

My thoughts on the documentary: I think the Leslee, though protesting against the ban might be actually happy about the whole controversy for reasons mentioned above. I mean accept it, we live in a world where people are put in place to make stuff controversial and we also live in a world where everything is about "like/comment, share and subscribe". So, she as a filmmaker and her documentary is going to be watched more and more thanks to the foolish decisions of the government. I am not against watching the documentary, just thinking how stupid people can be incharge of the authority and politicise anything and everything. Also, I will be surprised, if people would have even heard about this particular filmmaker before this controversy. So, she is getting her due fame, and for people in media any kind of fame by any means is good and is their ultimate currency. Sorry for digressing. So, the documentary. Even if it is getting critical review, I don't think there is any filmmaking genius that exists in how much ever long the documentary. Its just a series of interviews of people and family surrounding the incident. Literally any one with a video camera could have made this film. There is no after thought, there is no before thought. She could have followed what happened after, what steps did the people in power did to ensure women safety? Why there are so many pending cases in the court ? There is no pscyho analysis of these people by experts, (atleast not in 30 mins which I watched, I think I will try to complete it sometime), I was just horrified that how much wrong some people are, how crude the mentality of some people can be? The only few explanations produced by the filmmaker is that these people grew up in poor neighborhoods, they have seen domestic violence, they have seen women being treated in certain way? So what god dammit ! It is no explanation. Probably there is none! But please do not try to explain something when there is no explanation. I know a lot of people who grew up under similar situations and though I cannot guarantee, I know that not 100% of them are rapists or think the same way as you are trying to explain. What I am trying to say, is that as a filmmaker there is no genius of Leslee in making this documentary. Watch it if you want to get familiar with the whole incident and do remember every documentary and every history book is biased by the filmmakers and the historians. At the end, I am not too sad that I watched it, though I am horrified by this incident and I wish I could do something  If nothing, it gave me an idea of the horrible mindset some people have. And seriously, these rapists particulary the guy who was interviewed (I am not writing his name because I do not want to make my hands dirty) is worse than the most horrible devil. Even if he goes to hell soon after he is hanged, the overlords wont accept him in hell. Maybe hell has a special place for you. If you think that he is a bad person. He says and I quote, "If she would have not fought back, they would have let her live".. Oh my dear god!!! You are truely the worst type of person I have heard about.

Source: Spiegel.de

WHAT IS RAPE ?

Any unconsented sexual activity is rape. No matter who you are and what your relationshis is with the girl. Even if you are married, if you force your wife to have sex with you, you are commiting a rape. Though many imbecile religous leaders disagree because they think that it is the duty of the wife to keep the man happy and do things he so desires. Please get through your tiny head which I am sure is of the size of a pin head, that it is not true and should not be. Also, it makes me sad that the courts all over the world take this matter and sometimes find it funny that "How can your husband rape you ? It is a stupid case. Go home!!" No! No! he can. Infact, there are cases of domestic rapes which are either dismissed as cases of domestic violence. I hope people will be better informed in the future and our courts will not take these cases so lightly and do the needful.

Before I close, I would like to say few things about rape. I know this is not going to make anyone happy, I am too sad to even admit it. No matter what the goverments of the whole world combined try, the rapes won't stop until we as people are take responsibility as a society and better educate the future generations to treat women also as people like themselves, teach them to show compassion and feel for the weak and unprotected. If a women is walking in the middle of night, if she is wearing jeans, if she is alone or if she is with any other man. No matter what happens, "SHE IS NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED". And no not all boys are rapists. Many are good people.

Last but not the least, I think films are a mirror  of society . So, which makes me think back, when I was a kid and there were the Bollywood movies of the 70's that used to be aired on television every Sunday evening. As far as I remember, the villians like Goga Kapoor, Ranjit and Shakti Kapoor will try to rape the leading lady atleat once in the whole movie for 5-7 minutes. Infact, today in reality shows Shakti kapoor is synonmous with the person who used to rape the women and people laugh about it as thing of the past. Thankfully it has reduced and Bollywood has taken a different diretion to item numbers. But you see Mr. Directors of Bollywood films, accept it or  not you  have passively contributed in nurturing the rapist mindsets. I am not claiming it to be the case, but these are just my thoughts. You can get away by saying "Films are not something which happens in real lifes, it is art... Blah blah blah (french word) blah blah!!"  and I will not argue with you, because you can have your thoughts, they are not mine. What I am trying to say maybe these people who think that raping someone is ok, might have idealised and identified themselves with the man who plays the villan. As someone who can take anything by force and do whatever he wants and the way it used to end in the movie is the woman threatening the villan that she will kill herself, or burn her own face or something to that effect or will kill herself in shame after she has been raped. Wow!! Seriously, why couldn't you made movies, where the woman takes the initiative and fights back and get her due justice against such perils of the society. Well there are some movies who show that, but they also portray her as turning evil in due course of her revenge. Thanks Patriarchy! Why couldn't it be just be about a woman who got her justice and went back to her normal life. It won't be that fun, would it? But atleast, it will give the women some role-models to look up to. I hope you do change your attitude towards making movies. I do  not know what was going through your head when you though showing a 7 sec of kiss was a NO NO but showing 7 mins of "attempted" rape was OK.

To the people in our society, please do understand that it is not ok to alienate a girl who was raped., it is not ok to make her an outcast, it is not acceptable to think that she was raped because she had a bad character, it is not right to think that she was raped becasue of the clothes she was wearing. Do not, please do not make her feel that way. Because if you do, do not act surprised when she commits suicide. Because she was not responsible for her suicide, YOU were!!

Anyways, I wanted to write only about the documentary, but it is impossible to talk only about the documentary and not look at everything else.

So! My dear Government. Please get your heads out of your asses. Its really easy, just try! and stop trying to ban things which you cannot in this age of internet. And please act faster in such rape cases. Maybe we won't be the perfect society, but we will definitely be better, if you stop politicising everything and take action in the interest of your people...

Thank You!! I believe you are good individuals, just not good when you all are put together in politics.

Dark Souls: Almost finished and New Thoughts

Hey everyone, sorry for such a long delay on dark souls. But well, now that I am more than 100 hours in the game and I understand the world, the lore and the mechanics much better, it has been fun, really. Infact, I feel that for me to pick up another game which is not so hard and interesting is actually very difficult, it gave me a new perspective about gaming in general and myself as a person. I am still to clear Tomb of the Giants and Lost Izalith but I am waiting for my Microsoft points to arrive, so that I can go and clear Artorias of the Abyss before beating the game..

So, what do I think?
Well to be honest, I do not think now that Dark Souls is as difficult as people are crying out (some of them). It is difficult because there are many things you do not know about the world... In this case not knowing is the scary part. Once you figure out what is the deal with some particular boss or you change your equipment based on the understanding you have developed while dying and equip yourself with the right weapons, learn the kicking, parrying, back-stab and other stats like equip load, etc. you can clear the areas. So it all comes down to learning... This is also the first game, in which I realized dying is NOT FAILURE. Dying is education, accepting that you did something wrong, you got impatient, you got greedy (for getting more shots at the boss when you should have rolled back) and then building up the courage to go in for the battle one more time to claim the honor of defeating that boss. So, dying is the core mechanic. Really Smough and Orenstein, I struggled  with them over two weeks. It was so chaotic, but when I killed them, I felt so good. I understood so many things in between and when I killed them I screamed that yes I did that...:D. When I moved to Lost Izalith and killed centipede demon and demon firesage in a row, I realised that now I understand the game, I know how this thing works.. and it was the proudest moment during the whole game, trust me when you kill two bosses in a row you will feel the same :). Also, in no other game I felt two handing a weapon, and upgrading a weapon matters so much, really when you see the increased hit points after you upgraded your weapons, it is a satisfying feeling. The thought that after you kill the boss or beat the area, there is a story or an amazing lore you will have access to and you will be DENIED that privilege if you cannot clear this now kept me pushing. CURIOSITY is a good motivator. 

Balancing the Life
This part of my post, many might disagree and I am ok with that, but playing dark souls had effect on my time schedule too. For example, I played other rpgs before like Fallout 3, or even the action games but you know when you start playing, you loose track of time and may be sometime playing for 7-8 hours in a row may be the whole weekend and feel like shit the next day, may be guilty too that you didnt do other stuff or studied as much as you should have. It happened with me too.. But then I looked back on this, I realized that this is happening because I kept telling myself "ok ! I will play for half an hour and then get back to work." and this statement was completely wrong, because Dark Souls is not a game which you play for half an hour, because nothing will happen in a rush, you will die and get frustrated and it is just a waste of time. Instead, I told myself "OK! from 8 to 10 in the night I am going to play, or I will stop playing after I reach this bonfire or kill the boss in this area." Accepting this routine, for playing had a huge impact on my game play, I realized, I do not have to feel guilty I do not need to rush and when I put down my controller after reaching my objective for the day, I was very happy and proud and more focused later on. Also, after 2 hours you get tired and start dying so that is bad too...

Skyrim Vs Dark Souls

Source: http://wheresmysammich.com

Well this I am just putting because , I saw so many people comparing Skyrim and Dark Souls, and I do not see why? Just because there are dragons in both games ? I do not get it, why they have to compare? Initially I was motivated to play Skyrim too and so far I have not and I do not think I am going to play it now, because DS has raised the standards too high. Tell you what, the dragons in DS, will chew and spit out the ones in skyrim like cute kittens. As far as I know, apparantly you can win the dragons just by shouting and stuff like that (correct me if I am wrong.) But in DS you actually fight the dragon YAY ! Well really guys the two games are different. Skyrim is more for casual players, don't bring down DS to compare with it. I will be disrespectful to the souls series. There is a youtube video where people are comparing. I am sorry to say this guy who is favoring Skyrim got on my nerves and I stopped watching.

Thoughts on Dark Souls 2
As like many others, I am also worried and really excited for the new DS game. And sad because the man himself Hidetaka Miyazaki is no more the director. There are many speculations on how the souls series will be in the hands of a new director, what is the plot going to be etc, specially by EpicNameBro and HunterStarcraft, specially after the EDGE article being published. So yes, you can check that out. They tell things in a much better manner and there has been plenty of discussions so I wont re-iterate them here again.

But, I share the concerns, when the publishers try to make a game "more available" to the everyone, about the things they do, make it easier, story driven, mystery of the world is lost and so many bad things happen just for the sake of money :( .

Also, I will like to mention EPICNameBro and HunterStarcraft, who have uploaded amazing walkthrough videos with very interesting commentary, which helped me a lot during difficult times :)

So, ya as soon as I get my microsoft points, I will beat Artorias of the Abyss and then go to the Kiln of the First Flame. I am not sure how I feel about the NG+, or starting a new character may be a sorcerer, we will see. Also I killed Andre of Astorias by mistake, felt pretty bad about it. :( well what can I do I am only human. mistakes happen... :)

Probabilistic Brain: Are we really thinking?

So, we hear this phrase all the time.. "I am thinking"or "I am thinking, if I should go to this place/ buy this coat/ eat at that restaurant and so on and so forth. We are thinking, even when we think that we are not thinking.. Wow that was good. We cannot switch off our brains for a moment, it is always doing something.

So, the question naturally arises, what is THINKING? What are we thinking about and most importantly why are we thinking ? Now, if one defines thinking as a a process which effect our decisions? Probably to an inquisitive mind the question might come, What kind of decisions we tend to make. If our thinking can influence our decisions and our actions, our lives are always deterministic. And if it is deterministic, can we make a model of our decision making process ?

As it turns out, our decisions are influenced by external factors, factors which we cannot control and thus the expression "Oh! I didn't think, it will turn out like this! ", "Oh! I thought this will work, but damn it doesn't." Thus, making all the UNCERTAINTY around us come to life, and for all intent and purposes makes the world around us interesting. If you THINK about it, how it will be if everything and everyone's actions are deterministic. Well it will kind of suck!

Ok I feel I am going round and round the topic rather than coming to the actual point. What I am trying to ask/ say is that if it is somehow possible to model our thinking our thought patters, which influence a certain decision and use the outcome of the decision as a feedback loop to model our next decision.

Feedback Systems (Source: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be)

Talking about feedback loops, the upper schematic shows a system (a world), in which everyone is just doing stuff, without thinking (also known as an open-loop system). That is not very good I guess :), everyone doing stuff without thinking, the world will go to chaos. Now the second system is important, which I was talking about before FEEDBACK, that I think is everything, you can call it the thought process (well I will say it post-action thoughts), reflection upon your actions or whatever may suit your fancy.

Limbic System (Source: Wikipedia)

Now, it is well known in neuroscience (I would like to quote, as much as I know or based on the information gathered), this feedback mechanisms are generally channeled through our limbic system which also is the reward system of the brain. It is the pleasure center of the brain, which rewards us, when we solve a complicated problem, also the pleasure center, which plays a role in sexual arousal or eating choclates :). (excerpt form wikipedia).

That is all to put the context about the feedback system of the brain, how we make decisions. I feel at this point it is pretty obvious, that we like to do things, which rewards us greatly, in either ways direct or indirect.

Now coming back to the title of the blog, are we really thinking ? Well, I discussed this point with few people and it seemed I kind of convinced them on my view point. But, now I am looking for more. Is it so possible that we can model all the thought processes of the brain, everything it think, every POSSIBLE decision, it is going to take. Some research, is going on in EPFL, Switzerland regrading modelling all the neurons and synapses in the brain, with one huge computer, commonly known as the BLUE BRAIN Project.

What I think, is that our brain is always COMPUTING probabilities, down to the smallest thing as talking to a stranger on the street or taking a shower or eating an ice-cream. It is all the outcome of a complex  probabilistic computation, which happens in seconds and we do not even know it.

ICE-CREAM Shop:
For example, suppose you have not tasted an particular flavor of ice cream and your brain just have the prior information that you love ice-cream. Now, in an ice cream store, how likely it is that you are drawn to your favorite chocolate/ vanilla flavor. You are going to get it, but suddenly another signal in your brain kicks in, saying, "Dude! try something new. There are lots of flavour. You always take the same one." Now, the lady over the counter asks, "Which one? " and what do you say , "Wait! I am THINKING". Aha! what you are doing right now is computing the odds of taking the same ice cream and be satisfied, for which your brain has a high prior knowledge, than to spending 2.50 euros to try something new, which might not suit your taste buds. So, in effect you are doing a quick calculation for a most favorable outcome. In this particular scenario, this decision making gets harder, if you have a limited amount of money. One make choose to avoid risk and take the same flavor of ice cream which he always takes or act otherwise, if someone is a risk taker.

This is a simple case, but I am sure it can be extended to more complicated scenarios. Now, how the more complicated scenarios (say marrying someone) are different from a regular day to day decisions.

Graph Model Source: http://www.delphiforfun.org

 One can look at it as a graph model. Since more often than not, one particular decision will affect directly or indirectly your subsequent actions. The longer the graph, or probably the more interconnected nodes it has the more complicated the decision will be. So, ineffect, we can probably give a numerical value to the complication of a certain matter. For example, in case of marriage or choosing your career, the decision is going to effect so many areas of your life, thus adding more and more nodes, compared to eating an ice-cream which might just be a small graph. Thus, the problems can be separated and probably the brain looks for local information on the other nodes to make this decisions. Thus, we hear the expression, "Oh! it felt right at that moment." and each nodes carry the probabilistic outcome of the decisions made on the previous node. So, in fact it is all a conditional probability problem.

Now, the graphs may be close or open, depending whether the brain can re-evaluate the decisions or re do certain things. Thus, eating an ice cream is an open graph, but if you catch cold, after eating the delicious ice-cream you may re-think your decision next time. I have reasons to believe that more often than not the graphs are closed.

Addictions:
There are some other issues with the above arguments, for example, if doing certain things rewards us then by above logic we should be doing it again and again, then why do we loose interests in certain things, if we do it over a long period of time and start looking for something new, something EXCITING. Well, I don't know, how to fit that in this model, but probably a valid argument may be, if we like doing something we have a SPIKE of excitement, a reward, a tendency to go towards it in search of that spike. but too many spike in too frequent intervals, makes the signal flat and thus nothing more happens and we loose interest. Thus, bringing the increased addiction to drugs like cocaine or marijuana, the users keep looking for that spike. Probably, it is easy to explain with conditional probability models. If we iterate over a loops the same process, if the probability decreases in case of same outcome, and things like that. (I am sorry about the last line, I didn't do the math at this point, it is just a THOUGHT, may be if someone has an idea, you can let me know.)

Surprises:
This can be probably related with the previous paragraph. You may have heard people saying, "Oh! I love surprises!", why one will like surprise. It is not something that they thought is going to happen, neither they planned to do it. And I am sorry to say my friends, "No! you do not like surprises. But you only like surprises which are in favor of you, which give you that spike." Suppose, someone is walking down the street and get hit by a car. That is a surprise too, will he like that... I don't think so. Suppose, he finds a 20 dollar bill, How about that? Ofcourse, it will be fun to get money lying in the ground.

I believe, the graphs for the surprises can not be modeled in the regular decision making graphs, for obvious reason that it is not  your decision.

Also, one quick trivia, that human beings are the only creatures, who are aware of their demise, which I think is the biggest prior in all our decisions. The decision, which makes survival possible is more often than nor the best one. Interested readers, can read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, which explain the effects of altruism and other similar things on survival.

Well, I can go on and on about it, but I think you get my point. We are all programs and this is a matrix. Everything can be computed and modeled. The question that remains, How can we model them? How can we have a probabilistic model of the workings of a brain. How the decision weights be assigned to certain outcomes based on their probable consequences and most importantly, Are our brains smart enough to compute themselves ?

Dark Souls: Prepare TO Die

So, I have been playing and this is going to be a short post.... :) Because its Sunday and should really get back to work.... But I found that once you have a good build and upgraded your weapons, the game is not that much of a grinding but more challenging in terms of strategy. Most importantly, what I want to share is this AWESOME tribute video for Dark Souls by EliteTarget ... Its is really really good in terms of summarizing the whole game.. If you still dont feel badass and want to play it.... I got nothing to say :D

Also another one from Axel78Mr (E3 trailer), which is a little less hard core :)

And the one which is so divine by TheGoWMetal with "Anthem of the angels

Have Fun collecting souls :)
Later

Dark Souls: The game which sucked the soul out of me

So, finally last week I got the limited edition copy of Dark Souls. Aaaah heard so so much about this game, as in the hardest game one will ever play. Its hard, its not a joke. Reviewers in 3killabytes stretched it as far as comparing this game with dating a celebrity, calling it a high maintenance in terms of patience and commitment required from the player. But, that's what everyone is blabbering about.

Dark Souls Source: euniverse.net

What do I think ?? Oh man ! Let me take a deep breath even trying to start talking about this one. I mean really I can go on and on for hours about it. And trust me, if you have played it, you know what I am talking about.
First of all, this game earned a lot of respect and admiration for the Japanese developers, as in they always have something new to offer (for example Vanquish, super awesome FPS), where as on the other hand EA and Ubisoft, who keep milking the same franchise. Hidetaka Miyazaki, you are awesome.

Moving on,
Why Dark Souls is so GREAT ?
Ok, so I heard and knew this game is hard and I prepared myself before hand for the game. And yes, one of the reasons, this game is so awesome is because, I feel the developers treat the players with certain level of respect. The game starts, with a little back story, you dont know what is going on, you are undead, which is awesome :), and you start like usual customizing your character as in the case of any RPGs. But, the cool part about this game is the starting class is just something to start with, there is lot of flexibility in terms of character customization while leveling up. So, first things firsts, the game looks really good, except some frame rate issues in certain parts of the game, which I think is something people talked about a lot in last year.

The area where the game really shines is the combat mechanics, I think I have never seen such accurate combat mechanics in any dungeon crawler. I died a lot of times, a lot but everytime I died it was my mistake, I was too impatient, or didnt parry the attack, or holding weapons in wrong hands. It was never a computer glitch. (So, finally it was nice to see the accurate collision detection out of the Legend of Zelda series... which made me super happy YAY). Plus, I should mention the enemy types and Goodness gracious the AI is pretty awesome, I mean there were types when I was just dueling with a soldier and waitng for him to make a mistake so that I can attack.. Theses moments are the moments where really one needs to be SKILLED for playing this game and button mashers (yes I am talking to Assassin's Creed lovers), will go to bed crying.

The SOCIAL Element.
When I started the game I was going to one region and getting killed like all the time, until I figured, I am too low on levels to go meet the enemies there, so I went to a different area and progressed. This is what I liked, the game never tells you where to go, just lets you free in the world, go try something fail and then try something else. learn the world. And the best part about such a game is everyone who plays this has their own story to share with their friends. There are so many secret areas, and everything is interlinked.

Dark Souls Map Source: neoseeker.com

So, different players might access different parts of the world as they choose and the story of the world unfolds to them accordingly. There are more nitpicks here and there, than one can possibly imagine and understand in a single playthrough and that leads to awesome discussions in the forums.

So, far I am like 10% in the game. and this blog is not meant to be a review or anything just my thoughts about it. :) Anyways, its 2 in the morning and need to go to work tomorrow, until then ..... Take care. 

Will post more on Dark souls as I unfold more, If someone is interested in playing dark souls and explore the super awesome adventure,  together on a friday evening, let me know :) 

Tristan da Cunha: A Journey of Mind

Recently, I have gotten myself into the habits of searching and reading about random things on internet. Not because I have lot of time but just because I feel there are so so much more to know, there are so many things we dont even care about or just take for granted. Even at this moment, when I want to find more about this amazing place Tristan da Cunha, it is as far as few clicks away. But... in our daily lives do we acknowledge this convenience, Probably not. But coming back to the title of the blog. Tristan de Cunha, recently I have been feeling little withdrawl from the daily routine and I just wanted to go some place quiet, just pack my bags and go and dont tell anyone... So, I started searching for places, and the farthest I could reach was a tiny village on top of a hill called Gourdon in France. Really seemed remote to me as in there are like 100 people living ther, few restaurants and yes overly populated with freaking tourists like me... I don't know, should I feel bad about myself or good, when i visit such small places, Sometimes I feel like an intruder, but again the mentality of a tourist kicks in.. "Aaah, I am not so bad.. I am bringing buisness to the village." Well I dont really think that way, but that is what many will say.. So, coming back to the point, Tristan da Cunha. I can bet quite strongly, that if you are not curious or weird, for all intent and purposes you will  not care about this place or probably not even heard about it. The way I landed on this beautiful geographical feature, is searching for "Remotest place on earth." Because, as I discussed with many friends of mine about my plans for spending one year in Tibet to do some soul searching and really think what should I really do next, I realised I have the tendency to detach. So, I landed on this place and in last 2 days, I have been gathering information about it, as in what is it like to be there? What do the people do there? Is it really that remote ? Turns out, it surpasses everything i have ever expected, and it made me re-think about loneliness, remoteness and my daily life. I am sure, people whom I meet every day won't really understand this feeling. And by no means, I am being disrespectful to them. They are really some of the smartest people, but they wont understand it because, I wont be able to take them to the same page as I am.

So, it turns out this place is a British colony in Southern hemisphere in Atlantic Ocean, a small island with a population of just 290-300 people and just to give you an idea of the remoteness, its 1500 nautical miles from any other piece of land, and if you want to reach there, the only way to go is taking a Royal Mail Ship, which goes to this island once a year carrying post cards, letters and other STUFFs from UK and it takes 3 weeks in the sea to reach there sailing along the Mid Atlantic ridge through St. Helena island. So, that is to give an idea of the remoteness. When I think about it now, I dont know, all my thoughts about going to some place lonely and remote seems more romantic and Hollywood-ish to me. Really it is soooo far.

Source: Amusing Planet

I mean if we take a moment to think about the people's lives there, it is for all intent and purposes a different world, and I do not know, my heart goes out to them, when I compare our lives and theirs. Sure, I am not saying they are not happy, Ofcourse, they might me, from what I can say, for sure, I do not have a sure way of knowing. The stapled food in this island is potatoes, and taking out potatoes from the ground is the communal Saturday activity. I mean there is a place in the world, where probably the whole population has not seen an airplane, ok forget about airplanes, it is in middle of nowhere, the bird sightings are rare too, and here we are complaining about no internet connectivity on the airplanes and sooo amny mundane things, I cannot even start. The place has just one police office and one single road and walking is the only means of getting around. Few years ago, in 1961, there were volcanic eruptions, on the island and it was evacuated for 2 years and people were stationed in UK, and then sent back. There are some videos on youtube about interviews with  them. Really, they didnt know about television, and till 100 years ago, the buisness practice was barter system and probably even today, it will be sole place on earth, where money seems to have much less value than human relationships. For a community of 300 people to be able to live, through centuries, the real values of relationships, unconditional friendships, helping out each other, love and care for your fellow beings, those are the currency of Tristan da Cunha.

Volcano in Tristan da Cunha Source: HowStuffWorks.com

But, the volcanic eruptions bought the whole world's attention to this tiny island, and they got the modern facilities, which changed the island forever, but they are still far far behind the lifestyles you and I have. From what I could read, the means of communications is just one telephone in the island, so probably we should not consider high speed internet being a possibility. Even reading books, and getting to see pictures of outside world is a real treat for the Tristanians. And I get bored with playing the same video game second time. Somewhere deep down I feel ashamed and really small, when pity the people who complain about things they do not have and really forget to appreciate what do they have.

So, by this time, you might be wondering, ok it is a British colony, if they do not like it there can't they just come to UK. and I am sorry to disappoint you my friends, no they are not British citizens so no they cannot work in UK or other places. They cannot get the education or skills needed to survive in this world, so I am amazed that the UK cannot grant citizenship to these 300 people, just to give them a choice for their lives.

Talking about gender discrimination, you will be surprised to know that in this place, the men and women connot sit together as per customs. The women still have to do the daily chores of the house and really looking at the interviews, it seemed that they really do not have a choice to do things otherwise, and they have just accepted the tradition.

The most famous thing about this amazing place are the stamps, they are really cool, and is a really worthy of collection, if you are a collector. I am not but I think I will still get some. For interested people, you can order them here http://www.tristandc.com/postoffice.php . And I think you should, just to support this island and show them that we care. And you will have something with you coming from the remotest place on eath, which is awesome.

 Source: Tristan De Cunha Post Office

Also, I am torn between the thoughts, that whether to consider this place a heaven or a prison, because of obvious reasons. On one side, there is the serenity which we long for day in and day out in out busy lives, and on the other hand also it is just too far. So, it makes me question, what we really want? Which brings me to another point, that more often than not, we are unhappy because we want contradicting things, we want serenity but we dont want to be soo remotely located too. We want good grades, but also dont want to work too hard. We want the latest technologies, but we do not want to pay for it. Life is indeed an interesting optimization problem.

So, at the end of the day, now that I think about my life and things surrounding my life, I am really really grateful for every single thing I have starting from something as small as being able to just see different people every day as I walk down the street and hear a different music anytime I want, being able to talk to anyone anywhere in the world and eat different food every day if I want to. But, most importantly I feel we all should value choices that we have in life and be thankful for that, because some people don't have them.

Dead Space 2: The game which ruined all the shooters for me

So, the last blog I wrote was about how painfully boring and tiring Crysis 2 was. :(. Since then I tried to play some games which are not in the main stream and I have been successful in fishing out some of the best in the market, though they are not as famous as Call of Duty or Halo, I think they really really are putting milestones in terms of Gameplay mechanics. For example Vanquish, a really fast paced shooter. But, this blog is not about Vanquish its about Dead Space.......... Oh Yes !

I just finished the game. I mean just now, and it was so epic, I really feel that I have accomplished something., and I will like to share this. If I have to rate all the games I have ever played this one will easily make it in top 5 games I have ever played and that is because this one does so many things so right. I tried to explain to some of my friends about it and they just dont get it (You all know who you are if you are reading this blog :) ). There is some satisfaction in strategically dismembering your enemies and then stomping on their head until it gets all bloody mess and then pick up on of the dismembered pointy limb and shoot it on the approaching enemy to pin him on the wall.Yes, you guessed it right, this game is scary and scariest in the recent video game industry i will say. You are never safe, never, just when you think you got the situation under control, there is a necromorph jumping on you from the back. 

The sound design, the lighting effects everything just adds to the experience, and dont even get me started on the enemy types. Goodness gracious i had probably one new enemy type on each levels. and you cant just soot them on their head and kill them like the main stream shooters. you need to keep your cool, and dismember their legs and then arms to kill them and you are always short on ammo and health so yay strategy!! So, you are always always running for your life :). 

Did I mention, there is one enemy type which are just a bunch of toddlers. There is some level of fun attached to shooting bunch of babies. and ok dont get me wrong here I am not a cruel person, who likes to shoot babies LOL just in the game :). 

There is another type of necromorph call STALKER. I think they are the scariest. for me because you just hear them scream and you dont see them, they just hide from you in the dark and attack on you when you least expect it. Now thats something hearing your enemies, but not being able to see them. I must admit, I was really scared myself few times.

Stalker Source: Gamernode.com

What about the story? I wont say anything very special about the story. Usual space colony sci-fi stuff, earth's colonization has gone wrong, as we meet other species. Anyone with little interest in Ridley Scott's movies can almost predict the story line. But the best part is even though the story is so mundane there is always a sense of urgency to save yourself and your partner who is talking to you and trying to fix things.

So, what makes the game so amazing, is even though i am used to such gory cut scenes and the bloody mess after playing the game for like 10 hours, there are parts, where i found it rather disturbing and messed up. If a game can do that make you feel Ouch! what did I just do, now that's a keeper. I just couldn't keep my controller down and kept on playing. There are sequences, where one needs to operate on his own eye or the player dies because of mental trauma leading to shooting a javelin in his own face. Now, I dont want to say about this too much as probably I will ruin the game if I say too much about it. 

Other than strategic dismemberment, you upgrade your weapons and suits using power nodes and an upgrade tree thus adding some RPG elements and replay value. 

Also, I will conclude with just saying that this game's ending is probably one of the best and will make one feel like a hero. It is just right paced and just when you think its all gone, something more happens. :)

Can't wait for Dead Space 3 to be released NEXT YEAR :) So, anyone who like survival horror and shooters will probably do themselves a favor by picking this just near perfect game. An epic I must say.

Zero-Gravity Boots

AND did I mention you get Space thrusters in your boots. If doesn't motivates you, God knows what will.. :)

Crysis 2 Is so boring

So, I was pretty psyched about the crysis series, I must admit I wanted to play this since the first game came out on PC, but unfortunately as the Crytek games requires a really high configuration on PC. So, regarding Crysis 2, I am utterly disappointed by the boring story, as well as the gameplay. And to top these shortcomings, the Xbox version of the game seems to be full of glitches at numerous places. The previous games of Crytek (FarCry, which I played on PC), has an awesome AI, but in this game I found the enemies, particularly the Aliens are so so stupid. More than often, I find them running around in circles, without doing anything in particular, or just running into a wall, as if they got stuck in the environment geometry, and only attack you when they you go in front of them blatantly. I am half way through the game and every time it seems there are same kind of enemies, the nanosuit's power and usage is not well explained. May be, if I play this game in supersoldier mode, the AI will be probably improved, but the graphical glitches are far from less. In addition, there is a subsequent amount of load time, everytime you power up the console.

When it comes to story, it seems very linear but it is so confusing, the guy who is giving you missions, doesnt know who exactly you are, most of the times you dont know what is the final objective its more like running between check points and shooting down the aliens, which gets so boring after a while, the bosses are also same in most of the levels.

I started the game with all good intentions, and as I saw the reviews on IGN and gamespot.com, which claimed the game to be one of the best looking games of 2011, and praised many aspects of it. I still find the game story in-captivating, the graphics look better in the beginning, but the glitches in the graphics and kill the pleasure. The guns are not so varied. The games are the mundane ones found in any FPS game for that matter. Towards the later part of the missions, its dark and it seems so repetitive. After a while, I get really bored and leave it. The game has good music, which is cool, but that credit goes totally to Hans Zimmer, who scored the tracks. I will just like to add one more comment on the voice acting, it is not so good as well. It doesn't seem personal at all. Infact they are so monotonous I just dont care what they are saying, I just go from point to point taking down everyone in between. The nanosuit though looks pretty awesome.

I will still finish till the end of the game, just for the heck of it, but so far it has been a little disappointing... :(

A pertinent social debate

So, recently I was drawn into a discussion regarding marriage with one of my friends. And it was dragged on and we were discussing about the fact that many times the women do not change their last names to that of the guy they are getting married to. Not to be politically correct or anything but, many people in the society take it for granted that the girl will change their last name to that of the husband's, and the only reason that any one has to backup this argument is that, "Its the culture" or "It is going on for ages".

Well too be true, that is not a substantial argument for any girl to change her last name and in the present era women are more independent and many want to keep their last names as before and it is also not frowned upon by many open minded people. I even asked few of my friends, if they care about their wife's last name issue, and all of them were least bothered about it. The answer was, "Come on! I don't really care."

So far so good... But when I took the question a step further, "So, what about your kids?". Do you care about the kid's last name. And suddenly, the whole "open mindedness" thing was gone and the guys answered, "Obviously ! the kid will have the father's last name". The problem is there is nothing so obvious about it. We tried to come up with supportive arguments for either cases, but really were not able to reach any definitive answers.

An argument in support of the guys were as the kid is nurtured in the father's house (well at least looking from a perspective of many oriental society structure), the kid's nature is more inclined towards the father's upbringing. But, this fails in the case of a nucleus family, as both mom and dad of the kid has equal contribution in the kid's upbringing.

Another way to look at it is, what is more important allocation of resources by the father for the kid, or the mother's 24X7 for the kid. This again is not quite good enough, because in present times, well both parties equally contribute.

So, at the end one can leave upto the kid without the last name for 16 years, when he can legally choose his last name. But, that is not a reasonable scientific solution if someone has to decide for the first 16 years :)

Well I thought about it a lot and couldn't reach any reasonable conclusion... So, if any of you readers (however few you are), let me know what you think...
Thanks

I am hopeful for India

Well that's being said, the next immediate question that arise is Why? The recent events in the capital and across, have shown the common man that there are things that can be done. Anna Hazare being standing up for a strong anti-corruption bill, Dr. Subramaniam Swamy trying his best to uncover the political masks behind which such corruptions are going on, the enormous numbers being displayed and forwarded through emails across the globe, the numbers being the trillions of dollars that are in foreign banks. That is certain to move the commoners  like ourselves in despair and leave us to certain extent if I say honestly amazed. I being a student counting numbers all my life, don't really know what is the term for a number higher than 10 crores and there are 5 more digits after that. I just end up saying Wow, goodness gracious, what the hell these people will do with so, so so much money.

I mean the accused A. Raja in the 2G spectrum scam has acquired or I may say looted 12.5 billion USD, to give a general idea, of how much that money is, its almost half the worth of Google Inc. (29.5 billion USD). So one can only imagine. I wonder, I really do, that what these people will be able to do with such sums of money. No, you probably cannot buy islands in the Caribbeans, you cannot buy out companies, you cannot buy yachts no nothing, because as soon as you invest, the media will question you that just being a minister how did you get such a huge amount of money. So, what exactly they do with such money, they just put it in banks in Switzerland, Mauritius, Leicester. According to a recent interview with Dr. Swamy, as he mentioned that these people are so in-secured about the money that they don't even  mention any nominees for their accounts. So, if they die, which eventually they will and there is no one to collect the money, it automatically becomes a property of the bank. So, long strty story short, its gone. And everytime I read one of these articles, I am just so amazed by the irrationality and greed of human mind.

To be honest, I am in some ways happy that we had the 2 colossal corruptions in the history of our country, because nothing really happens, things don't change until a common man stands up and says "Its enough!". The term has its own deep meaning, it says that we are not going to take any more, we are not going to suffer for mistakes you did, we are our own masters and we won't let you run our lives.The way I see it, the recent scams are equivalent to the Jallianwala Bagh incident during India's struggle for freedom. That was the incident, which really made everyone say "Its enough!". And lets accept it, these corruption is in the system from a long long time, if you carefully trace back it goes as far back as Indian Independence. This was imminent and this happened now.

And the true significance of this event and what makes it so fundamentally different from the others, that it has started with few people and got the support of the nation, without much provocation from any political party (I will be careful in my last sentence, atleast not much political interest is visible to me right now). So, I am sure that things will change and it will change soon. Today as I sit and write this blog, I really feel unfortunate that I am not in India, in support of this bill and probably will think about it for a long time. But everyone is bound by the social obligations he has and may be I am not courageous enough to break free my obligations. But I am happy to see many are, people from all parts of the society, have participated actively in the protests and made lives for our prime minister and the ruling party really hard.

That being said, many might be speculating or thinking "Oh its just another bill, we will see hat happens!", "The proposed committee will again turn into a toothless lion, mostly like the present prime minister or the president." But, either we can delve in that or we can try to make the change, and constantly promote the thought that "Lets not do anything which is wrong morally or socially!" If people make a pledge that we wont do anything wrong, I am sure the evil will be rooted out from the system eventually.

I am also hopeful for India, because  any nation to flourish needs a strong society, a helpful and hospitable surroundings. India still has a very very strong social structure and family values to the most part. The growth rate of the country is really high. If you think about the good things, since 1947 inspite of our own problems like poverty, over population, corruption, war and terrorism, India is still leading in many sectors, of the modern world, in computers, in research ofcourse cricket and there are so many more, and most importantly we are in course of addressing our biggest worries, the corrupt politicians and I am certain that only good will come out of it, because its not possible to stop 1.6 billion people, who are saying "We want to do what is right!, We want to change things".  India's prosperity is not based on selling goods made using cheap labor to the United States, but its prosperity is based on knowledge base that we have. Education probably is the most valued asset in India.

When they say India is poor, or a third world country, well it is disturbing to hear, because, its unimaginable to me that how a country where 1 billion people are working day in and day out, can be poor. It is not possible, now we are in the process of removing the parasites from the system, and if 1 billion people are trying to get things done, they will get it done today, tomorrow or next week. The people who compare India or say that it is a third world country in an attempt to find a politically correct word for "poor", to them my fellow friends they need to really brush up the history. A third world country is not synonymous to a poverty stricken country. If you are doing it , you are comparing India and Somalia, considering both are third world countries (according to UN, or should I say America). During the cold war, there were two poles in the world, one being USA, Ocenia and western Europe who supported capitalism and the other being USSR and China, who were supportive of communism, there was a third group of countries, who were indifferent of either of them, so they called it the third world. So, that eventually became South Asia and Africa. But really you cannot compare either of them.

So, that being said, I am also hopeful for India, because of the smart people like Subramaniam Swamy, Kiran Bedi, who are really fighting for the system from inside and are gaining support of vast majority of people from within the country and abroad. I am also hopeful, because the way I see it India is not under any foreign or economic crisis as half of the world is now, it just had some snakes in the system, which are getting weeded out by the people for a better tomorrow.

For people looking for more information apart from news, if they do not already know
http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org/

The Class, the Professor and the Student... still what's missing ? How students manage to sleep in the class?

Well I have been thinking about it a lot. What is missing in the class? What hinders learning ? And what makes the class boring? and I think I have broken down the problem to some extent, though there is a large group of educationalists who are trying to come up with interesting ways of teaching, make the students more engaged in the class, using props and what not, but still to me most of them are quite not feasible for a graduate level courses. They might work on an experimental level and may be for kids? And come on lets get real you really cannot teach a bunch of graduate students with a bunch of lego kits or make them draw things and seriously wonder why the so called education reformers don't think of improving the graduate courses.. Is it not a concern? or they think that there is nothing that can be done to improve the quality of courses in a graduate school. I really disagree. I think it is also an important issue to address and it is not easy and may be people do not put a serious effort because it is just too hard. When I say hard, it is hard because unlike a primary school, in a graduate course the level of student vary on a wide range specially in interdisciplinary courses, because they come from a different background, they have different cognitive ability and more often than not, people who are teaching the courses are researchers than a teacher. I do not blame the professors teaching the courses, it is hard to find a balance between being a researcher and being a teacher. So, without further adieu, here is something which I think might solve or ease the situation to some extent if not completely.

Assumptions: So, let us make some linear assumptions about the students. I will like to assume that the students who come to take the course are really interested in the course material and want to learn and apply it and are very honest about it. There might be some nonlinearities for sure, like the student is supposed to take the course as a requirement, the student is not interested at all and just goofing off. We will account for that later.

Another simple assumption I will like to make without any kind of prejudices is that the teacher really wants to teach and make the student understand the material.

The Problem: So, if the student wants to learn and the teacher wants to teach and both parties in the system are fine. What is the problem ? The problem lies in the mode of communication, the way of teaching. The problem lies with the fact that the what teachers follow in the class a routine I like to call active teaching. I am totally against the active teaching. It is time we rule out the process of active teaching. In most cases the professor forgets that he is not supposed to be an educator, but a facilitator of education. This mode of teaching was ok and worked may be 100 years back, today it might not work. Sure some professors try to improve the learning experience in the class with some aids, but most of them are crude and I dont think it will work. So what are the things the teachers try to do?

1. Use Presentation slides: Though I think it is a good introduce the course, it can never replace the chalk and board system. Reason being, if you are using the classic chalk and board, the amount of information that is being produced in front of the class is more engaging and it is a process that takes some time, giving the brain enough time to inculcate the new information, whereas the time spend between slides is never enough to get the information from the slides to the notebook to the brain. Come on, give some time to learn. Also, while a chalk board system involves the professor in the process, a slide system keeps both the student and the teacher aloof from the process.

2. Take more tests: Really you think, that will help in a graduate course. The people sitting on the benches have passed 100s of tests before to be able to sit on those benches. You cannot scare them with tests and if that is what you are trying to do, it is not really teaching. It is force feeding, either you mugg up everything taught or u fail in the class and really you cannot make some one learn anything with that.

3. Asking Rhetorical Questions: Well I am sure most professors do that and it is always the same response to the question, "Are you following?" A 10 sec silence and few head nods on the first benches and that is probably a "full-proof guarantee" for the professor that the students got it.

4. Prejudices: Now this is a tough one, and to the most part I will like to blame the graduate students. Come on people till now you have taken so many courses and everytime you ask the "senior" students the same questions. 1. How is the professor? 2. How does he grade? 3. Is the course easy or hard? Really it is a big big mistake that they do everytime and yet never learn. And the senior students give their honest opinions and let out all their griefs. They take you for a half an hour crash ride about the whole thing because they also did the same when they were wearing your shoes. They lay it all over you. The course is hard, too many test, professor is grumpy or they say he is nice and really god with grading. So, you start making an opinion about the whole thing and go to class with a prejudice and really that is a bad thing. Its like asking some one hey you watched that thriller movie? How does it end? At what times you laugh and what times you are scared? Come on if it was hard for the senior student, it might not be hard for you. It might be an easy A for him, it might not turn out the same for you. It is a ride that you need to take and enjoy don't make the prejudices come in your way and ruin the process. We all are different, with different individualities and different cognitive ability, with so many differences still we fall for the "honest opinion" of the other student.

The Solution: So, what is the solution to these problems, how can we improve in order to have a better understanding of the course material. How can we restructure the system so that the students do not sleep in the class. This whole process I will like to call passive teaching and it will require a good deal of effort from both sides. Active learning is too easy a process to follow and that is why people do it, and if it is too easy may be it is not right.

Ever wondered, why you hardly read instructions of a new game and start playing it without knowing the rules and in a matter of hours you end up mastering it, but also find the loop holes and the bug in the system, inspite of the initial boredom and fuzziness of not understanding the deal with the game. So, why didnt you fall asleep while playing the game. The reason being you were using the brain's cognitive ability in order to understand the game. Brain is a huge cognitive machine and it has amazing cognitive abilities and when put to proper use, it does amazing things. And, ever wondered why you never forget cycling even after 20 years while you forget the thermodynamic equations right after the semester got over or may be during the semester sometimes too. The reason being, we hard-wired the cycling in our system, developed a plasticity in the brain for cycling rather than the equations where we didnt use the real cognitive ability to learn it and everything just remains in the volatile memory. That is probably the reason, even the students who got an A+ in some course are unable to answer the questions after a semester and that is anything but learning.

Proposal There is always a gap between different students. I cannot stress this more. For some the course material is too easy (so they sleep or loose interest), some find it really hard to follow, so they loose interest. So, why not keep everyone in the class engaged at their level of understanding and make the teacher a facilitator of the learning. Why not let the students knit their own stories about the subject matter and then correct for the mistakes they commit in the process, make use of their ability to form stories, because Science is science, but it is also an art. Why separate the art from science? Because my understanding is if you learn this way it stays with you all the time. So, what I propose is that, instead of teaching, may be it is better idea to create a series of presentation slides for one class and just give the students and let not the professor speak during the class at all. Jus present the series of slides with thought provoking question pictures or results. Like which makes them wonder How it happened, and also such that the series of slides are able to draw a conclusive connection and a train of thoughts that will complete the process of understanding. Because we can learn looking at a pattern, that is how the mankind learnt just by observing and formulating rules. That is how Dr. Feynman puts it, "Nature plays a game of chess, and we look at the moves and try to learn few things about it." So why break this natural way of learning through observation. Why not make the students come up with their own way of putting the pieces all together. Who knows they will be able to see some loop hole which was not seen before. And of course, if there is something wrong (well lets say incorrect, because nothing is wrong, it is just a matter of perspective), the professor is always there to correct it through a series of conclusive debate with the student. Observe and learn that is the way of nature, that is how research is done, and so why to take research out of the class to the labs, why not bring it into the class and learn together. There is no need to separate classrooms and labs.

Well, they are just my thoughts on why we end up sleeping in the class even in hot sweaty summer and cramped up benches...

Macro Photography: Reverse the Lens, save money

Penny: In GOD we trust
Originally uploaded by Vicky/Vikash

So, you have a dSLR and the kit lens, but you want to do Macro photography. The problem is that if you are on a budget, buying a Macro lens can be quite challenging. It costs any where between $500 to $800 dollars. So, there are few things which one can do. The most popular option being getting a Canon close-up lens depending on the lens you have. It just screws on top of the lens like a filter and yield pretty good results for the price. It costs around $70-120. Another good option, being the Sigma 70 - 300 mm lens. It has a Macro feature which one can enable or disable. I haven't tried it yet but the reviews are pretty good and it cost like $150, which is an awesome deal.

Now comes the cheapest option which will cost $5-10 and lot of patience. One needs to get something called a reverse lens adapter for Nikon or Canon, which ever camera you have. Screw it on top of the lens and reverse it and attach it to the camera. Now when the camera is switched on, it will show that lens not attached. So go to manual mode.
Also you cannot use the focus ring or autofocus to take your picture. So you need to move a lot to get the sharpest image.

Also, put a lot of lights on the subject, use a table lamp or something for lighting. Use maximum aperture size (Nikon 50 mm with manual aperture is the best bet) for maximum depth of field. Move up and down on the subject, keep ur hands rock steady as Image stabilisation or VR feature also doesn't work or even better use a tripod. Take pictures at various shutter speed, until the desired result is achieved, I mean correct exposure and sharpness...
It will work wonders... :)

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ISO: A not so Technical discussion

As I mentioned earlier, that ISO is one of the most tricky aspects in digital photography and it is analogous to the film speed in the old school cameras. But that definition doesn't help us much. Recently I was able to get my hands on a really good book called Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. Its really good and highly recommended if you wish to gain insights in your equipment's operation. As Bryan mentions, we should consider the ISO number as the number of worker bees in the camera.. What worker bees? But trust me stay with me on this discussion it will make sense. We all know that if we have to shoot in low light situation, we crank up our ISO to 400 or 800 to have a correct exposure and in bright sunshine we can get the gig done with a much lower value of ISO...

Analogy: Lets consider the camera's aperture as a water tap from which water is flowing continuously and there are bees working on your camera sensor who are ready with their buckets to collect the light (water) and each bee has bucket with same capacity as any other bee. Now, no matter where or when you shoot, you need to have a correct exposure for shooting tach sharp images. So the total amount of light required for making a good image is constant. When you have more light (bright sunshine), you employ lower number of bees to fetch the light to your sensor thus a lower ISO, but in lower light situations if your shutter speed is high, for carrying the same amount of light you need more worker bees so a higher ISO number. So we crank up the ISO. Its all about getting the correct exposure.
Thus, in a low light situation if you are taking pictures using a longer exposure, the number of worker bees required is less, because they spend enough time on the sensor to obtain the required amont of light, where as in bright light their photo-buckets gets filled in a relatively less time, thus enabling higher shutter speed.

Now, a little experiment as suggested by Bryan. If you point your camera to a subject read the exposure on the camera metering. Say you read an ISO of 100 at an aperture of f/11. Crank up the ISO to 200, you will find that the aperture size required for making the correct exposure is f/22. Similar, trials can be conducted by setting the camera on shutter priority. If a shutter speed of 1/250 at ISO 100 gives you the correct exposure, a shutter speed of 1/500 with an ISO of 200 will give you the correct exposure..

Over exposed photos are examples of photos where the buckets of your worker bees are overfilled and they spilled the water (light) from their buckets. Similarly, under exposure refers when their buckets are not completely filled with light. Thus making the photo underexposed or darker because there was not enough light..

Things to remember:
1. Its all about getting a correct exposure.
2. Remember this formula for the photographic triangle
ISO X Aperture X Shutter Speed = Constant. (Rules of inverse proportion)

For a given ISO, you will have at-least 5 to 6 camera settings for the correct exposure. It depends what you want to do with your shot. Control your depth of field or freeze the motion or get some creative blur. They determine your shutter speed and accordingly aperture size is determined by the camera and vice versa depending whether your camera is on Shutter priority or Aperture priority.

I learned all these from The above mentioned book. Its really good and really cheap. worth a purchase. I hope I was able to make ISO clear to some extent. Any further questions let me know. Keep Clicking... :)

Photography: Things one should know

Hey folks, I was not sure about the title of this blog. But, recently I have been reading a lot and so I thought may be its a good time to share few things I know, which helped me taking good shots.


The balance of 3: Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO
Any good photograph is a balance of the above three things, so lets look at them one by one:
Shutter Speed: Have you ever clicked a picture at night with a point and shoot camera, tried to capture the sky-line and found that you have just one dark picture, in which nothing is visible. I had that problem a lot of times. When you click the picture the curtains behind the image sensor opens and lets the light impact the image sensor (film in old school) cameras. Now, without light, you cannot generate an image, we know that. So, if the shutter is open just for a fraction of second (ideally 1/250 or 1/500) in Auto mode, not enough light impacts the sensor and we fail to create an image. So, ideally the shutter speed should be slow, say 1 sec or more when you take pictures at night. I will go in detail later on.

Aperture: Aperture is another key factor in taking good photographs. We can think of the camera aperture as something similar to our IRIS. If you are in a dark room, our iris expands and lets more light in and so we can see the things in dark. On the other hand, if we go out in the bright sunshine. the IRIS contracts, and let less light inside our eyes, thus compensating the bright light. This happens involuntarily and so we don't notice it. Similarly, in a digital camera the aperture size dictates whether you are letting less or more light inside your camera, depending whether you are in bright or dark situations. The aperture size is generally stated as f/22, f/8 etc. The higher the denominator the smaller is the aperture because it is represented as a fraction of the full-aperture size.

ISO: Now, what is ISO, everyone at some point of time or the other is intrigued by this term. Well its analogous to the film speed in the film cameras. But, does that definition help us. I don't think so. Think it like this, when you are in a low light situation and you cannot have a long exposure (slow shutter speed), just crank up the ISO. But, if you have a tripod just keep it low as low as 100 or 200 (slowest your camera allows). Lower ISO makes the picture less noisy, if you crank up the ISO to 1600 or 3200, the picture becomes grainy and it won't be what we call "tach sharp". So only crank up the ISO when long exposure is not possible because of lack of tripods or any steady camera holder. I hope this minimum knowledge helps.

Combining all 3 key-elements: Ok, so now if you have a general understanding of these 3 main features, you can combine these 3 things to shoot great pictures, of-course there are more to it than just these 3 things. Normally, you can set your camera to any ISO you want to (lower or higher). So, you are left with only 2 other parameters aperture and shutter speed. Now, depending on whether you keep your camera in Aperture priority or shutter priority, if you choose one the other is automatically decided by the camera to get a correct exposure, unless you are in manual mode where you have the power to control both.

Few more terms: There are more technical jargons one should know and using that knowledge one can give a creative look to their shots. Few techniques are discussed here:

Depth of Field: What is depth of field? If you have seen those portraits where the subjects looks sharper than the background, and you always want to do that but just don't know how to do it? Here is a quick tip. First you should know, that depth of field means how much of your picture is in sharp focus. A shallow depth of field means less of the photograph is in sharp focus, whereas a massive depth of field means large portion of the snap is in focus. So how to achieve a narrow depth of field.
Set the camera to aperture priority and use the highest aperture value and shoot the portrait. The larger the f number the shallower will be the depth of field. For typical portraits you are looking at f/11.

Capturing Night Landscapes: Capturing a well-lit skyline is everyone's dream. People starting with point and shoot cameras almost find it impossible to do, at-least it was the case with me. But I am going to tell you how it can be done. So hang on. Get a tripod. Do this favor to yourself if you want to take good tach sharp images. Find a good angle and set your camera on tripod. Set the camera to manual mode. Set aperture to the maximum possible typically f/11 and the shutter speed to 1 or 2 seconds (do experiment with different shutter speed to get the desirable result). Set the camera to self-timer. This is important to eradicate any vibration due to your fingers clicking the camera. Set the ISO to lowest possible may be 100 to remove any noise. That should be it you should get a good picture of sky-line well lit up at night.

For dSLR users Set the camera to above mentioned settings. As you are setting the camera on tripod, switch off any vibration reduction mechanisms within the camera. If your camera allows use mirror locking and use cable release or self-timer mode to shoot the picture.

Capturing trail lights at night: In the night you might be interested in capturing the trail lights of fast going cars, they add a dramatic effect to the pictures. Actually you are trying to induce some blur in your picture to give that effect. So set the camera to manual mode. Use aperture f/11 and set shutter speed to 20 to 30 sec. A 30 second shutter speed works well for me, and you will have the desired trail lights in your picture.

Adding Blur to your pictures: Oh snap!! what did I just say adding blur. Well yes! adding blur can give very good effect on your pictures. Just set the camera on tripod and increase the shutter speed to 10 sec during day while shooting a waterfall or a fast moving vehicle to add some motion to your pictures. Trust me you will be astonished with the results.

Taking pictures of monuments: Well if you know what I mean, anyone going to Paris returns with an image of Eiffel Tower, everyone going to Pisa, returns with a snap of him/her trying to support the leaning tower as if it will fall..:)
So, what to do if you have to take pictures of places which are shot to death, if you know what I mean. Go to those places when the weather is bad or early morning or late late night, when they look a little different and you may end up getting a 100 dollar shot if not million....:D

Also keep experimenting with your composition and taking pictures from different angles.. open eyes look around.. everything is beautiful in its own way. All we are trying to do is to make an attempt to capture the beauty, it is long way to reach perfection..

This blog contains no new information, I just happened to read a lot presently so just felt like sharing what I learned through experimentation. Its like taking notes when I read or see some tutorial. Hope it helps anyone looking for some quick information...
More to come as I learn.....

dSLR Camera: How I made my choice?

Its a big investment, and probably if you are buying a dSLR its an investment that you need to think through. Probably, this is the second most expensive thing I have bought with my hard-earned cash (if you think earning your stipend as a lowly grad-student as hard-earned). The first being of-course the sweet MacBook. While buying a Macbook I was sure why I need it, and there are hardly any laptop that goes even close to it, and I knew I need it, its a piece of art, its not technology.

But, buying a dSLR camera, though its been three years of thinking but you start thinking again twice and thrice before finally entering your credit card details on the web and you think it till the last moment until you authorize the purchase, if you are not a professional photographer and have no intensions of minting money with your photography skills. Graduate students are always low on budget and high on ambitions. So finally coming back to the topic of the day how did I choose Nikon d5000?

Earlier, I wanted to buy Nikon d90, but when I compared it with newly released d5000, I found that it has all the features as d5000, as well as the same size of CMOS sensor. One of the few noticeable difference for the amateur photographers being that nikon d90 has a 3" LCD display, whereas d5000 has a 2.7" display. I personally think that a 2.7" display is a good enough size, unless you want to be picky about each little aspect of d5000. But before doing that one should remember that d5000 is almost $500 cheaper and so more affordable. Also the LCD is tilt-able which gives a wide freedom for the photographers for taking pictures. Another good thing about d5000 is that its much lighter and smaller than d90. So clearly, I ruled out d90 on the grounds of d90 being expensive as well as little heavier.

So, what about Canon, is that any better than Nikon? Well, as there is always a rivalry between Mac and windows users, so is it between Nikon and Canon. There is no straight answer for that, depends what you are comfortable with. I had the privilege of handling both the cameras. Though Canon gives you higher specifications at the same price, but the downside with Canon is that, it doesn't feel so good in hand (atleast to me). The body and the lens doesn't seems so well made, where as Nikon feels just great, which is very important when you are taking serious photographs. A lousy handling won't take you far. If you compare the specs, the Canon ISO goes up to 12800 (with boost) and nikon goes up to 6400 which is good enough for any photographs you take. The numbers seems to me a marketing strategy. Higher resolution, higher ISO won't yield much.. People take good pictures with much lower end SLR cameras. And personally I had reasons for choosing NIkon because I knew Nikon lenses much better than Canon lenses, so at the end it depends what kind of lenses are you comfortable with, about which brand you know the most.

Few tips about choosing lenses:
dSLR is an expensive investment and if you are low on budget, I will suggest go for a low end camera and get more lenses, because at the end they matter the most. If you have a 18-55 mm and another 55-200 mm lens, you are good for taking your dream shots. But just don't stick with those kit lenses.. Read more and try to find more specific lenses that suits your photography style.

Few initial doubts:
What is 18-55 mm lens and what it is used for?
Well 18-55 is one lens which are readily available and comes with most camera kits. Its kind of a lens used for taking landscape photographs, and is not very good for portraits because the zoom doesn't fill your subject with your camera's field of view. You need to move really close to the subject and definitely you cannot do that if you want to take close ups of insects and animals.
So use it for landscape photography, again there is no had and fast rule.

What about another popular lens 55-200 mm?
Well this is a really good lens and will be the most used lens during your photography. It is good for taking portraits and also macro photography. But, keep in mind its still a zoom lens and not a dedicated macro lens.

What is the deal with Macro/Micro photography?

If you are interested in macro photography, like me. Be prepared to spend some bucks. Start Saving $$s...:)
Macro or micro photography are the same thing and the terms are used indifferently. The macro lenses are one which can create a 1:1 or 1:2 image of the subject on the image sensor. And easy way to know if your lens supports that is to look at the lens specification. They write Macro specifically on the lens and they are little expensive. If you are buying a Nikon you are looking at almost $800. If you are going for a third party lens like Tamron or Sigma, which are also good unless you are too picky, you are still looking at $500 approximately. I still need to get one.

Accessories you think you might need
Its not true that if you buy everything in the market your pictures will turn out well. So initially be a little patient and get the bare minimum stuff. be familiar with their usage. The most important being a sturdy tripod, a camera bag with good padding for your lenses and last but most important get a UV-protection filter for each lens, you dont want to get scratches on your lens and they are really cheap ($20 max).

Useful Websites:

For lessons and more knowledge:
http://www.slrphotographyguide.com/


For reviews
http://www.kenrockwell.com/


Also,last but not the least, talk to people with similar interest and take atleast one class on photography near you.. There is so much to learn and a good class will be worth it. Know about F numbers, aperture control, shutter speed, ISO, depth of field. They are just technical terms but be familiar with them. Join Flickr...

One most important note, most people think that good pictures can only be taken by using the camera in manual mode. But, I suggest pay more attention to composing your pictures, use the appropriate auto mode, they are pretty good and learn about manual settings slowly,,,But concentrate on composing your image first.

More posts will come as i learn more...In the mean time Happy Clicking.. :)