Chetan's blog

Overriding overloaded methods

2010-08-11T12:42:00.002+05:30

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

class B {
    public:
    virtual void A(string a, int b) {
        cout<<"B::A(string, int)"<<endl;
    }
    virtual void A(int c) {
        cout<<"B::A(int)"<<endl;
    }
};

class D : public B {
    public:
    virtual void A(string a, int b) {
        cout<<"D::A(string, int)"<<endl;
    }
};

int main() {
    D d;
    B* b = &d;

    b->A("a", 1);
    b->A(2);

    d.A("a", 1);
    d.A(2);

    return 0;
}

What do you think would be output of the above code?

Obviously, the output is not what most people will expect i.e.:

D::A(string, int)

B::A(int)

D::A(string, int)

B::A(int)

The code will instead give compilation error on line

d.A(2);

This is because if you override one overloaded method, you need to override all of them, otherwise the ones you don't override are not available in the derived class.

~~To get things working you'll need to add following method in class D~~

~~virtual void A(int c) {~~
~~B::A(c);~~

}

As suggested by Kapil in the comments, the correct and elegant way to get it working is to add a declaration of A() in classD:

using B::A;

Domestication

2010-07-19T17:51:00.002+05:30

I look in the mirror,
I look around,
I see the wildness tamed,
The jungles are lost,
The animals are gone,
all that is left are sanctuaries,
domestication taught in the name of education.

The biggest delusion of all times is time itself

2010-06-18T15:32:00.002+05:30

Time was invented to sequence events, to record what happened first, and what after that. Just like a label. We never realized when time took control of our lives. Things went wrong when we thought of time as an absolute entity, shared by everything and everyone. Is time really same for everyone?

As I see, time is not same for everyone. Putting it simply: when speed (w.r.t. clock time) of some action gets slow, it's because of its time getting slow! Assuming time is absolute makes many thing simpler, looking it the other way can explain things which otherwise have no satisfactory answers.

When you are feeling bored lazy, your time goes fast, you spend like an hour while your watch shows that only 15 minutes have passed. Similarly when you are excited, enjoying, your time goes slower. No doubt being happy makes you live longer i.e. with respect to the clock time.

Some people seem to age faster, others look younger just because their time passes at different rate.

Some people can solve problems quickly, because their time passes fast. While you think they solved the problem in seconds they actually took a minute of "their time" to solve it.

Oh, by the way, if you have realized I just discarded "Time Travel" concept as viewed by most of us :).

Predefined or a matter of chance but not a choice!

2010-04-07T15:16:00.001+05:30

Life is predefined or a matter of chance but not a choice. I have used this 'funda' many time. The best thing about this 'funda' is that the other person is left baffled. They obviously can't agree to such a thing and eehh at the same time they can't really disagree :D.

How do people do something? They do some action: blink eyes, move hands, speak etc. How do people do some action? They move some muscle in their body which results into action. How do muscle move? They get signals from brain. How do muscle get signals from brain? Chemical reactions! How does a brain thinks? Again chemical reactions. You can not deny the fact that every thing that happens in our body is result of some chemical reactions. Everything happening around us is a result of some chemical reactions.

Consider this: for a given condition, keeping everything fixed; the temperature, the pressure and everything else, will a chemical reaction produce exactly same products every time?

If you think that the answer is 'YES', then your life is nothing but a chain reaction. At any instant the present conditions are product of the previous reactions, which were product of previous reactions and so on till the 'start of time' when the first reaction took place. No matter what you do, or think to do, its all part of the game. Nothing could have happened except what happened. You have no control on what's happening.

If you think your answer to the question is 'NO', then your life is just a matter of chance. Since all the conditions remain same there can not be a logic as to determine what would be the products of a reaction. It has to be random. Everything you do or happening around is result of random reactions. You again have no control on what's happening.

Whether its predefined or a matter of chance life is surely not a choice.

Right or Wrong??

2010-03-14T02:01:00.002+05:30

Recently I came to know that many things I say or write sound daft and confuse people, so please don't mind if what follows doesn't makes any sense... :P

What do you think... things are going the right way or the wrong way?

I'll tell you what I believe. It doesn't matters! Really, according to me it doesn't matters whether things are going the right or the wrong way; if you just believe that things are going the right way..rest everything will be fine :-)

Why so??

There are two things, first: your thinking that things are going right or wrong, and second: whether things are actually going right or wrong. Let us consider all four cases in detail:

o You think that things are going right, and things are actually going right:

Things are actually going right implies that your thinking must be correct, and you are thinking that things are going right, this complies with the original statement that things are going right.

(I did warn about my thoughts sounding daft)

o You think that things are going right, and things are actually going wrong:

Things are actually going wrong implies that your thinking must be incorrect, and you are thinking that things are going right. This means that things must not be going right, this again complies with the original statement that things are going wrong.

o You think that things are going wrong, and things are actually going right:

Things are actually going right implies that your thinking must be correct, and you are thinking that things are going wrong. This means that things must not be going right! oops.. now there is a contradiction with the original statement that things are actually going right.

o You think that things are going wrong, and things are actually going wrong:

Things are actually going wrong implies that your thinking must be incorrect, and you are thinking that things are going wrong. This meas that things must be going right! once again we have a contradiction with the original statement that things are actually going wrong.

Now you can see, if you think that everything is going the right way, you don't get any contradictions, if you think that things are going the wrong way then you always get contradictions in life. Contradiction means things in life don't fit together and you tend to feel even more that something is wrong which sure doesn't give you peace of mind. So, it doesn't even matters whether things are going the right way or the wrong way, if you think and feel that the right things are happening, everything will start to fall in place and fit together.

Status messages

2009-11-26T17:47:00.034+05:30

Some of my status messages...

When man learns to look deep inside others, he learns to forgive.
Everyone has a talent but the real talent is to control it.
Some people just live to die while some others are dying to live.
May be you'll win, but you see, I can't lose now.
Common man is a waste produced by friction between powerful people.
When u look yourself close enough, you don't see problems.. you see there is nothing to fix.
If whole mankind was to be described by a single word, it would be 'stupid'.
Our leaders fought for freedom and all they got was independence!
It really pains sometimes, most of the other times pain is just an imagination.
Are we really living or someone is playing SimCity up there?
Many mornings I wake up and think "When was the last time I slept?"
God doesnt need to be pleased or made happy. Just embrace the Power with all heart. Be a part of it, be God.
No doubt everyone is unique, the problem is 99% of people are unique only in 1% of aspects.
A good life is when you don't have to think about whether its a good life or not.
Try being good and happiness runs away from you. Be good and happiness will follow you. I guess I'm still trying
Knowledge makes life difiicult. If you don't know there is a tiger under you bed you'll sleep calmly. If you know there is a harmless tiger under your bed, you just can't sleep
Even the ugliest truth is beautiful. No matter how painful, it provides solace to soul.
Sinners are potential saints - Swami Vivekananda
Two things drive a man, his family and his dreams. Give him a good family and respect his dreams and you'll get the best out of him.
Everyone has something boring to talk about. When you find someone who is not boring at all, you know you are in love.
May be the world will take me away from myself, but it can't take away my thoughts.. my dreams for they don't belong to this world.
They planned, planned and planned and He smiled for it was all His plan.
We are all defective pieces. Love is when two defective pieces fit into each other.
There is already a machine on my desk, don't want another one on my chair.
Don't say sorry or thanks till its really needed or it'll stop having any meaning.
Killing is not really a sin, enjoying the killing is.
I'm nothing but ashes.... a phoenix will rise again
Many a times I don't want to be myself... but there are no better options.
I don't hate myself, its just I am what I hate.
Brilliance and madness are two sides of the same coin
Money is not the only source of happiness, but its sure one of the best ones.
You don't need a medical certificate to be mad... just be yourself.
People people everywhere, trying to make a living, are they really living??
Dilbert makes me feel better
Behind every man there is a woman, and its upto her to make him successful or devastate him.
I'm not a bad guy, just tired being a good guy.
Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.
Part1--If you can convert your thoughts into other's feelings, you are one of those who rules this world. Part2--What you feel are actually the thoughts of those who have been ruling this world. (agam)

Does Earth revolves aroud Sun ??

2009-09-19T20:22:00.002+05:30

Warning: I am no astronomer or a researcher. Everything below are my random thoughts :P

Does Earth revolves around Sun? Or is it the other way round? Yeah... I know Galileo told this four centuries ago that its Earth that revolves around Sun, but this doesn't means that I can't raise a doubt.. :D :P.

It was around two months back when I was working in my office and this popped into my head. I pinged my colleagues to know their opinion and it was declared that I was getting mad [eh eh eh]. Anyway, back to the point: does Earth really revolves around Sun? Me and everyone else has been taught this in school. But I remember reading another thing, that if two bodies are in motion then both of them are revolving around each other. So, when you say which one is revolving around the other one, it totally depends on the frame of reference. With respect to Earth's frame of reference isn't it absolutely correct that Sun, Moon and all other celestial bodies are revolving around Earth?

Just a thought, may be Sun and Earth are revolving around the combined center of mass (you can extend this for all planets). The center of mass would be closer to Sun so, its revolving in a small circle and the Earth is revolving in a bigger circle. So, when you look from the reference frame of one you can see the other revolving in an elliptical orbit!

Yeah, this all may not make any sense, but it just came back to my mind.. so I thought to put it down..

Broke my leg..

2009-08-24T11:19:00.003+05:30

It was supposed to be a two day trip to mumbai that became 7 weeks of bed rest. Last to last weekend I visited my brother in mumbai, went to lonavala on Sunday along with my bhai n bhabhi. At bhushi dam I slipped on a big rock, at first I laughed and nothing seemed wrong till I tried to get up, but then I realized that I cant move my right leg. Everytime I tried moving my leg, or someone helped me move it, I felt something moving in my upper thigh, there was a little swelling too. Anyway, I got up while 2-3 people held me with my arms. I was not able to put my leg down because of pain. Somehow I was made to sit on a chair and 6 people picked the chair to get me to the main road where I was seated in an auto rikshaw that took me to the hospital. The doctor at the hospital looked at my right leg which was about an inch shorter than my left leg and declared that I have fractured my leg. Now the question was where and how severe it was. He suggested two X-Rays: one for thigh and other for pelvis. Finally we found that I broke my Femur where it connects to Pelvis. The doctor suggested to take me to a mumbai hospital where I can be taken good care of as the fracture looked really bad. Then came Ramdas, a wardboy in the hospital who very carefully straightend my leg and tied it to a frame this reduced the pain to a large extent and it was now easier to move from bed to stretcher and then to a car that brought me to Vashi's MGM hospital.

Next day I was operated and the doctor said that the fracture was bad but the operation was successful. I was in hospital for a week and then I was discharged on the Independence day :) with a recommendation of 6 weeks bedrest before I can put weight on my right leg and try walking without supports. Today I'll see my doctor again, my stitches are to be removed. Apart from the pain and bed rest, the better side of the whole incidence is:

o my whole family is together at my brother's place

o all I have to do is eat, sleep, watch TV!!!

[edit] I don't know if anyone of those will ever read this post, but i really want to thank those guys who helped me to get to the auto rikshaw, without them i really would have been in a big trouble.

Photo to vector art

2009-07-26T11:59:00.007+05:30

After a long time... another tutorial!
Converting a photo into vector art. Using this method you can quickly and easily change a photo into vector art. Following is the final result of this tutorial:

1] Open the image in GIMP. I wanted to have just myself in the final result, so used scissor select tool to crop myself out from the photograph

2] Use Filter | Blur | Gaussian Blur tool 2-3 times to smoothen the image.

3] Now use Colors | Posterize tool to reduce the number of colors. I used 5 colors, you can use less or more. After you apply the changes, the image looks very much like the final result, but its still not a vector image!

4] Next thing we'll do is creating paths from these different colors. Use the 'Select by color' tool to select all regions with black color in the image.

5] If you see closely, at many places there are very thin selections made which we probably don't want in the final image. We need to clear those selections before we proceed. Click on the 'Quick mask' button in the bottom-left of the image window. Use the Filter | Blur | Gaussian blur tool, to blur the quick mask. Blurring would cause very thin transparent regions in the quick mask to be filled.

6] The blurring causes very thin transparent regions to be filled, but they are still not completely filled. Use Colors | threshold tool. Apply a threshold value such that the small regions are now filled.

7] Click again on the quick mask button to get back to normal mode. You should see that most of the thin selections are removed. If there still are some regions that you want to deselect, you can do it manually. Because of the previous step, the size of selection is slightly reduced. Use Select | Grow tool to grow the selection by few pixels so that the selection is slightly bigger than the original black color region.

8] Select | To path tool will create a path using the selection, i.e. a path representing whole black region. Rename the path to '1'.

9] Do the same steps to create paths for all five colors, and rename the paths to 1,2,3,4,5.

10] The paths created are very complex and have a many nymber of nodes. We need to simplify these paths. Open the paths dialog, right click on each of the path and export them as .svg files.

11] Now open one of these .svg files in Inkscape and double click on the path [an object in inkscape] and press ctrl+L, this would simplify the path and reduce the number of nodes. Save the .svg file.

12] Do the same thing for other .svg files.

13] Rename the existing paths in GIMP or delete them and import the modified paths from the .svg files. To import right click in the paths window and click import.

14] Double click on a path, this would show the path and select the paths tool in the toolbox. Click the select from path button to get a selection, create a new layer and fill the selection with some color. Similarly create a layer for all paths and fill them with different colors. I used the same 5 colors that the posterize tool used.

[15] Done! You can play around with other things, like I added a gray background and a shadow.

Death

2009-07-12T01:00:00.005+05:30

"Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back"

I am not sure if you are a movie freak(neither am I as much as it sounds) but what I realized is, every time I watch a good movie again, I see new things or I'd rather say I feel a new things. Last night I watched Gladiator 'again'. This time what caught my attention was death. I am not really afraid of dying because I know for sure one day I 'will' die, but what bothers me is will I be able to smile back at my death. I know that I am not ready right now. Recently I had two road accidents (believe or not but both of them were not my mistake, I am not a reckless driver :) ). Truly speaking, I felt nothing 'during' the accident, but the moment I picked myself up, I was thinking what if this was more severe and I was killed, and I wasn't smiling at the whole incident. Lucky guy I am, nothing happened to me except some minor scratches(touchwood), but what I am thinking now is will I be able to smile at my death when (whenever and however it comes) I'll face it?

Enhance colors using HSV components

2009-05-05T19:54:00.006+05:30

Following tutorial shows how to enhance colors of a photograph.
There are several ways to enhance colors of a photograph. Two of the methods are really simple and just require a few clicks. I'll be focusing mainly on the third method that uses the HSV components.

Following are the two test images that I'll be using:

First method - using GIMP's inbuilt color enhance option
GIMP has an inbuilt option to enhance colors[ Colors | Auto | Color Enhance]. Sometimes this option is just enough to do the job but sometimes the output is not very satisfying, moreover it doesn't gives you any control over how much enhancement you need.

Following are the two images after applying GIMP's inbuilt color enhancement:

As you can see, the first image looks much better, there seems to be more scope of color enhancement in the second image.

Second Method - Color saturation
The second method is also pretty simple. We can increase the color saturation in the image to get the desired result. Open the Hue-Saturation dialog [Colors | Hue-Saturation ]. Make sure primary color is selected as "Master". Now increase the saturation using the slider to enhance the colors. You can also play with the lightness to get the desired result.

Following are the results that I got after applying this method on the original images

For this one I used a saturation value of 80, and lightness value of 5

For this one I used a saturation value of 50

Third method - Using HSV components
This method gives us a little more control over how the saturation and the lightness is changed and with some trial and error it can give us much better results. If you don't know what is HSV color model, you must read a little about it.

1] First thing to do is to decompose the image into its HSV components. To do this select [ Colors | Components | Decompose ]. Chose the HSV color model, and check the "decompose as layers" checkbox. Click "ok".

2] You should get another image with 3 layers representing the H(ue), S(aturation), V(alue) components of the original image.

3] We'll be working only on the "saturation" and the "value" layers.

4] First, the saturation layer. You can use the levels or curves to enhance the saturation layer. To see the effect of the change you made, select [ Colors | Components | Recompose ], this would recompose the image using these layers.

I used levels to change the saturation layer. Following is the screenshot of it:

This is what I got after recomposing the image:

5] Now, the value layer. This layer represents the intensity of the colors in the image. I used the levels to enhance this layer. Following are the settings I used:

This is what I got after recomposing the image:

Similarly, I applied the same steps as above on the second image. Following are the screenshots of the intermediate steps and the final result:

Man is an animal

2009-04-28T15:15:00.003+05:30

"Man is an animal", did I miss something? Oh yes! "social". "Man is a social animal", I remember reading that somewhere when I was in school. It sounded alright back then, but now, something seems wrong now or am I wrong now? I guess the more appropriate thing would be to say "Man is an anti-social animal".

To me it seems man created this whole concept of society just to cater to his anti-social nature. How can man remain anti-social when there is no society? Man setups all these rules for society and then just goes ahead and bashes them. What's the purpose of society? The purpose of society is supposed to be people coming together to support each other and make a better living. What really is happening in the name of society? People coming together to get benefit at the cost of others. They don't want to be better than others, they just want to prove that they are better than others. They'll look for things to ridicule other people, show them down, prove their own superiority. They love to criticize other countries, other religions, other castes, other societies, as if they are the chosen ones bestowed upon with all the superiority.

I think it would have been better if man was just an animal rather than a social animal.

p.s. Gupta ji, in the comment of last post you said "The day you will see a pig and human as equal, you will be a happy person". May be pigs are happier than men, probably they see us no different from them. :D

The more we learn the lesser we know

2009-04-13T16:28:00.006+05:30

"The more we learn the lesser we know", sounds preposterous, but is it?
All the time I see the learned people struggling every day to learn more, to do more, to get more, behaving as if they got nothing, no time to take a time off, while the unlearned ones keep on enjoying their ignorance. The more we learn seems to take away much more from us. Everytime we learn something it opens up doors to many other things that we don't know and make us desperate for knowing more. The question is learning might be making us desperate to know more, but how does it cause to know less?

Lets say, knowing something gets you a positive point, and not knowing something gives you a negative point, the things that you don't know about (not even that you don't know it) gets you a zero. You might ask, whats the basis for this scheme? Well, I chose this scheme because I assume absolute knowledge is bliss, because when you know everything, you don't have to worry or fear, think or do anything about anything and your mind and soul are at peace, so knowing something gets you a positive point, a maximum score indicates bliss. As I see in my daily life, being aware of something that you don't know causes some negative effect that takes you away from this bliss, so a negative point for it, While not knowing about something (not even that you don't know it) just doesn't causes any effect, so a zero.

When a child is born he is at zero level, he knows nothing about anything. As he learns some new thing [getting a positive point for it :)], he learns about many more things that he doesnt know [and thus getting a negative point for each of them :(], the net result is: he moves to a negative level. As this *learning* continues he collects some positive points and many more negative points thereby continuously moving towards negative side, away from bliss.

Knowledge is boundless (and so, bliss is impossible, but a high positive score may be close to bliss), so a state never comes when a person is already aware of everything he doesn't know so that he can fetch no more negatives and then just continue moving towards bliss learning about everything he doesn't know. Everytime we learn something new, this boundlessness of knowledge just keeps us moving away from bliss or the absolute knowledge, and so "The more we learn the lesser we know".

[This post is dedicated to the highest positive scorer: Gupta ji]

Put yourself on banner

2009-04-02T10:29:00.007+05:30

Couldn't find a good photograph of mine to use (I am not photogenic), so I used Daniel Craig :D. This tutorial shows how to put a photograph on a hoarding. Nothing complex, just a simple thing. It just came across my mind, so I thought to write a tutorial.

GIMP version - 2.6.4
Image size - hoarding (1024x768), Casino royale poster(799x403)

Here are the two images that I started with

..this is what I ended up with

Following is what I did:
1] Open up the hoarding image in GIMP. Now, before doing anything else we need to make sure that the image that we are going to put on the hoarding is in (almost) same aspect ratio as the hoarding. To get the aspect ratio of the hoarding use the 'Measure Tool' to get the height and width of the hoarding, as shown below:

For the images I used the aspect ratio came out 2:1 which almost same as the image, so I didn't have to crop the image. If the ratio is different, make sure you crop the image before putting it on the hoarding.

2] Open the second image as layer. I'll call this layer as "poster layer". To put the image on the hoarding, use the 'Perspective Tool'. Reduce the poster layer opacity and in the perspective options select 'Preview' as 'Outline', this is not necessary to do, but it will help.

3] This is what I got after applying the perspective transformation.

4] Now, we need to do some clean-up stuff. As you can see the corners of the hoarding are round, there are few cables infront of the hoarding, a light at the bottom. Add a layer mask to the poster layer. Reduce the layer opacity so that we can see the hoarding border through it. Select the layer mask and paint black color over the area that we don't want to be visible. You can zoom in to do it neatly

5] This is what I got after rounding the corners:

6] Now, the cables: hide the poster layer, select path tool to create a path over the cables. Select the layer mask and "stroke path" with black color. I guess most of the cables in front of any such hoarding should be easy to handle.

Similarly, do the same thing for other cables. This is what I got:

7] Almost done, just the final touch. The colors in the poster look too bright compared to the surroundings. Reduce the brightness and contrast a little for the poster layer.

8] And then, here is the final result

Image to polaroid collage

2009-02-16T18:50:00.010+05:30

Hmmm.. it seems I've been busy for some time (not really ;-)). Anyway here comes another GIMP tutorial that I wanted to write from some time, but couldn't. Better late than never :-)

Following tutorial is to get a polaroid collage effect on an image. What I am going to do is just place some randomly rotated polaroid frames that we will create in step [3]. To give it a little realistic look we will use shadows and Curve Bend tool.

GIMP version: 2.6.4
Image size: 1024 x 768

Before we start just preview of what I finally got:

1] Create a new image in GIMP of size same as original image (i.e. 1024 x 768 here). The idea is to create all the frames and finally put the original image in the background.

2] Hide the background layer and create a new transparent layer which is 300px wide and 400px high, and name it "frame".

3] Now add little off-white borders to the layer. I used (240, 240, 240) color. Make the borders 10px wide on left, top and right side and 30 px wide on the bottom side. You can use the rectangle select and the bucket fill tools. After drawing the borders you must have something like this:

4] Now create a transparent layer, and name it as "collage". We will use buffer to temporarily put a frame, then rotate and distort it a little, and then put on the "collage" layer.

5] Lets start with the first frame. Select layer "frame" hit Ctrl+A to select the frame that we made. Select layer "buffer" and hit Ctrl+V to paste, but don't merge down the floating layer yet. Select Filters | Distorts | Curve Bend, and slightly bend the upper curve, press copy button to copy the same curve to the lower region. Press ok to apply the transformation. You should get something like this:

6] Now, take the rotate tool and rotate the floating layer with some random amount.

7] Select Filters | Light and Shadow | Drop Shadow, and drop a shadow. I used the x-y offset as 5 and blur radius as 8, opacity as 80.

8] Now merge down the floating layer on the layer "buffer". Rearrange the layers as "buffer", "Drop Shadow" and "collage". Merge down the "shadow" layer to the "collage" layer. Select the layer "buffer", take the "fuzzy select" tool and click inside the blank area in the frame. Now merge down the "buffer" layer to the "collage" layer. Now press delete to delete the selected area. This is what I got after this step:

9] As you would have noticed that the "buffer" layer is lost. Create another "buffer" layer. and repeat the steps 5-6-7-8 several times, with frames rotated with different angles, distorted with different amount, and pasted at different places.

10] After repeating steps 5-6-7-8 several times, I got this:

11] Now, just place the original image in the background. To get better results you may place the original image in the background before and then put the frames according to the image.

We are all Sick!

2009-01-27T18:03:00.001+05:30

We are all sick.

Did I say.. sick?

Yes I did!

Oh..Really? Is it so..What kind of sickness?

Nature created us for two reasons survival and growth of race, it seems to be the way with every other species.

So? what it has to do with sickness? Man seems to be doing a good job.

Oh yeah.. man seems to be doing a good job, but not as good as other animals.

What? Do I mean other animals are doing better than man. I must have lost my mind.

That's it, that's the sickness I'm talking about.

What? Do I mean man has gone crazy?

Yeah, in a way. Man would have done a great job, but he got infected.

Infected with what?

With emotions! He started to feel things other than survival and growth of race.
He started feeling Love, Hate, Pride, Grief and it let everything to this imbalance. Every other species tries to maintain equilibrium, they eat, sleep, reproduce, do everything in balance. They don't kill each other until and unless to survive or to reproduce.

I guess I am right, everything man does just makes the situation more worse. Man is destroying this beautiful Earth which otherwise would have been much more beautiful than it is now. We are destroying everything. We all really are sick.

Cool Water Text Effect

2009-01-20T10:50:00.006+05:30

Another GIMP Tutorial :D

Following tutorial is to create a water text effect.

A quick google search got me the following image of a wood surface on which we will add our water text effect.

This is what I got finally

image size: 1024x678
GIMP version - 2.6.2

Following are the steps that I followed

1] Open image in GIMP.

2] Add a new text layer and add text in white color with some hand-writing font so that it looks more realistic.

3] Take a white brush and paint some spots that we'll turn into water drops like the following image:

4] Set layer size to image size.

5] Duplicate the layer with text (Lets call them t1 and t2).

6] Right click on layer 't2' in layers dialog and select 'Alpha to Selection'. This would select the non transparent region.

7] Switch to channel window and add a new channel. Set channel opacity to 100, and tick 'Initialize from Selection' option. Now deselect all and blur the channel three times with blur raius as 7, 4, 1. Then hide the channel.

8] Now we will add some lighting effect to the layer 't2' using the channel we created as bumpmap. You can use following settings:

After applying the changes you must have something like this:

9] Select layer 't2', Lock the alpha channel (this option is towards top of the layers dialog), then blur the layer with blur radius as 4px. Unlock the alpha channel.

10] Select Colors | Color to Alpha, and choose a mid gray color. This should give you something like this

11] Now we will add some shadow to give a little more realistic look. Right Click on the 't1' layer and select 'Alpha to Selection'. Drop a shadow offset to x:-2, y:1 and alpha set to 50%.

12] There is too much *white* in the image, select the 't2' layer, Colors | Curves, select channel as Alpha and slightly move the curve downwards till you have something like this:

13] We are almost done, just need to add a slight refraction effect. Select layer 't1' and again make a selection from alpha. Now select the wooden surface layer (keeping the selection). Select Filters | Distort | Whirl and pinch, set angle to 60, radius to 2. Select Filters | Distort | Lens Distortion, Set Main:-25, Zoom:2.

14] Done!! This is what I have finally:

Add colors to your pics : Lomo Effect

2009-01-16T16:56:00.008+05:30

While browsing through some photoshop tutorials, I came across 'Lomo Effect'. There seem to be lot of Photoshop tutorials to add lomo effect to your pictures, so I thought to write one for GIMP.

I used GIMP 2.6.2
image resolution 1024x768

Original image

Final image

1] Open your image in GIMP.

2] Select whole photo using 'Select | All'

3] Shrink the selection by 75 pixels (Select | Shrink)

4] Feather the selection by 300 pixels (Select | Feather)

5] Invert the selection (Select | Invert)

6] Create a new transparent layer and select it

7] Take the gradient tool, set shape to 'Radial', and add a white to black gradient from center of phot to the bottom side. You must get something like this:

8] Set the gradient layer mode to overlay.

9] If the border looks too dark, reduce the opacity of the gradient layer or ifs less dark then duplicat the gradient layer (make sure the duplicate layer is also set to overlay mode). I got the following result after duplicating the layer.

10] Flatten the image (Image | Flatten Image)

11] Open the Color curves dialog (Colors | Curves), set channel to values and apply an 'S' curve, something like this:

12] Apply the changes.

Done!!

Be a sketch artist

2009-01-02T16:20:00.011+05:30

Once I was searching for GIMP tutorials to convert a photograph to a pencil sketch. Almost all tutorials I found used same technique which I think can be roughly summarized as finding edges in the image and inverting the colors. Though the results were fine they seemed to lack something, and then I thought of adding the diagonal pencil strokes.

I used GIMP 2.6.2 and a 1024x768 sized image.

Original Image:

Final Image:

Following are the steps (including the ones I learned from other tutorials)

1] Open the image in GIMP

2] Duplicate the layer

3] Gaussian blur the top layer. I used the blur radius as 5 pixels.

5] Invert colors of the blurred layer, and set its transparency to 50%.

6] You should have something like this.

7] Merge down the top layer.

8] Open colors | Levels, set the minimum and maximum input levels as 100 and 155 as below.

9] Desaturate the layer

10] Open Colors | Levels, adjust the input levels so as to get something similar to the following

11] Now Duplicate this layer. Hide the top layer and select the second one.

12] Select Filters | Blur | Motion Blur. Select blur type as Linear, length as 10 angle as 135. Repeat motion blur with angle changed to 315. You should get something as:

13] Unhide the first layer set its transparency to 20%. Merge down the top layer with the blurred layer.

14] Select Colors | Contrast. Increase the contrast slowly till image looks more like a pencil sketch. I increased the contrast to a value of 15, to get the following result

15] Now we need to add some more random pencil strokes. Add a new transparent layer of size 512x384 i.e. of half width and height of the image.

16] Select Fileters | Noise | Hurl. Select a random seed. Set randomization% to 10 and repeat to 1. This should add some random dots to the layer.

17] Select Layer | Scale layer. Scale the layer to image size select interpolation as cubic. Move the layer if necessary to overlap the image correctly. You will have something like this

18] Select Colors | brightness and Contrast. Set Brightness to minimum and Contrast to maximum.

19] Now again apply motion blur on this layer as previously. But keep the length as 20.

20] Again merge down the blurred layer.

21] Now, Select Colors | Brightness-Contrast. Reduce the brightness and increase the contrast to get something like this:

22] Now you can apply canvas from Filters | Artistic | Apply Canvas, to give it a more realistic look. Here is the final image that I got after applying canvas:

Done!!

create your twin

2008-11-21T14:59:00.016+05:30

Recently Parag saw a photograph somewhere with a person sitting at two places in the same photograph. He wanted to do something similar and asked me if I can help. Giving it a thought I found that its not that difficult. Following is what I did:

You'll need an image manipulation software, I used GIMP 2.6.2. Its open source and freely available.

1] First thing to do is to take two pictures of yours. While taking the pictures utmost care must be taken that the camera (and other objects in the scene) are not moved. Try to make sure that everything else except you in the pictures should remain still. For example following are the two pictures that Parag gave me (resized to 1024x768):

2] Next thing you need to do is open these images in GIMP. You can use "File | Open as Layers" to open the two images as two layers. You should have something like this:

3] Hide the first layer (click on the eye against the first layer in the layers dialog)

4] Take the "Scissors Select Tool" and use it to select the person in the second layer (you can also use "Free Select Tool") try to keep the selection close to the person.

5] Grow the selection using "Select | Grow" so that some more area around the person is selected. I grew the selection by 25px. You shoud have something as below:

6] Make the first layer visible (make sure the selection is not lost). Right click on the layer and select "Add layer mask". Select "White (full opacity)" in the dialog and click "Add". You should see that there is another white layer added to the right of the first layer.

7] Click on the layer mask added, select the "Bucket Fill Tool", make sure that foreground color is set to black and the selection is still there. Click inside the selection. This should fill the selected area on the layer mask with black colour. Also, the person in the second layer should become visible. You can lose the selection now.

8] Its almost done, but there might be some sharp color changes around the second person because of the change in the lighting. To Fix this we will blur the layer mask a bit so that the colours of the two layers are blended. Select the layer mask and select gaussian blur from "Filter | Blur | Gaussian Blur". Select radius something less than how much we grew the selection, I used 22px.

9] Done!!

Some other images I made:

Mind and God

2008-10-17T16:35:00.005+05:30

Mind and God
--------------
After my previous post, last week I had a discussion with Agam. He has some thoughts similar to mine. He was planning to write a book on this topic but it appears he lost his interest for some reason. Anyway, I suggested him to blog it so that if he ever thinks again to write a book, it could help, moreover he'll get other people's comments as well, which could help improving the content. But I guess he wasn't interested in putting it down anyway. So, here I am putting his content my way. There might be places where I deviate from his theory, miss some points, or add something, but I already said I'm putting it my way!

Agam's theory is based on a simple postulate:
Our mind can emit electromagnetic waves AND it can also absorb them.

With this he tried to explain me the existence of God and various other things that we see around us.

Our mind has three levels of consciousness:

1] The Conscious Mind - This is what we know very well. All that we think or do is taken care by our conscious mind. Its very logical in nature, puts things together so that they make sense.

2] The Subconscious Mind - Next to the Conscious Mind, comes the Subconscious Mind. We don't actually see it working, but we can feel its presence through intuitions, involuntary actions, dreams, deja vu. Anything that happens automatically without our consent i.e. without our conscious mind coming into action. The Subconscious Mind is not very logical, though it can be very accurate at times.

3] The Unconscious Mind - Last comes the Unconscious Mind. The Unconscious Mind is the one that emits and absorbs the electromagnetic waves. It communicates with the rest of the universe. Its our sixth sense that gets us information that the other five senses don't or can't get.

Effect of these three levels of our mind on our lives:

The conscious mind does everything we want to do. It represents "us" thinking and doing what we "want" it to do. That doesn't needs much explanation.

Coming to the Subconscious Mind. It handle our intuitions, dreams, luck etc. Subconscious Mind keeps on getting inputs from the our 5 senses and the Unconscious Mind (the sixth sense). It filters out things not usually required by the Conscious Mind, puts them away for its own use and gives the rest information to the Conscious Mind. Few things I'd like to explain on this logic:

o Sometimes it happens, that you read about something or someone talks about it, and from that point you notice or find something closely related to it everywhere. These closely related things were always there, but you wonder that you never noticed them before. Earlier the Subconscious Mind was filtering out that information, but not anymore.

o Sometimes you are looking for something, say a pen, you don't know where to find it. Suddenly out of nowhere you look under the pillow, and there it is! May be sometime back you did look at the pen very near to the pillow, but the Subconscious Mind filtered out that piece of information and you never noticed it. While you were looking for it, the Subconscious Mind responded and told the Conscious Mind to look under the pillow.

o The intuitions, dreams, deja vu are all results of the Subconscious Mind processing every bit of information it receives. Since it processess too much information very fast, it doesn't follows a logical path. It jumps from one thing to other. Only when you (Conscious Mind) are too much stressed for something (like finding the pen) it comes for the help, gives a hint and gets back to its work.

o Some people are lucky they just do the right thing at the right time. Its there Subconscious Mind that gives them intuitions to do the right thing.

The Unconscious Mind, I haven't said much about it till now, but it does the most important job: emitting and receiving electromagnetic waves. These mind waves are a way of communicating with the rest of the universe. Every information we receive from our senses, the Subconscious Mind and the Conscious Mind is transmitted by the Unconscious Mind, and the information transmitted by others is absorbed and fed to the Subconscious Mind.

The amazing thing about The Unconscious Mind is that it works at a very low level, it doesn't differentiate itself from the other Unconscious Minds. It works as if there is a single Unconscious Mind located at different places in parts connected to each other with the electromagnetic waves that it emits and absorbs.

Few more things I'd like to point in support of the Unconscious Mind
o Have you ever looked up suddenly and found someone directly looking at you.
o Similarly, have you ever looked at someone and suddenly he/she looks at you.
o When you look at a person for the first time and before your conscious mind brings up its own conclusions about him/her you get a feeling of what kind of person he/she is, which is usually correct.

Many of us have heard about people who can tell your past and future just by seeing your face, hand, or can tell where to find your stolen or lost valuables. The explanation of this based on this theory is that they have a very trained Subconscious Mind. Something similar to a trained Conscious Mind of a mathematician who can do large mental calculations in seconds. When they look at you, their mind tries to recollect all the information you already have knowingly or unknowingly. Based on this information their Subconscious Mind tells them the needed details.

Prayers: Another interesting thing that Agam discussed were prayers. I haven't noticed much, but according to him its true that when you pray for others they are mostly accepted, but when you pray for yourself they are not accepted that often. Some people get their most of the prayers answered, while others get no success. His logic with respect to the things I said above is that, when you pray for others, you mostly say their name or visualize them. Your prayer gets registered in the (collective) Unconsious Mind, which immediately starts working for it. The visualization or being specific about their name helps the Unconscious Mind to do the job efficiently and accurately. While you pray for yourself, they prayers are something like this "oh God! I want to be a good singer". When the Unconscious Mind gets this, he doesn't know who exactly wants to a good singer? All he knows is a "I" or "me". It choses the nearest match it finds depending upon the rest of the information that it got with the payer. Sometimes its you, sometimes someone else. So, finally your prayer does gets answered, but in favour of someone else.

This again reminds me of the Affirmations. The correct way of writing affirmations was to include your name in it, and visualize the results. Thus making it easier for the Unconscious Mind to work for you. So, if you think that God doesn't listens to your prayer, try prying this way i.e. mentioning your name and visualizing yourself, and if it comes true, do mention it in this blog's comment! I'd really like to know if it works.

While thinking about all this, an earlier thought was that their is no God. But now it seems as if this collection of Unconscious Mind is the God. God, who is present everywhere, invisible to our eyes, knows everything, can control everyone, who listens to our prayers, God who resides in us.

God, Destiny etc

2008-09-24T14:38:00.002+05:30

God, Destiny etc
----------------

Ever since I was a child I have heard about God and Destiny. God I was told is an omnipotent supreme power who watches everyone and rewards or punishes everyone's deeds. A man can always make his choice of Good and Bad. Depending on what choices he makes, he goes to Heaven as a reward of Good choices or to Hell as a punishment for Bad choices. Destiny was on other hand meant that (the same) God has decided the paths of our life. Whatever happens is just his wish. Earlier these two facts seemed to bother me a lot. I just couldn't understand if everything what I do was God's wish, why should I be punished for it. He could have used me better!
That was almost 17-18 years ago. As I grew up, slowly I started following the "hybrid" way that's followed by most of us. If I made a good choice, I felt good, feeling I'm making my way to heaven. If I made a bad choice, blamed it on destiny.

Things went on as they were, until I got hold of Scott Adams' The Dilbert Future. In his book Adams talked about 'Affirmations' (Which he read in another book). Affirmations are as weird as they appear. You write down your goals fifteen times a day and then somehow they come true as if by magic. Those who have not heard about affirmations I'll brief it here:

1. Have a specific goal, one that you can visualize.
2. Write it down fifteen times in a row, once a day, using the form:
"I, [your name] , WILL GET/DO/ACCOMPLISH WHATEVER"
3. There's no set time to expect results, but you should see some movement towards the objective
4. It doesn't matters if you forget to write it for a few days or if you typed it.
5. You don't need to have faith in affirmations in order for the process to work. You should get the same results if you wrote the affirmations while thinking the whole thing is a load of crap.

This was something different from everything that I had known. It made me to think a bit more; What if there is no God or Destiny. There is no one watching us and we are free to do whatever we want to. Even if we make Bad choices there's no one to punish except other people in the world. Whatever happens in our life is a result of everyone wanting something. Our decisions/choices/actions are affected by the people around us.

Assume everyone in this world is a variable that keeps on changing its value. A value represents the variable's current state. While we do our day to day work, the variables(we) keep on changing their values such that
F( f1(v1), f2(v2), f3(v3)....) = K,
F, a function of our values always maintains a constant value. Here v1, v2, v3... variables represent people. f1, f2, f3.. are functions that represents the effect of the variables on the whole world. So, a person living in seclusion might have a function that results in a very small value to effect other variables(people), for a very important person it might result in a very big value that can affect other variables(people) in a significant way. K is a universal constant, that forces all variables to maintain a balance. Putting it in simpler words, whatever we do or think affects everyone else or the, actions and thought of others determine our destiny.

Linking this theory with affirmations, when I write the same thing again and again, thinking of what I want, keeping it as specific as possible, visualizing it in my mind, I am just forcing other people(variables) to change so that I can achieve my desired state. The points (3), (4) and (5) are the views of Adams (as it appears from the text in his book). What I believe, is that it certainly matters how desperately you want to achieve your goal. The more desperate and focused you are while writing, the more force you put on other variables, and the faster you should get results.

Infact, from what I said earlier, I believe you can even change past! As we assumed that every person is a variable that keeps on changing its value. If you can concentrate hard and long enough to change all other variables to a new value, a new value that completely changes their thoughts, their memories, what they remember of the past, then you have already changed the past.

Whatever I have said are just my random thoughts and as I let my mind wander more another question pops up in my mind. Earlier I wondered what if there is no God or Destiny, now I think, if our thoughts and actions affect everything happening in this world, with so many people believing that there is a God, we might have created a real God. Someone with all those supreme powers to do anything. Still worse, with everyday we think that things are not coming our way and the God (that we created) is being unfair to us, we might be forcing Him to be more unfair, turning him into a devil that does good to no one, who's unfair, unjust, merciless to everyone.

This all gets me back to my childhood, with just one thought, have faith in God, always remember that He is your friend and He will be. The more you doubt Him the less He'll help you out. With this I now have a new image of God in my mind. He has no interest in rewarding or punishing me. He's a friend who'll always help me out no matter how difficult the situation is, and as long as I believe in Him, He'll always be on my side.

Google Chrome

2008-09-04T10:51:00.002+05:30

Finally google launched its browser "Chrome" but truly speaking it didn't impress me much.
The first thing that I came to know was about the objectionable EULA for chrome. The original license agreement had following lines in its setion 11:

11.1 ...By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services...

Summing up in simpler words by agreeing to this license a user gives Google right to:
o Save his bank id and password..
o Display his private albums publicly..
o Share his private information with other companies..
o Use any copyright material he publishes through Chrome..

Another line says that:
11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

No, I don't have power to grant Google access to my company's forum, which means I (and millions of other users) can't use Chrome. And if a user agrees to the above license, its he who is responsible for any information leak that Google can do, because agreeing to the license means that he has the authority to grant these rights to Google. which he doesn't has.

And, after all this Google puts out a statement saying the terms of service for Chrome was simply copied from other applications it has been designing and the overly intrusive copyright aspects were a mistake and will be corrected.
I don't believe that a company like Google doesn't inspects its license agreements closely before presenting them. I suspect if it was just a trick on common user who usually don't read the license agreements before signing up for web services or software. This way Google would get access to almost everything (private or public) available on internet without being held responsible for anything, as according to the license its the user who is lying by saying that he has the authority to allow Google to use all the sensitive information on his company's website that otherwise is only available to the site members!!

According to the latest updates Google modified the EULA to remove these lines. What bothers me is the fact that Chrome was designed to send everything to the Google servers, just removing these lines from the agreement doesn't means that the content is not being sent to the Google servers. Till now many users would have downloaded and installed Chrome that would be sending loads of information to the Google servers right now. Either Google would be storing that information anyway or would be just discarding it thereby wasting network bandwidth. What I believe is that Google is a company that can store all this sensitive information and keep it hidden so that they can't be held.

Till now I am pretty satisfied with Firefox 3, and don't really see a reason to switch to Chrome.