My Technophilic Musings

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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I’ve known about ImageMagick tools for quite some time now but never dabbled with it. A couple of weeks ago I played with it for some time (notice the new cascaded polaroid pics header above) and was amazed even more. Few of its shining features:

• It has almost unlimited features to manipulate your images through its tools like convert, montage, mogrify etc and their long list of options.
• It is available for Windows, Linux and Mac as well.
• Runs on web servers also (most of those nifty image sites use it for run time image manipulation)
• It is amazingly fast.
• Runs on the command line, which means batching of operations can be done and is also good for butter fingered people like me who are clumsy with GUI based image manipulation programs
• Has modules for interfacing with C, perl, php, C++, C#, java, etc. So, you can create your own applications around it.
• It’s FREE (as in speech and as in beer)
• It has an amazing documentation over at imagemagick.org and also a very thriving community, so help is just a few clicks away.

As a very rudimentary sample of what it can do for you, take a look at my blog’s header above. I just gave it a few pics and ran a command, and it resized them, turned them into polaroid pics, rotated them at random angles, made the background transparent, strung them together to make a webpage header/banner.

Since the command was specific for the number and names of images, I made a simple perl script to automate the command making process so you can also download this script (link at the end of post) and run it to create your own header. (You might want to tweak the $w and $h variables in the script to specify your header’s width and height). Running it would be like

After I made this script, I came across Stas Bekman’s photo gallery which has a much better and cool stack effect with photos. And he generously agreed to share his script (much more sophisticated than my my few lines) with me. His script is also attached below.

Polaroid web header Creation Script

Stas Bekman's Image Stacking script

Let me know if you use any of these scripts (as it is or after modifying them) to create any cool effects.

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Quote of the day: Trust no one. Question Everything. - Deus Ex

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: cli, convert, Effects, ImageMagick, images, linux, mac, mogrify, montage, Panorama, perl, Photo Manipulation, scripts, Stack, Stas Bekman, windows

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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Just read on BGR, that RIM will have to close down its BlackBerry service in India if they don’t allow our government to snoop on every little piece of data that goes through it. WTF? On an even more serious note, if they do comply, then will the same demand be made to all the ISPs? I just shudder at the mere thought of this…Quotin BGR below

It looks as if the Indian government is not content with its inability to decrypt their citizens BlackBerry e-mails, and is threatening a shutdown of Research In Motion’s devices in the country as punishment. Business Standard reports that the Indian government desires access to RIM’s proprietary e-mail network, in order to monitor e-mails being sent and received through the country. It is reported that a meeting will take place on March 14th, involving RIM representatives, members of wireless companies within the country, and representatives of the Indian government.

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Quote of the day: Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: BGR, BlackBerry, boy genious reports, Government, Idiocy, India, Research In Motion, RIM, shutdown Blackberry

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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A gaping mouth was all I had when my 3 year ol’ Canon Powershot S1 IS’s LCD/EVF went blank all of a sudden a few months ago. Nothing could be seen, clicking the picture button resulted in blank pics. Googling about it revealed an advisory by Canon, stating that it is a known issue with the CCD image sensor. Canon impressed me by that notice when they said they will fix it for free, even for cameras out of warranty period, and will also pay to-and-fro shipping. Contacting canon support in India (support, in India? Is that a joke?) resulted in just their ignorance about any such advisory.

Undeterred, I sent the camera to the land of dreams (USA) with a friend, e-mailed the Canon USA support at carecenter@cits.canon.com with my predicament, and they promptly sent shipping labels to my friend. So far so good. But a couple of months went by, with no word from them. Customer support told me they are awaiting parts. Sad I was that day .

One fine day, I just checked the status of the return shipping label on a whim, and found that they had shipped my camera back. I was disheartened thinking it had been returned unrepaired, but then my friend called to let me know that they had sent some other camera back. I thought they might have sent some low price, refurbished camera, but atleast a working camera is better than a non-working one.

Today my friend came back from the US, and what do we have? A brand spanking new Canon Powershot S5 IS (8 MP, 12x Optical zoom, flip out and twist LCD). Yessir . Here is a pic of my new baby (Ah, the irony, the clicking powerhouse has been clicked with a low-res phone camera, but anyways.)

Note: Contact canon immediately if you are facing the same problem and your camera is one of these:

- Camcorders: ZR60, ZR65 MC, ZR70 MC, ZR80, ZR85, ZR90, ELURA 40 MC, ELURA 50
- Digital Cameras A60, A70, A75, A300, A310, S230, SD100, SD110, A40(*), A80(*), A85(*), A95(*), S1 IS(*), S60(*), S200(*), S330(*), S400(*), S410(*), S500(*)

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Quote of the day: Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. - Kierkegaard

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blank evf, blank lcd, blank picture, canon, CCD problem, customer care, image sensor problem, powershot, S1 IS, s5 IS

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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Came across this funny, but still thought provoking, definition of an engineer.

(Taken from “The Embedded Muse”, a useful embedded stuff related newsletter published by Jack Ganssel.)

“An engineer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
of being able to turn out with prolific fortitude infinite strings of
incomprehensible formulas calculated with micrometric precision from
vague assumptions which are based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive experiments carried out with instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of questionable mentality and doubtful reliability
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confusing a hopelessly
chimerical group of esoteric fanatics referred to altogether too
frequently as technicians.”

Crossposted to both my blogs: My Technophilic Musings and Never Knew I Was Living In The World

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Quote of the day: Trust no one. Question Everything. - Deus Ex

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: definition, embedded, engineer, funny definition, funny quote, ganssel, jack ganssel, muse, newsletter, quote, The Embedded Muse