Mar 7, 2014

City of Portrait hunters!

City, such interesting place it is with such interesting people. City, where every day is another odd day for accidental encounter with interesting people, subject of inspiration, portraits!

Every thinking face on a street and every thought engrossed expressions on a public transport here is portrait worthy character it seems. Expressions with hints of accumulated experience still hidden behind unfathomable  layers of time, and wrapped under imposed smile, only occasionally revealed by the true talkative eyes. City filled with such inexhaustible supply of interesting characters is a true shrine for portrait hunters whether artists, photographers, writers or movie directors. 

Feb 9, 2014

Key traits of future cities! #futurecities

[Post By- Anoop Jha]
A complete new mindset is needed to craft future cities-

Focus on judicious use of resources rather than creating abundance.

Focus on leveraging and channelising externalities rather than eliminating it.

Harnessing untapped second hand energy.

Eliminating wastage by design rather than repeated appeal and imposing penalty.

Waste to be increasingly viewed as resource rather than burden.

Focus on eliminatingneed of artificial day-lighting instead of promoting LED.

Engineered to the very core to sustain.

Decide your own workplace rather than “walk to work”.  

Carry your personalised holographic and sonic environment wherever you go. 


Jan 24, 2014

Unfathomable data: are you still scratching the surface?

Take for instance images!

If you have reached at the end of Google image search page, while looking for a random object or word like say "chair" and if you think this is it, here we are staring at the last image of  chair in world ever uploaded online and you start having this feeling that lets change the key word to "modern chair" and next  changing it to "modern designer chair" ; probably you are going in the wrong direction, probably you are approaching it too casually.  Online research is a  serious business whether its data or image. Its far easier to get lost or get disorientated in the   convoluted maze of online data while it needs a serious approach and focused objective to reach where you want to.

Just to get the hint of quantum of information that is floating out there freely online, if you are searching for any image for instance on Google you might get few hundred results now if you search using each of those images using this option called "search by image" you will get another few hundred distinct results for each original image now if you use a  combination of "search by image" and "text" -any text of your choice - you will get another thousand results now if you keep changing the text or combination of text you will keep getting different new results even if you don't change the image used in "search by image". Easy, we are not done yet. Now if you keep changing the "choice of  color" offered  by Google search results you will keep getting further unique results. Other option of image search is to use "random" text along with "text of your choice". 

Now another way is to search for photographs instead of images. Are they any different? Yes, and we are not even talking about twitter or instagram photograph;we are talking about photograph search through Google. Millions of photographs out there, all you have to do is to search for your  choice of text or subject with the several dozens extension names by which different brands of cameras save their files.

True, while still looking for chair, you might not get only "chair" in your search results if you search using above methods but possibility is that you might come across things in course of your search which will inspire you to the core and which might give a whole new direction and meaning to your research, which you can call accidental learning. We haven't  talked about ever flowing ever growing image database of flicker, twitter or instagram even. We haven't talked about text search yet.  

Its not just about research, its about the real fun part of it. Just take a dip in the unfathomable ocean of data its addictive. Be a smart netizen.


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Jan 20, 2014

Digital art is so convenient

You can paint or draw on a touch screen, on the go, deriving primitive sense of satisfaction by applying  paint with your bare hand; without need of arranging the paint brush canvas logistics and all of this without getting your hand wet. Only drawback  is that you will miss the fresh raw smell of paint and oil. Go for it!