BITS ABOUT BYTES

Roopinder Singh

Facebook was banned in Pakistan recently. Now the government has restored the service. Who won, actually, nobody.

The social networking site had come under fire for a competition featuring caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Now, in Islam, no pictorial representation of Prophet Mohammad is allowed and such an act is considered blasphemous. No one has any doubt that the Facebook page was a blatant provocation, intended to cause controversy. The page showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and other religions figures, including those from Hinduism and Christian.

The sensitivity of Islam to illustrations depicting Prophet Muhammad is well-known, more so since the publication of 12 editorial cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005, which resulted in a violent and furious reaction.

A page grab of Facebook

Facebook’s tardy reaction to the concerns expressed by Pakistani authorities is inexplicable, since Pakistan alone has 20 million Internet users, a sizable number. It is not as if Facebook has never removed pages that offend; it does do so from time to time, more so in response to requests by sovereign nations.

To cite just one recent well-documented incident, in December 2009, Facebook shut down a fan page for Massimo Tartaglia, the man who hit Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with a statuette of the Milan cathedral. In the less than 48 hours before it was closed won, the page had almost one lakh users.

Initially, Facebook reportedly responded to Pakistani concerns by saying that the page did not violate its policies, even though they state that “obscene content and the triggering of hate material toward any group, individual, or religion will be banned and removed”.

Dialogue and engagement are always the best ways to get over a situation of conflict. Pakistan has a vibrant Internet community, and this is the time for it to show to the world that it has the intellectual and communicative skills to taken on the challenges posed by the brief ban on Facebook. Too often we condemn others and withdraw into our shells rather than explain our point of view to them.

Banning a website to block a page is often a case of over-reaction, whether it is by the Pakistani authorities who reacted recently, or the Indian attempt to ban 18 blogs that posted extremist views, after the July 11, 2006 Mumbai bomb blasts. The collateral damage, in the form of blocking legitimate activity over the Internet, is simply too great. During the Kargil conflict in 1999, India had banned the site of the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, and action that I then criticised as a knee-jerk reaction. What is the point of blocking something that remains accessible even after it is banned?

While I criticise banning websites, I am also critical of the fact that freedom of speech is often taken to mean that anything goes. This is not so. The cyber world is an extension of the real world, it is another dimension of our normal social interaction, and as such the normal rules of conduct evolved for the civilised world do apply to it.

Thus the site that posts offensive material is, to my mind, should face the consequences of its actions. Facebook should have faced some kind of sanction for posting something that is deeply offensive to millions of people.

Many of the Internet companies were started by geeks at a very young age. The world does not conform to their idealist and somewhat restricted view. The success and tremendous growth of these companies brings makes them a great force with incredible power to change and indeed sometimes redefine social borders in the world. Along with this comes responsibility and the need for caution.

Facebook.com is the leading Website in the world with 540 million unique users, according to Google, its rival. Facebook, reached 35.2 per cent of the total Internet population, and racked up 570 billion page views. Google’s new DoubleClick Ad Planner 1000 list places Yahoo.com, at number two, with 490 million unique visitors.

This is the time for Facebook to grow up. It is already under a fair deal of pressure regarding its privacy policy. People speak of Facebooking rather than e-mailing. The post their status, pictures, favourites, in fact major slices of their whole life, on Facebook. They are thus entitled to know that their privacy is in safe hands, and that the website they are entrusting so much to is a responsible one.When we ask someone to be responsible, we also tell them to have a sense of right and wrong, and to set some boundaries. That’s what grown up behaviour is. Google is only six years old in the conventional sense, but in Internet years, that’s a long, long time.

A message to Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder of Facebook-Grow up. Your baby has grown. Please give it the wherewithal to negotiate the world it is growing up in it. A message for governments that ban Facebook and other social networking sites-don’t shoot the messenger, social networks reflect society, and if you have conflicts, engage those you are in conflict with, banning them just doesn’t work.

This article was printed in the Lifestyle section of The Tribune on June 1, 2010.

You may also like to read my previous columns by clicking here.

An intruging person, Laxmi Kanta Chawla is a politician without being one, a Minister who believes in austerity, stubborn and inflexible. She is a class apart.

Laxmi Kanta Chawla

She has been at loggerheads with some influential doctors, as well as BJP leaders, but is liked by the public because of the very qualities that fail to endear her to her party and fellow politicians. How does she get along with her Akali Dal doppelganger, Manpreet Badal? You will have to read the article that Jangveer Singh and I wrote to find out!

by Roopinder Singh

ONE of the first decisive acts of new British Prime Minister David Cameron was to censure the use of mobile phones, including Blackberries, in Cabinet meetings. His “Not, now. Not here, please” strikes a sixer for cell phone civility, which has been absent from the world in recent days as much as cricket is from Twenty20.

Even as the British Cabinet was meeting to discuss ways to get away from the exertions of forming the Cabinet to being the Cabinet, there were two distracting phone calls and a text, which led to the ban. Ironically, at the same time, back in a country which was once the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, I was sitting in a place where by convention cell phones should not be used - in a place of worship.

We were all there to pay our respects to a wonderful man, a surgeon and a scholar, who had departed us a few months before his 100th birthday. The psalms were soothing, the atmosphere sombre and serene. Till your glance went to someone who was busy texting, or another one who actually took a call!

No doubt, cell phones or mobiles liberate us in many ways. They have revolutionised the way we communicate, and are ubiquitous in their spread. In India, a recent study found out that we have more cell phones than toilets! Not that we need the latter. He who hasn’t seen the sight of a grown-up man (why does it always have to be men?) standing by the roadside, peeing while carrying on a conversation on his mobile simultaneously, ain’t seen nothing yet.

Who hasn’t been embarrassed at hearing in a crowded public place what should obviously be a private conversation? Which social gathering or meeting hasn’t been interrupted with a rude, incongruous sound of a caller tune that reveals the immaturity and fantasies of the mobile owner even as it irritates. I have always called my cell phone an electronic leash that allows me limited freedom at the cost of being available to all and sundry at even unearthly hours and inconvenient times.

As German philosopher Immanuel Kant said, while formulating his Categorical Imperative, “Nothing is good in itself, except good will.” Cell phones have given us liberty, but they should not take away our life with their intrusions. We have to take charge of our lives. Somehow, people assume that cell phone recipients must always be available. Well, they will learn that this is not so, simply if you are not available to them. Cameron has made the right call.

I sincerely hope that it catches up and we can cut ourselves from the tyranny that cell phones impose on us. When I acquired my first cell phone, it resembled a small Nanakshahi brick. It occupied pride of place in a holster on my belt. I guess at sometime or the other, Wild West fantasies played in my mind, and I definitely felt as empowered as any cowboy wearing his six shooter.

It rang one day while I was sitting with an American scholar friend. As my hand moved towards the phone “like greased lightning,” as they say in Sudden books, she gasped: “Your aren’t going to take the call, are you?” For her it was inconsiderate, impolites and a personal affront that I would take a call in the midst of our discussion.

The sharpness and horror in her voice was enough to freeze the hand and make it cut the call, instead of taking it, as originally intended. I had learnt a valuable lesson.

This middle was published in The Tribune on 19 May, 2010

While sending photos to friends online, get sharp

BITS ABOUT BYTES

Roopinder Singh

The very essence of taking a picture involves sharing it with others. After all, what are photographs other than memories immortalised. Even as we compose a picture on our viewfinder, or, more often, on the LCD screen of our camera or phone, we are already thinking of people we would love to share the moment with.

But before we share the picture, we would like to make sure that we put our best foot forward. Since photography, as we saw in the last article (click here), is now largely digital, we often download the photographs we have taken from the camera to a personal computer.

The bigger screen of the PC helps us to view the pictures and it is not surprising that we can then find flaws. Often, the picture, especially if it has been taken with a cellphone or one of those smart, cute flat little cameras that you can slip into your purse or pocket, suddenly doesn’t seem as sharp as it did on the dinky little screen of the device.

The most common reason for that is not technical, but simply physical - camera shake. Your hand shakes as you take a picture and the image becomes blurred. While they look good, these cameras do not sit well in the hand, since they are not ergonomic.

When I had to buy a camera for Jansher, our son, I bought something that was not absolutely flat, and sat well in the hand; an Olympus SP-600UZ had a body with a curved end and sat well in the house. It has a 12 megapixel sensor and has a 15X zoom. Really good specs for a camera that a 14-year-old is going to use!

Like this camera, most mid-range cameras have image stability facility that counters a camera shake. It is fairly effective, but still, the best thing to do is to keep yourself steady, and even control your breathing for a few seconds while you press the shutter. In fact, I often find that childhood hunting skills come is very useful during photography, but that’s another story.

In the days of chemical photography it was practically impossible to fix a camera shake. When things get into the digital arena, like through scanning or directly uploaded from a camera, there are some software solutions, primarily the unsharp mask filter, which is actually a sharpening filter that emphasises the edges in the image, or the differences between adjacent light and dark sample points in an image. In expert hands, it is a tremendous tool, though a bit difficult to master. It is widely available in most image processing software.

Focus Magic, a photoshop a plug-in for Mac, and a stand-alone software for Windows, has quite a reputation for improving shaky pictures. Other plug-ins include Image Skill’s Magic Sharpener and a freeware utility called Unshake.

The Rolls Royce of image processing tools, Photoshop, is well, like the car, expensive, and it takes a while to master. I have been using it since it was first released for Apple computers in 1990 and I love its capabilities. It has many features and the new Creative Suites from Adobe offer much more than you can ever imagine, or use.

However, much of my basic stuff like cataloguing and even some touching up is done using a free software called Picasa, which I mentioned in my last column. It is easily downloadable, simple, uses less computing resources, and is great at cataloguing. I upload my pictures from my computer and see them Picasa. I even do some basic colour balance and retouching.

To share pictures online, I often use Flickr an image and video hosting website, owned by Yahoo since 2005. When I got involved a lot in the Vivek High School Soccer League as a parent photographer, I would take the pictures with my camera, a Nikon D-200 for those who want to know, and post the pictures on Flickr so that our son and his friends could check them out. Many bloggers also use Flickr; thought I use Picasa’s online version, Picasa Web Albums, to upload the pictures that I use in my blog, but it is a matter of personal preference, more than anything else.

Sometimes, we want to send photographs by e-mail. Most of the time camera generates really big files, which measure in MBs. Such files are of very good quality, but they take a long time to download, and are not convenient to see on a computer screen.

Most image processing programmes, including Picasa, allow you to prepare your pictures for the Web. By doing so, they decrease the quality and the file size, optimising it for sharing online and for viewing on a computer screen. Please remember that in case you want to print the pictures, you have to send the best resolution possible because the print shops need that resolution.

What happens to people who want the pictures for offline viewing? Well, as you walk into Mahijit Sodhi’s house, you notice that while the ambience is traditional, in various nooks and corners there are silent displays of pictures, changing every 30 seconds or so. These are digital picture frames, in various sizes.

Digital frames can be as small as 1.5-inch keychain displays and the biggest ones are 32-inch wall-mounted ones. However, most frames are in the 5″ to 15″ range. Most digital photo frames have Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screens, and operate at a resolution of 720 x 480 pixels for a 7″ frame, and 1600 x 1200 pixels for those 15 inches and larger. They accept USB drives, memory sticks, or memory cards and thus you can keep adding your latest collections for display.

Many people want to hold a picture in their hands and for them, all you have to do is to upload your picture at the highest possible resolution and take it to your nearest photo processing shop to have it printed.

When you enlarge a picture too much, you will notice pixilation, or graininess in the print. The number of megapixels of the camera and the size of the CCD, coupled with the quality of the lens, all work together to give you better quality. Thus my Nikon D-200 gives better quality of pictures even though it is 10 megapixels as opposed to Jansher’s Olympus, which is 12 megapixels. Of course, the Nikkor 18-200mm DX VR lens helps a lot, too!

Photography is fun, but as you explore the world of pixels and computer algorithms, you learn much more and get involved in the technical aspects of picture taking, which makes it far easier to tweak your photographs, and share them with others, both electronically, as well as physically.

This article was printed in the Lifestyle section of The Tribune on May 18, 2010

Accomplished surgeon and scholar

Soft spoken and gentle in his manner, Dr Man Singh Nirankari, however, was firm in his convictions and opinions. He was equally at ease with the prefix and suffix to his name and the different spheres of life they both signified his eminent professional life and his heritage. He passed away in Chandigarh the early hours of May 11.

From Website

Dr Man Singh Nirankari, MBBS, FRCS (Edin) DO (London), was born on December 8, 1911, in a small village called Meki Dhok, Campbellpur, district of joint Punjab, now in Pakistan, renamed Attock. His father, Hara Singh (1877-1971) was the leader of the Nirankari movement, active in northwest Punjab then. It was in Rawalpindi that the young Man Singh studied at Khalsa High School and Garden Mission College, (for FSc), King Edward Medical College, Lahore (for MBBS). He became FRCS in 1937.

In 1942, he married Phool, the daughter of Sant Singh Lyallpuri, who served as Indian Ambassador to Ethiopia from 1950-1953. She had studied English Honours at Government College for Women, Lahore. It was an Anand Karaj marriage; something the Nirankaris had played a significant role in popularising.

From Website

After Partition, the couple settled down in Amritsar. They had three children, a son Dr Verinder Singh Nirankari, an ophthalmologist who lives in Maryland, USA, and daughters, Aruna Singh who lives in Delhi and the prominent theatre personality, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry.

Recognised as one of the most prominent ophthalmologists in the region, Dr Man Singh became the Principal and Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, Government Medical College, Amritsar, a position from which he retired in 1971. Among his students are many famous surgeons.

A prominent citizen of Amritsar, he was active in the educational, cultural and religious fields, and friend to many prominent political and religious leaders. He served as a Syndic and Senator of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar; he was an adviser to the SGPC’s Dharmam Prachar Committee, and member of the committee to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Amritsar.

After he and Phool moved from Amritsar to Chandigarh in 1998 to be with their daughter Neelam and son-in-law, Pushi Chowdhry, he often attended various literary and cultural events, and spoke on a variety of issues at various functions. A prolific writer, he published articles and wrote books in Punjabi in a variety of genres, including poetry, history, divinity and Sikh issues. He also wrote Katha Kahani, his autobiography. Phool Man Singh passed away on May 7, 2006.

Many of those who came to the Electric Crematorium in Chandigarh on Tuesday afternoon remembered that this was the man who had constructed a similar facility in Amritsar, the first in Punjab. Many also remember the strong voice and emotional Ardas of Dr Man Singh when he prayed, at this very spot, four years ago, for the peace of his wife’s soul. Now, he was joining her.

This obituary was published in The Tribune on May 12, 2010

Dr. Man Singh Nirankari (1911 - 2010) passed away in Chandigarh in the early hours of the morning on May 11, 2010. He was a very dear friend of my parents, and an elder I greatly respected. We will all miss him. Dr Man Singh Nirankari  was the father of Dr Verinder Singh Nirankari, an eminent an ophthalmologist who lives in Maryland, USA, Mrs Aruna Singh who lives in Delhi and the famous theater personality, Dr Neelam Mansingh Chowdhury.

He and his wife Phool ji, moved from Amritsar to Chandigarh in 1997 to be with Neelam and her family—Pushy, Kabir and Angad. His cremation is at 3pm today. I will be writing about him later and you can read it tomorrow.

From Website

The recent case of improper disposal of radioactive waste in New Delhi has highlighted the need to be careful in handling such materials, says Roopinder Singh

We are all afraid of radioactivity, yet it plays a vital role in our lives. It is terrible when things go wrong, like they did on April 27, 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, which is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. The plant was located in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the former Soviet Union. Reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant, had a meltdown, which resulted in a fire that caused radioactive fallout into the atmosphere.

Not only was the nearest town, Pripyat, effected, so were large parts of the western Soviet Union, eastern Europe, western Europe, and northern Europe. There have been other disasters, yet nuclear energy is sought as a major resource for the energy-deficient world.

How does a nuclear reactor work? Nuclear power stations use uranium in fission reactions as a fuel to produce energy. They use the heat released during the fission process to generate steam, which turns a turbine to produce electric energy. Of course, the whole process is complex, and operators have to be constantly on the guard to ensure that safety standards are strictly adhered to.

Even though it should always be treated with respect, there are many practical applications of radioactivity or radiation. Radioactive materials are involved in the study living organisms, diagnosing and treating diseases, in testing all kinds of industrial objects, including aircraft and ships, and in sterilising medical instruments and food, etc.

Radioactive Iodine-131 is used to study the function of the thyroid gland by doctors. It is a tracer, i.e. a radioactive element whose pathway through which a chemical reaction can be followed. Similarly, there are other applications for medical usage.

Some universities are also allowed to use radioactive materials, and it was one of these that was the cause of all the trouble in Delhi. A gamma irradiation machine was imported from Canada in the 1970s for use in experiments by chemistry students. It was built by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. in 1968, had been in disuse since 1985. The machine was auctioned away to scrap dealers on February 26 this year.

The scrap went to the Mayapuri, where workers, unaware of its lethal contents, set about dismantling it by removing the protective lead cover, and thus exposing themselves to the radioactive Cobalt-60 isotopes inside it. Although decaying, the radioactive substance was of high intensity and thus the people directly involved in handling the pieces were exposed to high doses of radiation. Severe radiation poisoning was seen in seven persons, one of whom died recently. The other six are also in various hospitals.

Initial media speculation centred around a foreign source of the material, a highly likely scenario since 4,000 tonnes of junk metal is imported as scrap in India every day. Later, the police found that the machine had come from the chemistry department of Delhi University.

The company that supplied the machine apparently responded to the query with great efficiency and supplied the details of the transaction within a few hours. Officials of the AERB and the National Disaster Management Authority surveyed the largest junk market in India and located the radioactive sources and secured them. Thus ended the latest crisis, which had resulted the in the first the first radiation death in the country.

We need to learn our lessons. There is no doubt that a casual attitude towards the disposal of radioactive waste from sources other than nuclear plants has seriously exposed Indians to hazards.

The fact is that thousands of tonnes of scrap metals and waste materials are imported into Indian every day and there is a possibility of radioactive material slipping through the ports. Scanners and other safeguards are absolutely necessary to ensure that such hazardous materials are not allowed to slip into our shores.

Caution has to be the byword while dealing with materials that can be of immense use on the one hand, and harbingers of death, in case, they are misused.

This article was published in the Science and Technology section of The Tribune.

A painting should reflect how the artist perceives the subject, and you appreciate it for the effect it has on you, the viewer. During my younger days, I did not have many definite ideas about art and artists, for the simple reason that I did not know enough, though I did appreciate art. Looking at Rodin’s Thinker was an experience that touched the soul; the impressionists left an impact of a painting that far transcended realism. The fundamentals of art are universal, and people are ready to pay maximum dollars to possess paintings by masters.

Pablo Picasso’s 1932 painting, Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur
(Nude, Green Leaves and Bust). From Website

A painting by Pablo Picasso has just been sold in New York for $106.5 million — a new world record. The 1932 painting, Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust), has Marie-Therese Walter, the artist’s mistress, in a reclining position and also in a bust. Picasso included his own profile in the blue background.

Picasso was a painter about whom I had strong views. When I was young, Picasso’s work left me totally unmoved and impressed, though, to be fair, I had graduated from an earlier stage when I felt that Picasso was a bit like me, someone who couldn’t paint and thus odd shapes like triangles for the nose!

I lived in ignorance for decades. I remained somewhat suspicious of the person whose full name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.

Although he dominated the 20th-century art scene, he left me unmoved. By the end of the century, I had seen the world, but not Picasso’s place in the world of art. It was the dawn of the 21st century that enabled me to finally shed this bit of ignorance, and my prejudice towards Picasso. The trigger was a colleague who had just visited an exhibition of the works of the great artist mounted at the National Museum, New Delhi. The Government of France had sponsored the “Picasso: Metamorphoses, 1900-1972, From the French Collections, from December 2001 to February 2002″.

Gaurav had seen the exhibition and was bubbling with enthusiasm, talking constantly about it to my colleagues and me. His account of how great the exhibition was, and how it aided his understanding of the artist enthused me enough to drive down to Delhi one Sunday morning, straight to the museum.

Having started early, I found myself there by the opening time and went in. Here were 122 works - graphics, drawings, collages, assemblages and sculpture. What an array divided into various sections that profiled the panoramic sweep of Picasso’s prolific career. Blue Period paintings, early turn-of-century, brooding contemplative works, the brilliant sculptures, his portraits, which were thoughtfully placed along with photographs of the subjects… Picasso’s greatness finally sunk into.

I realised, not for the first or the last time, what a fool I had been, in not getting rid of the negativity of ill-formed opinions based on prejudice. Thank God, providence and prodding had enabled me to discover the greatness of an artist.

I went out for lunch and came back to the museum. I bought some prints and generally spent as much as I could afford before driving back to Chandigarh that evening. I had thought of meeting friends, as I always do when I am in Delhi, but that didn’t happen. I needed to be alone to absorb what I had experienced during the day.

This middle, by Roopinder Singh, was published in The Tribune on May 6, 2010

It was a Mamiya medium format camera that triggered this article. The occasion was the 90th birthday celebration of Mahijit Singh Sodhi, one of the grand old men of Chandigarh.

Karam Sodhi examines the frame of his picture through the viewfinder of a Mamiya medium format camera. Photo: Avi Sodhi

His grandson, Karam, was making a valiant attempt to photograph the extended family of, well, around 90 people together and his tool of choice was this medium format camera that uses a film which I started my photography with - the 120-film that was used in the Agfa Click III cameras and the Yashika and Roliflex twin-lens reflex cameras, common in photo studios in the 1960s and 1970s.

Now, there were digital cameras galore at the wine and cheese evening. You could say that everyone had one, from the Nikon and Cannon digital SLRs to the ubiquitous cameras in phones, and as drinks circulated and the roasts were savoured, many flashes punctuated the darkening sky. A number of pictures were snapped, as often happens when people meet after a long time.

Why was the seemingly antediluvian film camera doing amidst all these snazzy digital ones? Well, it still holds true that practically nothing in the digital world can match the tonal range and even resolution of a film. A medium format film image can record an equivalent of approximately 50 megapixels. The 120-film dates back to 1902 and a century later, the best digital camera was made by a filmmaker, Fuji, and the FinePix S602Z Pro had a resolution of 6.0 mp. Top cameras have managed to double the resolution now.

The convenience of reducing light to binary digits, the bits (Binary digIT, i.e., 0 and 1) and bytes (8-bit bundles) that dominate the digital world is, however, undeniable. We can do so much more with pictures than we could do using the traditional chemical
methods.

Often comparisons in digital cameras have been reduced to the megapixel game, but this is not an accurate measure.

Megapixel (one million pixels) is a term used for the number of pixels in an image. It is also used to express the number of image sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of elements of digital displays. A pixel is generally defined as the smallest single component of a digital image. Instead of a film, digital cameras use photosensitive electronic image sensors. They can either be charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS). These sensors have a large number of single sensor elements, often called pixels.

A colour film normally has three layers of emulsion and each layer is basically the same as in black and white film, but sensitive only to one-third of the spectrum (reds, greens or blues). Similarly, each pixel in the sensor will record only one channel (red, or green, or blue) of the final colour image.

When comparing cameras, one must look at the size of the sensor, and bigger is better in this instance. Just as the 120-film is three times size of a 35mm, the size of the CCD in compact cameras is much smaller than that in digital SLRs, which have only recently been able to give a “full frame” 35mm CCD.

The size of the CCD determines the size of the individual elements in it and the bigger the sensors, more the information they can store.

Most phones now have fairly acceptable pixels in their camera, yet the sale of compact digital cameras is booming. This is interesting, since most of the people who buy these cameras would have camera-equipped cell phones. This brings us to the fact that sensors are but one aspect of the camera.

The most important thing in a camera is arguably its lens. Normally made of glass, it can have one or many elements. SLR cameras have mounts on which a photographer can mount different lenses, depending on the situation and the effect that is desired.

Compact cameras, however, have only one kind of lens fitted to them. Most of them have a zoom feature, which allows you to change the frame of your picture without moving back and forth. Thus, you can go nearer the object or go wider to include more of the background without moving.

The range and optical quality of the lens plays a major role in the way the image is formed, and that’s the reason people pay thousands of rupees, even lakhs, for a high quality lens. My photo lab person says that most of the images that he processes daily come from digital cameras, not from films.

The wide-scale adoption of the digital medium means that storage of pictures has also moved from shoeboxes to computers and hard drives. Since, unlike film, digital pictures do not cost money to take, just to print, people tend to take more, and thus have many more to store, process and catalogue.

What use is a picture unless you can find it when you want to? On a computer, it can become difficult unless you have some sort of picture processing software. After long use, my favourite is Picasa, a software application for organising and editing digital photos.

The word Picasa is a blend of the name of famous Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso, the phrase ‘mi casa’ for “my house” and “pic” for pictures. It was created by Idealab, but Google bought it in 2004 and has since offered it as a free download. I have been using it since the beginning, and thousands of my digital pictures are catalogued via Picasa. The retouching and other functions are basic, though effective. The recently introduced face-recognition programme is fun, although sometimes intrusive.

Since on my phone I can store pictures of the callers, I have used the recognised and tagged faces from various pictures and exported them to the phone. Seeing a smiling face when you receive a call definitely puts you in a good mood to talk! Other photo organisers include Adobe’s Elements, Apple’s iPhoto, Novell’s F-spot, PicaJet and DigiKam. And you may want to try out these too.

When we take a picture, one of the primary reasons is that we want to share the moment with others. The people who took pictures at the party also shared them with others. How? Well, that’s what we will look at the next time!

The article was published in the Lifestyle section of The Tribune. It is the beginning of a fortnightly column.

Adrift: A Junket Junkie in Europe

By Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu.
Leadstart.
Pages 106. Rs 150.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

Adrift: A Junket Junkie in Europe by Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu.

SOMETIMES you can judge a book by its cover. The light-hearted graphic impressions of various important European landmarks, including items of food and drinks, standing out against a dark background-well, the story is like that only. ‘Life gone temporarily wrong’ becomes a backdrop. To escape it, the author wings her way to the Continent, making sure that the capital of romance, that certain Paris, is last on her itinerary.

As we all know, having friends and relatives at the right places helps, and Puneet, who traces her decent to the Arnauli family, certainly has them. Her sister gets her a ticket, the Captain of the plane puts her in Executive Cabin and so begins a journey that takes the reader to a tour-of people and their relationships; places, often taking the road less travelled by; and food, glorious food. The author’s wry wit is infectious, and she spares none, especially not herself.

Her thin wad of foreign currency has made sure that she will have to stay with people she knows, rather than hotels. Trading expertise for hospitality, she cooks Indian foods for her hosts, even though she herself likes to check out the local stuff and all kinds of beverages for which Europe is justly famous.

The account of a ‘Goa’ recreated in Germany, where “a certain suspicious odour, evocative of evenings in and around Manali, pervaded the air,” has a wistfulness about it, which finds fulfilment during a visit to Amsterdam and legally-purchased, bartender-rolled joint.

‘Mitfahzentrale’, a government-encouraged car pool service for travellers, literally gives wheels to her attempts to see more and takes her to Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungry, Austria and France. Each has adventures, succinctly told, and we join the author in exploring the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, and share her agony in not being able understand them, in spite of a prior thorough reading of Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, a 1934 biographical novel on the artist.

We have a lump in our throat as she visits Anne Frank’s home and later, pays pilgrimage to the concentration camp at Dachu, the ground zero of Nazi horrors, and shares her voyeuristic streak as she traipses through not one, but two red-light areas. For a self-confessed control junkie, this junket in Europe would have been an experience of being set free, from all that bound her back home.

Even though it masquerades as an easy-read, it is a layered work and quite unpretentious. This tightly written book is rich in characters that pop in and out of the journey-Anne Aunty, Moni, Kristen, Zina, Joszef, Eszter, Sanjay, Gunjan, Kaushik, Georges. It is an interesting work, written by someone who has a good turn of phrase, and a dash of self-depreciatory humour.

Now, if only the author had not bound herself to those “cardinal travel rules” (you will have to read the book to find out which), there would have been another story! In any case, you will be happy to curl up and become a part of this journey of a plucky single woman who dared to travel alone and came back with these stories.

The review was published in The Tribune on May 2, 2010