Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Man is an animal

"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

Monday, April 13, 2009

The more we learn the lesser we know

"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]

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Put yourself on banner

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