Monthly Archives: November 2011

Why My iPhone4 is A Survivor: The Story of My iPhone4

Why My iPhone4 is A Survivor: The Story of My iPhone4

iPhone4, Apple, Steve Jobs, Jailbroken, iOS 5.0.1, Twitter, Royal Mai, IndiaPostOf all gadgets I’ve acquired in my life so far, I look upon my iPhone4 as the most valuable possession. I acquired it in February this year and, if I let you in on a secret, it has me possessed ever since. I’ve held it close to my heart, my mind and my soul, spent most of my time with it and even allowed it to witness some of the very intimate developments in my personal life which none other person seems to know (not even my closes buddies).

Yet, there’s another reason why I believe my iPhone4 has been the closest anyone or anything can ever get to me. I personally consider my iPhone4 and I lead nearly a very similar life, have the same story to share and even, seem to have the same destiny.

Consider this: all my life, I’ve had everything the hard way, struggled my way up and become a self-made person. I still fight today for every single thing in my life, from dawn to dusk. So much so that I wake up every morning preparing myself for something untoward, something seemingly insurmountable. Speaking for my iPhone4, it shares a similar story.

How? Read on to understand the similarity…

My iPhone4 was conceptualized by Steve Jobs, put together somewhere in China and sold in the open market, and then landed at an unscrupulous trader in the UK. It never had a father who could take care of it, until it found me. Despite my best efforts, it has still sustained multiple scratches, survived several falls, and been jailbroken nearly 9 times since I adopted it back in February, 2011. Well, it might sound dramatic but it’s real. Here’s the full story of my iPhone4:


The Acquisition Anomaly: They say the sweetest of things in life are the hardest ones to acquire, and the entire ordeal I went through to get my iPhone4 delivered only reaffirms the truth. On the 29th of December, 2010, I ordered an iPhone4 from the UK. It was sent via Royal Mail and was paid for tracking services as well. I was skeptical about using Royal Mail and unsure whether it would reach me in time as I knew how the government offices in India work. However, the die was cast and there was no turning back.

But I didn’t like what followed thereafter.

When I tracked my parcel online, I found the parcel was yet to take off even though ten days had already passed. I became restless and tried contacting the Royal Mail customer care department using their Twitter account. They promptly replied saying that there had been a delay in sending the item and but it must have been with the Customs at New Delhi Airport. After my frequent conversations on Twitter, I found the Twitter address of India Post, and was happy to know they are on Twitter.

From then on, I contacted the India Post on Twitter and they were ready to extend their help with regards to the issues with my parcel. Here’s the Twitter conversations that followed:

iPhone4, Apple, Steve Jobs, Jailbroken, iOS 5.0.1, Twitter, Royal Mai, IndiaPost


Finally, on the 5th of February this year, I received the parcel in good shape, although I had to cough up a hefty 720 rupees for custom charges (it was 2% on the parcel value).

OMG, It was Jaibroken: After battling my ill-fate for nearly 2 months, my iPhone4 was certainly within my arm’s length; but it was still out of my earshot. It turns out the iPhone4 (32GB version for the price of 16GB) was jailbroken and I needed to use a micro SIM card to be able to use it. This effectively meant I should get my existing SIM card replaced with a brand new SIM card that supports my iPhone4. But, blame it on the BSNL staff, it didn’t come easy either.

I’d already cut my old SIM too short for them to accept as it didn’t have ICC-ID (Integrated Circuit Card ID). But, after a negotiation of nearly 2 hours, I was able to receive a new micro SIM card for my iPhone4. But then again I had to borrow the iPhone4 SIM cutter from Soam to resize it and insert it in my device. It worked fine and I managed myself a smile after a good sixty days of that fateful 29th December, 2010.

iPhone4 Baseband Upgrade Catastrophe: Just when everything seemed fair in love and war, and my romance with the new gadget was on full throttle, I committed an innocent yet potentially irreversible blunder by upgrading my current iPhone4 iOS to its latest iOS firmware on the iTunes software. After the update, the iPhone wouldn’t recognize the SIM card anymore, and after a little online search, it turns out I’d ended up upgrading the baseband of my device for which the Dev Team didn’t have a software patch ready. It’s a day I could barely forget in my entire lifetime. But then, after a week of regret, I started learning to live with it and life was back to normal.

Ever since, apart from surviving several falls from as high as 2 feet, my iPhone4 has been jailbroken nearly 9 times (the latest being for iOS 5.0.1). But, it still works as incredibly as it should for me.

It still feels magical every time I touch its screen and work on its apps. If you have never had an Apple Device, you might feel either jealous of me or think I’m just a plain jerk, but if you’re one of those luckiest lot who have ever used an iPhone4, you know what I’m talking about.

The Takeaway: It’s weird though, being a big fan of Steve Jobs, I’m still rendered helpless to use a jailbroken Apple device. I wouldn’t be surprised if his spirit started hunting me for retribution :-) . Sick jokes apart, I might as well buy a certified Apple Device in 2012. Maybe, an all new iPad3, if not the much talked about iPhone5 .


Try These Smoke Photography Tricks to Go Beyond Mundane Photography Practices

Try These Smoke Photography Tricks to Go Beyond Mundane Photography Practices

Smoke Photography, Low Light Photography, Photography Tips & Tricks

Smoke photography is one of the most creatively challenging and intriguing aspects of low light photography. What many perceive as a feeble, ignorable, unwanted by-product of combustion can actually be used as a wonderful subject for low light photography.

What Makes Smoke Photography So Difficult?

Smoke is a subject which is beyond your control and this is what makes it a challenge for you to achieve great results in smoke photography. Since you can’t control the movement and flow of the smoke, all you need to do is wait and stay prepared to catch the most creative wave of the smoke as you trigger the shutter button of your camera. In short, great results in smoke photography definitely come with frequent experiments under a wide range of lighting and smoke sources.


Things You Need for Smoke Photography

A DSL Camera – DSL camera is the perfect tool for creating smoke photography although I’m yet to experiment the same with a point and shoot camera. However, going by the difficulty to catch smoke in utter darkness, you need a DSL camera preferably one with a strong flash feature. I used a Canon EOS 1000D for my experiments (please see EXIM data) and didn’t use any external lighting sources. However, the flash on my camera was good enough to support the results.

A 50mm Lens – Although you can use a regular lens for smoke photography, but a 50mm lens is likely to offer better results as it helps focus on the subject and blurs out the background altogether. In my case, I didn’t use any artificial background such as a piece of black cloth or curtain. I used the sky :-) . I know it’s kind of weird but you can try the same and it’s likely give you great results too. However, if you are shooting indoor for smoke photography with an artificial dark background, a 50mm lens will get you the closest to the best possible results.

A Tripod – Yes, you need a tripod to capture the smoke as your camera needs to be set on manual focus mode. Again, this is a necessity if you’re shooting indoor. If you’re shooting outdoor such as on your terrace with the sky as your background, you might as well do without a tripod. However, you need to be good at holding the camera still when you press the shutter button. I didn’t use a tripod for my experiment though. I consider myself a tripod :-)


A Couple of Incense Sticks – No, I’m not insane, but you need to find a source of smoke. The thicker the smoke, the better the results. Therefore, my choice was a couple of incense sticks. It’s good for your health too.

A Pitch Black Background – Background is the key to achieving best results in smoke photography. This is because the smoke is a very feeble subject which is barely visible either to the normal vision or in the viewfinder of your camera. However, if you have external source of lighting such as strobe or a table lamp, you might catch the movement of the smoke better. As I said, I used the sky as the background and it worked fine.

Some Sense of Timing – Great results in smoke photography hinge heavily on your sense of timing. You need to follow the patterns of the smoke patiently and click the shutter button just at the right time. Even the fraction of a second can make a difference as the subject is NOT under your control. So there needs to be an ideal co-ordination between your eyes and hands.

Smoke Photography, Low Light Photography, Photography Tips & Tricks

Camera Settings – The first thing is to set the camera setting to manual focus mode. Plus, adjust the IOS speed to a moderate range, preferably 600 for better results. Set the shutter speed as high as possible since you wouldn’t want to blur effects. The rest of the settings are shown in the EXIM data sheet.

How to Go About Capturing the Smoke:

  1. Hang the black curtain behind the subject and make sure there is a gap of nearly 3 feet between the background and subject.
  2. Place the light source (table lamp or strobe) 3 feet away from the subject. Make sure the source of light should only be on the subject alone. You don’t want to expose any amount light on the background at all.
  3. Adjust your tripod according the height of your subject and position your camera conveniently.
  4. Then light the incense sticks and let the thick smoke flow upward nicely and get ready capture the smoke in great patterns.

Post Processing in Smoke Photography:
Although the original results in smoke photography are stunning anyways, you still can play around with them and let your post-processing skills create interesting colorful patterns. You will be amazed to see the results that will just wow your audience. You can either use Adobe Photoshop or Lighthouse photo editing software to achieve best results.


5 Facebook Pet Peeves and How I Protect Myself from Them

5 Facebook Pet Peeves and How I Protect Myself from Them

Facebook Addition, Facebook Obsession, Facebook Pet Peeves, Facebook etiquettes

Ok, so just about everybody on the planet loves Facebook these days and quite a few of them are actually offcially addicted to it. A research on Facebook Obsession conducted by Onlineschools.org reveals shocking realities about people and their craze for Facebook. As of 2011, there are 500,000,000 active Facebook users which is approximately 1 in every 13 people on earth. Nearly half of them are logged in on any given day.

The number is growing even faster and speaking of my own experiences, I get nearly 3-5 friend requests daily from people I’ve never met or known in my life before. I know some people prefer keeping their Facebook profile quite private and like sharing updates with people they are really close to. I can say the same for me.

This is why I avoid accepting friend requests from people I don’t know at all. Adding you to my friend list precisely means I’m letting you gain an access to my private space even when we’ve barely interacted in person. Well, the worst thing that can happen when you add an unknown person (even if they are friend of someone who’s already on your friend list) is they will start intruding into your personal space right away. It’s really quite annoying of them to show up and start chatting with you without any introduction. That is when you regret friending them on Facebook.


Does that mean the ones that are already on your Facebook friendlist gives you a high? Not at all. Here are the 5 most common things they do that just get on my nerves:

Unnecessary Status Updates: Some people on my Facebook friendlist are so addicted to Facebook that they nearly flash every minute detail of their daily life. The biggest mistake people do is sync their Twitter updates with Facebook status wall. Consider if you have a dozen of them on your friendlist – you certainly see an eyeful of trivial updates that just clog your newsfeed and bore you to death. Rarely anyone is interested to know what you just had for lunch or if you’re annoyed with your boss today. Stop imposing an overdose of personal updates on your friends, please!

So what do I do to get rid of this? I simply “Hide the Story” or “Unsubscribe from Their Status Updates” depending on how irritating they are.

Perennial Change of Profile Picture: How often do you change your profile picture on your Facebook reflect a little about your addiction to Facebook. Some people change it on a daily basis. Seriously? What makes you change your profile picture as frequently as you change your underwear? Do you really have anything more substantial to do in your life? If you have, I’d rather listen to that. Else, I will just ignore your profile picture update and move on to better things in life.


Annoying App Requests: If you have ever been invited to Maifa Wars, Farmville or any other shitville for that matter, you would know what I’m talking about here. So when you invite me to “Click here to find out how to maximize your weapons stash”, I feel like hiring a mafia gang who could scare the crap out of you before you send me the next one. How about asking me if I care about those games at all! Don’t spam my inbox, please!

Thank God, Facebook empowers me with the option to “spam” your app requests. Else, I would dump Facebook for life!

Queer Quizzes: Nothing sucks more than a bunch of completely stupid quizzes such as the one shown below.

Facebook Addition, Facebook Obsession, Facebook Pet Peeves, Facebook etiquettes
What possesses you to spare your time on some silly questions is beyond me! Worse, some people take these juvenile quizzes so often that you almost HAVE to “Hide Quizzes” to clean your newsfeed. Certainly, you can’t unsubscribe from their updates but for those silly quizzes.

Join-My-Group Junks: Sometimes, you either invite me to your Join A Group that I’m hardly interested in or worse, add me to a group without my consent. Well, you would do me a big favor if you could just tell me via message that there is a group I could benefit from if joined it. That would be cool enough of you. Forcing me to join a group is like coaxing me into buying a drink for you which I’m not very fond of.

I could easily have left my private settings on Facebook as default but for the above reasons. I hope my friends on Facebook take note of my Facebook Pet Peeves and spare me the horror. No hard feelings, but let’s make Facebook a better place to socialize at.

Disclaimer: The author has only expressed views on some generic Facebook etiquettes of what most people ignore on Facebook. So he means no offense to anyone in specific.


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