• Shotwell – Photo organiser
• Gimp – Post processing pictures
• Hugin – For panorama stitching
• kflickr – Publishing on Flickr
• Unison – Back up
• 2 external USB HDDs

Below is my work flow in order.

1. Import photos from camera to one of the external HDDs using Shotwell. Since Shotwell 0.7, users can specify the export folder (instead of the default ~/Pictures) and can even use multiple source folders as libraries. I use a folder called “imported” and sort my photos by date/events.
2. Browse photos and select those which I would like to post-process/publish. Mark as “fav” for later processing.
3. Open marked pictures whenever time permits in Gimp (Shotwell supports opening a photo in an external editor for PP) and do the usual PP (e.g. crop, rotate etc). Save the processed picture in a different “processed” folder. I use the exact same folder structure like in ‘imported’  i.e., processed/year/month/event-name/<filename_modified>
4. Publish those in “processed” folder to flickr. Here I use kflickr or flickr web interface. Shotwell is yet to support uploading/creating new sets via its interface. Also AFAIK, one cannot set licenses for the photos from its UI.
5. Use unison to sync the ‘imported’ and ‘processed’ folders between the 2 external HDDs.

After Shotwell’s 0.7 release, things are much better and I have ditched F-Spot for good. If you have any further suggestions do leave a comment.

Best Night Photo – I casually took a photo of this scene from over a bridge and upon seeing it on the LCD I saw the reflection of the colours and the beauty. Took out my tripod and spend 15 minutes getting the image according to what I like. Easily my favourite night shot of 2009. Taken in Barcelona.

Memorable – Most difficult one to choose. In the end I preferred this one to this other photo because the other is seen in gazillion of web photo albums. This is unique, simple and potrays the wonderful Swiss landscape.

Adorable – Do I even have to explain? I thank God for this. Best wishes and a very very Happy, Prosperous New Year 2010 to all my readers.

Google Summer of Code 2009

I am participating in this year’s google summer of code program as a student (yes, you read it right , as a student ).  You can find my proposal to RTEMS here (pdf). The Community Bonding period is almost coming to a close and the work package is getting more clear day by day. My mentor, Thomas Doerfler from Embedded Brains Gmbh has helped me refine and catch up with all the necessary required knowledge to start work. Thank you Thomas. So this summer is already scheduled for me. Oh! You can find the project related wiki page here.

Photography

Whenever I feel like “Its getting on to me”, I take my good friend (now its got some companions like tripod, UV-Filter, Polariser etc) and go shooting. Outcomes are the sets of Tulip Show (one of my favourites), Geneva Autoshow, random pics of my town and nearby areas. The photos I liked the most are in the Masterpieces set. Some preview below.

 

Oh and my cooking skills have improved tremendously. I can now cook Palak Paneer too

Academia

Its been hectic, hectic and hectic. But things are looking good. If everything goes well I should be able to get some experiment results out of my project by July which could be great. I have decided to put all my code that I have written for my assignments on the interweb under the WTFPL. Thanks to Thibault to have suggested it If FEL team accepts we can package it under different sections and provide it along with the FEL Spin for F12. I have a few blog posts to make on some roadblocks I came across which could be really very interesting and informative for fellow Computer Architects, students and in general to anybody interested in Hardware Modeling and Design.

Thats all folks! Later!

1. Came out of Brussels Railway station and for a moment wondered whether I took the wrong flight/train to some place in the US. Tall buildings (very much unlike Europe)
2. Explored most of the city with a map provided by the youth hostel (2go4). Very informative map with some cool Young Traveller tips and favourites.
3. Travelling alone is no more boring.. I have my good companions (yoda and my Nikon D60 – need to find a name for her)
4. KillerX decided not to join me in brussels at the last moment because of some commitments, and I was left alone in the 6 bed dorm. It was so exciting to meet new faces everytime you enter your room in the evening and everytime you exit the room in the mornings, you would know these people (who you would have spent a whole night chatting) were not going to be around. I left notes on their tables and left the place.
5. Met people from Chile, Australia, Taiwan, Spain and ofcourse Switzerland itself in this short stay here. And most of them were good looking girls KillerX , you missed someting
6. Had all those that Belgium and Brussels is famous for.. From Waffles to Kwak, Kasteel, Krieks…
7. I returned back to Swiss and was down with flu for almost three days and today I am feeling a bit better. Hence this quick blog post. Its been a horrible three days.
8. The number of times I got lost in this city easily exceeds the sum of all the times I have got lost in my brief periods of stay in Europe and my short Eurotrips. I infact managed to get lost and end up in a street having strip clubs too.
9. The number of Siren sounds I have heard in three days is way higher than any I have heard in my 6 month stay in Swiss. Goes to show the number of politicians in this city.

Brussels, a nice mix of middle age europe and modern architecture. A city that has life and parties go well into the night. Brussels through my lens here.

• Lost my lovely little Nikon Coolpix L2 (I miss it even now)
• Became a proud owner of Nikon D60 DSLR
• Became a Fedora Electronic Laboratory team member (The dev time line calls me a consultant )
• Got my Ubuntu Membership Approved (Yes I have a @ubuntu.com and @fedoraproject.org email ids now )
• GNUSim8085 was awarded FOSS India Award by LFY magazine
• 2nd time speaker at Freed.in (Will miss this year’s edition. Its like missing a family event )
• NIT Calicut happened (3rd time) again. Miss that too this time around.
• FOSS.IN 2008 Speaker. Was great to meet the known and unknown faces again.
• Quite a few memorable trips with friends and colleagues. (I also did some snow sledging in the fag end of 2008)
• Got Admitted to a World Top 15 Engineering and Applied Sciences University and shifted base to Switzerland.
• I Quit my Nice Cosy Job as a senior Engineer and got back to Academic Environment and Research (Loving it!!)

And this year again, though I feel is not going to be that life changing is definitely going to be full of challenges, travel, loads of photography and a lot and lot of learning. Looking forward to 2009!!

PS: Around Christmas and New Year Abhijeet (I linked your flickr account. Happy now?? ) and I went around a few cities in Swiss and here goes their photos. Enjoy!!!

 

Full Flickr Sets Luzerne, Bern, Les Diablerets, Montreux

GNUSim8085 FOSS.IN 2008 Delayed Release

What was supposed to be a foss.in 2008 release has been delayed by a month and it just became the Christmas Release. Yes!!! GNUSim8085 1.3.5 is released! Go grab it now. So whats special about this release? You can run gnusim8085 now on Windows machines as well. Kudos to a lot of guys who helped fix a lot of issues that were big road blocks for the release and foss.in 2008 was the place where things got sorted out and most of it got fixed in the Workout. So thats news number 1 for you all.

Next..

Around Switzerland in 4 days

Starting tomorrow evening I will be touring Switzerland (Bern, Luzern, Diablerets, Geneva and the likes.) with a very very good friend of mine who is coming down from Germany. I am really looking forward to it. And I will be doing all these with a special thing in my hands. (thats the next news..)

The Special Thing

The special thing is the wonderful DSLR Nikon D60. I got this at a great price. Thanks to Nikon for the 100 CHF cashback offer. Thanks to Abhijeet for the gift contribution. I just cant believe that I am the owner of a D60 now. Yipee!!!! And already I have started flooding flickr

So thats it for now. Wish you all a Merry Christmas and see you again around New Year’s eve. Happy Hacking!

As of now I have listed a few P&S cameras as follows, Canon A2000 IS, A1000IS, A590IS. Any suggestions are most welcome.

Now, I am even more motivated to get a DSLR. Oh, Btw I also have a second career option