Shopping with Pets

If you have a dog, and have to go shopping, in a shop where they do not allow dogs, what will you do? A thing I forgot to mention is that you seem to be a alone when you do your shopping, also none of your friends were free to be accompanying you with these chores. So you cannot just keep your dog at home, all alone, for the duration of your shopping chores. So you take him along, only to tie him/leave him outside the shop waiting for you. And this is just something that I see across the UK, it doesn't seem all that bad on the dog, I'm sure he/she wont mind some alone time, maybe see a few pretty dogs walk by as he waits.
Sadly, the dogs dearly miss their owners, I have many times seen them looking earnestly at the people coming out of the shops as if expecting them to be their owners but always looking away from them disappointed. I never had an issue seeing this outside as the owners usually got back from their shopping in around 10-15 mins and they were heading back. This is something usually outside Tesco and Sainsbury. The dogs themselves have been well behaved otherwise, not even barking or any trouble for that matter, but just waiting. So today while I was out in Bath, a historic city in SouthWest England, I saw something that just made me very sad.

This was right outside the M&S store on the high street. She was a very lovable one, just sitting there, those eyes were only looking for the owner who had one inside. She had a collar on her. Everytime some passerby ooh'd and aah'd at her and even pet her, she still kept staring inside the store. I was outside the store for about 30 mins waiting for my friends, so atleast she had some company. When my friends finally came, I told them I think I better go talk with the floor manager of M&S to check of the owner was in the store. But then when I finally got hold of one of the security guys and walked outside, she was gone, hopefully with her rightful owner. 

So coming to my point, my gripe.... I personally hate it when people do that with their dogs. No matter how patient their dogs are. I have been in the UK for the last 14 months now, originally from India, I have three labradors back home. And I would always have someone from my family with them if this kind of a scenario ever happened. It was either me. my sisters or either of my parents who stayed back to look back at the kids (as I refer to my pets). I know, the luxury that I have, of having atleast someone around to look after my pets when I am not around isnt something that all can have, but still, I would like to figure some way out so that any of the pets dont have to be left alone, even if it is for a little while. Pets are like kids, they are completely dependent on us. I know, many people will not agree with my take on this, but just saying that if I were in that position, I would make sure that my pet would be very happy always like all my loved ones.

I seriously miss my pets.....

My first great night shot...

In England, the weather isnt the best for some night time stars photography. This is because of the ever present cloud cover and the light after glow coming from the street lights, especially in small towns, like the one I live in. So instead of the stars, I thought I'll capture a satellite and thus I shot the moon. Now this shot wasn't as easy as the setting wasn't available to me directly, I had to stay up most of the night for the moon to come in the right place and then, without waking up my room-mate, take a snap. This is what I got:

The best part about this picture is that it is very much unaltered, it is as I had got it from the camera, just that I adjusted its sharpness a bit. The sharpness adjustment was required as this was a 1.5 sec exposure shot and I just about managed to stay still. I was too lazy to bring out the tripod. So coming back to the photo, I have to say, this is even more prettier than what I saw last night. Hopefully I can add on to this soon.

For more pics: http://techeretic.500px.com

My trysts with photography

Ever since I joined Google Plus, I have got to admit, my interest in photography has just skyrocketed. I did have my initial inclinations but then again, I wasn't that serious. So since the day I have been following the guys Thomas Hawk, Trey Ratcliffe and the dame Lotus Carrol on G+, I thought of making the most of my photo-clicking urges and bought myself a decent cam. Being a pretty impatient guy, I was very much looking forward to getting some instant results. But sadly, that is SO not the case with photography. One has to be patient, and willing to spend a lot of time playing with some bars and number in photoshop so that, that one pic you clicked actually seems worthwile.
So after getting myself some good photo-editing software, I was finally able to get some good results post processing. Anyways, my new portfolio can now be found at http://500px.com/techeretic.
Hopefully I'll be able to add to this soon...

How boring is the iPhone?

We have all at some point in our lives thought of buying ourselves the iPhone, or atleast wondered how it will be to have owned the 'Jesus' device. I too always wondered the same and thus was happy when about two months ago, I landed myself the iPhone 4. After the initial excitement had worn down, I kind of a truth dawned upon me.
"This iPhone with its iOS ecosystem is one boring place".
I browsed through the App Store with great difficulty, synced my music onto the device, listened to the music from the device, downloaded some games, played those games; still nothing, never felt any mojo. Apart from it's good looks and the great display, it has got nothing going for it in my very honest opinion, even with its arsenal of over 400k apps.
Well..... have to flash this device now and move the sim onto the Incredible S, this post will be continued....

Google+ - THE Social Network

Google+ or Google Plus has so far been the best online social experience of my life. No I didn’t meet some interesting people out there or saw some pictures I shouldnt have, its just the joy that I dont offend people by adding them to my circles and then just not share anything with them. This privacy feature is just the best of all the features that Google+ brings to the social networking front.

I wanted to start off with that, it so far has been my favourite feature on Google+. So, Google+ (G+) invaded my life about two weeks ago now, a time when i was pretty much whining why I didnt have the G+ invite yet, or if someone could send me and invite, it was just the elite club I wanted to get into. Google have been saying that they keep on doing these invites in batches so that the existing users on G+ dont suffer from any availability issues, i.e. their infrastructure is able to keep up with the demand. Now, let me tell you, when I first heard that, I was a bit annoyed, its just odd that a behemoth like Google is saying that one of it sites may face availability issues due to excess requests. But then after finally getting in, and after a few happy laps, I clicked on this green button, on the right pane of the page, ‘Start a Hangout’, and thats when it all made sense. Google knows that the privacy features are something that arent that difficult to deliver technically, but being able to provide lag-less stutter-free video conferencing via your browser does need some infrastructure behind the scenes. From what I’ve read, this is achieved via some codecs from Vidyo to help with this. This needs the Google chat plugin to be installed for the browser being used. Google does have plans to make it independent of plugins and will then use something called WebRTC which is currently supported but Mozilla and Opera. Either way, this, so far has been the most popular feature on G+.

So now coming back to me finally getting an invite, I was greeted with the welcome screen and then after filling up some very few details, I was shown this popup asking me if i wanted to link my Picasa account with this one. Since I really hadnt been using picasa much, but had a few pics there, I just complied and then under picture/photos, all my picasa albums were listed. Pretty cool I thought, but then FB doesnt have any uploading limit on my albums, but Picasa has a 1GB limit, after which I have to pay for excess storage. I didnt bother at the time as I was more involved in uploading some recent pics online and then setting up my profile pic. Soon I realised that, though Picasa always has a scale on the side of the page telling you how much MBs have you used till now from your designated 1024 Megs but nothing of the sort here. Turns out, there is actually unlimited storage available for uploading pictures and videos. Though I aint exactly sure about videos but the scoop about the pictures is spot on. Also, unlike FB, my pics were actually uploaded in the resolution they were clicked in, and are downloadable from Picasa.
So I thought, this was all there is to G+ when it comes to pictures, obviously the mobile upload would’ve been via the app, which I had downloaded pending an invite, so I wasnt expecting any surprises here.

The Instant Upload feature on the Google Plus app for Android was just something unlike I have seen. In a world where we had N8 like cameras on our android devices, Internet access available on out android device at all times, and no limit on the data upload, this would be a pretty amazing service. Though I dont have a good camera on either of my current two android devices, I do have a proper unlimited data plan and internet access for my android devices. Also being a big fan of being able to share pics the moment they were clicked, I was in love with this feature. I was pretty much clicking some random images, or rather anything I saw and then sharing it within minutes. For someone who travels a lot, and sees some amazing things, and has a good camera on his/her android device, this feature is a godsend. Though, do realise that the pics are not shared with the public the moment you click it, its just that they are uploaded to your profile and are available for you to share in a few clicks. But this too can be setup if you want to.

One thing about the way pictures are handled on G+ is that its said that Google uses some hardcore PNG compression technique for storing the images, which is pretty much lossless. Though this is something i would be worried about if and when I am uploading any quality pics, which as of now, i am not.

Now, after playing about with the Huddle, the pictures, and the various picture upload services and storage features, I went about taking a closer look at the privacy features, which I was adoring since I joined G+. The circles, or grouping is very well integrated within the entire site. Everything, from your Hangouts to Huddles to even the simple google chat, everything is governed by you, with the option to be available to which of your circles. This feature can also enable the entire G+ community to block someone out completely, with that person just being able to see whats being shared to public. This kinda works against the idea of a social network where you share some pictures and then have some really random people comment on it, maybe they were in your list of friends but that pic might not concern them. This is something that could result in starting new friendship from just mere acquaintances or rekindling some lost friendships. I guess, Facebook would be the kind of social network for that to be achieved. Though this is something you can also very well achieve by sharing your posts to the public, something that will spotted even in the Google Searches. So, I would say, this new privacy feature all depends on how you use it, its all in the hands of the end-user, the person to whom the profile belongs to, rather than Google. The only thing that Google wants to keep public about your profile is your name and gender.

You could keep a tab on any new features being doled out at http://twitter.com/#!/Google_Plus apart from Google Blog. From what I’ve read, expect to see some core blogger and picasa integration in the coming months. Apart from that, I’d expect some subtle UI changes, adding Hangouts with video on Android, the much awaited iOS app for G+. Something I would like to see more of, is the integration of Google Docs and G+, something I see missing, imaginge collaborating on a document while hanging out. Pretty much takes care of handling college projects unless there is some hardware related work to be done. The possibilities are all there, just have to wait and see what Google ushers towards us, at a brisk pace.