About Me

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Gurgaon, Haryana, India
I look at life with detachment and distance, like a window shopper. Not only I study the window but also my own reflections in it.

Scripting Music

Friday, October 09, 2009 1 comments

Labour of Love is a Waste of Time

I am fond of Hindi film songs of 1950 to 1970's. I have been collecting Mp3 songs of this period, for last 9 years. The collection has now grown to 7,000 songs.
(A photo taken by me: "Seven Thousand Noses""- Like my Music Collection)

Many like minded friends have shared their archives with me. Because of diverse sources, the songs were not having consistent or uniform "Tagging". It was a daunting task to clean tags of 7,000 songs. I have now completed that. Let me share with you the pains and pleasures of this labour of love.

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Recognising Faces

Friday, October 02, 2009 5 comments

Software That Sends Chill Down The Spine

Recognising faces is such an amazing God-given gift that we fail to realize the complexities of the process. Only when we try to build machines to do this, that we realize the near impossobility of the task.

(On the left, is me @ 13 Yrs of age, 1963, a school group photo. Notice the determination in the eyes. I love this boy!)

Picasa, the photo software from Google has added face recognition in its recent version 3.5. I tried it on my 5,000 odd photo collection. Let me give a rewiew of Picasa's face recognition abilities.
I am computer world's senior citizen. I wrote my first computer program in 1969 on a 2nd generation machine which filled a big hall in our college. Since then I have kept pace with various fast paced changes in the technology. During the course of these 40 years, I have put all my music (7,000 songs) and photos (5,000) on the PC. The photos represent a vertable history of my life and my times. Oldest photo is of 1954 - when I was a 4 year old toddler. It has been a herculian task to maintain this treasure, specially due to transfers and changes of computers and software.

I downloaded and upgraded Picasa 3.5. On opening it started the task of recognising the faces in my stock of albums.
It asks you to name the faces it recognises and asks your confirmation wherever it has any doubt.
The accuracy is amazing. It not only recognized 'me' with or without beard - that I keep growing and shaving from time to time, but it could recognize my son's childhood photos and linked these to his adulthood face. A normal person who has not seen my son grow would not be able to do that!
Rather than successes what sent a shiver down my spine was its errors. It confused between my son and faces of myself, his mother and sister. That means that it can discern genetic signatures. DNA tests may become redundant.
I thought that the software appeared to be "God's hand". But such horrorific ideas vanished when it also made silly mistakes like confusing between a female face and a face of a bearded policeman. I felt relieved and granted myself a smile. The software doesn't have "God's hand" but is all too human. Even that is a disturbing achievement!!!

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What For Am I Here?

Thursday, September 17, 2009 0 comments

The Purpose of Our Existence

One of the quest for which this blog is written is "What for am I here?". In seeking lifelong quests, we should not restrict ourselves to hand-me-down answers not even from this blog. Such answers are however definitly helpful to draw your own answers.
Some people do feel that there is no grand purpose in our existence. We are here just for existence merely? To get born, live and die? At best leaving progeny to carry our genes ahead.
I feel that this is only partially true, but what we do to pass time on this planet is also important.
"Geeta" says we all have come to this earth for a specific purpose - which it terms as "Swadharma" - our unique individual duty! This "Swadharma"also changes with time. As you grow old this swadharma also unfolds into something new. Its not static.
But How do We know our "Swadharma".

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