frack!

The shoreline serenity (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:27:28 -0800

The shoreline serenity (Taken with instagram)

A late night classic - heavenly!! (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:20:45 -0800

A late night classic - heavenly!! (Taken with instagram)

New year’s dessert run! (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 01:58:04 -0800

New year’s dessert run! (Taken with instagram)

Wonder about square signs you see everywhere?

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:23:30 -0700

techwonder:

What are these signs?!

- They are called QR [Quick Response] codes. Very similar to [UPC] bar codes that we are all familiar with already. Their purpose is to transmit information to a machine when a scanner scans them. [like telling the register at the grocery store which item you are purchasing]

So, what’s the difference?

Read More

Cool crowd @ #ignitesf. Side note: need a way to show all...

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:13:09 -0700

Cool crowd @ #ignitesf. Side note: need a way to show all hashtags around me! (Taken with Instagram at Public Works)

Remnants of an era gone by! (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:26:56 -0700

Remnants of an era gone by! (Taken with instagram)

Seen @ Starbucks: QR codes and a dash of mystery… The QR...

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:52:08 -0700

Seen @ Starbucks: QR codes and a dash of mystery… The QR code points to a form of scavenger hunt!

Aperture iPhoto Sync

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 02:07:00 -0700

Aperture iPhoto Sync is an applescript which will sync your Aperture projects/albums to iPhoto, thereby making them available to the rest of iLife apps for you to use. (Yes I know that you can drag and drop Aperture images & create iPhoto albums, but a script sure beats doing this manually!) It syncs masters by creating links in iPhoto library to save space.. and (optionally) syncs up modified versions by exporting them using Aperture’s export presets.

Note : This post is a part of migrating my old blog over to Tumblr. I worked on this a while back, but hopefully, someone still finds it useful.

Also : The script hasnt been updated for Aperture 3 yet, so if you’d like to use it with A3, please feel free to update and let me know :-).

UPDATE: See below for a version that works for Aperture 3.

Features

Syncs Masters without copying them – save space !
Syncs modified versions by exporting them from Aperture using selected presets.
Will optionally delete photos from iPhoto albums before syncing – ensuring an exact replica.
Syncs intelligently – ignores ‘Rejects’ and syncs only ‘Select’ of a stack to avoid clutter.
Uses the library that you have configured in Aperture as the the library it imports from.

First run….

The first time it is run, it will prompt you for certain defaults for it to use henceforth. These values include :

Whether to Export or Ignore modified photos or ‘versions’ from Aperture while syncing. Exporting modified photos to iPhoto will take up more space since duplicates of the existing versions in Aperture will be made. This also takes up more time to sync.
If exporting, the Aperture Export preset that will be used by aperture to export the photos.
Whether to delete photos from existing iPhoto albums (with the same name as the Aperture project/album you are syncing up) before adding photos to it. Selecting this option increases sync time by a bit, but will ensure that the iPhoto album is a replica of your Aperture album/project.

These preferences are stored in the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.devarshi.ApertureiPhotoSync.plist. To change these preferences, either edit the file using plist editor, or delete it. If the script does not find the file, it will prompt you again for the preferences.

The sync….

Using the script is pretty straightforward.

When run, the script will present you with a list of folders and projects from Aperture that you may choose from. Currently, this script allows you to select only one folder/project at this level.
Upon selecting a project/folder, the script will present you with a list of projects/albums contained within it, from which you may select one or more.
If the first selection does not contain any projects/albums, the script will check to see if it contains any images itself. If so, the script shall create an album in iPhoto with the name of the selected project in Aperture and import those images into that album according to the defaults selected earlier .
If, in step 2, you were presented with and selected one/more sub-projects/sub-albums, the script will then proceed to create albums in iPhoto with the same names as the selected sub-projects/sub-albums and import the images into those albums according to the defaults selected earlier.

A few tips…

If you choose to “Export” modified images from Aperture, do note that this takes up some amount of time during which, apparently, nothing seems to be happening… This is because Aperture performs a background export of the images… If you don’t believe me, check your CPU usage !
The “Export” of modified images creates temporary photos. After each project/album is imported into iPhoto (copies of these temporary photos are made in the iPhoto library), these temporary photos will be moved to trash. So, if you plan to ‘export’ a lot of photos, make sure you clean up your trash periodically !

A few things to note…

As of version 2.3, the script needs your Aperture library to have atleast one stack for it to run correctly. It will fail in between if you dont. While I work on this problem, for the time being, please create atleast one stack in your library.
I’ve done some basic tests with Aperture 2.1.2 and iPhoto ’09. (Do not use this version script for Aperture versions prior to 2.0 or after 3.0).
Please note that this script is still in alpha stage… so please backup your libraries before attempting to use this script.
I currently do not have a lot of time to test this script extensively, and so am posting it here hoping that it’ll be useful to others, and that I can use your feedback to fix any issues…
However, if you run into any problems, or if you have any comments, please feel free to get in touch with me or leave me a comment here.

Updates for Aperture 3.0…

Note : Michael Rest was kind enough to share his changes to the script to make it compatible with Aperture 3.0. I’m including his version of the script here for folks to use. I will be integrating changes from his version into my release after I’ve had a chance to test them.

Please contact him if there are any issues with the script since I havent had a chance to test it.

Change List:

- Updated to Aperture 3 : Fixed Paths, Tablenames, SQL Statements
- Fixed deletion of exported temporary Files
- Fixed temporary items folder
- feature changes marked as [MiR]
-Modified seection Process:
* Select Projects from Root Folder (Library Folder)
* Select Folders from Root Folder (Library Folder)
* Select Subprojects / Albums in Folder
-Modified behaviour just to export Pics:
* rated from 1 to 5
* flagged
-Disabled GetListOfPathsToImageMasters because i always want to export my Versions (Masters all RAW in IPhoto i only keep resized JPEGs)
-Default PrefDeletePhotosInAlbumBeforeAppend changed to true

Download v3.0 of the script here (Updated to work with Aperture 3 by Michael Rest)

Download v2.3 of the script here (does not work with Aperture 3 yet)

Your Multi RSS visualizer was just what I was looking for to show RSS feeds in my companies lobby TV screens. We would live to able to pull in twitter posts as well but I see on Twitters site they don't support RSS> Do you know of any way to get Twitter posts on a visualizer like yours?

Tue, 24 May 2011 10:39:46 -0700

If you have a public Twitter account, try this as the url to get the RSS feed for it :-). (Replace [username] with your twitter username)

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=[username]

A “Sticky” prototype.. By @dreealo. Great way to...

Mon, 16 May 2011 20:50:11 -0700

A “Sticky” prototype.. By @dreealo. Great way to test what users want! (Taken with instagram)

The beginning of a new web presence at...

Sun, 15 May 2011 19:33:06 -0700

The beginning of a new web presence at http://devarshi.shah.name ! (Taken with instagram)

"Mobile phones changing social media ? Duh! “People that use Facebook on their mobile..."

Sun, 15 May 2011 19:11:08 -0700

“Mobile phones changing social media ? Duh! “People that use Facebook on their mobile device are twice more active on Facebook than Non-mobile users”.. Or is it the other way around ?”

- Social Media Via Mobile : Infographics

the nth muse

Sun, 15 May 2011 18:58:49 -0700

Greek mythology speaks of the 9 muses.. the sources of inspiration for artists and scientists.. “The Nth muse” is my attempt to acknowledge that there are many more than 9 of these.. That one can (and probably should) learn to derive inspiration from a myriad of people, places and happenings around oneself.. That whenever you feel you’ve run out of ideas, try searching for the one tiny little thought that escapes you…; the one glimpse of sheer ingenuity that’s within your reach…; the one muse no one has ever thought of… the “n”th muse !

So what’s that got to do with blogging ? Maybe because the act of putting your thoughts down in a coherent fashion lends itself to the yet-more-thought-provoking act of introspection.. Because it forces you to give shape to what has previously always been an amorphous glob of unexplored ideas and feelings… and maybe, in that process, it helps you discover muses you never knew were right there !

My first blog was titled ‘the nth muse’. I started it in 2008, as I was looking for ideas. Fast forward to today, I’ve learnt that it’s about much more than ideas. Life is about surviving in a world of constant change. This one is called ‘frack!’ (more on that later) - and that’s what it will be about - thriving in a world where change is the norm.

Thanks for reading.

MultiRSS Visualizer - an enhanced RSS screensaver for Mac OS...

Sun, 15 May 2011 18:55:43 -0700

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

MultiRSS Visualizer - an enhanced RSS screensaver for Mac OS X

Note : This post is a part of migrating my old blog over to Tumblr. I worked on this a while back, but hopefully, someone still finds it useful.

The RSS Visualizer Screen Saver in Mac OS X 10.4/10.5 is a pretty nifty one… However, in my opinion (and in that of so many others !), it still lacks some functionality – especially being able to specify multiple feeds from which to grab news items… After having searched around on the web for something that would do, I finally bit the bullet and opened up Quartz Composer. The result ? MultiRSS Visualizer…

Ok… so once I opened up the stock RSS Visualizer in Quartz Composer, some playing around was all that it took to understand the basics of how it operates. The great thing about Quartz Composer is that you can pretty much do everything by simply interconnecting blocks. Anyone with even a little bit of programming background shouldnt have any problem understanding how QC works. Being both an EE and Computer Science engineer, it was pretty easy to look at it from the perspective of digital circuit design – putting together blocks, interconnecting them with signals carrying data ! So much for my thoughts.. on to the actual process..

The only needed addition to the stock RSS visualizer is the ability to change URLs periodically. That and a bit more work to add a randomization element. The first was solved by parsing a comma separated list of URLs to produce a list, and then stepping through that list one at a time (with a time interval equal to NumNewsItems * Time to display one news item) – and passing each URL to the existing processing blocks.

It took a little bit more time to implement the randomization – using which you can select a different feed to start the screensaver each time. An initial solution was to use the Random patch – but it took one run for me to realize that because this was a pseudo random generator – with no way to specify a starting seed – this approach would never work ! The solution ? Add in a system time patch which can then be used to really generate a random starting index for the feeds.

That was it.. You can open up the screen saver in QC and look at it in more detail. Enjoy!

The screenshot below shows the preferences panel for the screensaver. The RSS feeds to be displayed by the screensaver are configured as a comma separated list in the field RSSURLList seen below.

Download : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4922709/blog-media/multirss-visualizer-v2.qtz

Right click on this file and download it to your Mac. Save it in /Users/_your_username_/Library/Screen Savers/ (create that folder if it doesnt exist). Then open up the Desktop and Screensaver preference pane and select this screensaver.

Enhanced Entourage/Mail – Omnifocus integration using...

Sun, 15 May 2011 18:55:00 -0700

Enhanced Entourage/Mail – Omnifocus integration using Quicksilver

Note : This post is a part of migrating my old blog over to Tumblr. I worked on this a while back, but hopefully, someone still finds it useful.

So.. if you are a GTD fan, and use a Mac, you may have been enticed into using OmniFocus (an awesome GTD app, by the way..). While the folks over at Omnigroup have provided a nice set of scripts to add tasks using Quicksilver, it’s still not that straightforward to add Emails from Entourage to OmniFocus…. Many folks have put together nice scripts (see this thread, on the Omnigroup forums) that will take a set of emails currently selected in Entourage and add them to the OmniFocus Inbox… However, if you use Quicksilver, I’ve extended these scripts so that they will automatically add these emails into the appropriate Project and Context, therby saving you the time and effort of having to go in and clean up your inbox later on..

Installing the script

Copy the script to /Users//Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions/ folder. (Create the folder if it doesnt exist)
Restart Quicksilver.
Open Quicksilver preferences.
Go to Preferences -> Actions and make sure that ‘Entourage to Omnifocus’ is selected.

Using the script

Select one or more emails in Entourage.
Bring up the Quicksilver window, hit “.” (period) and enter text in this format : ” > Project @ Context ” without the quotes, ofcourse. Note that this part is an integration from the Quicksilver Omnifocus script that comes with Omnifocus, and so supports the different features of that script (such as creating the project/context in Omnifocus if one does not exist already and trying to match the first few characters of the project/context with the any that already exist).
Hit Tab and enter the name of this script (Entourage To Omnifocus)
Once the script comes up, hit enter. This will cause the selected emails to be added to the specified Project and Context with their subject as the task title. The email body as well as a link to the actual email will be attached to the notes section of the task.

Ofcourse – this is, by no means, a completely indigenous script. I took the two scripts available (Quicksilver-Omnifocus script & Entourage – Omnifocus script), made some modifications and here we go… Have fun!

Download

Entourage-to-Omnifocus

Mail-to-Omnifocus

Welcome to Galactica!

Sat, 14 May 2011 01:01:28 -0700

Yeah - you can tell what I’ve been watching of late :-).