One pointless picture, three pointless stories.
The Tank, Manju and I went for a Malayalam book haul some months back. That was when I took this picture of the Tank.
I better not narrate stories about him here. On the other hand, I thought the way this picture is made into B&W is mildly interesting. If you open a colour photograph and simply change mode to "grayscale" using your favourite image editor, you'd get a rather noisy unappealing picture. There are other means to this.
So what you do is, first apply whatever regular transformations you want on the colour picture. Then decompose it into RGB channels (with GIMP, this is Filters -> Colors -> Decompose), and change layering mode to "overlay". The "blue" channel is generally noisy, so it has to be greatly eliminated. Change the overlay amount of "green" and "red" channels also as appropriate. You'll get a rather nice, noise-reduced B&W picture. (Instructions that actually make sense are available, too.)
Ok, I just wanted to paste the token picture here. It's become a habit, and yes, I don't have many worthy pictures this time.
***
Short political history of moustache
This happened some months back.
I'd been traveling for about a week without shaving whatever little facial hair I have. After that one week I got to shave, but decided to leave the moustache (or whatever little facial hair I have under my nose.) It just stayed there for a month. It even started showing signs of developing into a real moustache in a not very faraway future.
Then I went home to visit The Family.
When I stepped in on a Saturday morning, mother was alone at home. She said, "hehe, what is this under your nose?"
Sister came home after a while with a friend of hers. Both of them giggled and asked, "heeheehee, what is this under your nose?"
Father came home in the evening. I was lying half asleep on the couch with an open book on my face. He removed the book from there and exclaimed, "haha! Hey, what is this on his face?"
Remember the Panchathanthra story, in which crooks manage to steal a goat from a poor Brahmin by convincing him that the goat is not really a goat? My domestic crooks decided that my babyface and the moustache are a bad match. They were trying very hard to convince to me to shave it off urgently.
Which greatly disappointed me. I was hoping that they would immediately become fans of my new sparkling moustache. I would disappoint them all, I thought. I would shave it off soon after showing it off for the weekend. I would act nonchalant to their pleas to have mercy on the innocent moustache, I thought.
On Sunday evening, as the two cheering women watched on, I shaved off my moustache of great expectations.
***
Festival, psychologist and sex
The other day I installed festival, a speech synthesis software on my work computer. What interested me was not festival itself, but that Emacs can interface with festival rather well. It can read out files, highlighted regions, messages etc. It can also interface with the psychologist, an Emacs LISP manifestation of the classical ELIZA program. The festival-hooked doctor will ask questions aloud, and you will type in your answers.
A small crowd gathered around my desk as I underwent my session with the Emacs shrink, with the speakers turned on at a rather loud volume. Soon enough the conversation veered to sex.
Doctor: Are you afraid of sex?
Me: Ugh, no.
Doctor: Describe something about your sexual history.
Me: Well, ugh, why?
Doctor: Please describe your sex life.
Me: Now? Right here?
Doctor: Describe your most unusual sexual experience.
Me: Hmm. Later, please?
Doctor: Describe your feelings about your sexual partner.
Me: WHY ARE YOU SO OBSESSED ABOUT MY SEX LIFE??
Doctor: Maybe some problems in your childhood are related to this.
Me: Eh? What are you talking about?
Doctor: Are you satisfied with your lover?
Me: $%@#$. *wiping sweat* C-x C-k
(C-x C-k is the keystroke to kill a buffer - ie, close a file, stop a program, etc.)
And the group around me burst into a wild demonic laughter.
***
"Bhhrrr!" (with apologies to Basheer)
Hmmm. I thought about this for a while, and decided that this is not worth anyone's time.