The issue of Windows 98 as a legacy system came up recently when there was report on BlenderNation about a new patch for the latest Blender release which restored its compatibility with Windows 98. There were a few wise ones who saw it for what it was, another extra bit to make an open source piece of software compatible with a larger range of platforms, but the majority of the adolescents complained and gibed at all the losers who were still using the old piece of rubbish that is Windows 98 … after all EVEN Microsoft doesn’t support it anymore. Pff! The remaining rabble complained about why the entire world uses Windows at all when Ubuntu Linux is there to save all our souls.

I tried posting a comment to the ever growing thread of responses to add another vote to the saner side of the “discussion”, but it probably got lost in the site moderation queue somewhere. So, I thought I’d jot down my thoughts here instead.

You really can’t discount the value of Windows 98 in many situations. While the special Blender build in question might not be of direct use to me because I use XP on my work computer, I do have one old piece of hardware that is still in use (almost always on) and runs Win98.

For anyone who has experimented with this stuff rather than giving grand pronouncements, the simple fact of the matter is that a well tuned Win98 install is the best option for a usable full-fledged operating system on old systems with low resources.

Yes I like Linux too, and use it when it suits my needs better, but it simply can’t recreate the useability of a Win98 system on most old hardware. What Linux has in its versatility and power, it lacks in the realm of truly light GUI options.

Let me preempt some of the responses this is sure to get.

1) NO, a Pentium 4, 1.(something) gigahertz processor, with a measly 256 MB of RAM is not what I am talking about when I talk of old hardware. I’m thinking much lower. As LetterRip rightly points out, getting a new powerful computer every 6 months to a year is not something a lot of people can afford in the world. Even if they can, in many cases such as mine, people don’t see the point of blind upgrading of hardware when the old hardware does everything you want it to at an acceptable speed.

2) Yes, I am aware of low resource friendly window managers for Linux: IceWM, fluxbox et. al. The point still remains that the modular nature of the open source Linux system means that simply starting up a basic desktop requires a million different modules to be loaded into memory no matter how light the windowing system is. Think about it, the Windows 9x base architecture was designed at a time when you had to pay extra to upgrade from a Pentium 1 to a Pentium 1 MMX running at a whopping 233 Mhz! Most modern Linux GUIs, however, were built at a much more resource-rich time and it shows in the performance. Windows 98 may not be built to take advantage of your new beast of a machine, but it was built to make the best of limited resources. Your latest Enlightenment desktop with rotating 3D widgets or whatever, might not be designed to downsize to low resources, but it makes the best use of your latest beast … and the less we say about the travesty that is Windows Vista, the better.

What it comes down to is using the best tool for each situation, and it’s good to know that that choice is still being kept alive by helpful contributions such as this. Three cheers to jms for providing this Blender build, and more power to open source!

Ultimately the reason I am a fan of Open Source software and the reason all my professional work is created exclusively using such software is because of the freedom of choice and implementation it allows. Since when did it become a mandatory decision to prefer and love a UNIX-like operating system, i.e. Linux. Is it not valid choice to prefer something else instead?

Replacing one form of blind faith (Windows is the only God) for another (Linux is the only God) is not my idea of freedom or open thinking, and I wish more people remember that occasionally. Software is at best a musician’s instrument and at worst a blunt tool. It doesn’t play much of a part in producing greatness in the hands of a great talent any more that it plays a part in producing garbage in the hands of the ignorant.

To me Open Source is one of the most important things to happen in the world of technology for decades, maybe centuries. Now if only we all refrain from our natural tendencies as a species to sink into religious zealotry about everything under the Sun, maybe it can actually reach its potential, and more.

If there’s anyone out there still using Windows 98 like me, leave a comment and let me know your reasons, and the challenges you face with it. This is actually a topic that might be useful to write more about. If there is enough interest I just might do that soon.

Samir

There are hundreds if not thousands of sites that list free software, but there are some I have come to rely on when I am looking for something specific, or just browsing to see what is new and interesting (or old and interesting). Since this has become a bit of a loose science for me, I thought I would share with you the places I visit for my regular free software fix.

Nonags>>

A simple site with a single page listing of each category of software. Listings go from the latest entries to older software at the bottom of the page. The great thing here is that you can find some real old gems which might not have been updated for a while but are still great pieces of software. Best of all is that only software without spyware or nag screens are included in this repository. This is always my first stop when looking for a specific type of software.

Sourceforge>>

The mother lode of open source projects on the net, and therefore by default also one of the best repositories of free software. It is true that many of the projects here are not in a mature state of development, and it is also true that these pieces of software are not always as mass-market oriented as other places. But you can’t complain about the variety available or about some of the ambitious things people are pulling off under open source coding practices.

Freshmeat>>

Similar to Sourceforge, but Freshmeat is less of a host and more of a directory of Linux software. Once again most of this is open source and free, and a lot of these have Windows ports as well. Since Linux is commonly used as a server operating system, many of the projects are focused on server scripting rather than end-user utility, but it’s a great place to broaden your free software horizons.

Filehippo>>

Straight forward and geeky software download repository that keeps track of new versions and allows you to download older versions and newer betas of a lot of the packages. Good and simple organisation into categories makes it very easy to find what you are after. A great resource.

Freewarefiles>>

I generally avoid the major commercial free software download sites like the plague, because they are more focused on advertising and less on the utility of the software they offer. While Freewarefiles is one of the most ad-heavy sites on this list, what it lacks in uncluttered simplicity, it makes up for in variety and good organisation. You can truly come across things listed here when you have never heard of, so its always a good haunt when you are casually browsing or exploring your options.

Gamehippo>>

I don’t consider myself a “dull boy” and I am interested in games too. But my taste in games happens to be a bit old school, involving more point-and-click than strafe-and-shoot. No matter what your tastes, however, Gamehippo will have enough free gaming goodies to keep you busy. Nice listings with helpful descriptions and decent screenshots, make this site a great way to find out at leisure what your next time wasting digital pastime is going to be. There are some excellent games hidden in here so look carefully.

The Underdogs>>

Sticking to the gaming theme, and in keeping with my love for old-school gaming, I can’t pass up the opportunity to mention The Underdogs. Not only are these old games with reviews and descriptions and walkthroughs and even downloads in some cases, but these are games that were either unsuccessful at original release or games that have a cult following. Once again, you can browse here for hours reading up on games but do try out some of the well reviewed gems. They are well made, and ridiculously tiny compared to today’s huge downloads. Well worth the effort.

TinyApps>>

Last, and certainly the least, I would like to leave you with TinyApps. They are free, they are useful, they are tiny. Heck, forget tiny, some of the software linked on this small site is positively microscopic! Head over there and enjoy the nostalgia trip to a time when floppy drives were a viable storage medium, or just go there to find some really quick and useful software.

That covers my regular hot spots for free software. These are what I rely on for enjoyment and utility when I’m looking to tinker with some programmes. There are tons of other sites out there and I’m sure you have your favourites. Share your favourite sources of free software in a comment below and add to the list. The great sites in this list can always use some great company.

I occasionally flirt with the idea of being more organised. Don’t get me wrong, I am more organised than most people. The photograph above is of my todo lists and notes which regulate my day-to-day activities. That’s the way it’s been for a few years now and that is the only way I can maintain my sanity considering my do-it-all persuasion. But, there is always more that can be done. I’ve never gotten into the strict calendar scheduling and note-taking habit. When I started this blog, I thought maybe a bit of more structured scheduling of posts to be written and tasks to be done on the administrative end might do me some good. So I set off down the internet stream in search of the right calendaring software.

When I look for software I stick to all free and mostly open source choices. It’s a bit of a lifestyle choice and it works for me. But I also have other exacting specifications for the software I use. I don’t have the newest and fastest of computers so application size, speed and efficiency are major issues, and things that I’m always taking into consideration. These are what I found on my search.

OpenPIM
I found OpenPIM very early in my search. The download is only around 250kb, which is exactly the kind of form factor I enjoy working with. But then I got to the download page and realised it required the Microsoft .NET runtimes. Unfortunately I don’t have those installed on any of my systems nor do I plan on installing it anytime soon. The .NET install is a 22Mb download, and the only programmes I have come across that required it were small little utilities such as this one. Not worth the trouble I say, because I like to run a very lean Windows install. So I passed on OpenPIM.

Sunbird
Then I moved on to something more established and something I already knew about. Sunbird is the calendar and organizer sibling of the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email software. This one was a good bet and might still be but I have my reservations. I still like Firefox but it has bloated to great and slow proportions over the past few years. This is the reason I do a lot of my browsing using Kmeleon, and only switch to Firefox when I need some of its excellent extension functionality. No, Internet Explorer is not even a valid option in my book … besides I don’t like it for making my life as a CSS+XHTML web designer hard and frustrating. Sunbird is a calendaring application that weighs in at a huge(for what it is) 7Mb download. That combined with the Firefox legacy means that I will leave it alone for now.

Chandler
It was now time to check out the maverick on the block, which led me to Chandler. Chandler is purported to be a next generation Personal Information Manager par excellence. That is of course not really true yet because the software is still very much a work-in-progress. It’s an ambitious project with high ideals, and it was the subject of a recent popular non-fiction book called Dreaming in Code. But, ideals aside, Chandler is still in an alpha state with a lot of missing functionality. Also, as part of their philosophy of rapid prototyping, it is developed in the Python (interpreted) programming language. One possible side effect might be the 16Mb installer which I found on their download page. Not for me at the moment, thank you. But something to keep an eye on.

The others
There are many smaller solutions. BORG calendar looks quite complete but uses JAVA — yet another programming API/runtime for me to download and install which I’m not enthusiastic about. The Pimlico project seems to be producing nice little purpose-built tools mainly for mobiles and handhelds. They also have binaries for Linux which gives hope for wider functionality in the future. Speaking of Linux, someone has made a Windows port of the famous Linux email and PIM software Evolution. Remember, this is supposed to be in the league of Outlook as an enterprise solution, which of course also means it is huge. At 66Mb, this thing nears OpenOffice.org proportions (but that I do use because of some unbeatable features). Ajour PIM looks ok and adequate, but not the most awe inspiring solution.

There is absolutely not shortage of online solutions of course. There are probably millions of freely available hosted solutions in the form of PHP scripts and mini groupware CMSs which can do the whole calendar and scheduling thing, but that’s not what I want. Why does everything have to be online now? I love online, but really, some practical perspective here please.

It would also seem everything is huge now, and in the admirable spirit of collaboration and not wanting to re-invent the wheel, everything is dependent on everything else. Unfortunately, the “everything else” in this case are large and cumbersome programming APIs which seem like over kill for a simple calendar utility. I think that is the main issue here. I still think of these as small utilities, but the popular paradigm is increasingly of large conglomerations of functionality that some marketing person down the line decided to call “suites”. Sometimes you don’t want a swiss army knife, you just want a toothpick. I’ve looked through whatever I could find in the realm of calendaring software, but none of the above meet my needs at the moment.

If anyone has any favourites or great finds to suggest, please share them in a comment below. I would love to hear of them. Until then, I’m going to play the great waiting game and stick to my little bits of paper.

Now that I seem to have ironed out the kinks in the workflow to a large extent, and considering the next issue is going to sneak up on me faster than I expect, I thought it was time to see what was new in my weapons of choice, and what developments I can look forward to in the near future. This is what I found.

The GIMP is probably the most maligned of all the creative open source packages, for its interface, for its ancient core and many other real and religious reasons. But on a practical level, while it may not be the snazziest of the bunch, it is a very mature piece of work. Once you learn how to use it, it easily becomes an unobtrusive part of your work flow. The GIMP is developed in two versions, a stable one for big fixes and a development version for new feature additions, cool new gizmos, and other larger changes which are not quite ready for the big-time yet. Since Windows build of the cutting-edge development version are hard to come buy, I have yet to try all the latest features that are coming up in this software. But, there is plenty to look forward to. The next version will have an improved brush engine and also includes a very impressive image extraction system based on recent research. While the GIMP isn’t part of this year’s Google Summer of Code, there were already many interesting projects completed under last year’s event that should find their way into the next major release. These include a healing brush, a perspective-based cloning tool, and vector layers amongst others. By all indications the current development version with all the shiny new features should be released this summer as version 2.4. That is more than enough to keep me busy for a long time to come.

Scribus, like the others, is in a constant state of development, and the team behind it regularly releases stability and bug-fix releases that are steadily improving the PDF and SVG handling capabilities of the software amongst other things. There has always been a very feature complete and ambitious road-map to this project that has struck a balance between must-have functionality and lower level API changes and core programming improvements. These people have taken on the daunting task of giving the world a viable open source alternative to full-featured commercial DTP applications and they are getting there. Two major new additions to look forward to are to come through GSOC projects over the next few months. We can look forward to an imposition plugin and also LaTeX based mathematical symbol and formula support. While the later is not of direct interest to me in the general purpose material that I work on, it should be a boon to the scientific and academic community who are after all some of the most prolific and vocal users of open source software. Imposition functionality, however, will be a godsend for anyone having to deal with compatibility issues with their offset print shop, or even people doing DIY small print runs which they would like to bind themselves. Here’s wishing the student programmers and the core team the best of luck for the completion of their immediate projects and the longer term road map in general.

I think I can safely say that of the three applications in this print workflow, Inkscape is my favourite. Not because it is in any way more capable than the other two, but because it feels the most complete. the strange thing is that it has felt that way since early beta versions, probably because interface simplicity and installation logistics have always been a top priority with this team. They have always known the Windows user was going to be their major audience and they have made sure to cater to them whole-heartedly rather than grudgingly. It shows in the finished product. Inkscape’s vector tools are a dream to use and this program truly makes illustration a pleasurable process. In fact the handling of bezier curves in Inkscape and in Blender are my favourite implementations of the technology. In my mind they are better than the commercial implementations that I have tried in the way they intuitively fit into the way I think about curves and manipulate them. Inkscape’s development is well planned like the other projects here, but they also have a tendency to drop in unexpected gems into new versions. One such feature in the upcoming version is the line engraving feature. It’s certainly not something I expected anytime soon in Inkscape, and you certainly won’t find me complaining about its inclusion. Add to that the very impressive list of seven GSOC projects being worked on and you can be sure that Inkscape is going nowhere but up in the foreseeable future.

As I was writing this post I came across the announcement about the release of Ubuntu Studio on Blendernation. Not only does this new customised Linux distribution include the triumvirate of applications I have mentioned above, but it also comes with a plethora of solutions for sound, music and video enthusiasts that should keep us all busy learning new skills till the end of time. And it includes Blender.

It would seem there are very exciting times ahead for those of us who have made the shift, and those making the shift towards an open source workflow for our collective creative kicks.

What open source software do you use in your work (or play) that you can’t live without? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

But I digress, because while there is an important co-relation to make here, this article is not about Spiderman, but rather about software. And I think one of the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to discussing software is thinking of it as only a “tool”. To me that seems like thinking of a motion picture as just some audio-visual information. But since movies are officially accepted as a creative medium, we do not think of them that way. We understand that in any creative piece of work, it is synergy that matters and not nitty-gritty. Sure every paint stroke counts, but what does that 1m by 2m cut of canvas on the wall make you feel when you step back and look at it? That’s what stays with you and that’s what makes you love or hate it, not the odd dab of paint in the upper left corner that just doesn’t fit.

Right now you’re probably thinking, “Ok, but what does painting have to do with software? Software is just a tool.” And in spite of what I said before, in most cases, you are right. Some software is just a tool. If you’re using Openoffice.org to type out invoices, I’m pretty sure it’s just a tool to you. But when you are spending hundreds of hours of your life inside a piece of creative software to turn out that perfect image, it transcends “tool” very quickly. The moment you get seriously into a creative process, where you are doing it mainly for the pleasure of it rather than as a chore, you’re in it for the experience, and your partner in that experience takes on a personality of its own.

Let’s take music as an example. If you were to analyse it on a scientific and usability level, I’m sure one of the big name software sequencers might come out as the most efficient and user friendly music production device. That doesn’t seem to stop people from buying and trying to learn the guitar. Why would they want to do that to themselves? There’s no undo button, you can’t repeat exactly the same sound twice, it’s death on your fingers as they initially learn to squeeze the sharp metallic wires into the wodden neck, it’s cumbersome, it’s difficult to learn, you can’t get anything good out of it for weeks untill you really understand it. This interface sucks! And yet many musicians are attached enough to those lumps of woods and wire to actually name them like their children. Even musicians who embrace the digital future often record their guitar solos live and mix them in with the synthesized material. Why? Because playing the guitar is more fun.

I can say the same for Blender. While I could find fault with various small pieces of it viewed in isolation, I enjoy the experince of using it as a whole. I actually “like” Blender. How many pieces of software can you say the same about? (Off hand I can only think of Inkscape which for me comes a close second) In the long run, and as a person who actually uses the software for results, that fun, that experince, that entertainment factor is what helps me create better. Creation is not a cold mathematical process of features and capabilities, but rather one of inspiration and persistence. Blender helps me persist, and it obviously helps a lot of other people persist too because so many fans seem to be forming a growing movement behind it. That growing movement of people adds to the experince that is Blender. Certainly not the least important of all these factors is that most people using 3D software, by the sheer power of numbers, are doing so for entertainment, as a hobby, because they like to, and not to make perfectly-scheduled renderfarm-based multi-million Hollywood blockbusters on a “tight” budget.

All this might seem like mystic mumbo-jumbo to the more pragmatic, technically inclined among you. Because while I might have answered why the creative user can prefer Blender over other ‘more technically solid’ options in the open source 3D software world, that doesn’t answer the original question proposed by the Slashdot post: “How come developers are still willing to put up with such an arcane code base?” The answer is the same: synergy, the fact that a system can be much more than the sum of its parts, and the Blender community is a very active system.

The greatest dis-service done to developers and programmers is to relegate them to the realm of well-oiled automatons. Programmers are just nerds who can mathematically throw together the correct sequences of code to get something done, right? If you put a thosand monkeys on a thousand desktops with an open text editor, eventually they will come up with the source code for Blender, right? Wrong. Anyone who erroneously thinks these things needs to realise that programming is one of the most creative activities you can ever be involved in. It’s not about the statements and formulas, just like a good story or a poem is not about the words and sentences. Programming is a high art just like any other, and you know what? Most open source programmers program for exactly the reason most artists paint. Because it’s fun. Maybe there are other better code bases out there to tinker with, but do they lead anywhere? Do they have a rabid fanbase of thousands who genuinely utilise their features? Do they have a list of enthusiastic spokespeople, informative websites, and entertaining forums to join? Are they fun to code?

You do the math. How entertaining is your 3D software?

The only hold back in this migration is Windows which I still use, but after some recent glitches and file losses, I have finally begun looking towards Linux for an eventual shift. Before I left for my vacation in January, I started downloading and trying out a whole slew of Live CD Linux distros, to get the hang of it and also the find the one that suits my needs best. Since I got back I continued my downloading spree but found to my dismay that my computer refused to boot from the CD anymore. That certainly put a damper on my playful experimenting so I set out to find the culprit.

It wasn’t the BIOS as I first thought, but instead it seemed to be a dirty lens in the CD drive which just didn’t allow for a quick pickup on the bootable discs at startup. The normal way of doing this is the much hyped “CD cleaner” discs which come with a special CD that has a cleaning brush on it and some special solution for the cleaning, but I’ve not had much luck with those in the past and my drive is quite old. I though perhaps it was in need for a fuller treatment. So I took it apart for a thorough cleaning, and these photos resulted.

The prognosis isn’t good however. While I might have managed to clean the lens, this drive has had other problems before, including a drive mechanism which sometimes gets stuck. Once it was all opened out, these problems are appearing again and I can see that there are obviously some mechanichal issues with the gear system in there which makes the opening and closing mechanism and the one that raises and lowers the drive head not co-ordinate as they are supposed to.

So for now I have moved on to a spare drive I had lying around, and this patienet will have to wait for some future leisure time when I can tinker, decipher and understand.

The listing in the newspaper sounded innocent enough:

EYE YOGA…
If you wish to get rid of your spectacles, attending Sampoorna Eye Yoga Camp can do it the natural way. The camp will teach you eye exercises, Vedic in origin, that will help in relieving you of eye disorders. Register for a free lecture in South Mumbai. On January 17. (Tel: 98xxxxxxxx)

My vision is quite normal and I don’t wear spectacles, but my brother and father do, and so this was of interest. We decided to go, and I went along for moral support, and for remembering any useful details as the member of the clan officially interested in this sort of thing.

The “registration” over the phone was done and after plenty of research on the net about the directions given to the venue, we showed up. My hopes for true new knowledge were dashed as soon as I neared the class room in the old school where the lecture was being held. There was a man in “professional” attire, who seemed to be waiting to control the proceedings, and there were women at the door keeping a record of those who showed up. And then there were the attendees sitting on the undersized desks: concerned parents and curious consumers. Now when did those ever show up to serious events of information dissemination? Down the corridor, a classroom was filled with little children dressed in bright yellow and red clothing. They seemed to be gearing up to do whatever extra-curricular activity they were being forced into this evening for the “well roundedness” of their development. At that moment I had a feeling I would be better off with them, but it was too late for a reprieve. I stepped into the nest of buyers, picked up the badly printed brochure lying on the table, and took a seat.

Needless to say I didn’t find myself mentally enriched by the hour long “scientific” sales pitch that followed. Oh, I’m pretty sure this camp is serious, because it is based on well regarded sources and uses methods which I was, in fact, already familiar with. The Chakshushopanishad was mentioned and also the Bates Method which I was introduced to after picking up and old edition of Better Eyesight Without Glasses many years ago. Can’t say I internalised everything it had to say, but I learned and put into practice enough of the simple exercises to make sure my eyes aren’t completely fried by my copious staring at CRTs in the line of duty and curiosity. [BTW, the curious can also read an online edition of Better Eyesight Without Glasses in addition to the printed version]

This stuff works, if done with seriousness, but somehow that was not enough of a selling point for me. Not when the information is freely available for the dedicated seeker and I was being asked to fork out a good chunk of cash — more cash than I would spend on a completely extravagant book shopping spree. Yes, THAT much cash ! This might make me sound like a spoilt brat of the internet age, but I’ve always believed knowledge should be free, as far as possible. And I believed this even before the internet existed. The idealist in me likes to think that a perfectly sustainable world can be built around the free sharing of information and learning rather than on the suppression and censorship of it. That is what draws me to Open Source software and content, because here at last is an entire movement of people and organisations trying to live by that ideal. But the fact remains that most of the world is geared towards, suppression, repackaging and selling old lamps as new, so who am I to argue. All we can do is follow the dictum, caveat emptor while the lazier ones rush off for that new special offer on the complete set of multiplication tables from 1 to 10, available only today for a special low low price with a free bonus gift! A congratulate them on their newly acquired mathematical brilliance.

While I sat in this average looking school class room, trying very hard not to doze off, and formulating movie posters in my head for “My teacher was eaten by killer salesmen from outer space”, a came to the realisation that this really is how the average classroom looks. Smooth grey floor tiles, cream coloured walls that had been subjugated by the elements into a dull beige, slightly non-existent windows, various mismatched notice boards, and a general neutrality only fit for movie sets of forgotten mental wards of creepy hospitals where you assume the boring sameness is meant to keep the inmates calm and to prevent them from getting into fits. How is anyone supposed to learn and be inspired in this place?

To clarify, the reason this situation came as a revelation to me was not because I never spent any time in school, but because almost all of my schooling years were spent in one school: The Indian School, Muscat. It wasn’t drastically different, mind you. In fact the entire building (or complex of buildings) was painted grey. Most of the insides were painted grey, and the environment was generally neutral looking to the untrained eye. But the magic was in the details, like the fact that a quick peep through almost any window in the campus would reveal that the entire place lay at the bottom of a dry rocky valley that was surrounded by a range of towering peaks — I’m not talking Everest here but impressive enough. Then there was the fact that the school had grown organically over the decades from one small original building to an entire complex housing 10,000 students. The sheer variety of building styles, and more importantly the sudden juxtapositions where two sections met made it an adventurous place with ups and downs and what seemed like a million secret nooks which no student might have ever discovered. That place was inspiring. I can’t say any students there would agree to this during their studies there, and it certainly didn’t encourage me into higher levels of book-wormness, but I can safely state that in hind sight that school played a large part in moulding my mind into the convoluted maze with many hidden nooks that it turned out to be, rather than the plain and uniform set of dull beige compartments that most children are left with as they grow into adulthood. For that I am eternally grateful.

All good things must come to an end, and eventually the arresting oration on the defects of the eye came to a sort of close as the costs involved were tabled. The room broke into a cacophony of hyper parents worrying about how their children could possibly sacrifice 5 days of their precious brainwashing schooling to attend this camp and save their eyesight. People’s priorities never fail to surprise me. We made a quiet exit from the front, and walked out into a lovely dusk surrounded by ancient trees lining ancient streets, far from the ongoing discussions about cheque payments vs. cash. Like any other red-blooded human beings, all that talk of vitreous humours and celery muscles had made us all a little hungry, so we set out in search of sustenance. Easier said then done in an area where “restaurant and bar” seemed to be the norm and when you’re more of a street food person. A mini-quest later we came across a waft of chai which lead us to Cozy Snacks.

Cozy Snacks is a Mumbai eatery. That’s really the only way to describe it because I doubt this strange mix of slightly run-down restaurant that also sells chocolate bars, ice cream, aerated beverages, and supplies long-life milk to the locality, exists anywhere else. And then there is that unique menu of the Mumbai eatery, and I’m not talking about the physical object, we’ll come to that later. I’m talking about the food available: South Indian breakfast snacks, plus strange Indianised sandwich variations, plus local Maharashtrian dishes, plus North Indian savouries, plus fresh juices and and fruit-based milk shakes, equals standard Mumbai eatery. Our meal consisted of the ubiquitous South Indian wada-sambhar, some sort of a grilled potato sandwich and chai. And at this point I would like to return to the menu. Some other dishes on those plastic coated pages included the very Long John Silverish “Vegetable cutlace” (I’m assuming they meant cutlet) and “Fresh Lame Sota” (I’m not sure what to assume since “Fresh Lime Soda” also appeared as a separate item on the list). And that’s just another facet of a Mumbai eatery. If youre the kind of person who picks up on these things, even a casual reading of the menu can be an extremely entertaining experience. Of course, it goes without saying that the chai was nothing short of sinful.

The Crossword bookshop at Kemps Corner is a favourite browsing place, and we had, in fact, dropped in to kill some time before the great ocular oration of the day. Now, our thirst for knowledge not quite quenched by the sales pitch and the chai, we stepped back into the bookshop. Unlike earlier in the evening, this time we were greeted by floodlights and bored camera crews. We had noticed the buzz of activity earlier, and the posters, but it was still a bit surreal to see the entire magazine section cleared out o make room for a make-shift press room.

SUKETU MEHTA
announces the
Hutch-Crossword Book Award 2006
Shortlist

…shouted the placards and the flyers, and the literati, the news crews, and the journalists waited patiently well past the appointed time in hopes of wrapping this up and probably heading home. I doubt stuff like this is reported in a hurry or as “breaking news”. Someone needs to break something for that to happen. We went about our browsing business and eventually as I navigated the displaced magazine shelves haphazardly placed around the check-out I could hear the official event getting under way in the background. The usual state-of-the-nation stuff normally mouthed by management and then Suketu Mehta (author of Maximum City I found out later) took over to get to what all the lights and cameras were here for. Before that of course, there needed to be the usual artistic stuff writers seem to be compelled to talk about when forced into a public corner. As I was browsing through the ever shrinking design and architecture section I could hear deep questions about why writers write. “We don’t do it for the money”, he said, and I thought aloud in utter indignation “Yes we do!”. Then he went on to say how writer’s actually write to (I quote as accurately as I can remember) “hear the distant echoes in kindred souls” or something like that. There was no applause during the momentary pause that followed. Flipping through novel compilations by unfamiliar authors I realised that I knew what he was trying to say but the problem with literature and any other communication that is too self aware is trying too hard to communicate. I’ve always found that the message is usually clearer when it is less costumed. The nuder the better.

We soon left behind the lights and headed for home picking up a bus across the street. As much as I would have loved to browse forever, eventually you have to realise that there are only so many hours during the day, and you must decide carefully how many of those hours will be spent in absorptive activities and how many in productive pursuits. I absorbed as much as I could on the way home as I always do when I am on the road. And the roads of Mumbai are so much richer.

Why do writers write, besides the money, in case you’re wondering? I don’t remember who came up with this answer, but I always found it to be the truest one: because writing is so much easier than not writing.

Those who aren’t familiar with this project should have a look at it. It is truly a worthy challenge to try to put together a free collection of “open source” vector clip art. With the increasing viability of software like OpenOffice.org and Inkscape, a good collection of clip art is essential to complement these packages. I recently visited the site and saw a call for logos for the project. I sketched out a couple of ideas and executed them in Inkscape. The logos submitted so far are viewable here. At the moment I’m writing this my logos have not been put up on the page, but they will probably show up once the administrators has had a look at them.

I wish this project continues a healthy growth, because it is an essential part of the open source alternative. Those who don’t subscribe to that “idealism” can go there purely to get some cool, FREE clip art.

Samir

The logo is now up on the site as the header/masthead. It’s a new site built to provide many Blenderheads out there a place to host their images and yet other place to hangout and hone their craft. Can’t argue with that sentiment. I wish them the best of luck and all the success in this worthy cause.

More the merrier.

Samir

Recently there was a call for splash screen ideas for the latest release of Blender (2.34), and I thought that was as good an excuse as any to put my character through some more deformation tests. This mockup was the result of the exercise. It didn’t win of course, because it is by no means is a stunning example of what Blender is really capable of, but it was worth the effort just to get to know this model better. Here I rendered the character with smooth surfaces as a test, and also because I didn’t expect my rough look to be comprehended by most of the viewers as a legitimate choice. However, the solid shaded polygonal look will continue in my further uses of this character. I like that look for the world I am trying to create.

More to come.

Samir