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Her green plastic watering can
For her fake chinese rubber plant
In fake plastic earth.
That she bought from a rubber man
In a town full of rubber plants
Just to get rid of itself.
And it wears her out, it wears her out
It wears her out, it wears her out.

- Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees

This blog post has nothing to do with the band Radiohead. The only reason I mention them here, is because they talk about fake chinese rubber plants. I would like to talk about fake chinese remote controls. And how useful they are.

It all started when I met a guy who showed me how he had built a remote by himself for his Canon digital camera. All it needed was a cellphone handsfree type cable and jack, a couple of touch-sensitive switches and something to hold everything together. It was cool, simple and the engineer in me really woke up (or was it the gadget freak in me?). But I didn’t want a wired remote. I wanted a wireless remote. I searched the net with no luck. I did find a site with detailed instructions on how to build a wireless remote for the Nikon D70s, but then I have a Canon 350D. I searched quite a bit, and in the process, my desire to own a remote overtook my curiosity to build one. The real Canon remote costs $20 and that is a ridiculous amount for something that consists of an IC, L.E.D and a few switches. I knew the Chinese would be upto something, and I did a search on Ebay to find this. It’s called OMG! SR-1 Universal Infrared Remote for Canon and Nikon SLR / D-SLR and costs $0.99. That’s about Forty indian rupees! But the catch - shipping costs $10.95. But it still worked out cheap for me - for $11 I would be getting a remote shipped to India. Cool!

I recieved the remote yesterday, and it works great. It has two modes (only for Canon) - instant shutter release and shutter release after 2 seconds. Any photographer would tell you that having a remote is pretty useful when shooting long exposure and macro. The 2 seconds delay is great when the photographer also wants to be in the photograph. All he has to do is mount the camera on a tripod, stand in front of it and use the remote

But that’s not it. This remote also features a tiny ultrabright L.E.D that can be used as a flashlight. And it comes with a small mirror that can be easily mounted on the lens. IR rays are reflected off shiny surfaces, so this is when you want to use the remote from behind the camera (the IR reciever is in front of the camera…duh!). If you thought that’s all it has, you are wrong. It also comes with a cool strap attaching thingy, which allows you to have it fixed to your camera strap always. Now that is what I called innovation. Innovation + Made in China = UBER GADGET! Will try to post pictures sometime.

Adobe’s much awaited software for photographers is called Lightroom. Currently available as a Mac beta, the Windows version should be here in summer (their summer, not ours :)). I was looking at some videos of the software’s functions, and found it interesting. Another reason for me to eagerly look forward to this program is the take-over of Pixmantec by Adobe. Pixmantec’s Rawshooter program is what I currently use to develop my camera RAW files, and I totally love it for it’s easy UI and great conversion tools. Before Rawshooter became popular, CaptureOne was the leading RAW convertor in the market. I never enjoyed using this program. It had a dull interface, and not so intuitive controls. Incidently, Rawshooter was written by CaptureOne’s original founders, and Pixmantec’s accquisition by Adobe is a classic big-company-buys-small-company story.

One thing that I have noticed about Adobe’s roadmap for photographers is the inclusion of Digital Asset Management (DAM) into it’s products. It started with Bridge, and now Lightroom has a roboust database with all functions one can expect from a database driven system. This is good, and many photographers would appreciate it (options being having to invest in DAM software like Iview Media Pro, PhotoMechanic and the like).

Coming back to Lightroom, one area that Adobe has really concentrated on (maybe they saved themselves a lot of RAW conversion coding by accquiring Pixmantec ;)) is the software’s UI. Currently most RAW convertors suffer poor UI, and this probably stems from the fact that the RAW convertors are nothing but different functions like Curves, Noise Reduction, White balance etc all thrown into one program. Lightroom is going to change all that with sliding and dimming palletes, short-cut keys, one touch full-screen mode (like Photoshop) etc. Also, since this is the big A’s product, photographers are probably going to enjoy a streamlined workflow. Any photographer worth his salt would surely be using Photoshop, so having a RAW convertor, DAM and Image editing software all from the same company is going to mean flexibilty and ease of use like never before. Or at least that’s what my optimism tells me. As of now, my personal roadmap includes going out and clicking lots of photos

Quick Links:

• On DAM
• Comparison of RAW convertors
• Digital Darkroom guides

It really gets to me sometimes. It’s ok if the management fundas are ‘out there’ (maybe in Orion), and I am ‘out here’ (in front of this computer), but no, that’s not how it is. These management fundas keep chasing me through my career, and they creep into my everyday life. To all the Management Gurus (ManGus):

1) There is usually a HUGE gap between what is (WI), and what can be (WCB). Usually WCB is easy to yap about, and that’s what you people are so full of. But in most cases, the poor bloke who needs help has no clue about WI, and so is left wondering how he can get from WI to WCB. And you ManGus cannot write about WI, because it’s different for different people. Sure, you can go on and on with your pocketfull of cliches, but you can NEVER step into my shoes and see it the way I see it happening. And when you cannot see it happening the way I see it, you cannot tell me what to do. Yes, you can offer advice, counsel, be there for me and all that, but so can my grandma. For this reason, stop quoting, telling fish stories and making everything look simple, while in reality you are just being a mindless parrot having nothing orginal to say. So you can just shut your trap or go teach in a school. Our classrooms are frighteningly without those guiding lights these days.

2) The dim-wits who reach out for those books on productivity, planning, quick-results and effective PPTs are the market for you ManGus and since we live in a world where mediocrity rules, for every dozen of dim-wits I see around, you have 1 ManGu. The rest of the intellegent folks are either sidelined or left with no choice but to follow ideas in the Selling-Condoms-to-Widows book that the manager bought at Landmark and wants to try out.

3) This world exists the way it is today because of Capitalism, so don’t give me that crap about "You don’t have to be a software consultant to profit from this XYZ book. In fact, you don’t even have to be a consultant or a software professional. This book is filled with sold advice and timeless wisdom for anyone…" Stop repackaging all the good things my mom, dad, grandma, grandma, uncle and aunty told me when I was a kid (stuff I never listened to) and selling it as 10-tips-to-supercharge-my-life-and-career. No, I don’t come from a family that runs on Capitalist ideas, so don’t try to bridge my life and my work. I DON’T have ‘customers’ at home.

4) There are only two constants in the world of business and that is the customer and the vendor. These two would do anything to get the best deal and knock the other over, and that’s the law of the jungle. If you are a ManGu, stop trying to make this jungle look like paradise and don’t expect the trading parties to listen to you if business is good anyway.

5) Eight of out ten times, the guy above you is an egoistical shithead. The guy below should have been plucking mangoes for a living, but instead has landed on this job. You as a ManGu cannot change this, and I cannot change my PoV because I am a realist. I call a spade a spade. I don’t like sugarcoating my reality with quotations, stories about sucessful fish sellers and all that. If your ideas can change the twisted intentions of the people around me, I will also automatically change, so try elsewhere.

6) I bet people like Dhirubhai Ambani, Narayan Murthy, JRD Tata, Azim Premji and the like did not read management books and get where they are. Similary, the goody-goody words in such books will not work in the docks of the Mumbai harbour, with the striking unions at factories and against Marxist ideologies. So stop pretending like your book is the next best thing to sliced bread.

7) People attend your seminars because their managers asked them to do so. And their managers said that because they have no clue how to manage, and hope that what you say makes sense to the trained monkeys and the dissident smart-alecs in their team. The only people who gain from this is you, the guy who rents out the sound system and the electricity board.

Phew! Had to get it off my chest

The fact that I am writing about these two words is indicative of a certain progress I have made in my life. Whether I like it or not, the past one year or so has seen me participate in many of my company’s team building exercises. This includes Leadership workshops, Quality initivatives and a whole lot of other things. I think at this rate, I will be just one step short of conducting or paticipating in a course on hypnosis.

Well, what is my team? To be very direct, it consists of a majority of fools, and a minority of ‘good’ people who are sandwiched between layers of upper management optimism and political manoeuvres by people who have nothing better to do. I guess such things are true of most companies, so I have nothing new to say here. But on a personal front, I have been actually seeing the difference between proactive folks, and reactive ones (and unreactive ones but nothing new to say about them either).

Proactive is good. Reactive is bad. But what makes a person reactive? Is it a trait? Is it an attitude? Is it a cultivated habit? Or is it something education brings out in a person? Oh well, education actually doesn’t do any good for most people AFASIK, except for maybe it makes you hardworking when you are forward caste in a school full of OBCs and your dad is a salaried bloke in some private company. But I think hardwork is an inborn trait. Back to the P and R in question.

What I have observed is that proactiveness is an attitude. It can be cultivated, and it can very much be applied to everything else beyond work. Sometimes it is born out of necessity too. But most times, the people who try hard to potray themeselves as proactive do a very bad job of it. Also, proactiveness is not appreciated everywhere and by everyone. Being proactive always is bad too. Sometimes you got to wait and watch. This is where the wannabes fail. They don’t know when to shut up, coz they don’t know what they are doing in the first place. And then they kiss ass.

Another interesting thing I have noticed is that people don’t act proactively in the different roles they play. Some are very out going at work, but sloths at home. And the other way round. So this means that there is something which make these people tick. To find what makes people tick and get them going is an art. Some people just don’t tick right. They have their priorities wrong and can be pretty anal. You have to watch out for such people and not waste too much time on them, lest you ignore the people who’d really benefit. That is true people management.

In a team, you need both proactive and reactive people. In the team I belong to, there are very, very few proactive people and the rest are unreactive. This is a bad combination because there is some terrible imbalance here. The reactives ones are the ones who don’t wake up unless situation forces them to, and then scurry around setting things right. Reactive people are either lazy, or incapable of foresight. They don’t know how things could turn out, so they don’t know what to do before shit actually happens. Generally, such people have time only for themselves in a critical situation, because obviously they have not done any planning and have no crisis management system in place. Maybe it’s my past experience, but I would be glad if people are at least reactive, rather than dead wood. Also, if you are unreactive, please ask yourself if you have an attitude problem, if you have are not in the right job or if you were beaten up too many times as a kid.

So there it is. My thoughts on two kinds of people I have come across. Most companies don’t take pains to identify the proactive and the reactive. It’s usually managers who pick the former as close alies for obvious reasons. Maybe I’ll write about Quality sometime. Some good lessons learnt there, too.

I finished reading this book by Paulo Coelho today. It was boring. Uninteresting and pointless. Others have applauded the simplicty of the story and the deeper meaning that it carries, but it didn’t do anything for me. At least one person (including the person who lent me the book) told me that the ending is good, and so I read it till the last word to see what’s so good about the ending. I was disappointed. C’mon, life is not as simple as the author potrays. The ‘boy’ doesn’t come across any real challenges, and at every stage he has someone or something telling him what to do. Now that doesn’t happen in the real world. Sure, there are signs, messiahs and omens. But seldom as simple and unadventureous as in this story. Actually, many a times I was wondering what could the author have been smoking to come up with some totally random, silly and disconnected parts. Like the part about the boy talking to the Wind, Sun and finally some BS Hand of God or whatever. I was not inspired one bit. But if it worked for you, good. I think Kurt Cobain can give you better gyaan. As for me, I’d rather stick to Deepak Chopra. 

I am home this saturday after god knows how many weekends. I have been out every saturday since the past many months and that totally sucks. So many things have been put into the backburner because of lack of time. My website for instance. And today is totally devoted for housekeeping. Lots of data to backup, lotsa cleaning to be done and lotsa sleep to catch up on

There is something else that’s not been happening since a while now. I was thinking of it last night, and I intend to write about it sometime. I have been thinking of where my writing is going. I don’t write as much as I used to, and some people have been complaining about it. I am well aware of this change in me, and I don’t blame working saturdays for this. 

My camera has also been sitting in the shelf for a long time now. Maybe I have outgrown the 18-55mm, but I really need to invest in a new lens. The Sigma 24-70mm EX  has been recommended, although I am inclined to get the Tamron 28-75mm. Of course, I am all set to make a huge investment in any one of these, except for the for the lack of Vitamin M

Anyway, its back to housekeeping for now.