I feel good

I feel good and there is no reason as to why I shouldn't.

Life is fair and I love every bit of it. Sometimes things don't go the way we expect or they are not good enough for our liking...but hey! the efforts we put in to get things in our favour are good but not as good enough as to get us what we want. So we try harder and become stronger. Take each day as it comes and accept things for what they are. No point kidding ourselves.

Sometimes things go in our favour but very few of us would appreciate what we have in life. We all have ourselves to thank when things go right but we have no business in blaming others when things go wrong. If we do that it means we absolve our responsibilites. That's not right and why give others a right over our lives? We owe ourselves a lot more than we owe others. Doing others a favour is cool but lets not get into that right now. This is about feeling good about ourselves.

So what happens when we feel low? We don't feel good about ourselves then. It might result in us harbouring regret/guilt or feeling sad about something. It doesn't mean we will stay in that mood for long. We can look for solutions to overcome the bad mood and go back to happy-state and thus maintain a healthy equilibrium.

I feel good about myself and I love life. I have no time to pull others down nor do I have the inclination to gossip. I don't want to get into fights. Friendship means quite a lot to me but there has to be a balance somewhere.. A threshold that shouldn't be crossed.. If it does,the friendship might go awry or result in one or both parties letting it stay on their minds...letting it affect them.
A carefree attitude helps develop a thick-skin and I wouldn't mind wearing an extra sheath ;). Sure friendship is good for us but I'd rather have my self-respect and peace of mind rather than try to sacrifice my good mood ..

So chin-up buddy! If you have had a bad day,you need not feel bad about it anymore. Look for solutions to end that bad mood and let that smile spread across your face. There's a reason people look better in photographs when they are smiling :).

A smile takes just 14 muscles;A frown-72!
Go figure!

The dog that followed...All the way!

A few days back, I decided to walk back from Bandra station to Santacruz. Having left a few books at Ollwyn's for overnight xerox ( 35p/copy ),my bag felt considerably lighter. My shoulders felt light and it was barely 4pm. It was a lovely evening and I felt like walking.

Along the way,on SV road-Turner Road junction I bought a bottle of water. A friendly stray came and nuzzled her head against my leg.  I played with her for a few and then I went and bought her a Parle-G packet. I played with her,patted and taught her how to "give a paw".

Then I started walking along SV Road again. A few minutes later,I felt something wet on my ankle.. When I turned,I saw it was the dog. I kept walking and gave her occasional pets. She was very friendly.. Along the way,many dogs came sniffing at her but she kept following me.

At Khar,I thought she would stop because she met with a big dog and they were playing with each other.
I was happy she made a friend and I continued to walk. A few meters down the road,I felt a familiar warmth and rubbing against my ankle.. Yeah,it was her.

She walked with me,all the way to Santacruz-No kidding!
While walking in the crowds,she would get a little disoriented but she kept looking for me and when she saw me,she darted towards me. So much love just 'cause I cared for her.

At Santacruz,I got a call from my aunt and she asked me to come to Andheri. I had to go by train and I thought the dog would stop following at some point. But no,she came with me to the ticket counter and followed right up the stairs on the bridge. On the bridge,it was very crowded and she lost me(so,i thought) in the crowd and I was relieved 'cause I didn't want her to come onto the platform. I was very surprised when I saw her come down the stairs towards me,inspite of losing me in the crowd. There were so many exits to that bridge but she came behind me.

I played with her for a few more until my train came. When my train came,I got in. I turned back and her eyes were gloomy. I felt sad but I had no choice.

She was an ordinary stray with regular brown/black patches with ears that pointed outwards..
I never saw her after that day but I know she loves making friends and I hope to see her soon ! :)

Gimp

My friends know how I love taking pictures and editing them. I have been using Picasa to edit my pics until recently. We have a subject called "Image processing" in our syllabus this semester. To understand and enjoy tinkering with it,my friend suggested I start using Gimp.

Now,Gimp is an image processing tool. Gimp actually stands for GNU Image Processing program.
It is freely available and runs on all platforms(windows,linux,mac os).

1. I downloaded Gimp from PortableApps.com
http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable

2. After I installed it, I opened it in a new folder and i saw the following folders along with the Gimp app.

3. After double-clicking on the Gimp app,I went into the options file and clicked on open and opened a new image.

The image i used was taken at versova and shows three kids playing on the beach.

3.Gimp has various options. Its got options like filters. We can use various filters to edit an image.

4. Its also got a channel mixer. Basically an image has 3 modes: RGB,Greyscale and indexed.
Assuming you want to work on the RGB mode ie with colours Red,Green,Blue and want to adjust the presence of each colour in an image. You can vary that using the in-built channel mixer.

5. A particular filter that caught my fancy was the edge detection filter. Under edge detection,we can use filters like laplace,robert,sobel etc. Sobel filter was one of the filters i wanted to use on this particular image. So i used it in the vertical direction (yes you can filter it in horizontal as well as vertical)

6. Although,we did get the desired filtered output image,i wasn't happy with it. Another edge detection filter i wanted to try out was Difference of Gaussian.

7. Another filter i wanted to try out (not under edge detection) was the one that said animation. So i tried using the spinning globe effect under the animation filter

Yeah,Gimp is easy to use and fun too! 

Best way to beat the heat

:)

Clicks at someshwar and koderi beach :)