lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

This question came up in one of the mailing lists I am on -

I want to take something which is an .html file, and turn it into an image. How do I do it?

Yes, you can take a text file and convert it into an image. Please put your hand together for the swiss army knife for image manipulation - Imagemagick.

You can use the convert command (part of imagemagick package) to do this. For example, I want to convert the file mysig.txt into an image. Here is how to do it label:@mysig.txt ~/dump/mysig.png ''

For more tips on how to control the colors, font etc., check out the excellent tutorial at http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/text/

The Step 0 of the marriage process is finding the girl of your choice and both of you agreeing to spend the life together. Step 0.1 of the process is getting the agreement of the parents on both the sides.

Step 1 - Printing the invitation card

I got my wedding invitation card printed in Bangalore. In Bangalore, the printing is a 2 step process. First, you have to pick up the card. Then you have to give this card to an offset printer who will do the actual printing. The best place for finding the cards and the printer in Bangalore is the Veerapillai Street, Shivaji Nagar.

The printer usually expects you to bring along the text that you want printed on the card. You have to sit down with the designer who will typeset your wedding card. This entails choosing the fonts, the colors and most importantly making sure that there are no typos in the design.

The printer usually takes one day for completing the job. Choosing the card and giving the job to the printer can be done on the same day, provided you start out in the morning and carry the text of the marriage card along with you.

Step 2 - Mailing the invitation card

I had to speedpost my marriage invites. I would suggest going to a big postoffice for the speedpost, as those people are accustomed to dealing with large amount of mails.

Step 3 - Finding a place to stay in Delhi (the venue of my marriage)

I stayed in the Paharganj section of New Delhi. This place is littered with cheap hotels and there is a Delhi Metro Station close to the place.

I walked around for an hour, inquiring at all the hotels before making my choice. As I had to host a few of my relatives at the hotel, it was important for me to get a good price.

It is easy to bargain for a good price for a room. You can get better rates if you are willing to pay with cash and forego taking a receipt for the transaction.

Step 4 - Buying the clothes for the wedding and reception

The venus for my marriage was Delhi and I had planned to buy my clothes (or costumes ) from Delhi itself. There are 2 places for the unique clothes required for the wedding - Karolbagh and Chandni Chowk. Both these places are easily accessible via the Delhi Metro.

For my wedding, my wife had decided that I would be wearing a Sherwani and for my reception, I would be wearing a suit (with a tie!!).

I bought the cloth for my suit from Chandni Chowk and got it stiched from Mohan Singh Place (Connought Place). Generally speaking, I found the Chandani Chowk to be cheaper than the shops in Karolbagh.

Step 5 - Buying other gizmos for the wedding

The other requirements for the wedding are available from the Karolbagh and Chandni Chowk markets.

Step 6 - The actual wedding

Be prepared for delays and short tempers. Some of the things will go wrong. Keeping a cool head will help. You will be photographed mercilessely. Be prepared to have stiff facial muscles after the amount of smiling you have to do.

It will help if you keep some cash (something like 4 - 5 thousand rupees) around yourself during the wedding. You will be required to pay money to your wife's sisters to recover your stolen shoes and to your own sister for various ceremonies.

Step 7 - The actual reception

In my case, the reception was in the evening itself. Again, you will be photographed mercilessly.

Step 8 - Bringing the bride to your home

You will require a specially decorated car for this ceremony (the vidai ceremony). I had to rent a car for this. It is best to inquire far and wide before renting the car. The prices vary a lot. To give you an example, the first guy I checked with wanted 5100 Rupees and the guy I finally hired the car from asked for 2100 Rupees. After getting a car, you need to find a florist and get the car decorated. Again, the prices vary and it is best to inquire at multiple places before making your choice. Also, note that for renting a car and finding a florist, the principle "you get what you pay" does not apply.

Step 9 - Zzzzz

Inspite of all the raunchy stories you might have heard about the first night, the only thing you would like to do is to get some sleep without anyone hassling you.

Step 10 - Honeymoon

Plan and execute your honeymoon. Try to book flight tickets beforehand. This will be the topic of the next blog post.

On 18th July, I got married to my long time sweetheart.

Finally! After 2 long years of courtship and various family wranglings.

If you had not seen any updates on this blog or any mails from me on various mailing lists that I am on, now you know why .

In case you are wondering how it feels after getting married, let me tell you it feels good.

Dance party at the reception. I am shaking my arms in an attempt to dance

For the past few days, I have been making yogurt at my home. I love having curd and flattened rice (chudaa or poha) in the mornings. However, buying yogurt from the market was getting a bit troublesome, so I decided to make the curd at home itself.

I had 3 failed experiments before I finally got the process perfected (thanks to my mother for the tips). According to my mother, the cool weather at Bangalore is not conducive for the preparation of yogurt.

Here are the steps

• You will need milk and 2 spoonfuls of yogurt
• Boil the milk on a stove
• Remove the milk from the stove and let it cool down. However, you do not have to let it cool down to room temperature. The temperature should be such that when you put your finger in the milk you do not get burnt, but at the same time it is uncomfortable for you to leave the finger in the milk.
• add the 2 spoonfuls of yogurt into the milk
• Take the milk vessel and surround it on the sides with a piece of cloth.
• Put the milk vessel (togeter with the cloth) into another larger vessel (probably a hotcase or casserole) to keep the milk warm for as long as possible

In a few hours, you will have fresh, tasty yogurt. I usually put the yogurt into the milk at night and I have yogurt by next morning. Remember to put the yogurt into the refrigerator once it is set.

Today was a funky sort day. On the work front, I did not accomplish much. I had been following the GTD methodology, but I have become tacky in doing my reviews and followups. I will fix that.

In my personal life, I am going through a rough patch. Not much to talk about there, but let us just say that I am living through interesting times, I am sure I will be a better person after passing through this patch in life.

Let us see what else is happening around the world.

The old iphones seem to be more valuable than the newer and cheaper iphones (half the price at $199), as the older iphones are easier to crack.

In her blog titles "Readin', Ritin', and Rithmetic, by Rote" , Vicki mentions that rote memorization is useless. I am not sure if memorization can be dismissed easily. I think having the raw data in your memory helps in solving a problem at hand faster.

I came across this small story by Douglas Adams today - The Private Life of Genghis Khan.

Here are some interesting fractions I came across today.

• express 1/81 as a repeating decimal, you are in for a surprise! the surprise is that we get an answer as .012345679.
• express 1000/998999 as a repeating decimal. You will get 0.001 001 002 003 005 008 013 021 034 055 089 ... (fibonacci series, if you failed to spot it)

If you work on a Unix system, you can use bc to check this out

rshekhar|~$ bc
bc 1.06
scale=40
1/81
.0123456790123456790123456790123456790123
1000/998999
.0010010020030050080130210340550891442333

I came across 10 Lessons of an MIT Education, an interesting document on scribd. Some good parts

• Four courses in science and engineering each term is a heavy workload for anyone; very few students fail to learn, first and foremost, the discipline of intensive and constant work.
• Lesson Three: By and large, "knowing how" matters more than "knowing what." Half a century ago, the philosopher Gilbert Ryle discussed the difference between "knowing how" courses are those in mathematics, the exact sciences, engineering, playing a musical instrument, even sports. "Knowing what" courses are those in the social sciences, the creative arts, the humanities, and those aspects of a discipline that are described as having social value.
• Lesson seven: The world and your career are unpredictable, so you are better off learning subjects of permanent value.
• Lesson Ten: Mathematics is still the queen of the sciences. Alumni who return to visit invariably complain of not having taken enough math courses while they were undergraduates. It is a fact, confirmed by the history of science since Galileo and Newton, that the more theoretical and removed from immediate applications a scientific topic appears to be, the more likely it is to eventually find the most striking practical applications.

Links

• 10 Lessons of an MIT Education

"Mr Beeblebrox, sir," said the insect in awed wonder, "you're so weird you should be in movies."

"Yeah," said Zaphod patting the thing on a glittering pink wing,"and you, baby, should be in real life."

These 2 headlines are so strange, they should be in the movies. Exercise caution when clicking on the links if you are surrounded by weird people

• headline 1
• headline 2