Bangladesh Daylight Saving: Patch for Windows based systems (XP, Vista, Windows Server)

As per the announcement from Bangladesh Government, the clock will move 1 hour advance to save on Electricity consumption during evening peak hours. the decision will be effective from 19th June, 2009 11:00 PM. In response to the decision microsoft and other software/hardware vendors has come up with the solutions/patches. You can do it manually by advancing the clock on 19th June 11:oo PM and adjust the time again when the DST is over.

To make the life easier, you can install a tiny little fix to the daylight saving feature here (KB 972423) Size: 640 KB

Note: As the government hasn’t decided the end date of the Daylight saving decision, this patch does not contains end date specified as 31st December, 2009. Microsoft will release another patch after the declaration has been made by the government.

let’s have a photowalk :D

Some TTLers are out of BD in our TTLs first international tour. Some of the unlucky guys missed the tour and some of like us didn’t join because of some personal causes.

Now, what will we do … … ?

Oh yah! … we can arrange a photowalk. a photowalk to Karwanbazar, the largest whole sale market of Dhaka, The retail prices of comodities fluctuates according to karwanbazaars rate. Basically the market starts to become crowded in the midnight. the sale goes till the morning. Some TTLers went there to cover the details of the evening. Now, let’s have a different plan. we will go there in the morning….

yah! tomorrow morning (19-June-2009) at 6:30 AM …

The initial confirmed participants are:

1. Tahmid Munaz
2. Sanjeed bhai
3. Ahmed Sharif (tentative)
4. Kamrul Hasan
5. Neaz Ahmed
6. Saud Al Faisal

Samsung T190 calibration problem in Vista x64 and resolution

Few weeks back I purchased a new Samsung LCD monitor (T190) to get a better photo editing experience. It was going well till i installed the Samsung monitor calibration software(s)

- Natural Color PRO

First of all it got installed without any problem and there was an icon in the system tray bar. when i tried to open it, there were no response. I felt like there were no effect of the software. So, i removed the software and restarted the PC. Everything seemed fine till i opened the windows picture gallery application. The background color of the picture gallery looked tinted like sepia and the colors seemed a bit warm … To be confirm that my calibration isn’t ok, i opened Photoshop. During the application startup PS registered an warning like, “Your monitors color profile has some problems” … I gnored the warning and opened a b&w image in photoshop. Then i got sure that, my monitor really has problem in it’s white balance/calibaration.

Now, What to do?

Asked my best friend google and he came up with milions of results … I found many such cases for Samsung calibaration software and Vista x64. but, this post solved my problem.

Steps:
1. Press the Start button.
2. Type in “Color Management” this should come up with the color management applet link
3. Tick “Use my settings for this device” to be able to remove, change or set new color profiles.
4. Remove the existing color profiles.
5. Add the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color profile.
6. Set as default.
7. Exit and reboot.

Now the problem got solved. thanks to My digital life blog

sRGB IEC61966-2.1 is the default/generic color profile for most of the display devices. I am looking forward to the samsungs updated software that runs on Vista x64. Hope, someday they will come up with the solution ….

Use my settings for this device to be able to remove, change or set new color profiles.

Relieved … :)

Starting from the scratch requires some inspiration/motivation. I am glad that i didn’t had to start from the zero. You must be pondering, what i am talking about ! … let me clear you a bit …

Yahoo launched a service with the blending of blogging, social networking, photo sharing named as Yahoo! 360. Don’t know why i started blogging on that platform. Anyway, it happened ….. Since i started to drift towards photography, blogging lost it’s focus from me. In the eve of 2008, Yahoo declared that, they won’t provide any support to 360… and that intensified the disregardness towards blogging.

I wanted to somehow migrate the blog to somewhere else. looked for some tool that can copy the 360 blog and import to more blog focused platform like wordpress/blogger…. I failed and almost lost my hope regarding the migration.

I was skeptic, yet hopeful that, yahoo might come up with some migration plan for the existing users. Last week i visited my old blog and found that, they have already came up with some migration plans …

I was happy as anything to get the option to migrate the blog to wordpress. now those old posts are all imported .. ! and i am relieved.

The lost city revisited

Sonargaon (Bangla: সোনারগাঁও) is the ancient capital of Isa Khan’s kingdom in Bengal. located near the current-day city of Narayanganj, Bangladesh. It is the eastern terminus of the Grand Trunk Road, which was built by Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century, and which extends approximately 2500 kilometres across northern India and Pakistan to Peshawar in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province.
(Source: wikipedia)

Image: Entrance of Panam nagar.

I visited the place in 2006. and after two years i see a huge contrast between the changes the city has has gone through in this two years…

Image: A lady passing through a narrow pathway.

when i visited the city last time there was more contrast on the walls, but this time some reconstruction has been made to preserve the lost city from being destroyed. resulting in a mixed texture (new and old).

Image: Almost destroyed.

most of the buildings were restricted for public to enter. Though i wasn’t able to shoot as i wanted, this indeed gave me the feeling that this will ensure the city to be standing for some more days

Image: Most of the buildings were inaccessible for public as they were locked
still there lives some people under huge risk, as the building might fall down anytime. Till the last political government it was often seen that many people living in those semi-destroyed buildings, After the caretaker government took the authority, they had to leave there place.

Image: A lady standing on top of a building tanning in the late afternoon’s sun.

Image: A working lady inside.

As the political government has took over again, now they all are coming back to the place to live the dangerous life.

Image: Strange look

Those very poor people don’t have any particular place to go, rather they find comfort finding a place to stay, no matter how many risk is involved in their living.

Image: A moment of joy, as the little boy was playing in front of house.

Interestingly I found some election posters hanging in those old buildings.

Image: Electing Whom?

Lake of devide

one side of it has fame, wealth, lavish lifestyle. the other side has miserable life, hunger and little hope to live the next day.

left behind …

Left behind … waiting for the next train …

Photowalk: Kamalapur Dhaka

Tuesday, 30th September. I was watching  the news in TV whether eid will be observed on 1st October or not. It wasn’t a big surprise to me when i heard that tomorrow is not gonna be the EID day… So, an extra day off and had nothing to do on that day ..

Their was no plan for the 1st october and i was thinking of what can be done. I came up with the idea of a photowalk … ..  i discussed with Neaz and arranged a conferance call with Sudipta da. 3 venues were in the short list (Kamalapur, Mohakhali & Satarkul) … after some discussion we finalized Kamalapur as the spot!

It was a very short notice and posted the news in Chit-Chat thread of Through The Lens: Bangladesh, a flickr based photography group. Eight of the members showed their interest and the time for the meet up was set to 1st October, 10 AM @Kamalapur Station.

participants were Me, Neaz, Sudipta da, Sharif Bhai, Kamal Bhai, Milton, Adit & Tahmid Bhai.

1st October: It was a very hot and humid day, whatever the condition was, we all were there by 10:20. and started the shooting. Kamalapur is always a special place for photographers for shooting lifestyle shots. As EID was supposed to be observed today. the station was almost blank. though there were many passengers waiting for the train to go home.

There were Subjects all around. with no delay everyone unleashed their cannons … and started the shooting… I never shoot in kamalapur before. and i like shooting portraits and lifestyle images… so, i felt like i am in heaven of subjects … lol

As we all were fasting (it was the month of Ramadan) it wasn’t very comfortable shooting in the hot weather for a long time with very high humid situation. we shoot there almost for 2 hour and returned back home..

here are some of my efforts …

21st February, 2008

Before 2008, every 21st February morning was a Sleepy and dull to me … going over the breakfast and tea … have some chit chat with siblings and parents … to say in a simple word, it was an usual holiday

But, this year, me with my friend went to the provat feri, it was really a great feeling to be in the possessions of the people who are going to show love/honor the language martyrs … who sacrificed there lives to uphold the mother tung in 1952… as the ruling west Pakistan wanted to establish Urdu as the national language for both part of Pakistan. That fighting spirit eventually fired up the desire to be a liberate country. and the triumph held in 1971, the liberation war of Bangladesh.

Back to the topic, It was a joyful day, me with Atiq, Mafiz was there in the DU Campus for the whole day. there were one prominent color (Black) the sign of sorrow among all the people who gathered there. In parallel it was a coloful day too with tattoos (picture of the monument (Sohid minar) constructed in the killing site ) in many people chick.

Me as a hobbyiest photographer didn’t had a good day like 21st February before, there were so many people around, so many moments to capture, great opportunity if you see the event from a photographers point of view.

while going out for the event, i wasn’t sure which lens to take with my magic box (camera) . recently i bought a telephoto lens, and i went with that, the result were awesome. At the end of the day, i ended up with some nice portraits. it was an excellent experience, and definitely i will be there in 2009 if i am alive … !

Stretched !

It’s now February 26th, 2008 11:00PM

Still at office to do some roll out stuffs after 00:00 hours. In company with some colleagues who were my dept mate until 26th February, Due to some changes in organizational structure, i have moved into new dept. with some new responsibilities. Today is the last session we are working as a part of the same team…

It’s really hard and painful being @work whole day long and continue till the next morning. I am stretched to the limit. My brain is not working … just had some chit chat with one of my friend in Msgr. dont know what i have said … lol .. but that was refreshing …

Didn’t realize the pain of the operational guys who stays overnight in workplace to make sure that the business is running smoothly … In most of the cases the effort from those guys are overlooked just because they are operational people. Am feeling lucky that, i am not one of them …

Activities from my side is yet to begin… so what i can do? ….. Yes, i can dive into the internet … to get lost into something/some topic which i don’t know yet …

Let’s start digging (http://www.digg.com) ..