Visual Effects: 100 Years of Inspiration (Video)

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Fighting Corruption: What are our Tools?

There is an unrealistic amount of faith that is pitted on the digitization of services (through BAL's much drummed 'Digital Bangladesh' ventures) as a way of relief from corruption by our present government. The Finance Minister admitted recently that corruption has just spread to all nook and cranny of public services and also cited the digitization of services as THE way out. That may be the case in certain areas or aspects, but if anyone has been to public offices with hopes of receiving services, they'll remember those uninterested faces, those blank stares, those lifeless creatures behind the counters and desks who seem quite bothered to have seen you, who state their (unlawful) prices quite frankly, even with anti-corruption posters hanging around them. You cannot expect to digitize everything and there will ultimately be servicemen and women you will have to deal with. The government seem to be suggesting that until we get those software development cycles complete and services up and running - a decade possibly, we keep on going about it the same way. Digitization doesn't happen with the snap of Jewel Aich's fingers!

What I find really lacking is an easy way to report when a public office declines to provide someone a service, fails to provide a service, or asks for unlawful funding from the public (recently, there was an extra charge under "Miscellaneous" for re-issuing my wife's license even after all the due payments have been made). At the point these happen, you are standing at a public office, quite possibly having traveled through Dhaka's usual high traffic, sweating, uneasy, and also having to spend time away from your actual day job, and you may ponder what is the way to get what you came for. I assume the beings behind the counter know these all too well, and that is what gives them the courage and pleasure to put you in a tight spot, where you'd rather pay that extra charge than having to risk not getting the right papers. Imagine driving without a license, or going for that business trip without a passport, or not being able to pick up your Tax Certificate, or not getting to register your new born child!

These officers have too much leverage on the public that they use to their gain, and the way out is to take away that leverage. Digitization IS a possibility for that, but immediately actionable consequences to these officers' way of working is also a quickly implementable counter to it. If those anti-corruption posters had along with those high sounding advice, a hotline that handles complaints for that specific office, and you could launch a direct complaint against the handler, or the office. It could be a mobile court, or there could be an overseeing officer responsible for action against malpractices within that office. Even while writing this, I can see how it falls into a cycle, since somewhere within our systems, we need people we can rely on.


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দুর্নীতি দেশের সব জায়গায়

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E-Content & ICT for Development Award 2010

Found out through Faizul Khan of The Independent that awards were given out for people in the IT industry! Pretty good!

Visit Contest Site

Related:
Ministry of Science and ICT

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A Tablet, Not a Pill

Apple has the qualities of a trendsetter. They had their iPhones out, and every company knew, they had to do it! Same is happening with their iPads!

Just in this week: Motorola Xoom Tablet Unveiled At CES 2011 They have also separated their mobile development unit into a share selling entity: Motorola Mobility.

Whereas Apple has their own platform, the iOS, Samsung and a few others have been quick to adopt the Android platform. Android is brought to us by the good people of Google, and it really gave the other companies a good start in creating both touch phones, and tablets that contend with the popular Apple devices.

Samsung have been advertising in India a lot, which of course catches our eye, and just like Motorola, Dell and a few others have entered this field: Apple iPad Alternatives from Amazon, HP, Dell and More.

I remember I saw the first tablet PC back in 2003 or 2004, which was an HP. A friend who worked for a German buying house was given one from their office for their work. Its not anything new, but of course, Apple has the magic touch - or gives everyone the magic of touch. Their interfaces are good looking, easy, and usable. Android has created the equivalent of the experience of that magic, where others are still trying, had tried or starting to use Android.

Who Invented the First Tablet PC?

I am not a fan of tablets. Not as yet. They're handier than a laptop, but you'd still need a bag to carry around, and be mobile, so to speak. I was thinking of getting a netbook a while back, but had already gotten rid of that idea. Right now I am just contemplating the Motorolla Droid 2 Global instead - a good phone with the perks of touch technology, and a full keyboard so I can blog and do other tasks on the internet.

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Fair Enough?

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Music and Computers

Recently under the influence of friends (Mushfique and Saif namely) I have adopted the use of a few softwares to record music.

My soundcard is an old SB Live and my pc an old P2 433MHz machine with a 34 GB hdd space. Hardly the setup that would fully support a task such as running audio editing/arranging/rendering softwares and hardwares! Indeed so, coz i get hung up quite often.

Even though, I managed to do quiite a lot with the help of the friends who were more experienced in the process.

The softwares i have used so far are Sonic Foundry's Acid Pro, Adobe Audition, Cakewalk, and Fruityloops. So far i have only stuck with Audition and Fruityloops. Being interested mainly in creating rock music, that works for me. I create drum tracks for a song with FL and then lay it out in Audition and record as many tracks of guitar as i want. And sometimes i even put bass on with the pickup selected on the one that enahnces the bass strings. So far so good. Then i even try singing on them sometimes.. ok, lets leave that out coz, none of the audition plugins and whatnot could make that sound like music. Audition is really easy and intuitive for me... thats what its appeal is to me.

With Saif and his brother Ashu, who are hip-hoppers, I worked and am working on a few instrumentals. So this time we switched my old soundcard with Delta M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (or something like that.. pardon me .. I am bad with names.). plus we got hold of a mini synthesizer, and a giant synthesizer (which our other member of the project uses with his guitar), a BOSS drum machine and other such things. This project will be a mixture of rock and hip-hop and eastern instrumentations. A tabla will also be used.

People in the west (say even Saif and Ashu who stay in the UK) are already well ahead with the use of softwares such as these and are setting up good quality studios in their own home. Dhaka is well behind still, with unavailability of softwares/hardwares, or even when they are available ... the unavailability of the knowledge of the use of such wares. Some of the studios in Dhaka have moved on to use these soft/hard wares in production, like 'Art of Noise'.

Recently I have found out a community on the internet that is comprised of people involved with electronic music. From there I have found the inspiration to maybe soon turn my laptop into a recording machine, I have found countless reviews on soft/hard-wares, found out about laptopalooza (something like lollapalooza but with djs who use their laptops to make music) and loads of other stuff. It is an interesting place where a lot of creative people come together have brilliant and intellectual conversations with each other... ok... maybe not.. its interesting nonetheless. Pay a visit: EM 411 .com

My half-done pieces: parthib.info [Click to proceed to the MP3 section].

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