atheist - "Happy holidays" or "Merry christmas"

Yestarday me, Jack and David had this discussion during our lunch.

Topic: How should an atheist greet people for Dec 25?
-Happy holidays
-Merry christmas
-Season's greeting


Dictionary point of view

Happy holidays: In word 'holidays', 'holi' stands for 'holy'. So an atheist may have subtle difficulty when using this. Some christian believers may get offended when they hear Happy holidays instead of Merry christmas

Merry christmas: An atheist may have real difficulty when using this.

Season's greeting: Sounds perfectly fine...


Humane point of view
Greetings does not directly make things happen, but the greeting-reciepient's mind can certainly affect events.
So, while greeting, its good to use what the reciepient would like to hear.
So, I think, an atheist should use Merry christmas if it makes the recipient happy...

Adobe CS2 "Smart Sharpening"->"HighLights"

I had not realized effectiveness of "Smart Sharpening"->"HighLights", till I started viewing the image at 400%.

Here are samples to proove the effectiveness of "Smart Sharpening"->"HighLights"..:-)
This control is supposed control sharpening of highlights; I had not observed its effect because I would normally view at 100% but at 400% effect is very apperant.

"Smart Sharpening"->"HighLights" is 17%


"Smart Sharpening"->"HighLights" is 90%



This way I can reduce the over-shrpen effect

depth & distance

Realization of distance and depth happens only when we dare to stroll along edge of the cliff

Panoramic Photography - Projections

Imagine looking at the world map printed on paper.
You may ask, Why some have curved lines while some have straight lines?
May be, I too should have asked this question long back.

Today, as part of my research(loose usage of word..:-)) in to panoramic photography, I started reading about projections.
I found this very usefull information.

http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/CartDef/MapDef/mapDef.html

http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/CartDef/cartDef.gr.html

Panorama photography - AUTOPANO

After a gap of few months break I made a second attempt at panoramic photography.
My first stop was at PTAssembler site. The automation done to PTassembler, a panorama stitcher s/w, surpraised me; especially the addition of AUTOPANO.

AUTOPANO
--------
AUTOPANO is based on the research called "Recognising panoramas" done by two great people Matthew Brown and David Lowe

Here is nice a presentation on "Recognising panoramas"
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~lowe/425/slides/12-Panoramas.ppt

Also research paper http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/papers/cvpr05.pdf

..life is pleasant...

"Life is pleasant.
Death is peaceful.
It's the transition that's troublesome" -Isaac Asimov

This is one of the most convincing quote I have heard in recent times.

In my opinion....
Many people wish to be dead; even such people would have experienced pleasant moments at some time in their life. In those pleasant moments, world/life would have looked like a paradise to them.

Once dead, person is a senseless meat, so she/he can't experience the peace; but still the person thinks that death is peaceful. For a person in misery this makes perfect sense because by dying he/she can escape from dreaded tomorrow. So for such a person peace means just no-misery.

Means to reach death: accident, natural, suicide are certainly trouble-some.

My friend Jack's opinions....
Many people do not consider life to be pleasant at all; for them life is never ever pleasant. Another thing is, for the one who does not believe in life-after-death, peace after death is meaning less.

Anyway...it's great quote.