Skid Software launch and my Presentation at India International Centre(IIC),New Delhi

On 10 October 2008, Skid software was officially launched at the India International Centre, New Delhi, India. In this launch Dr.Arun Mehta told people about the problems with which an Autistic child suffers from and also about the inaction on the government’s part.

All the people who had gathered there were shown the video of Arpit (whose blog is in my blogroll),an Autistic child, using the Skid software with the help of a gaming wheel. You can see the video below

You can see Arpit using the gaming wheel in the above video.

Arpit was also there at the function.

I was also given a chance to demo my cropping and picedit modules at IIC, main hall . First, I gave demo of my crop module and showed them by cropping a picture . Next I demonstrated the picedit module and as soon as people saw the border being added to the picture i realised  they understood the whole working as there were reactions from the audience.

One autistic girl from the audience came up the stage and tried her hand at the Skid software. The girl did some typing with the help of the gaming wheel and looked very excited and happy with the software.

All in all it was a great learning experience as it was the largest gathering in front of whom I have given a presentation and also an honour to speak at the India International Centre, Main Hall .

Anmol Anand : Web Designer

In my last post I had written code for cropping an image using Ruby and Rmagick and I had mentioned that I was working upon a simple picture editor for Skid software, which is a software(web site) designed for people with Autism,cerebral palsy, dyslexia or anyone who has a problem with keyboard or mouse. .

I have not written any post on my blog for quite some time now, as I was waiting for something significant to happen so that I can talk about it. So, I have completed my share of work for Skid software and developed two modules, instead of one, which was planned earlier.

My first module is “Crop module” which was developed in the Expert Guidance of Prof. Arun Mehta. The crop module allows you to have some fun with pictures, It allows you to crop a picture from all sides i.e. ‘left’,'right’,'top’ and ‘bottom’. The crop module works in conjunction with picbrowser module. First, you have to select a picture from the picbrowser module and then move to the crop module. On moving to the crop module, first select the side from where you want to crop the picture i.e. ‘left’,'right’,'top’ and ‘bottom’ and by the help of up and down arrow buttons increase or decrease the amount of cropping. After doing the desired cropping, save the picture by clicking the smiley and your picture will be saved in the relevant directory.

There is a special way in which we save the names of the files that are cropped and finalised by the users.For example:

If you select a picture of ‘Football.jpg’ and then you go to the crop module and perform 40% cropping from right and save it, the name of the new cropped file will be ‘Footballcr40‘.jpg, meaning Football.jpg croped 40% from right. Each time you perform a new operation on a picture, it’s abbreviation is appended to the name of the orignal file and saved.

left crop – cl

right crop – cr

top crop – ct

bottom crop – cb

A picture of crop moule on www.skid.org.in

Above picture cropped 60% from left with help of crop module

Now, let me talk about the second module which was made independently by me, after Prof Arun Mehta taught me how to go about the process, during making of crop module. This module is the ‘picedit’ module. This module lets you to have even more fun with pictures by allowing you to add effects such as border, wave, blur, radialblur, rotate and charcoal effect to the picture you have selected. The methodology is the same, first go to picbrowser, select the picture on which you want to add picture effects. Once you have selected the picture, move on to the picedit module and select the effect which you want to add to the picture. Once you have selected the effect, increase or decrease the amount of effect with the help of up and down buttons on the left side of the page. When you are done with your work, save the picture by pressing the select button.

Again, there is a special way in which we save the name of the files that are cropped and finalised by the users. For example: If you select the picture of ‘Football.jpg’ and then you go to picedit module and add a border of 40 pixels to the image and save it, the name of the new file will be ‘Footballb40.jpg’ meaning Football.jpg has been added with 40 pixel border. Each time you perform a new operation on a picture, it’s abbreviation is appended to the name of the orignal file and saved.

border – b

wave – w

rotate – rot

blur – bl

radialblur – rdb

charcoal – co

picedit module showing wave effect in the flower image

You can go and try the software on http://www.skid.org.in and apart from this module there are wikipedia module, email module etc.

I would like to thank God and my Parents who have helped me and supported me throughout the period of making of these modules and also given me strength when my spirits were down.

Once again I would like to thank Prof Arun Mehta for giving me a chance and making me part of this noble mission to help Autistic Children and also giving me guidance and support throughout the period of making these modules and also when I was struck with errors in the program .

Thank you all !!!!