Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2014

ever wonder how much pizza americans eat each day? and other facts

Count the number of cricket chirps in a 15-second period, add 37 to the total, and your result will be very close to the actual outdoor Fahrenheit temperature. The volume of the Earth’s Moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean. A chameleon has a tongue that is one and a half times the length of his body. It takes the stomach an hour to break down cow’s milk. Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of the blue whale. There are 22 stars in the paramount studios logo. On average, Americans eat 18 acres of pizza everyday. This common everyday occurrence composed of 59% nitrogen, 21% hydrogen, and 9% carbon-dioxide is called a fart. There are more living organisms on the skin of a single human being than there are human beings on the surface of the Earth. It’s against the law in Kansas to catch a fish with your bare hands. According to Utah law, a husband is responsible for any criminal act that his wife commits while in his presence. Van Gogh only sold one painting whe

abort, retry, ignore poem

The infamous Abort, Retry, Ignore message box of Windows, with no option given to close it. Found this classic and fun poem about the "Abort, Retry, Ignore" message. I have been able to trace back the source to Annoyances.org. Here it is: Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary, System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor, Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets. Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer, I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store, Only this and nothing more. Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
 Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
 But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
 "Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"
 One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
 Just, "Abort

great apps and software for everyday use

Whether you use a PC or a Mac, here are some great applications recommended for daily use:          3D Visualization : SketchUp, Blender          Accessories : CCleaner, WinRAR, Revo Uninstaller, Sumatra PDF          Audio Editing : Audacity          Browser : Chrome, Firefox          Browser Extensions : LastPass, Pocket          Communication : Viber, Skype          Email : Browser-based          Graphics : Photoshop, GIMP, Illustrator          Media Player : VLC Media Player, Kodi          Office Suite : Microsoft Office, iWork          Screen Capture : Camtasia          Video Editing : Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, Shotcut Nearly all of these are free, very few are not.

simple tweaks to improve performance on an older pc

Before you spend on costly performance upgrades, try these tweaks that promise to turn your aging beige box into a digital hotrod! 1. Boost Memory Speed Being one of the major bottlenecks in overall performance, a slight boost in memory speed can have a deciding effect on how peppy your PC is. In most modern motherboards, you can adjust the system memory frequency accordingly. Most graphics-intensive software and applications show some increase in performance just by using quicker memory. You can squeeze your system's memory for more juice by lowering the time it takes to respond. Proceed to the Advanced Chipset option and try decreasing Latency Time of RAM. 2. Understand the Cache A cache, in computer terms, is nothing more than a digital scratchpad used for storing frequently accessed information. It works the same way as memory does, but its lightning fast speed set it so apart, they had to change its name. A CPU sports a dedicated cache where it jots down its calcul

use these easy tricks in photoshop for amazing results

Making a Dull Image Brighter and Sharper Need to make a low-resolution image sharper and brighter? Duplicate the layer which has your image and under the Filter menu, choose Other > High Pass . Choose the radius according to the resolution of the image. Now in the Layer's palette, choose the Hard Light option under Blend Modes. You could further flatten the image by choosing Layer > Flatten Image . Now see the difference between the new and the original image! Working with the Healing Brush and Patch Tool With the Rubber Stamp tool, you can clone pixels from a sampled area and apply them to an area needing correction. However, doing so does not take care of the shadows and highlights of the flawed area. Here comes the rescue. The Healing Brush tool clones the target area by using the texture from the sampled area and then using the colours around the brush stroke as you paint over the flaw. You can sample and heal between two images but you need to make sure they ar

do you know the origin of zero?

Rolf, New York, NY.   Robert Kaplan, author of The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero , provides this answer: The first evidence we have of zero is from the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago. There a slanted double wedge was inserted between cuneiform symbols for numbers, written positionally, to indicate the absence of a number in a place (as we would write 102, the '0' indicating no digit in the tens column). The symbol changed over time as positional notation, for which zero was crucial, made its way to the Babylonian empire and from there to India, via the Greeks (in whose own culture zero made a late and only occasional appearance; the Romans had no trace of it at all). Arab merchants brought the zero they found in India to the West, and after many adventures and much opposition, the symbol we use took hold and the concept flourished, as zero took on much more than a positional meaning and has played a cruc

computer slowing down? could be the hard drive

What are the factors that most affect the performance of a hard disk? The performance of a hard disk is most affected by its interface and its spindle speed. The spindle speed decides how fast data can be read from and written to the hard disk platters. Therefore, the higher the drive’s rotations per minute (rpm), the faster its data transfer speed. Understandably, a drive with more rpm is more expensive compared to one with a lower spindle speed. Recently, the advent of solid state drives, commonly called SSDs have threatened the existence of traditional hard drives. SSDs have a significant advantage as they do not have moving parts since they are flash-based memory. Why do my applications slow down over time? Every time you work with an application, the operating system creates numerous temporary files that are required by active applications. These files tend to be scattered all over the hard disk. Also, when you add or delete programs and files, it creates unused clusters

10 great strategies to save money by mary rowland

Start small and pay off those loans. Here’s a list of ways to stretch your finances and account for every penny. I have lost the original link but I guess it was taken from an MSN article somewhere in 2003 or 2004. Also, here is a list of books on Amazon, written by Mary Rowland . >> Start small Experts suggest you save 10% of your income. It’s a good goal. But don’t give up just because you can’t save that much. Establishing a savings habit and saving consistently is better than putting aside a big sum just once. Start with something you know you can live with — say, $25 a week. Promise yourself that you will save that much every Friday. Sign up for the 401(k) plan at work Contribute up to the amount of the company match, which is the amount your employer kicks in when you contribute. The most common match is 50 cents on the dollar. This gives you an immediate 50% return on your money. Monitor your ATM withdrawals Decide how much you will take out each week and

a note of happiness

Srijana gave birth to our daughter Eka. God bless her.

enlightened perspective - words on life’s beauty

I’ve learned that: The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person. When you’re in love, it shows. Just one person saying to me, “You’ve made my day!” makes my day. Having a child fall asleep in your arms is one of the most peaceful feelings in the world. Being kind is more important than being right. You should never say no to a gift from a child. I can always pray for someone when I don’t have the strength to help him in some other way. No matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend to act goofy with. Sometimes all a person needs is a hand to hold. Simple walks with my father around the block on summer nights when I was a child, did wonders for me as an adult. Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes. We should be glad God doesn’t give us everything we ask for. Money doesn’t buy class. It’s those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular. Under e

love creating videos? read these tips from the 90's

Wondering why there's a 90s' digital camera on the post? It's because this is a post from the 90s. And why a still camera for a blog post on video? To fondly remember that not the same camera was used for photo and video as they do today. These tricks are here for adding that something special to the videos you’ve created. These tips are from late nineties - be warned, what you read might sound a little uncommon, but that’s okay. These theories were good back then - these are good today as well. Yes, there have been improvements in storage and graphics technologies in the past 20 years but the theory remains the same. This article lets you understand the humble beginnings of digital video. 
 Avoid Dropped Frames If the system is slow, it may not write some frames to the disk and dropped frames will occur. The result is a null frame that takes up virtually no space and simply mimics the last frame. More dropped frames result in a jerkier video and are more apparent at

star trek: the lost episode

This is a fictitious conversation among Picard and his crew immediately after being confronted by a Borg ship. >> Captain : "Mr. LaForge, have you had any success with your attempts  at finding a weakness in the Borg? And Mr. Data, have you been   able to access their command pathways?" Data : "Yes, Captain. In fact, we found the answer by searching  through our archives on late Twentieth-century computing   technology." LaForge shows Picard the computing history from the archives in a monitor, and pauses the presentation at the Microsoft logo. LaForge : "As you can see, captain, the answer lies in Microsoft". Captain : "What the hell is 'Microsoft'?" Data : "Allow me to explain. We will send this   program, for some reason called 'Windows', through the Borg   command pathways. Once inside their root command unit, it will  begin consuming system resources at an unstoppable rate." Captain