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This page contains what I believe to be one of the highest resolution, most detailed stitched digital images ever created. It is the view from Bryce Point in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. It consists of 196 separate photographs taken with a 6 megapixel digital camera, and then stitched together into one seamless composite. The final image is 40,784 x 26,800 pixels in size, and contains about 1.09 billion pixels...a little more than one gigapixel. I have been unable to find any record of a higher resolution photographic (i.e. non-scientific) digital image that has been created without resizing a smaller, lower resolution image or using an interpolated image. via I want some more .

The Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) was initiated in the 1960s with the objective of providing a continuous 14,000-km rail link between Singapore and Istanbul (Turkey), with possible onward connections to Europe and Africa. The link offered the potential to greatly shorten the distances and reduce transit times between countries and regions, while being a catalyst for the notion of international transport as a tool for trade expansion, economic growth and cultural exchanges. Meanwhile, this serves as a depot for sites providing information on passenger rail travel throughout Asia and Russia. The list ranges from Baku, Azerbaijan to Yokohama, Japan and all stops in between. Whether you want the timetable for the Taegu line in Korea or route maps for the Philippines, you’ll find it here. The site also includes links to the public transit systems in large Asian cities.

The High Definition Television, HDTV , system was developed in the 1980s. It uses greater number of lines and wide-screen format, providing a significantly clearer picture than the traditional 525 and 625 line television screens. Each line in HDTV also contains more information than normal formats. HDTV is transmitted using digital technology. While we gush over the gorgeous resolution of 1920 x 1080 (1080p) that true HD offers, Japan’s NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai) has been testing a new format called the Super Hi-vision , or Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV), which offers 16 times the pixel resolution – an eye-popping 7680 x 4320 (4320)! Visually, there’s little here in the way of enhanced experiences, though – it’s effectively the same old HD, just really, really big. What does make a difference is the audio. Where we rejoice with 7.1 channels, viewers of UHD content will be treated to glorious 22.2-channel audio – 24 speakers, arranged in three layers: ten at ear level, nine abo...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a dream for over half a century now. Researchers have been building robots and software to try and mimic the human brain for as long as they possibly could, and are nowhere near building a thinking application than they were when they started. A lot of people will disagree with that, of course, and we don’t mind. A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), can simulate intelligence to an untrained observer, but doesn’t understand the meaning of what’s being said. Basically, everything to do with computers uses mathematics, and it’s near-impossible to make a computer understand characteristics of human speech or conversation such as wit and sarcasm. And if that’s hard, imagine how impossible it is for a computer to understand the difference between someone telling the truth and someone lying! See for yourself – some eagerful talkative chatbots – that you might even want to have a chat with: Eliza , Jabberwacky , Ultra Hal Assistan...

Some people are born boring; others like John Ingram, thrust boredom upon the rest of the world. And so as we tread upon the gargantuan bog called the Internet, we slip and wonder: why? Why did John Ingram create a site that has nothing but just 413 (exactly) words of text? Why did he create a site that has no meaning, no reason to exist, and no way to earn him even a cent, forget a fortune? But it takes all kinds, and Ingram is one of those. He is rational in his thought, grammatically correct in his writing (although) for some reason he hates capital letters), and has enough reasons to keep the world’s most boring site alive at all times since its “founding” in 1996. Is that why his site has now been translated into 12 languages including Finnish, French, Swedish, Norwegian, and, hold your breath, ladies and gentleman, Pig Latin? World War II is obviously history since here we have a German as well as a Hebrew translation sitting right next to each other. The site, Ingram informs us...

A BLUFF article in a recent magazine had an interesting page that showed how a simple switching of words can make you sound hip. Instead of saying Motherboard, try saying MoBo ; and instead of 1 Gigabyte of RAM, use 1 Gig ; or use 1 Meg for 1 Megabyte. Similarly, when you are explaining someone about 3D animation, say MoCap instead of Motion Capture. And if you want to explain him what NURBS is, you could say, “NURBS stands for Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines” or say, “NURBS is an advanced computing technology. The tools are complex and require knowledge about certain jargons.” Then add, “Nurbs basically deals with curves whose shapes are governed by control vertices”. Occasionally, look at your listener and judging his mood, throw out words such as interpolation, b-splines, wireframe, mesh, animation path, perspective, muscle & bone animation, gait cycle, ambient animation, etc. – just make sure that you do not get caught in a difficult question. In that case, just point your aud...

A friend of mine has been trying to get into using Linux based Open Source software, however, due to the unmanaged > 200 Gigs of stored content in his Windows Xp machine, he has not been able to format it and install Ubuntu Linux . At this point, there are hundreds of duplicate files; and (seemingly) important files that are scattered throughout the remotest folders possible. As a result, his machine is beginning to get crappy and slow. He said he is now actually motivated to switch to Ubuntu Linux. Last week he showed me a list of software suited for Ubuntu. Animation : Blender Audio Player : Amarok, JuK, XMMS Audio Editor : Ardour, Audacity CD Burner : k3b Desktop Publisher : Scribus Email : KMail, Thunderbird Graphics : GIMP, Inkscape Gaming : Chromium, GnuChess, Lbreakout2, Tuxracer, XBill Instant Messenger : GAIM, Yahoo! Messenger, Xchat Office Suite : Open Office Video Editor : Cinelerra, Jahshaka, KdEnlive, Kino Video Player : mPlayer, Xing Player Web Browser : Firefox, Kon...

Consultant : A man, who borrows your watch, tells you time and then sends you a bill. Literature : The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. Humour : Anything that makes you laugh but the finest sort draws a tear along with the laugh. Critic : A legless man who teaches running. Diplomat : A person who tells you to go to hell, in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip. Kindness : A language which the dumb can speak and the deaf can hear. Conference : A gathering of important persons who singly can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done. Banker : A fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. Economist : An expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. Statistician : Someone who brings a fake bomb on a plane, because that decreases the chances that there will be another bomb on the p...

Radish – French word ‘radis’ modified form of a word meaning ‘wart’. Lettuce – Latin word ‘lactuca’ meaning milk-giving plant. Corn – Saxon word ‘corn’ meaning ‘worn-down particle’. Cabbage – French word ‘caboche’ meaning head. Mushroom – French origin, first cultivated in beds of mousse (moss). Pumpkin – French word, derived from a Greek word meaning ‘cooked by the sun’. Turnip – French origin, used for feeding cattle. Cauliflower – French word ‘cole florie’, meaning flowering cabbage. Potato – Spanish word ‘patata’, name of an island in Haiti. Tomato – Mexican word ‘tomatl’

Basking in the sunshine, I am wondering whether the formatting of this post, being written on a mobile, would appear right on monitors. Basking in the sunshine, I am wondering when the electricity will be back online; because I have to update and print my CV. I am watching someone collect Cherospondias axillaris [ lapsi ] right now in the middle of the forest and appreciating the GPRS service of Spice Nepal. Writing using a handheld device without a QWERTY keyboard is obviously not convenient, but updating this post from the middle of the forest is definitely amazing.

I found this piece in an old magazine with papers torn and ragged. I was about to throw the heap when suddenly this article caught my eyes. It is powerful enough to make us think twice; to make us remember something we so often forget easily. It is strong enough, if contemplated, to review the pile of contrasts that we have created and forcefully dumped at the backyards of our homes, and then deliberately neglected in the run for life, livelihood, etc. It goes: The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less well being. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We hav...

Greenware: A type of otherware which requests the user to help the environment to "register" the software. Guiltware: A piece of freeware decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of money. Hardware: Computer hardware is the physical part of a computer, including the digital circuitry, as distinguished from the computer software that executes within the hardware. Liveware / Meatware / Wetware: Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software. Malware: Malicious software intended to cause consequences the unwitting user would not choose; especially by use of virus or Trojan horse. Otherware / Requestware: It is a collective term referring to software that is not distributed as freeware, shareware or commercial software. Payware: Commerci...

Abandonware: It refers to computer software that is no longer current. While the term has been applied largely to older games, other classes of software are sometimes described as such. Adware: Software which is free to download and use but includes pop-up banner ads somewhere. Annoyware / Nagware: A type of shareware that frequently disrupts normal program operation to display requests for payment to the author in return for the ability to disable the request messages. Beerware: It is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek term for software released under a very relaxed license. It provides the end user with the right to use a particular program (or do anything else with the source code) if they buy the author a beer, or, in some variations, drink a beer in the author's honor. Bloatware: Software that provides minimal functionality while requiring a disproportionate amount of diskspace and memory. Catware: A type of otherware which requests the user to pet one or several cats. Charitywar...

The problem of bugs in machines has existed since the time of inventor Thomas Edison, who described finding one in his phonograph. The word surfaced in an 1896 manual to describe faults in electrical apparatus. Radio technicians called an early gadget that traces radio interference a bug because of its roach-shaped body. In 1945, Harvard University operators removed a moth fouling the guts of a primitive computer called the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator. They taped it to that day’s log book with the entry: “First actual case of bug being found.” Computer bugs naturally spawned the term computer virus, notable for spreading nasties from one infected machine to another faster than you can sneeze. Bugs aren’t the only ‘creatures’ in computer, though. “Worm” describes a virus that contaminates computer networks, and some anti-virus software boasts “bait” or “goat” files that flush out viruses. via

Excerpt from HISTORY OF NEPAL by Pundit Shew Shanker … On reaching the top of the Chandragiri pass, a stranger is at once impressed with an idea of the denseness of the population of the valley. Besides three large towns, which are conspicuous objects in the view, there are many smaller towns and innumerable hamlets, studded all over the higher grounds and slopes of the hills; and in addition to these, in almost every field there appears to be a cottage. The natives themselves estimate the population of the valley at about half a million, and probably this is not far from the truth. Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, stands near the centre of the valley, in Lat. 27º42′N., and Long. 85º36′E. It is situated at the junction of the Bagmati and Vishnumati rivers, but lies closer to the latter, extending along its eastern bank for about a mile. When seen from above, its shape is very irregular, but it is said by the natives to resemble the Khora or sword of Devi. It is known by several names...

While sitting at a local restaurant we heard someone cancel his previous order, fried chow mein, and make a fresh order for a large burger. Moments later a friend commented about the ingredients of chow mein and burger - and after some talk we concluded that both were made of wheat. Walking back home, I began to count our daily food items that actually consist wheat, and realised that many things we eat including bread, bun, pasta, pizza, cookie, cake, roti, puri, burger, noodles, chow-chow, chow mein, macaroni, etc. are basically made of wheat. Wheat is the staple diet of human beings. It is the most produced cereal crop of all times succeeding maize and preceding rice. More foods are made with wheat than any other cereal grain. According to FAO , China is the largest producer of wheat followed by India, United States of America, Russia and France. This site contains a lot of information about wheat, resources for enthusiasts, and a fun section for kids as well. And do no forget to...

The generally accepted units of time, by SI System, go down from a second to millisecond (1e-3) to microsecond (1e-6) to nanosecond (1e-9) to picosecond (1e-12) to femtosecond (1e-15) to attosecond (1e-18) and so on. Whereas in higher units, a second goes up to a minute, hour, day, year, decade, century, millennium and further. This " second" which we are referring right now, is actually the International Second , defined here as, " The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. " This is the generally accepted definition today in global context. However, some cultures have developed unique time measurement systems of their own. Here is one such system used wholly in Nepalese culture before SI System was adopted in their daily schedule: The day begins when the tiles on the roof of a house can be counted, or when the hair on the back ...

Surfing through the pages I landed on this site. It is a personality test site, like the ones you have encountered here and there. This site, however provides you a unique and engaging way of learning more about yourself - well, at least in terms of fun! All you have to do is select a photo on each page, which gives in to another page of photos where you pick yet another picture and so on. At the end of the test it reveals your personality. Does not sound any appealing at all - I felt the same at first, but well, why not see for yourself how boring or engaging it can get. And yes, do not forget to check out the WISHES section.

These creatures, these creatures and these creatures were made using Photoshop. Yet, these creatures were also created using Photoshop. It is amazing what one can do with Photoshop these days! However, keep in mind that these creatures are real ones.

We were wating for a team of investors to arrive at the meeting desk. "I'm out of juice", said one of the presenters candidly. The comment was remarked upon by several participants with a series of facial expressions and laughter. Everyone of us knew what she meant - battery power in her laptop had drained out, and as if it weren't already enough, she admitted that she was not used to carrying its power adapter. This might have happened of some of us; and many of us do not carry along the power adapter. What should be done in order to avoid such unpleasant surprises? Here are a few tips - tested and tried - and found to prolong your laptop battery-life a bit longer. Much longer, in fact. Power down all non-essential components when not in use, such as wireless card, ROM drives, USB devices and external mouse. It is not advisable to watch movie in your DVD-ROM while on the road or during flight, because the spinning DVD-ROM takes up the majority or all of the juice. Op...

A Canadian group researching advanced networking technology says it is about to test "the world's largest disk drive" - data storage within the light waves of a 5,000-mile fiber-optic loop. Labeled the Wavelength Disk Drive (WDD), the concept promises to provide lightening-fast access to shared data at the same time that it offers a new use for excess bandwidth in optical networks. Bill St. Arnaud, senior director for advanced networks at CANARIE, an Internet research outfit funded in part by the federal government, told that an initial test of a WDD would create several gigabytes of storage within the nationwide fiber backbone known as CA*net 3 . "Today, we use optical networks for point-to-point communication," St. Arnaud said. "You send a (data) packet across and it goes off the end into a computer. What we're doing is putting a packet onto the network and letting it circle continuously around the network. It can got from Vancouver to St. John's...

EyeDentification System is an application to perform your retinal scan and identify you. Released by EyeDentify, Inc - the first popular company to research the possibilities of retinal identification. As listed in this page, there are other such companies who are working on not only retinal-scan technologies but also on the topic of Biometrics as a whole. As described here , biometrics is the the science of using biological properties to identify individuals; for example, fingerprints, retina scan and voice recognition.

Is your Wi-Fi's WEP turned on? What's the difference between bluejacking and bluesnarfing? Do you know your SSID? Here are the details behind the acronyms and jargon that is wireless technology with this Wi-Fi glossary from CNN : ACCESS POINT An access point is the connection that ties wireless communication devices into a network. Also known as a base station, the access point is usually connected to a wired network. Most Wi-Fi networks have a range of up to 150 feet but the access point range can be extended through the use of repeaters, which can amplify the network's radio signal. BLUEJACKING Bluejacking is a practice of sending anonymous text messages to mobile users using Bluetooth. Phones that are Bluetooth-enabled can be tweaked to search for other handsets using it that will accept messages sent to them. However, a user can avoid these messages by setting their device to "invisible" or turn off Bluetooth when not using it. Bluetooth is a protocol that...

Submarines go up or down based on their buoyancy. That is when they weigh less than the water they displace they go up. When they weigh more they go down. If they weigh exactly the same they float right where they are. Submarines vary their weight by adjusting the amount of air in the ballast tanks. You can use a pen cap and a bit of modeling clay to build a submarine that goes up or down as the amount of air in it's ballast tank shrinks and enlarges. You need a pen cap, modeling clay, a plastic bottle with a mouth large enough to get your "submarine" through and the bottle cap. (The cap must close air tight on the bottle so that when you squeeze the bottle the water won't come out the top). Make your submarine by putting a ball of clay on the stem of the pen cap. The opening to the hollow portion of the pen cap should be facing down. The hollow portion is your sub's ballast tank. Put the "submarine" in water (clay down so the air is trapped in the holl...

This is a flash drive. A flashbag, more accurately. When it is empty, it is slim and as data is filled into it, the bag starts to inflate until it is full. How ingenious! The creators have applied micro- pumps to achieve this, as stated in their site . When the device is about to blow off, it gives a message - "There is not enough free space". At times when it is not plugged in, it remains inflated relative to the amount of data it is holding. There are other innovative products from the creators of flashbag - such as C'ALL future phone , Balloophone , AllTunes , GMEA , Trings and Remobeads . Great, PlusMinus ! Kudos to your grey cells.

In 1997 a team of Japanese engineers dared to imagine a computer so powerful that it could keep track of everything in the world at once — steaming rain forests in Bolivia, factories in Mexico belching smoke, the jet stream, the Gulf Stream, the works. What's more, they dared to build it. On March 11, 2002, when they turned it on, the engineers did something no mere mortal had ever done before: they created the Earth. Or at least the next best thing. The Earth Simulator , the most powerful supercomputer ever built, was designed for a single purpose: to create a virtual twin of our home planet. Before the Earth Simulator arrived, the fastest computer in the world was an American military machine that can perform 7.2 trillion calculations per second. The Earth Simulator runs at more than 35 trillion calculations per second, almost five times faster. In fact, it's as powerful as the next 12 fastest supercomputers in the world put together. Located at a vast, newly built facility i...

In general sense, multimedia is just two or more media. Nevertheless, when most people refer to multimedia, they generally mean the combination of two or more continuous media, that is, media that have to be played during some well-defined time interval, usually with some user interaction. In practice, the two media re normally audio and video, that is, sound plus moving pictures. AUDIO – An audio (sound) wave is a one-dimensional acoustic (pressure) wave. When an acoustic wave enters the ear, the eardrum vibrates, causing the tiny bones of the inner ear to vibrate along with it, sending nerve pulses to the brain. These pulses are perceived as sound by the listener. VIDEO – The human eye has the property that when an image is flashed on the retina, it is retained for some number of milliseconds before decaying. If a sequence of images is flashed at 50 or more images/sec, the eye does not notice that it is looking at discrete images. All video systems exploit this principle to produce ...

Sometimes days are boring and you feel like doing nothing. You want to lock yourself up at home with a big sad headd. And then suddenly you remember that maybe an online chat will cheer you up - you know, with some stranger on the other side of the globe - that sort of thing. And when you want to connect to a chatroom, it is not working because of slow connection or disturbed connection. Then you want to shut down the Internet itself. Oh, what a wonderful idea - to be able to visit the last page on the Internet! Try it once, before you try out the first page on the Internet or the middle page on the Internet.

Claude Nuridsany and crew goes to a rural meadow in France to capture insect activities in their amazing camera. Using sophisticated closeup lenses, time-lapse photography and a lot of patience, they have managed to capture fascinating shots that are as rare as waterbombs . Featuring the life of insects, Microcosmos is a documentary film that shows a wide range of insect activities including but not limited to interactions such as kissing, mating, dueling, hunting, working and eating. The amazing music composed by Bruno Coulais complements well with the amazing documentary; however, the lack of narration can be quite easily felt during the entire one and a half hour of the show - but then nothing is perfect to the satisfaction of everybody. Most of the show is filled with sounds from insects while occassionally accompanied by contextual music and sound effects. However, not all insects and their sounds are familiar unless you are a zoologist specializing in arthropods. This is a hig...

Use VirtualDub to extract a portion of video. This is a very useful feature of VirtualDub . With it you can extract a portion of a movie and save it. Put the movie CD in your CD drive and open VirtualDub. Here, we are going to just extract the movie file and are not applying any compression to it. To enable compression, you will need Video Codecs such as xVid or Indeo. Now make sure the following settings are qpplied in VirtualDub: Options > Preferences > "Output Color Depth" should be "Match Display Depth", "Display" should be set to "Use DirectX for displaying panes". Under the menu Video > Compression should be set to 'Uncompressed RGB/YCbCr' and under the menu Audio > Directsream Copy. After the options are saved, select the portion that you want to extract. Just move the Timeline slider until you reach the starting point of the scene you want to extract. Press HOME to mark the start position of the selection. Now move the...

VirtualDub is a small, yet deceptively powerful program useful for video editors. Virtual Dub started out as a pet project at ECE lab at UCSB . At its homepage, there is a line of text that says, PROOF THAT I HAD TOO MUCH FREE TIME IN COLLEGE - quite a nice way to say it! You can use VirtualDub for frame-by-frame editing, applying video effects and extracting audio or video clips as necessary. Here is how to extract a song from a movie CD using VirtualDub. First open the movie in VirtualDub. Now, in the Audio menu, make sure the Direct Stream Copy option is selected. After the options are saved, select the portion you want to extract. Just move the Timeline slider until you reach the starting point of the song you want to extract. Press HOME to mark the start position of the song. Now move the slider until you reach the end position of the song you want to extract. Press END to mark this option. Click on File > Save Wav and enter the location where you want to save this file as ...

"I don't know if anyone would venture to say the Magic Self-Stirring Mug is a truly useful addition to your coffee-drinking arsenal, but I can't help but wonder what it would be like to swear off teaspoons forever. Those tiny buggers have long been a nemesis of my clumsy mitts. With just the push of a button, the mug employs a tiny propeller (not real "magic," I guess) to mix your drink up. All you need is $21.51, two AAA batteries, and no shame. Yeah, it doesn't get much lazier than a self-stirring mug." via SciFi Tech . "Wouldn't it be great if you could command a robot to fetch another brewski from the fridge while you kept right on watching the big game on Sunday? Judging from this picture of the HRP-2 in action, that's exactly what scientists at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) have in mind. But how many robots does it take to retrieve a can of suds? AIST did it with three HRP-2s: one ...

The Internet needs no definition. From the desk of Tim Berners Lee to the present day Web 2.0 phenomenon, the Internet has grown to become the global medium for mass communication. It is a live network that is forever expanding, forever intensifying and more importantly, it is forever engaging. But how engaging can Internet become for a person? Can Internet evolve into a highy addictive model for a human being so much so that it becomes absolute necessity? It may not be so now, but in the future it is possible according to the book Neuromancer by William Gibson , who is better known as the person who coined the term CYBERSPACE . Set in the not so far future, Neuromancer is about a wannabe ubergeek named Case. He lives in a world that is saturated with ubiquitous technology. Cities are no longer metropolises - they have developed into urban sprawls . People no longer log in to the Internet - they use neural jacks to directly plug in their brains so that they can visualize whatever th...

While trying to look up help with Clip In in Adobe Premire Pro, I encountered something interesting. Fire up Premiere Pro . When you click on Help>About menu, an image of a horse appears followed by credits. Now, while pressing Shift, click Help>About. Repeat using Alt, Ctrl, Ctrl+Alt and the combination of all three keys. Eight different images are displayed in total. That's one easter egg in Adobe Premiere. For some really great eggs, visit EggHeaven or Eeggs . There has been a long tradition for Adobe to include Easter Eggs in Photoshop since Adobe Photoshop 5.5. Some inquisitive Freecell lovers can select game number -1 and game number -2 by pressing F3 on Freecell main window.

I've never been good at drawing, since elementary school. Whatever happened but I lost all my interest in drawing, crayons or pencils. That said, it is equally appealing to admit that I want to start drawing. Again. Joi Ito has a post that says Betty Edwards starts out explaining that drawing is like reading and writing for the right hemisphere of the brain. The right brain deals with spacial and relationship oriented things and is good at dealing with chaos and complexity. She explains that people who are "not good at drawing" typically have strong left brain tendencies which often prevents the right brain from taking charge of drawing. Read on . After all, who said you can't teach old dog new tricks?

What if cars really were like computers? You'd have a helpline to assist in solving problems as they came up... Now just imagine if the same people that answer the phones at Microsoft had to answer the General Motors helpline... HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?" Customer: "My car will go forward, but when I put it in reverse, nothing happens." HelpLine: "What model do you have?" Customer: "It's a brand new 1994 Mongoose." HelpLine: "Yes, but it is a 1994R with a big R or 1994r with a small r?" Customer: "I don't know. Let me find out and I'll call you back." HelpLine: "Alright, but let me tell you you've probably got the small r model. You'll need to upgrade to the big R version to go in reverse." Annoyances.org has an impressive collection of annoyances and their remedies encountered by Windows users. It provides articles about customizing Windows, troubleshooti...

Here’s something from the past – some tips to save your time while working with the all new Windows Xp. Yes, you heard me right – “Windows Xp”. In an age where Windows Vista, Xp’s successor, is straddling computers across the globe, this document might seem a bit old fashioned. However, for all of you who want a quick revision of the early days of Xp, here are some documents found at the dungeons* of a P3, 550 MHz machine. * [C:\Documents and Settings\Xertxes\Old Documents\Documents\Computers\OS\Microsoft\PostWhistler\WinXp\Tweaks & Tricks\Updates\01041104\]

A wiki is a website or a collection of websites, that allows users or visitors to add, remove or edit the contents. Wiki is by nature, a collaborative approach to manage and provide information on the web. The concept of wiki was developed by Ward Cunningham, who launched the world's first wiki site . "Wiki" means rapid in Hawaiian language. Today there exist a huge number of wiki sites including Wikipedia - Probably the largest encyclopedia on the web. Wikimapia - An extensive online map database. Wikitravel - Everything related to travel on this planet. Unilang - A databse of language contents. LyricWiki - Contains lyrics sorted by albums. Wikipedia has a collection of the largest wiki sites here . Get ready for information, or just get The Cure for Information Overload .

Ever wonder how much of your storage space a program occupies? How about an ebook? A picture file? Your son's birthday video? Here is a nice compilation. 10 bytes: A single word 10 Kilobytes: The size of this web page 10 Megabytes: A minute of high-fidelity sound 10 Gigabytes: A good collection of the works of Beethoven 10 Terabytes: The printed collection of the US Library of Congress 100 Terabytes: The entire Internet 100 Petabytes: All printed material It basically goes like: Bit-Byte-Kilobyte-Megabyte-Gigabyte-Terabyte-Petabyte-and so on.

Some amazing tech facts are listed below. In 1981, while working on MS-DOS, Bill Gates made a prediction that 640K of RAM should be enough for everyone. The first word processing software developed in 1975, was called Electric Pencil. Intel released its first Pentium processor in 1993. It was a 60MHz processor with 3.2 million transistors. The first cellular phone communication network was launched in Japan, in 1979. The original URL of Yahoo! was http://akebono.stanford.edu/ Domain Registration was free until 14th September 1995. Google got its name from the word googol, which means the number "one followed by a hundred zeroes". It took 13 years for television to reach 50 million users - it took the Internet less than 4 years. The first patent for a typewriter was issued for Englishman Henry Mill in 1714. The CD-ROM made its debut in 1984 through the combined efforts of Philips and Sony. All tech facts listed from "1001 Tech Facts: Trivia That Gives You The Edge", ...

Probably you have played around a lot with the Window key on your keyboard, that small key between the [Alt] and [Ctrl] keys. And you probably love it, because it saves your time. Working with shortcuts not only shows that you are a fashionable user but also that you know your machine well. When your boss tells you to find that particular "Budget.XLS" because he doesn't know its location, you can simply trigger the search box by hitting [Windows] + [F]. There are a lot more [Windows] shortcuts that you could use. [Windows] + [D] = Minimize all windows or show all windows [Windows] + [E] = Open Windows Explorer [Windows] + [F] = Open the Search window [Windows] + [M] = Minimize all windows [Windows] + [R] = Open the Run box [Windows] + [Tab] = Cycle through items on the Taskbar [Windows] + [Shift] + [M] = Undo minimize all windows [Windows] + [Pause/Break] = Open System Properties window Apart from these Windows default shortcuts, you can create them by yourself by using a...

Among a plethora of online word-processors, one could choose ajaxWrite for its simplicity of use. As the name suggests, ajaxWrite is a word processor on which you can work online - type your document, print it, save it, share it or download it to your hard drive for reference. Visually, ajaxWrite is similar to Microsoft Word, with integrated capacity to handle most of the document formats. It is a great software when it comes to user-friendliness, however, there is a downside to it. Users of Internet Explorer browser CANNOT use this free software because it is designed only for Mozilla Firefox browser. Registration is required prior to use. Apart from ajaxWrite , there are other online software - giving users an impression of an entire Ajax Office Suite containing ajaxWrite , ajaxSketch , ajaxXLS , ajaxPresents and ajaxTunes .

क्या मुझे प्यार है? क्या तुम येह पढ़ सकते हो? और क्या तुम्हारा नाम 'जोकर' है? हिन्दीमा त लेखीयो, बबाल सजीलो हुँदो रहेछ - अब नेपाली लेखेर हेरौं है, कत्तिको राम्ररी लेखिन्छ - भन्ने कुरा गर्ने हो भने तपाइँ मलाई भनी दिनुस कि यो गूगल को नयाँ सुविधा कत्तिको राम्रो लग्छ तपाइँलाई. फेरी पनि तिम्रो तस्बिर, आँखामा आयी दिन्छ अनी फेरी धुलो लागे जस्तो सारा हरायेर जान्छ - यो लेख्नु त majja po रहेछ - it's fun! देवनागरीमा ब्लग लेख्ने होइन त? सच्ची, यो एकदम सजीलो रहेछ - धन्यबाद ब्लगर! But it still needs refinements to be perfect.

Lord Vishnu, who is also knows as Narayana or the Supreme Being, has has ten avatars , according to Hinduism. So, how many avatars can you have? Well, it seems that you can now have thousands of them. Thanks to Yahoo! Avatars, now you can create avatars that you like - at any time - for free! Yahoo! Avatars is a free software utility that lets you create online avatars of your own - you could dress up as a gangster, a super hero, an actor, a traveler, a cook, a lover boy and thousands of other identities. To suit your mood, there is an option to choose backgrounds, locality, dresses, hairstyle, jewelry, pets, and last but not the least, face! Express youself with Yahoo! Avatars. Here .

You are running a P3 machine on 128 MB of RAM and you click that "Beautiful.jpg" sittly idly on the desktop forever. To your annoyance, Photoshop is triggered, and before you get to see the picture, you are already frustated because it is taking forever to load. So much annoying, right? Similar events have occured to most of us at least once - and we wish there was a better way to open files. FileInfo has a huge (probably the largest) collection of file extensions, the three lettered 'suffixes' that come with every file, separated by a period. (example: Sky.jpg, Report.doc, Fun.ppt, Program.exe, etc.) As written in FileInfo web site , A file extension, also called a filename extension, is the suffix at the end of a filename, which indicates what kind of file it is. For example, you can tell that the file "computer.jpg" is a JPEG image file, based on the ".jpg" file extension. Similarly, you can tell that "readme.txt" is a text document a...

JJ is a simple-minded imaginary character. His life is full of adventures; or mis-adventures, perhaps. Here is what happened to him recenlty. One fine morning found JJ driving his new Toyota. JJ was very happy to be the owner of a Toyota and was singing to himself. Suddenly, he collided with the milkman. The accident caused much damage to the milkman's bicycle and our guy was furious. JJ ran towards him mumbling apologies, but our guy was not pacified. He shouted, " JJ, blood for blood, wreckage for wreckage ". Saying so, he got a stout stick and started hammering on the windshield. JJ was shocked and tried to take the stick from him, requesting him to stop. But the milkman got hold of JJ and pushed him ten meters away from his car. He drew a small circle near the road with the stick and asked JJ to stay inside and not move outside the circle, threatening him for better measure. Now our JJ was not very brave at heart and coolly went to stand in the circle. The milkman goe...

There is little talk of Yahoo! Next , a products laboratory of Yahoo! Research . They say, "It's a showcase of some of Yahoo!'s newest and coolest projects - the cutting edge of what Yahoo!'s doing today and working on for tomorrow!" That's one impressive tag-line! Many products listed in the site are in Beta stage; however other few of them have just started schooling ; such as Yahoo! Audio Search, Yahoo! Mindset, Yahoo! Maps, and Y!Q.

This is about WikiAnswers , a site which contains questions that anyone can ask and anyone can answer. Literally, anyone. The mission of this site is TO ENABLE ANYONE, ANYWHERE, TO ASK A QUESTION ON ANY TOPIC - IN THEIR OWN WORDS - AND GET A COOPERATIVELY-WRITTEN HUMAN ANSWER . True enough, because you can find lots and lots of Q&A related to wide range of topics. What are the hand signals for motorcycle riders? What is a tennis ball made of? Why do the Irish wear the colour green? How can an illegal alien become a US citizen? Amazinly enough, there are tonnes of answers related to business, religion, job application, cats & dogs, sports, insurance... you know the list!

Written in 1895, it is one of the most favourite poems of all time for people all around the world. If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too, If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise If you can dream--and not make dreams your master, If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never...

When a friend saw this video clip, he admitted that it was a brilliant idea in the first place! He was totally impressed about how far a search engine company could possibly expand. This 3 min 15 sec movie asks a question - "Does Google really worry about our privacy?" - and provides some facts related to the company itself.

Most of us regularly use Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, Tagged, Ringo, etc.; and some of us might even be getting anxious about how to manage time for all these sites. There can be a number of methods, including this one.

The greatest single construction project is currently underway - the Three Gorges Project, in China. It is by far the largest construction project following the Great Wall and the Grand Canal. The project started in 1994 and as of May 2006, the construction of the main dam wall has been completed. The Three Gorges Dam is scheduled to begin operation in 2009 AD. The estimated cost of this project is figured within 25 billion USD. When completed, this dam will stretch 2150 meters across and rise to a height of 185 meters while the reservoir itself will be over 600 km in length. This dam will cause the relocation of over one million people in total. Although this project has raised a number of controversial issues related to environment and human rights. it has been hailed as one of the most remarkable technical feats of all times.

This is post number 99 of this blog. Some (not so interesting) fire related NINE dates: 999999 BC : Homo sapiens' ancestors might have been thinking whether fire could be created or not. 99999 BC : Homo sapiens might be sure that fire could somehow be created. 9999 BC : Homo sapiens were actually using fire for their daily activities. 999 BC : Homo sapiens might have explored far-away lands by use of portable fire. 99 BC : Homo sapiens might have learnt well that fire could sometimes be harmful. 9 BC : Homo sapiens might have learnt that they could not live without some type of fire. 0 AD : Cities might have been actually burning due to the spread of fire. 9 AD : Homo sapiens might have started to think as to who created fire. 99 AD : Homo sapiens might have been thinking well, actually who created fire. 999 AD : Homo sapiens might have been still thinking as to who actually created fire. 9999 AD : Homo sapiens might actually meet the guy who created fire. 99999 AD : Homo ...

No, it's true. The slab that is seen levitating is actually a bed. Floating 40 cm high, unsupported, this bed is the first of its kind - which looks like Trek stuff but if not the ultra-geek thing, it is based on the basic principles of a magnet - that opposite poles attract & similar poles repel. With sets of repelling magnets built on the floors and into the bed, it is capable of holding up to 900 kg. This means it could be used as dining table or a sofa, too. To sleep on this bed, it looks as though sleepers are required to remove bracelets, chains, earrings, piercings, ATM cards and similar magnetic items before going to bed. But the story is not so. Magnetic fields are greatly reduced at the top - so no worrying about erased data on your cards, says the creator .

WHAT IS THE RALLYING CRY OF THE INTERNATIONAL DYSLEXIC PRIDE MOVEMENT? DYSLEXICS UNTIE! There is a whole lot of similar jokes at this site, but arranged in a unique way. First, you are provided to read some jokes, and then rate them. After that, the site will automatically start to feed you jokes depending upon those ratings. Worth visiting.

Honestly, this is one of the coolest designs for a CPU casing. No wonder the designer himself must be the proud owner!

See it to belive it - what an amazing robot it is! Murata Boy, the riding robot born in Kyoto, is the first of its kind who rides a bicycle. According to its developers at Murata Engineering Company, the robot uses gyro sensors to facilitate its forward ride without falling. It also uses shock sensors to go over bumps, as well as ultrasonic sensors to identify and avoid obstacles along the way. His aim, to ride around the world; with the motto WHEN YOU FALL OFF A BICYCLE GET RIGHT BACK, ON.

The events, depicted in the motion picture by Peter Jackson, belong to The Third Age; however according to the book, here's a short text about the Ages, which should be understood as the chronology of The Westlands only and not of the whole world. THE FIRST AGE ended with the Great Battle, in which the Host of Valinor broke Thangorodrim and overthrew Morgoth. Then most of the Noldor returned into the Far West and dwelt in Eressea within sigh of Valinor; and many of the Sindar went over Sea also. THE SECOND AGE ended with the first overthrow of Sauron, servant of Morgoth, and the taking of the One Ring. THE THIRD AGE came to its end in the War of the Ring; but the FOURTH AGE was not held to have begun until Master Elrond departed, and the time was come for the dominion of Men and the decline of all other 'speaking-people' in Middle-Earth. In THE FOURTH AGE the earlier ages were often called the Elder Days ; but that name was properly given only to the days before the ca...

Snowfall started today in Kathmandu at around 2:05 PM local time. It had been raining since yesterday night, with the Meteorogical Department announcing today morning that this heavy rainfall would continue throughout the day. Maybe they did not want to let the surprise out, which is why folks at the Meteolrogical Department made no comments about the incoming snowfall. Local residents in Koteshwar came out on their roofs to witness this rare event while school children danced with joy at the sight which they had never seen before. "We are excited", said Samy Malla, who was holding out hands to feel the snowfall. Meanwhile, people at coffee shops and restaurants came out on the street to experience their first snowfall in Kathmandu City. Thirty-six year old Pasa, who runs a grocery store in Koteshwar, said, "I have never seen snowfall in our city and I'm shutting down the store today to play with my kids in the snow." However, the snowfall didn't last long a...

"I began to buy books about electronics, and I subscribed to Japanese and foreign magazines that contained all the latest information about sound reproduction and radio. Soon I was spending so much time on electronics that it was hurting my schoolwork. I was devoting nearly all my after-school hours to my new hobby, making devices from the diagrams in a Japanese magazine called Wireless and Experiments. My dream was to build an electric phonograph and make a recording of my own voice. I kept expanding my experiments as I learned more and more about the new technology. I had to teach myself because the subjects I was was really interested in were not taught in my school in those days. But I managed to build a crude electric phonograph and a radio receiver on my own. I even made a crude recording of my voice and played it back on my electric phonograph. In fact, I became so engrossed in my electronic tinkering that I almost fluked out of school. My mother was called to the school of...

One of my friends accidentally deleted an XLS file in which he had kept the company record for monthly salary of staffs. Over the phone somebody suggested him to restore it from the Recycle Bin, but he had already emptied the Recycle Bin too. He was in a bad mood and was very much afraid that the boss will be cross at him, and might suspend him temporarily. Enter RESTORATION , v 2.5.14 by Brian Kato - a small freeware utility that saved him from getting caught. Whenever a file is deleted from the Recycle Bin, it does not go away permanently from the computer. Only the pointer of the deleted file is omitted, thus allowing the file's original space to be over-written with new files. RESTORATION does exactly that - tries to find the deleted pointer, thus helping to find the deleted file. It allows search using a number of facilities and then displays the results, after which the user can scan individual result item at his ease.

Ever wonder how far your mouse icon travels while using the computer? Although confined inside a screen of certain length, the mouse icon covers a great distance throughout the day. A program called Mouse Clocker can calculate the distance that your mouse travels. Once installed and run, Mouse Clocker automatically starts to record the distance, which can then be viewed in different units of length. From today afternoon when I installed Mouse Clocker until right now, my mouse icon has travelled 301.5672184823833185588921984 meters, which is just past the height up Eiffel Tower.

[Roger Ackroyd was a man who knew too much. He knew the woman he loved had poisoned her first husband. He knew someone was blackmailing her – and now he knew she had taken her own life with a drug overdose. Soon the evening post would let him know who the mystery blackmailer was. But Roger was dead before he’d finished reading it – stabbed through the neck where he sat in his study…] …........ “My greatest fear all through has been Caroline. I have fancied she might guess. Curious the way she spoke that day of my ‘strain of weakness’. Well, she will never know the truth. There is, as Poirot said, one way out… I can trust him. He and Inspector Raglan will manage it between them. I should not like Caroline to know. She is fond of me, and then, too, she is proud…My death will be a grief to her, but grief passes… When I have finished writing, I shall enclose this whole manuscript in an envelope and address it to Poirot. And then – what shall it be? Veronal? There would be a kind of poetic ...

All was over at last, even her regrets for having misunderstood him on his last visit, for not having searched him out sooner, though these were deep and sharp for a good while. From this time forward Elizabeth-Jane found herself in a latitude of calm weather, kindly and grateful in itself, and doubly so after the Capharnaum in which some of her preceding years had been spent. As the lively and sparkling emotions of her early married life cohered into an equable serenity, the finer movements of her nature found scope in discovering to the narrow-lived ones around her secret (as she had once learnt it) of making limited opportunities endurable; which she deemed to consist in the cunning enlargement, by a species of microscopic treatment, of those minute forms of satisfaction that offer themselves to everybody not in positive pain; which, thus handled, have much of the same inspiriting effect upon life as wider interests curiously embraced. Her teaching had a reflex action upon herself, ...

The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover a miracle – another circle, drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. There would be richer messages farther in. It doesn’t matter what you look like, or what you’re made of, or where you come from. As long as you live in this universe, and have a modes talent for mathematics, sooner or later you’ll find it. It’s already here. It’s inside everything. You don’t have to leave your planet to find it. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature. Standing over humans, gods and demons, subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe. The circle had closed. She found what she had been searching for. .CARL SAGAN: Ellie @ Argus Computer ...

He found a great dictionary, Which had all the meanings. He unwrapped it And opened the cover. All the pages were blank. Then, as he leaved through, They started melting into space. Finally, there remained nothing But the empty space. Still, he had time on his hands, With which he could wade his hands into the space; But then it was not the end. So everything started to get squeezed into a point – A minutest point. There language a lie. A point with no time.Everything it. .ANADHISH PAL - bad dreams good dreams

Once cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now – if I may use the phrase – be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own part, cannot thing that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man’s culminating time! I say, for my own part. He, I know – for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine had been made – thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the...