Portable Apps: the digital extreme of new era

These days our life is becoming more and more digital. We are now living in a gadget-oriented world where day-to-day stuffs are impossible without gadgets. In earlier times, people used to have one computer or one more at the office.Now, even pen drives and cell phones have started acting like portable computers.

Sometimes, it becomes difficult to manage things around. Say, you are carrying your pdf document to your office. Now ,on reaching there you realised that your office computer is not having acrobat reader and you are not even authorized to install anythings(even if you have then also it will be a cumbersome task to install each and every app like media players)

So , here comes a new wave of achievement, with PORTABLEApps you can carry your softwares portably without any need of installation of any kind. Just install PortableApps in your pen drive or iPOD and get oyur softwares on the go.


Go check it out yourself.
Portable Apps

Turn any website into a GAME!!!

Japanese game coders are always known for their novel ideas. While browsing through flash games, i came across a truly genius game which can turn any website into a game. THE LAST GUY lets you mess with any high-profile website whether even it is of US Military. It is not like a background of that website on which you play game but actually the game modifies itself with respect to the website. For example, i tried to play it on my blog , so it turned the outer boundary as a wall and inner boundaries as semi-permeable wall, Plus, i can't go across pictures, i can only move in the passages given b/w them. Truly an ingenious concept.

Try it out yourself

http://lastguy.jp/


Try it on popular websites like GOOGLE.

Easter egg in python 2.6

Recently i found a new easter egg in Python. It is a nice one, u get a long poem about python describing its features. And i used to think they have stopped putting easter eggs. Microsoft even has a rule that the programmer who puts any easter egg in their program goes straight out of the job. They consider it a reason for security loophole. I think Microsoft should look into its code rather than blaming easter eggs for loopholes.

Anyways, here the cheat.

Go to python console and type import this and u will get:


The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!



It's now on my ORKUT profile.

Running WINDOWS in LINUX

The power of open source never fails to amaze me. Every time they come up with something unthinkable. This type is one of the best.
I am running Windows XP "inside" my Ubuntu 8.10 and it is running smooth. All I did was to use Sun Microsystem's VirtualBox. It emulated my pc as a new system for XP which i easily installed in one of virtual drives without any partitions or other hassles. You only have to define the amount of space and memory it can use, and then in just a click of a button, one OS is running inside other OS.Now, i can do all the windows stuff without having to quit linux. Deletion of OS is also just one click away. Hats off to Sun for creating this fantastic piece of software.

Keep looking for more of techno-miracles and achievements.

Diet Coke + Mentos= Kaboom!!!

Yes, this is true. Try having some mentos with diet coke and soon things around you will be exploding out. When two or three mentos pills are inserted in a Diet coke bottle, bubbles start forming and whoosh!!, the liquid ejects out high. Your own liqui-rocket .Starting from an curious college time experiment , it soon turned out be a major Viral Video. Try searching youtube for it.
So what you are waiting for?? Make your own water(??) jet.

Note: this trick only works for mint flavored mentos and not fruit-falvored ones.

Detailed explanation can be seen at wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_Coke_and_Mentos_eruption

Also, try same thing with Sprite and Pepsi....

Hi Tux! Looking you thru a WindoW

Many of us are getting influenced by the new wave of Linux operating systems. Their stability, versatility and endless extent of modifiability is winning hearts. Above all, its FREE.

We can easily access windows partition in linux, but what about the cases when we want use files in linux and am currently running windows?? This is possible.

Small utilities , if installed in your windows, will allow you to access files in linux partition and, in some cases, allow it to change.

Linux Reader, as the name suggets, is a nifty app by diskinternals which allows user to access linux partition. http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/


More powerful tool is ext2fsd is http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/.


Using ext2fsd, it starts showing linux partition in your my computer window itself.

Pretty simple way to do the things , right??

sorry!! did i blow your head off??

Yes, this question my friend was asking when he showed me this website. http://xkcd.com/ is the collection of web's finest comic strip based on technology to life, current affairs to rotten stuff, anything and everything. The way of passing the message is great. It takes a little time to realise what that small comic strip has just actually said ,and next moment you will rolling on the floor , laughing your heart out.

Could XKCD mean anything?? Is it an acronym or phonetic pronunciation but later found that out it means nothing. The author typed something and it became the name. You can check out the entire story here http://xkcd.com/about/

Go and enjoy your piece of brain.

We had Air-thin laptop since 2006...

Apple isn't the first one to introduce paper thin laptops like MACBook AIR. Back in 2006, Fujitsu(a relatively unknown company) introduced Q-series thin laptops weighing only 2.2 pounds. It had also the features which AIR is boasting of. According to CNET.com, "The ultraportable notebook is less than one inch thick and uses Intel's new Core Solo processor. It's designed as an executive companion for world-weary travelers tired of lugging larger notebooks through airport security, said Paul Moore, director of mobile product marketing at Fujitsu."

But, due to their very bad marketing strategy, the CEO of the company had to take back the Q10 series. Although it was an awesome piece of technology, it wasn't able to survive in the market.
On the right side are MACBook AIR and Fujitsu Q10 laptop. Notice the thinness of both.

Moral: Sometimes good things also don't succeed because their timing is bad. So, if anything is unsuccessful, it doesn't mean it deserved that.

Now !! To head which way??

I have been spending sleepless nights thinking in which way my blog should be heading....

Ultimately, after loads of chocolates, colas and chips(killer Cs), my mind finally responded and answered. this blog will be techno-cum-programming-cum-science oriented-cum-personal blog(all these things are wire meshed around me so can't separate them out!).


**Readers of this blog are supposed to bookmark it because everytime it will be briniging mind-bogglingly good stuff **

Back from Hibernation Mode

Pratik Anand is back.......... and he is back with a bang.

Several engagements prevented me from continue blogging for last one year, but i finally decided to give all away. After all, the return was imminent.

Well, many things have changed in last one year. After passing XII with 87%, joined MIT Manipal for computer science engineering.Now, living in a hostel in Manipal. Have become a part of OPEN SOURCE movement, joined LUG Manipal, beginning to develop FOSS.
For last some days, i am volunteering in LUGM workshop and it really gives a good feeling to be a part of such a fantastic clan.

Chapter 1

The War of the Worlds (1953)



This
film was the winner of the Best Achievement in Special Effects Academy
Award, by producer George Pal, for its vivid depiction of the invasion
of the Earth by Martians. This was the first visual effects-laden "popcorn"
film, featuring vibrant color special effects, and the destruction of
various cities and landmarks, including the famous Los Angeles Courthouse
Building.

[This film would inspire such films as Independence
Day (1996) and Steven Spielberg's remake War of the Worlds (2005).]

The
Ten Commandments (1956)

The film won the Best
Achievement in Special Effects Academy Award. It was Cecil B. DeMille's
remake of his own 1923 silent film, with one of the most miraculous visual
effects scenes in film history (and the most expensive special effects to
date) -- the parting of the Red Sea. The scene, prefaced by Moses' (Charlton
Heston) statement: "The Lord of Hosts will do battle for us. Behold his
mighty hand," involved the use of miniatures, pyrotechnics, traveling matte
paintings, rear-projection, and a 32-foot high dam or water tank churning out the waterfall.
Other special effects scenes included the various plagues, the Burning Bush,
etc.; in the massive Exodus sequence, compositing was used to multiply the number of extras in the crowd.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)



The Star Gate and Star
Child sequence and other special effects helped this revolutionary and pioneering film win the Academy
Award for Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects. Stanley Kubrick's
film featured the most realistic footage of space ever created - and it's
still not dated by the passage of time. Miniature models of spacecraft, computer-guided
pre-motion control cameras, rear-projection (for the film's many video displays and computer monitors), full-sized props or models (such as the 30-ton rotating "ferris wheel" set of the spaceship), and other early
techniques (such as a primitive type of "Go-Motion") were used.

In the film's opening "Dawn of Man" sequence of prehistoric apes learning to use tools on the African savannah, retroreflective matting (front projection) was used to display second-unit background scenic shots projected from the front onto a reflective surface combined with soundstage photography of actors in the foreground - a technique now replaced by computer-processed blue-screen techniques.

Near the film's end in the Star Gate sequence, astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) traveled through
the stargate corridor in a dazzling sequence (using a slit-scan photographic technique) -
a sound and light hallucinatory journey or whirling lights and colors in which he was hurled through and
into another dimension - where he was reborn as a Star Child; other effects were achieved by applying different colored filters to aerial landscape footage and a close-up of an eye, and filming interacting chemicals.



The Andromeda Strain (1971)

This film contained possibly the first use of 3D rendering (the rotating
structure of the underground laboratory). It was
another early feature film to use advanced computerized visual effects
for its time, with work by Douglas Trumbull
(2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)), James Shourt, and Albert Whitlock
(The Birds (1963)).

Created in 1996-2007 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.

THE BEGINNING......

VISUAL EFFECTS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN EYE-CANDY FOR MOST OF US WHO LIKE HOLLYWOOD MOVIES. HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT WHAT LED TO THIS POINT. FOR THAT, I (PRATIK) PRESENT TO THE TIMELINE OF VISUAL EFFECTS IN HOLLYWOOD MOVIES. SO SIT BACK N RELAX AND DON'T FORGET TO ADD COMMENTS.