Babel Machine - Technology and Games

Netbook computers have taken the world by storm, but not all netbooks are equal. While the overwhelming majority of models seem to use the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, there are different storage configurations, screen sizes and, most importantly, battery capacities that mean getting a decent runtime while you’re on the go is not a given. However, there are a number of ways to improve battery life.
Your netbook’s battery has a certain capacity measured in milliamp hours (mAh). That means it can deliver a certain amount of currentAdd nenetbook, battery, life, better, increase, extend, how to, diy, brightness, ma, milliamp, usage, time, short, longer, cuts  Add nenetbook, battery, life, better, increase, extend, how to, diy, brightness, ma, milliamp, usage, time, short, longer, cuts (measured in milliamps, or mA) for a certain amount of time. The more current you use, the faster you drain the battery and the less time it can deliver the current.
Putting it really simply, think of your netbook’s battery as though it were a full bucket of water. You can allow the water to trickle out over a long time or you can up-end the bucket and get a big flow for a very short time. The bucket has a fixed capacity – how we use it determines how long that capacity lasts. What we wasn’t to do is get the flow of current from the battery down to a tiny trickle. So I’ve come up with 10 ways you can ensure your netbook (or any notebook for that matter) runs for as long as possible on whatever battery size you’ve got.

1.    Drop the screen brightness.

If you’re running any full version Linux operating system, you can actually see just how much power your netbook is using.
Open up Terminal (think Window’s Command Prompt) and type: cat/proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state. The current drain will be shown alongside the ‘Present rate’ indicator. That number tells you the total current being drawn from the battery.
If you vary the screen brightness and do a ‘before’ and ‘after’ test with that cat command above, you’ll see that the power consumption on the MSI Wind U100 netbook varies by as much as 25%. The Wind U100’s battery current drain dropped from 1,181mA to just 944mA going from full brightness to the minimum brightness level, which is still easily bright enough to see.
In my testing, the LCD backlight is the single most power-hungry feature on a netbook that you have direct control over. Therefore the basic rule here is to drop the brightness and you could get ad much as and extra hour’s battery life.

2.    Turn off Wi-Fi

If you’re not connected to a Wi-Fi network, there’s not much point in having your Wi-Fi connection switched on. Turning off the 802.11n Wi-Fi option inside the Wind U100 dropped the current from around 950mA to approximately 870mA, or roughly 8-9%. That’s not as dramatic an improvement as dropping the screen brightness, but it’s significant nonetheless and it all adds up.
As with all of these power-saving options, the actual power saved will vary between different netbook models, but I guarantee that switching off the wireless networking will gain you at least some extra battery life.

3.    Turn off Bluetooth

Bluetooth is another power drain on your netbook, although it’s not as big a drain on the battery as Wi-Fi. The power saving here amounts to around 20-30mA of current saved – not huge, but that’s still about 2-3% and every little bit helps. Bluetooth is normally used for low-powered peripheral devices and some telephony work, but like Wi-Fi, if you’re not using it there’s no real reason to have it powered up.

4.    Use aggressive power management

Setting the operating system’s power management aggressively – that means setting it to maximum battery life – will also ensure you get better battery life because it will use the netbook’s power management features to reduce consumption. Basically, if it’s not being used it’ll be shut down. Even if it’s only shut down momentarily, it’s all power saved and any power saved will result in longer battery life.

5.    Disconnect any USB flash drives

USB flash drives are known for their ability to store data without the need for power, but if you’ve got one plugged into a USB port on your netbook it will be drawing some power. On my calculations, it’s typically only small – a 4GB Corsair Voyager adds around 10-20mA at idle, but it can be as high as 150mA when it’s transferring data or being accessed. That’s a huge amount, so do as little data transfer as you can while on battery power, and preferably don’t use and USB flash drives at all.

6.    Switch off any compositing effects

If you’re running a full Linux OS with the compositing feature switched on, switch it off to get better battery life. Fancy 3D effects on the desktop look great, but they require extra processing horsepower to create and that loads down the battery. The same thing goes for Vista – if you’re running Windows Vista and you have Aero switched on, turning it off will give your battery a tiny nit of extra breathing space because the integrated graphics chip won’t have to work so hard.

7.    Set the hard drive and screen power-down times low

You don’t want to be turning off your netbook every 2 minutes because you have to leave it momentarily, but there’s no point burning up battery power if it’s not doing anything. Set the screen and hard drive power-down times relatively low to ensure that if you do need to leave you netbook running, they’re not wasting power keeping things lit up or spinning for no reason. The only caveat here is that regularly spinning up and down the hard drive motor isn’t a great thing to do in the long term, as it places extra wear on the motor itself. But in short bursts, it shouldn’t do too much harm.

8.    Turn off any background applets

Background applications are great for adding little bits of extra usefulness, but they’re a luxury you can’t really afford if you want the maximum battery life you can get. Things like antivirus programs, system monitors and other bits and pieces all require CPU time and the more the processor is loaded up, the more power it consumes.
Switching off your antivirus normally isn’t a great thing to do, but if you’re not connected to the internet, you’re not accessing files from external sources and the antivirus has already done a sweep of your netbook’s hard drive and found nothing untoward, switching it off for a small period while you’re working on battery power shouldn’t do your netbook any harm. Of course, as soon as you hit the internet or get back to AC mains power, switch it back on again.

9.    Disable the audio and flash card reader

This sounds like we’re getting a bit desperate for things to turn off, but in the end, it’s pretty simple – anything that consumes power is going to reduce your netbook’s battery life, so if you can turn it off, the battery will last longer. By disabling the audio, you should be able to reduce the power consumption because the device won’t be used. The same thing goes for the flash card reader.

10.    Turn off the webcam

I have to admit that if I were designing a netbook, I probably wouldn’t include a webcam. One thing the webcam will do is drain the battery like no-one’s business. The MSI Wind U100 pulls as much as 150mA of current, which is a hefty load, especially if your netbook happens to only have a small three-cell battery. Turning this off as well will help the battery to no end.
So there are my 10 tips. The two most effective are making sure the webcam is off and that the screen brightness is at its lowest level. That’s how I use my netbook and it’s still easily visible in normal room lighting. These tips will definitely make a difference to overall battery life, regardless of whether you’ve got a three, six or even a big nine-cell battery inside.
Just remember the golden rules when it comes to battery life: the less you use, the longer it will last.

Belkin Miniglow Optical Mouse

The MiniGlow Optical Mouse couldn’t be more aptly named; it’s a tiny mouse with a retractable cable that has a gentle pulsing glow that runs around the body of the mouse and through the scroll wheel.
Pros: It’s driverless and, thanks to the retractable cable, immensely portable. Tracking with the mouse was generally very good over most surfaces, except that…
Cons: The tiny size does make it a hand-cramp candidate for many users. The glowing effect is initially cool, but I’d hate to be stuck on a plane next to someone using it while I was trying to sleep.
Rating: 3/5 – Cool concept, but impossibly the world’s most anti-social mouse.

Bento 2

The second release of FileMaker’s friendly, Mac OS X-only database product adds a few new simple tweaks, including RSS and Apple Mail integration.
Pros: Bento’s biggest plus is that it’s a genuinely easy-to-use database product, with little to no knowledge of forms, relational database or programming required. It’s also aesthetically very nice, right out of the box.
Cons: It’s OS X only – FileMaker does its main database product in a Windows version, but not Bento. In some ways, this is a bit of a ‘point’ release of the product, as the new features aren’t that great, and could have arguably been included in a patch.
Rating: 3.5/5 – A great, easy-to-use database product for Mac users.

Acronis True Image 2009

Acronis True Image 2009

Backup software is just about the most dull software on the planet, but with the increasing amount of digital data we possess these days, it’s also quite vital. Acronis’ True Image 2009 offers the ability to back up your entire PC – or just selected folders.

Pros: New improvements include a very Vista-looking interface and a slick text search ability. One new feature I liked was that after the initial installation, Acronis sets up a simple one-click backup of your existing system, with all the necessary files pre-selected for you.

Cons: As with a lot of backup utilities, initial backup can be rather slow

Rating: 4/5 - A solid backup utility

Avanquest Fix it Utilities 8

Avanquest Fix-it Utilities 8

Fix-it Utilities doesn’t shirk when it comes to offering features – it’s a registry cleaner, Windows system tweaker, anti-virus/spyware package, startup manager and file recovery tool – or rather, a suite of tools.

Pros: The default install offers a three-user license, so it’s easy to keep an entire houseful of PCs covered. The range of utilities offered is impressive, but not overwhelming, as it’s easy to do a one-click security or system stability check and update.

Cons: With that much to do, it’s perhaps not surprising that Fix-it Utilities can be slow to run through its tasks. If you’re already using an anti-virus package, you’ll have to remember not to install that component, but if you do, you’ll need to keep it updated for it to have any relevance.

Rating: 4/5 – A good overall package, if no the fastest available.

Iolo System Mechanic Professional

Iolo System Mechanic Professional

Like Fix-it Utilities 8, System Mechanic promises to make your PC run a lot more smoothly, although in System Mechanic’s case, it’s through a number of rather more in-depth utilities, including anti-virus, firewall, file recovery and drive deleting utilities.

Pros: It’s comprehensive, and covers some factors other utilities leave out, including in-depth hard drive deletion utilities.

Cons: The firewall is very chatty, as is the anti-virus package. You can opt not to install them, but then you may find yourself better served by the standard utility, which is $69.95. Some of the vendor claims, such as the ability to “Accelerate download and Web surfing speeds up to 300%” are pure snake oil.

Rating: 3/5 – A decent suite of utilities, but a little overhyped.

The WRT610N is an 802.11b/g/n router with two radio transmitters within – one at 2.4GHz, and one at 5GHz. Why does that matter? Well, the 2.4GHz band is compatible with just about everything, but prone to interference, whereas the 5GHz band is less cluttered. By offering both simultaneously, you can run high-speed wireless for things that need high bandwidth – like video – and lower speed for older devices that need the 2.4GHz compatibility.

Pros: Setup of the WRT610N was nicely simple, thanks to the integrated LELA tool, and data throughput rates, while not up to the hype of 802.11n (so far, nothing is) were respectable.

Cons: The uncluttered 5GHz range was relatively poor. I’m still not a fan of the 802.11n, as the hype surrounding what you should get just doesn’t match up to the reality.

Rating: 3.5/5 – A good router, but 802.11n is still disappointing.

INTRODUCTION:
The Glyde from Samsung is another touch screen phone. The large touch screen design of the phone works and looks a lot like the popular iPhone from apple. The slider features a QWERTY keypad which is fast becoming a standard feature on most new models. The colour screen is bright and the images are surprisingly sharp and bold. It also features a 2.0 mega-pixel camera and has Internet and many other serviceable capabilities like emailing, browsing, VZ Navigator, etc. The Glyde offers all the Modern smart phone features.

DESIGN:
The Glyde is a shinny and sleek touch screen slider phone with an option of using the device as a bar phone also. It measures 4.09 x 1.97 x 0.7 cm and weighs 4.13 oz. Its screen size is excellent this screen takes up most of the front space of the phone. Sliding this phone shows off its QWERTY keypad. The sliding face of the phone is not exactly 90 degrees making the screen slanted. In general it is a sturdy phone but is not that light for a compact phone and the sliding mechanism makes the phone look less classy.
Sliding the phone to an open position allows the screen automatically to switch from landscape to portrait mode. When in a closed position the phone operates as a bar phone instead of the touch screen and it uses the keypad like an iPhone the screen is on portrait mode.
The touch screen operates well except for the occasional hiccup; you have an option to setup the touch-screen how you use it. The selection keys on its touch screen are very small making it difficult to scroll through the list. Users will most probably make use of the keypad for typing text messages opposed to the emails it works great for this purpose.

GLYDE TOUCHSCREEN:
The Glyde is fitted with a unique interface, preloaded background images, and also includes a Rubik’s Cube feature for fun purpose. A Shortcut menu is activated when you touch the pulsating blue box.  There are many other quick launch keys on its home screen which includes: Menu, Contacts, Dial Pad and Messaging. At the bottom you would find more icons that dim or light up according to the alarm set, a missed call, a calendar appointment or new message. Besides the navigating menus, UI is very easy to apply, if you are familiar with haptic-feedback phone you will catch on easily. However we noticed that the option had to be clicked on twice before the input was registered by the phone.

KEYBOARD:
Glyde’s keyboard is firm and has simple to use buttons and has excellent punch/bounce response but the numerical keys were a bit too close to the top part of the phone. The black keyboard has white letters and every key is set with a white light.

INSTANT MESSAGING AND EMAIL;

THE Mobile IM application comes with Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo and AIM. The Glyde also offers built-in e-mail support AIM Mail, Verizon net, AOL, Yahoo mail, Windows Live Messenger and Other. Other feature on this phone allows the user to set up his own POP3 or IMAP e-mail account. Similar to LG Vu, Glyde is also able to read out SMS messages. For that you will have to setup voice command in the settings menu and the phone automatically reads every SMS when opened. The voice is robotic but understandable.

MULTIMEDIA: MUSIC AND VIDEO:

The Glyde packs a Verizon over-the-air service WHICH includes V CAST music, VZ Navigator and V CAST Video. Downloading music is speedy with EVDO connections. This phone supports MP3, unprotected AAC and AAC+ files and WMA MUSIC FILES. Music was crystal clear when played out of Glyde speakers.

BLUETOOTH:
The stereo Bluetooth works well after the first few minutes of putting on. The stereo BLUETOOTH is also used to watch videos. With Most devices you can walk 20 to 30 feet while connected and before it cuts out but with Glyde you can only walk 11 to 13 feet before it cuts.

WEB BROWSER:
Web browsing was pretty decent, it supports HTML Web sites, But we found that it is limited using Verizon Wireless’ poor performing browser. You will be able to connect too easily to Gmail, Facebook, AOL Mail, Yahoo Mail and Windows Live. Mobile version CNN.com was loaded in speedy 6 seconds, other full sites took about a minute or two.

CAMERA:
The Glyde has a 2-megapixel with 1600 x 1200 pixels resolutions, it also has auto focus feature which helps to keep images sharp. The camera also has a flash for night time or for poor lights. The video has a limited resolution of 176 x 144pixels.
GPS
The Glyde has the Traffic Enhanced VZ Navigator 4.1.0 software. This service is quite accurate; the new versions include traffic incorporation to help the user to avoid the congestion of the busy highways. The VZ Navigator searches for local gas stations, movies and weather. This latest version packed on the phone offers a 3D map which makes it easier in car navigation. The performance was excellent and the audio was quite loud even when the vehicle was moving.

CALL QUALITY:
Making calls in open spaces or busy places the call were not audible. But indoors, the phone call was loud and very clear. On sliding the keypad while on a call the speakerphone becomes active but the caller sounded fuzzy and the speakers were muffled.

BATTERY LIFE;

Glyde has 10.4 hours standby time and 3.5 hours talk time. Battery was still at half charge after using the phone over a 24 hour period on Web surfing, streaming music through Bluetooth and making calls. Battery life was every impressive.

CONCLUSION:
THE Samsung Glyde is an appealing phone with touch screen it has messaging also with fun messaging capability. The keyboard is easy to use. But the interface is a bit confusing which needs a lot of getting used to. The touch screen is not always responsive at first try. It is a slider phone which also can be used as a block phone.

One thing Vista has in common with its Windows XP heritage is its fairly average ability to handle different audio and video files. While it’s happy to play Microsoft’s own Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV) files straight out of the box, get any version of Vista to try and handle anything exotic like H.264 video or Vorbis audio and it all goes sour.
The Ultimate version of Vista is capable of playing DVD movies without any trouble, but even this top-drawer version of Vista can’t do everything.

Here are 2 free media players for vista with which you can play almost any media file

Ffdshow To The Rescue
However, there’s a special software package called Ffdshow, which fixes everything in one hit. It’s what is called a ‘video decoding filter’, which basically means that it handles a wide range of audio and video compression formats or ‘codecs’ and allows Windows Media Player to play them rather than just telling you it needs to look for (and seemingly never finds) the codec online.

Ffdshow works exceptionally well in Windows XP and it also does the job nicely in all versions of Vista – from Basic through to Ultimate.
All you need to do is download the software, install it into your Vista PC and you’re done. It automatically links into Vista so that when any media player (not just Windows Media Player) gets set to play a video or audio file, Ffdshow lines up the correct codec so that your file plays.

Media Player Classic

Media Player Classic for Vista
However, while Vista comes with Windows Media Player, it’s not the only choice you have when it comes to media players. Back in the days of Windows 98, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player was a lean, simple player that did much the same thing as the current Windows Media Player 11, but without all the extra fluff.
While Microsoft abandoned the older player in favour of newer versions, a keen band of developers has taken the original interface and beefed it up with clever and useful new features, releasing it as Media Player Classic (MPC). If you’re finding that Vista’s Windows Media Player won’t touch your file, even with Ffdshow installed, try playing it with Media Player Classic.
To get MPC to show your videos in full-screen mode (without any Windows borders), just double-click on the video screen window. You can double-click on it again to go back to a Windows view.
There are many different video and audio formats available on the Internet. Installing Ffdshow is the ideal way to ensure that Vista can play anything you throw at it.
Adjusting The Aspect Ratio In MPC
Aspect ratio in video means the ratio between the width and height of the video image you look at. Old tube TVs had an aspect ratio of 4:3, whereas today’s new LCD and plasma TVs have an aspect ratio of 16:9. If you’re watching a video with MPC and it looks too tall or too squished, you can adjust the aspect ratio by going to MPC’s menu and selecting view -> Video Frame ->Override Aspect Ratio, and selecting from the options in the list.

If you happen to be a hardcore programmer and think that you’ve indeed mastered all the programming languages then just hold on! I guess you should have a good look at the Top 10 most Weirdest Programming Languages, which you probably might not have even come across. Each one of them is unique, and has some mind boggling stuff associated with it.

These languages are often referred to as esoteric programming languages, which have been designed with the intent of complicating things and amusing the users rather than simplifying it.

1.    Brainfuck

It was the invention of Urban Müller, designed to realize its implementation in the smallest possible compiler, and his master-plan came into existence in 1993.

Known for its extreme minimalism, and controversial name, Bf comprises of only 8 commands +-. <>, [] and is practically useless, however recently few decoders have been designed to render it useful enough.

Examples- Hello World!

++++++++++                    initialises cell zero to 10
[
>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-
]                                 this loop sets the next four cells to 70/100/30/10
>++.                             print   ‘H’
>+.                               print   ‘e’
+++++++.                              ‘l’
.                                    ‘l’
+++.                                  ‘o’
>++.                                  space
<<+++++++++++++++.                ‘W’
>.                                    ‘o’
+++.                                  ‘r’
——.                              ‘l’
——–.                             ‘d’
>+.                                   ‘!’
>.                                    newline

NOTE: Comments have been just provided to make the code readable, however the real code is merely-

++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<]>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.——.——–.>+.>.

So if you think you’re damn good at programming, try printing Hello World in brainfuck within 2minutes just like you do in C, C++, Java, PHP, HTML and other programming languages!

2.    FALSE

It is one of the weirdest programming languages designed, which served as an inspiration for development of other similar esoteric programming languages like Befunge, brainfuck and the likes of them. This language is highly confusing, basically because of its low level Forth programming language like structure, making it hard-to-understand.

For example, to calculate 3 + 1 by evaluating (λ x → x + 1)(3): 3[1+]!

You bet you can never follow it at first shot.

3.    Funge

It is extremely weird because basically the language models programs to be metric spaces attached with a co-ordinate system. One could never imagine that the instruction pointer could be even used in such an unorganized manner. What’s more it has even further developed into Befunge, and there have been several standards defined such as uni-funge for uni-dimensional and so on.

Check this out, and you’re bound to grow some fungus inside your head for sure!

4.    LOLCODE

It is a very funny programming language, basically designed to amuse the users with resemblance of the speech of lolcats. Wondering what is the language all about, and then has a closer look at the “hello world” program:
HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE “HAI WORLD!”
KTHXBYE

Lol yeah, no kidding it prints Hello World!

5.    Chef

This language is more of a cooking recipe rather than a programming language. Just have a look at this statement - Put cinnamon into 2nd mixing bowl!

Clueless what is it all about? Well it is just a statement, which instructs the compiler to push an item onto the stack.

6.    Velato

This one is for the music lovers, as Velato makes use of MIDI files as the input, with each command being determined by the interval between successive notes.

7.    Shakespeare

As it sounds, the language has been deliberately tweaked to frame programs resemble the plays of Shakespeare

How about this statement- Act I: Hamlet’s insults and flattery… It actually serves as declaration of a point in program, reachable via a GOTO-type statement.

8.    Whitespace

One of the most idiotic ones, which comprises of just the letter A, accompanied by commas, spaces and exclamations! It takes just the whitespaces into account, ignoring the non-whitespaces

9.    TRUE

It happens to be another weird one, which is basically a kind of mutation of FALSE. However, FALSE is rather structured, and TRUE just like its counter part (as its name suggests clearly) lacks variables, and features hardly few string manipulations etc.

10.    Intercal

Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym, INTERCAL was the end result of exceptional work by James M. Lyon & Donald R. Woods, who came up with a programming language in 1972, which was totally different from all other programming languages. You can’t make head or tail out of it, except the binary numbers, which wouldn’t even make much of sense to you!

Twitter is an outstanding place to register with.  You have a way to meet people, and write blogs, or articles for others to read.  Plus if you have some interesting stuff going on in your life, share it with your new friends.

With Twitter it’s a free signup and you can invite your friends with a simple few steps.  Plus you have tons of others you can meet.  See what people are up too, or what they have found interesting on the internet and feel like sharing with others.  You can find things on Twitter by searching or browsing interests.

Perhaps Twitter can in a way be compared to MySpace without all the crazy stuff involved.  If you want to stay in touch with people you have another way that is great to do this, with Twitter.

Go and look up others and see what they are talking about.  Add new friends or as Twitter calls it following a person.  Wait for people to follow you too; it’s a way to get your thoughts and ideas heard by others.  Or if you have product to sell you can even advertise it on Twitter.  A lot of people who are on Twitter love to blog, and if your just meeting a new person, this is an outstanding way to get to know someone better.

Meeting with new people from all over the world is fun, plus it opens up new avenues.  If you’re a writer you can post some of your work on Twitter, or advertise your website so others will go and see what all you have to offer.  It may get you a few jobs too, would be a great way to advertise for free!

Signing up for Twitter is completely free of charge, and the whole process is quick.  Before you know it you’ll have a Twitter page all set up, than you can go and add stuff as you wish.  Or go and check out other people, add some friends and have a blast.  It doesn’t matter if all you want to do is post a blog every once in a while.  Rant and rave about things that you feel are not right.  Or praise those things that you enjoy in life.  Heck even if you want you can leave a day to day blog for how your day went.  Its funny how many people have gotten tons of followers due to there hilarious outlook on life, and their daily adventures.

Of course you don’t need to do that, but it’s just an idea of how to have fun each day.  Maybe you have found a great website that you think people should look at.  Put the link up and attract attention to the site.  Or you can put up your own link for your website, and maybe sell some things.

Twitter is a fantastic place to go and attract more people to read stuff you wrote, or just get some more friends and learn about other cultures maybe.  Twitter try it out and see if it’s not one of the best sites around.