Saturday, November 6, 2010

New blog

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I rarely blog here now, please follow me in my microblog.
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Monday, June 14, 2010

Nothing to write about

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This post is about nothing. I have nothing in my mind to write about. Isn't it wonderful? Having nothing in the mind to write about?
Wait. How can having nothing to write about be wonderful? It's always great to have something you can share with others. Having nothing to write about implies you are living a kind of a stale life.
On the other hand, if I have nothing to write why am I writing like this? Of course having nothing to write itself made me write. It's quite interesting to write about the fact that there is nothing to write about. You must try this too, you know.
When you have nothing to write about and when you are writing about this fact, so many things come to mind that you can write, of course about having nothing to write about. This a wonderful feeling you know.
And then, there may be some people who have nothing to read. They of course can read posts like this, written by people who have nothing to write about. I know, it is lame.
Okay, I see the frowns of some of your faces. I quit. There is a possibility that I'll have something to write about sooner or later, of course not about the fact that I have nothing to write about. So see you then. Kthxbai!
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Monday, May 24, 2010

Life with the E63

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Three weeks without a phone wasn't a much welcome experience, but the all new Nokia E63 that followed wiped all the worries away.

I had by no means imagined that I'd end up with an awesome phone like this. What better phone can a boy who had only an N70 wish for?

So here I am, typing proudly with its qwerty keyboard in the quickoffice suite, checking for new tweets in Gravity now and then, and occasionally returning to my ebook when I feel like. Then perhaps I will watch the next episode of The Big Bang Theory in Real Player. Suddenly I see something worth sharing on the road, capture it and post in TwitPic. What a wonderful life this is! What should the lives of people who doesn't have E63s be like!

Believe me, life with an E63 is simply wonderful!
EAVB_VQWOMEREJU
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Sunday, February 21, 2010

There's an antivirus called ubuntu

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I stumbled upon this thread in ubuntuforums.org today: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1412150

The question been asked is:

"A frient of mine heard of a program that will make you never get viruses again.
Its called Ubuntu. I go to the site and download the program, but it wont install.
How do I install it. I got like a lot of viruses and dont like that it makes my computer slow and sends stuff to friends.
I just want to chat with my friends and internet without getting viruses.
This is the good site to ask about this, right.
Srry for my bad english."


The people in the forums have answered him, welcoming him to the linux world, telling him that Ubuntu is an operating system - not an antivirus, etc. And at one point the problem poser says:

"Wubi. I download it and click install. Its busy now.
Thank you for the help.
I don't know what a operating system is. I hope just the viruses are gone.
I think this is what my friend got."


He is just another typical example of a normal computer user who doesn't want to know the inside out of a computer, but just use it for his day to day tasks.

"It isn't windows. I didnt know that. Just dont want viruses anymore.
I can chat and use internet with ubuntu. Youtube, facebook, msn. Yes."


Ubuntu will be the best choice for him. It's very good that he chose ubuntu forums. Just to know that you have a whole community to help you when in trouble, that's lovely!

We meet lots of people having similar problems - who don't know what an operating system is, who just want to know how to get their surfing and wordprocessing done hazzle-free. All we people need to do is to carefully guide them in their transition to Ubuntu, without burdening them with technical stuff. Just make their life in ubuntu wonderful and exciting!

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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Need for Speed: reading the web faster

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Everyone need to read web pages. News sites, reference material, this and that. Unfortunately most pages are designed to discourage our reading experience. Some have letters so that we need to magnify the screen to read. And there are those pages which have so many words per row, that we almost always get lost when moving to the next line.

And we have our problems too. Inability to concentrate on anything makes us read the same para again and again.

Not to worry. At least in the computing world, problems are solved nearly in the same speed they appear. There are several interesting tools we can use to enhance our reading experience in the web.

1. RSVP Reader

This is a nice addon for Firefox. Once installed it brings a new toolbar with several buttons and a text area. To read some text all you need to do is select the text and click the Play button on the toolbar. It then begins to show chunks of the text in the text area which is the only place you need to keep your eye on while reading. You can adjust the font size, number of words displayed per minute and the length of the chunks.
Since you do not have to move your eyes in the screen your attention is not lost. For articles you want to skim through, for example long articles to be read in a short amount of time, you can increase the wpm value. May not be much suitable for reading technical stuff, but really great for going through news, stories, etc.
And it is said that by using this your speed reading skills improve too. It's a pity a substitute is not yet available for Chrome.

2. Reasy


This somewhat an extension to the RSVP reader. It makes the words scroll in the page while blocking the view of the real page content. Meant to further reduce the distractions. More focused on the presentation of the text, rather than many options, the author claims. But I personally dislike this.

3. Readability


Ever noticed that it is far easier to read the slim columns of a newspaper than long sentences in a book? Wished everything was in columns like that? Readability is the answer.

This ain't an addon, but a bookmarklet, something (a script in fact) you can drag and drop in your bookmarks bar and can be used in all browsers. You can first adjust the font style, size and margin size and then drag the bookmarklet to the bar. To read using this gadget, all you have to do is to hit the Readability bookmarklet while you're on the page you wish to read. If the RSVP reader's pace is too fast for you this will fit. The only drawback is Readability still lacks support for certain sites and has difficulty in displaying bulleted lists, etc.

This list isn't exhaustive. These are just the ones I'm using daily and would give you a started. I noticed that googling "read online faster" gives a plenty of results.

And, finally, if you want to increase your reading speed as a whole, I'd recommend Tony Buzan's Speed Reading book for best results.
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