Month / July 2006

by Nirupam Biswas

How to make the top banner of Blogger.com disappear!

Note
This trick no longer works. For a better and newer trick that actually works now see my post Make the top bar (navbar) disappear.

As u can see at the top of my blog, there is no banner. I read about tricks to do that. That trick required us to remove a code in the template, but it seems that Blogger has become wiser and now it directly inserts the code at the appropriate place at the moment when the page is requested. So, the old trick now fails. How can we prevent Blogger.com from inserting that damn code? Simple, we don’t need it to do that.

In my technique I just hide the banner by placing a layer of my theme colour over it. Simple. If u too want to do that then copy the following code

<!-To make top bar disappear, exclusively by AppleGrew-> <div style=”position: absolute; width: 100%; height: 32px; z-index: 1; left: 0px; top: 0px; background-color: #CCDDBB” id=”layer1″> </div> <!-by Apple Grew->

and paste it between
<!– Begin wraps –>

and

<div id=”wrap”><div id=”wrap2″>

Please change CCDDBB to the HEX value of the colour u want. To know the HEX value of the colour u want, enter the RGB values of ur colour at this site at http://www.kenjikojima.com/java/RGBHexConverter2.html .

by Nirupam Biswas

How to save videos from Google Video.

In the last post I posted a video from Google Video. If u wanted to save that file to hard disk then u might have found that there is no way to save them. Well, u can save them!

First, download Google Video Player from here. Then click on Goto Google Video in the button of the player below. U will be taken to Google Video site. There click on Download (choose ur operating system alongside). This will start the download of a file with extension gvp. This is of few kilobytes. Run it from the downloaded location by double clicking it. This will launch Google Video Player. Let Google Video Player download the full video. U will know the percentage downloaded by the percent of the seek bar which got grayed out. When complete, goto to Google Videos folder which is inside My Videos folder (which is itself inside My Documents). There u will find a file with the same name as that of the gvp file u just downloaded, but its extension will be different. It will be gvi. This is ur file. It is a simple DivX avi file. Change the extension of this file to avi and play it in any media player.

Enjoy!

by Nirupam Biswas

Setting movie brightness etc. when these settings are not available in the media player.

Today I saw a movie. I had copied the full DVD to the hard disk because my PC had trouble reading it. I clicked on the .ifo file but PowerDVD failed to open it, same thing with VideoLAN, then I found refute in Media Player Classic. It played it exactly as if it were being played from the DVD itself, but there was a problem – the picture was too dark to see. My monitor’s brightness settings and contrasts were already 100%, now how do I increase its damn brightness, Media Player Classic doesn’t have any such brightness control feature as VLC or PowerDVD has. Idea!

Why not use Intel Graphics Controller Properties? This thing is only available for computers with Intel made motherboards. This tool may not be available even on ur Intel made motherboard comp if ur comp is quite dated. Search Intel’s website.

Now, open Control Panel and double click on Intel(R) Extreme Graphics. This will open the above mentioned dialog.

U can alternatively open it by right clicking on an empty area on ur desktop then navigate to Graphics Options and then to Graphics Properties.

If u can’t see Graphics Options then click on Properties on that menu. Then on Settings tab. Click Advanced button. Now click on Intel(R) Extreme Graphics tab in the newly opened dialog box. Click on Graphics Properties .

Now u r there. Click on Color tab. See here the Brightness and Contrasts sliders? There u r, but wait….If u drag these sliders then u affect the whole screen. Wouldn’t it be nice if could just set these values for the movie only? Yes u can! Just look on that page. Click on Video Overlay option. There, now u have another option, Saturation, available. Now there u r. Don’t forget to cick on Ok. Click on Restore Defaults if u want to goto the default values.

It is recommended that u open the movie while changing the settings. This way u will know how much to move the sliders.

It would had been really nice if we were allowed to save them as schemes. I don’t understand why on earth do they disable the Save as Scheme button for Video Overlay.

by Nirupam Biswas

Pics for Laughs.

It seems the cow has some tastes for dogs.

Quack-Highness


Royal Bengal Tiger. Is McDonald responsible for it?

“Who is that, with wierd hairs?”

“There u r.”

Cross Atlantic Cruisers.

“It’s just a bad hair day”

“The coast is clear.”

Cross breed-ed?

“No I won’t go with u. I will stay at home.”

“Hey sis. Look at that wierd face.”

“Hmmm…”

“Aaaah! This smells so sweet. Will make a good snack.”

“Ha ha. Who am I?”

“Hey u go off. He is my prey.”

Chicken Littles.

Locusts’ storm.

Fan-tastic.

00003324.jpg

Nice way to workout.

waterski.jpg

Not enough waves for surfing. Hire a jet!

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Bad Santa


losehead.jpg

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…..


bed_positions_01.jpg

“Aaah. This is life.”


home_school_16.jpg

Hot dog.


Snaps from Movies (edited)

All pics from Opera community @ http://my.opera.com/community/
Almost all pics (maybe all) has been taken from Mathilda Tómasdóttir’s album at Opera Community.

Well the captions are mine.

by Nirupam Biswas

AppleGrew Apple Grew.

My friends and kinsmen sometimes ask me from where did I get this weird name – Apple Grew? Well I too don’t remember, maybe the Apple thing came to my mind from the Apple Computers and Grew? Maybe from the fact that apple grows! What has hooked me on to this alias is the uniqueness of it. Sample this. Type applegrew (don’t put space between apple and grew) in Google and search it. Almost all the search results (total of 53 when I searched) including the 1st result, turned out to be me! Only about 4-5 results (out of 53) didn’t relate to me.

Come-on search the net for ur name. See how many of them relate to u. It is recommended that u use quotes around ur name. I would like to hear from u, how much results were related to u. Do u know what this kind of search is called? It is called ego-searching. It is the searching the internet about yourself to access your popularity. There is yet another place to pamper ur ego. Goto Google Trends . Here u can get the statistics on how many times a particular keyword (it could be ur name) has been searched for in Google and from where. It gives year-wise and region-wise break-up.

U didn’t knew about Google Trends? Well there are many more goodies available from Google. Google is more than a search engine. Keep a watch here (subscribe to feed here) for my post enlisting the dug out Google services u may not know of.