Category / Regulars

All posts which are not featured in the sliding header. This will be used to make sure featured posts are not shown twice on the home page.

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.

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.

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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

How to drive and some more on NFS.

If my friends see me giving advice on playing games then may laugh off their beds. Actually I am not much of a gamer, but I do love racing games. NFS is the best, but the recent Most Wanted Black Edition was verrrrrry tough to play. One or two bangs here and there and bye-bye to being a winner. My repeated attempts to play has now paid well. Now I know to tricks to drive (somewhat).

The golden rule is: never pull the brakes (space-bar). In NFS if u steer even slightly sidewards and pull brakes at the same time, ur car goes out of control and it spins. So rule 1, don’t use brakes. When u r approaching a turning then decrease ur speed, by releasing ur throttle (UP arrow key). If u sense that u need to gain some speed then tap on the UP key, don’t keep it pressed. Keeping the UP key pressed is like increasing the throttle and hence u will be accelerating, and if u have auto gear transmission enabled then u may quickly gain too much speed. This is also true for LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys, used for steering. Keeping them pressed means increasingly steering more and more to that direction. Hence, if for example u keep the LEFT key pressed then u r steering ur steering wheel continuously towards the maximum extent on the left. So rule 2, if u want to maintain the throttle or the steering of the steering wheel to some value between zero and maximum then tap the respective keys repeatedly; keeping it pressed will result it to go to the maximum value. When u r through the turn then fire a short burst of nitro to gain for the lost time. A long burst of nitro is no better than a short burst of it. So rule 3, fire only short burst of nitro, u will immediately accelerate. The trick to good driving is to learn the skill to get the ideal speed for the turning.

While playing NFS, while I was behind the A.I. cars I noticed that the computer too slows down just before a turning and when it is through it fires a short burst of nitro.

After unsuccessfully trying to beat #15 blacklist member for many days at last I discovered these golden rules. Then I successfully beat #15 and just after that in single attempt I beat #14 yesterday. U can download my NFS MW Black Ed saved game from here. I have only beaten #15 and #14 and I have cleared two challenges.

Some good NFS links:-
 ————————
1) ZModeller : It is a free complete 3d Modelling software exclusively made to edit and create 3d-Models for games. It supports many games including NFS.
2) NFS Cars: As its name suggests it is dedicated to NFS cars. It has a very big and active forum on of course NFS cars.
3) Ferrari for NFS MW: This is a link to a thread in NFS cars which deserves special mention. Forum member Arushan is busy cracking the file format of NFS MW and is making a tool which will allow u to add ur own car into NFS MW. He has already created the much missed Ferrari for NFS MW. Though still he has neither released the tool or the Ferrari. He promises it will be out when he has ironed out the problems.
4) NFS Planet: All about the Need for Speed games with actual News, many downloads, addon cars and tracks, cheats, pre- and reviews and tutorials.

by Nirupam Biswas

‘Euro English’ is coming…

Today I received a letter from my friend. Read it below.

—
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English
will be the official language of the European Union rather than German,
which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that
English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year
phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will
make the sivil servants jump with joy.
The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up
konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the
troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like
fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted
to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben
a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag
is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th”
with “z” and “w” with “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining
“ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in
ze forst plas.

—

I juess I will have to start learning German to get a hang of this ‘English’.