Archive for February, 2009

Desktop Enhancement Software: Fences

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Stardock, the people behind WindowBlinds and ObjectDock, has now given us another nice desktop enhancement software.

It’s called Fences.

Fences allows you to group your desktop shortcuts into one particular area. As you can see from the demo video above, it not only allows you to group your shortcuts, but it keeps all your shortcuts in that area only. If you have too many, then a scroll bar appears if you hover over that fenced area, allowing you to scroll using your mousewheel. You can also give this fenced area a label, like “Work”, “Temp” or “Games”. Somehow, it gives me a sense of more control over the icons on my desktop.

One killer feature I love is that all these fenced areas and shortcuts will disappear when you double click on any empty area on the desktop. Of course, if you don’t like this, you can exclude a Fence from hiding, or exclude a single shortcut.

I find that this is a very simple idea that could have been a nice key feature of any desktop in any OS. I always like to group my desktop shortcuts according to type in a certain area. This desktop enhancement software feels right at home.

[Fences - By Stardock - Clean up your desktop clutter.]

Formula 1 in 2009

Friday, February 13th, 2009

Formula 1 rule tweaks explained in this awesome video with the coolest and slickest animation I’ve seen to date.

Speed boost! What will they think of next?

mariokart_greenshells

Probably not…

[Formula 1 Cars Getting Electric Hyperspeed Jumps]

Joke: The Professor

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

I love jokes like these!

A professor of mathematics noticed that his kitchen sink at his home leaked. He called a plumber. The plumber came the next day and sealed a few screws, and everything was working as before.

The professor was delighted. However, when the plumber gave him the bill a minute later, he was shocked.

“This is one-third of my monthly salary!” he yelled.

Well, all the same he paid it and then the plumber said to him, “I understand your position as a professor. Why don’t you come to our company and apply for a plumber position? You will earn three times as much as a professor. But remember, when you apply, tell them that you only got through seventh grade. They don’t like educated people.”

So it happened. The professor got a job as a plumber and his life significantly improved. He just had to seal a screw or two occasionally, and his salary went up significantly.

One day, the board of the plumbing company decided that every plumber had to go to evening classes to complete the eighth grade. So, our professor had to go there too. It just happened that the first class was math. The evening teacher, to check students’ knowledge, asked for a formula for the area of a circle. The person asked was the professor. He jumped to the board, and then he realized that he had forgotten the formula. He started to reason it, and he filled the white board with integrals, differentials, and other advanced formulas to derive the result he needed. He got “minus pi times r squared.”

He didn’t like the minus, so he started all over again. He got the minus again. No matter how many times he tried, he always got a minus. He was frustrated. He gave the class a frightened look and saw all the plumbers whisper: “Switch the limits of the integral!!”

[The Professor]

Commentator On Dennis Bergkamp’s Goal

Monday, February 9th, 2009

I just had to put this up.

The goal was brilliant, a classic Bergkamp goal.

But definitely not THAT brilliant (no offense) until one can go nuts from it. :P

Singapore Government No Likey Interwebz

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Contrary to what some may feel, Singapore’s Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yew, has said the internet is not an effective self-regulated regime.

The Internet is a regime now?

Asking the internet to regulate themselves is like asking the crowd at a stadium to sit down quietly and watch the match. I guess the minister is really not acquainted with the web at all. Can someone send him this instructional video on what the internet is for?

You actually take the words of porn-watchers seriously? Seriously?

Mr Lui added that the internet community had not done enough to rebut some of the unhelpful comments delivered by fellow netizens.

I somehow find it difficult to see people vehemently supporting the ruling party. In every nook and cranny of the forums and personal blogs, criticism is abundant. I wonder, when this generation replaces the one before it, will PAP still get majority vote?

The blogs of local netizens were abuzz with the incident involving Mr Seng.

I always love to see quotes like these in the local newspapers and local online news sites. The term “netizen” seems to be a favourite catchword for SPH. I don’t remember seeing it used in any other website. And where are these so-called “blogs of local netizens“? You know, I’ll bet soon, the government will form a team whose sole job is to scour ping.sg’s feed and hardwarezone forums like a hawk, noting down each post, it’s origin, check the whois or ask hardwarezone to hand over the private information of the user, and knock on the bastard’s door. Then, coerce and lock him or her in a detention centre with over-sized windows in a toilet cubicle. Prison Break II!

Too much?

[Internet not an effective self-regulated regime, says MICA]

Imagine All 10 Dimensions Of Reality

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

If reality has that many dimensions in the first place…


Watch Imagining the ten dimensions in How to Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

A very simplistic (but still cool!) overview on String Theory, a proposal to unify General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.

I always find physics and mathematics fascinating because it touches on our physical realm. Of course, topics like this is fun and cool to read about, but way, way too much to actually properly study in a university. This is a very huge personal flaw of mine. I like to learn on the concepts and overview of every single subject, but to delve into a particular topic in detail? I’ll get bored and become disinterested fast. Probably a self-motivation thing.

Anyway, this seems like a nice book for a casual read. It’ll probably go into my list of books to get, along with Prof. Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time.

[Imagining The Tenth Dimension]

Free Acronis True Image 10 Personal Edition!

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

We all love free stuff don’t we? Even more so if it’s a quality product.

Coming from the glorious folks at lifehacker, Acronis is giving away free Acronis True Image 10 Personal Edition.

I very much prefer Acronis than Norton Ghost to do my backup. Amazingly, Acronis 10 is able to detect SCSI harddrives in RAID in a server machine. Norton Ghost did not. Acronis also has a better user interface than Ghost, especially when booting directly from the CD. I also find Acronis to be more user friendly.

One feature I like is the ability to add incremental updates to an image. Say you’ve already took an image of your harddisk. Then you made some changes and you would like to create another backup. In Acronis, you would not need to recreate the entire image again, but simply create an incremental backup. One feature I have not yet tried is saving the backup image to a network shared drive. I’m not sure if that is available for the Personal Edition. But you can backup to a USB drive instead.

What’s the catch? This is a legacy version. The latest version is Acronis True Image Home 2009, which costs £39.95 per license.

Note: The site may be unavailable. I had to try and refresh a few times before I got the registration page.

[http://www.acronis.co.uk/mag/ati10pe]

Even More Creative Uses For YouTube: Spot The Difference!

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

First, we have the innovative “Choose Your Own Adventure” style of movie story-telling, which I showcased before. Now, with a little ingenuity, you can create a simple “Spot The Difference” game with YouTube and its annoying annotations feature.

It will show you two pictures side-by-side with an error on the right image.

yt_pic1

The right side image will be split into 9 squares, so you have at least 1/9 chance of getting it right. Simply click on the square with the difference and it will take you to a new video.

yt_pic2

The music is a little agonizing (ok, a lot agonizing). Just hit the mute button and you’re on your way to wasting a few minutes of your life.

[2009 Oscars Interactive Photo Hunt!]