Lifehacker: Shortcut Screencast Contest

I know, another rather long hiatus, partly due to my Mumbai trip, and partly for no reason at all ;) . Another post describing my (very) (un)memorable trip is due, but here's what just happened:

Most techies would have heard of the site Lifehacker. I began reading it some time back (it's quite useful; you don't really need to be a techy to read it - and it's also one of my favourite sites as of now). Anyway, so they recently announced this Shortcut screencast contest where you send a screencast of a quick way you know of doing something on your computer, and if they like it, you get a prize (they had ten prizes to give away).

So I sent my entry a few days back - I thought it was quite good, but I didn't have that much hope since it was my first ever screencast and it didn't come out too well. Plus, the same day as I submitted my entry, someone else won. But - you know where this is going - I WON!!

Here's the screencast I sent:

Or you can check out the Lifehacker page here.

Anyway, I was left a bit confused when they didn't ask me my address (how the hell would they send me the book?). So I wrote to them and got an answer in 20 minutes flat (talk about speed). I sent my address, and now I hope I get the book soon. Really soon.

Cold. Cloudy. Rainy. Gloomy. Lovely.

Perfect.

The whole of yesterday it was raining and raining - nonstop. Well, almost.

*

By the way, some time back, I came across this blog - The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. It (obviously) isn't really the secret diary of Steve Jobs, but most of the posts are real laughs.

Suh-weet!

So, not many people did not know that there was an Apple event on 12 September where they were going to release some exciting new products, of which the iMac Core 2 Duo was not a part.

Yesterday, I switched on my computer with some excitement, as I had no idea what was to have been released. Only that when I went to the Apple site, I realized that the event had not even taken place! (well, obviously India is in a totally different and useless time zone ).

Okay, so there are the updated version of the iPods which have been released - and they are really cool! I mean, all right, it ain't the iPhone and it ain't a touch-screen iPod, but hey the new iPods look really sweet! First of all, there's the new iPod Shuffle which is about the size of half your palm (depending on how big your hand is) and at $79 for 1GB, it's really good!

Next we come to the Nano. It replaced the Mini last year and was the iPod I wanted. Now it comes five different colours (black, silver, pink, green, blue), has a new 8 GB model and a new design (similar to the Mini's, except it's thinner).

The 5G Video iPod has also been updated (well, obviously). It now has a whopping big 80GB model, which inicidentally is the same size as the old 60GB one.

The new iPods also have brighter displays, much better battery life (24 hrs for the Nano) and sync with the iTunes Store to download movies, and games too.

There's also iTunes 7. Well, they've changed the looks a bit and I don't really like them, plus the logo's got a blue musical note instead of a green one. Check all these things out at the Apple site.

So long, and thanks for all the patience,
-- Sahil :)

Nice Visitors not using IE

I like this! See for the site statistics for this blog, I'm using Google Analytics because I got an invitation from them (I applied for it). Anyway, so here's what I see in the browsers being used by visitors to this site:

Yay! All hail the Firefox users!
Soon, I'd like to see IE as instead of the second largest segment, at 0% .

Download Firefox here (those who're using Internet Explorer).

उफ़!

No, really! This is definitely the limit! For, let me see, four days now, I have been unable to visit any blogspot.com blog! This has, you know, been highly irritating, 'cause I can't see my own blog and neither can I go to others - and even the feeds don't work. Till today, I didn't know why this was happening - I thought that maybe it was some problem with the blogspot servers or something...

But the real reason (or what seems to be the real reason) is dumb - just plain dumb. It seems that the Ministry of Communication of the Government of India has banned all these blogs, for some unknown reason. So, because of said unknown reason, all of us innocent people have to be denied the pleasure of visiting blogs!

Hmph!

It's absurd! People tell me that it's been done because of other people posting about the Reservation thingy! What about the Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression and all that? And anyway, just because some people have been posting about it doesn't mean that each and every blog should be banned just like that!
I hope they'll get over it soon.

Anyway, while blogs have been inaccessible, I've been doing...well, nothing, actually . Though I did find some interesting sites recently, some time ago and I Stumbled Upon a few, too (this makes it sound as though I've found tons - but really, there are only around 5-6).

1. TuneSleeve: This is a nice program for iTunes. What it does is, it searches Amazon.com for Album Art that is missing from your library and lets you choose among some nice images.
2. The Song Tapper: I read about this one on a blog. Basically, you tap a song using your keyboard and it searches its database and tells you which song you've tapped. I was pretty sceptical about it at first, but it actually works!
3. byokal: This is a 'toy' made by this guy. Drag 'n' drop these images on to this image and you get to see a kaleidoscopic thing on the bigger image . (Just try it out, I know I'm not making much sense)
4. Snipurl: Trouble remembering URLs that are too long? Snip them! I saw this one in a magazine.

Oh, and I downloaded the release candidate of Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 - though I haven't tried it out yet.

And today was the first stayback for DPS MUN - and after a lot of debating, I didn't stay back. I spent the whole of the last period thinking about it - that's 40 minutes of pondering over two words (Yes and No).Now I'm wondering if I should have stayed back after all. And a blighter in my German class broke my glasses, so till seven o'clock I had to do without them.

N.B. I completely forgot to mention - blogs can be visited by going to pkblogs.com. I'm also trying out a program called 'Tor' to accomplish the same thing, though I haven't quite got the hang of it yet.
Oh, and the shoutbox seems to have gone on strike. I'm thinking of applying for a new one, what say you?

8-bit Games certainly are fun

Well, as Diggi says, 8-bit games are fun. I mean, all right, forget the graphics, but there really is something catchy about them. I'm really not going to start harping on about 8-bit games, whatever you need to know can be found out here.
What I did want to say is that some time ago, I found loads of these games on my computer. Their average size being no more than 250 KB (yes, kilobytes :D ), I've decided that if you want them, you've only got to ask. Here's a complete list of all the ones I have:

(N.B. 'Punch_0' is same as Mike Tyson, and 'ULTRBASE' is in Japanese)

Of course, being NES games, you'll need a NES emulator to play them. I suggest you head to Emulator Zone's NES Emulators page and grab one. I'm using FCE Ultra right now - it's pretty decent, but if you use it, you'll need to set the controls (the defaults don't work properly and the controls for the turbo buttons aren't set by default).

Anyway, we still have one exam left (sad, I know). Fortunately, its German, unfortunately, German's no longer the easiest subject that many people imagine it to be. I mean, all right, the level of learning German in our school is much lower than that of French, but as a language, it's a lot more complex. This, is mainly due to cases (nominative, accusative, dative, etc) or rather, the numerous ways a sentence has to be changed in order to make it agree with the case. The syllabus is also (very) misleading - it is, after all, three words. The unfortunate part starts when you realise that those three words are 'everything', 'is' and 'coming'.
Right now, I'm feeling jealous of the people for whom the exams have already ended (in other words, those who are exempted from the last exam due to the JSTS interview - the lucky pigs people).

So then,
Cheers,
-- Sahil.

WLM 8.0 [updated]

//Updated and edited

Did you really think that I would waste my time writing "Windows Live Messenger" in the title? :D
Well, so MSN Messenger 7.5's replacement has been released today. And with a new name - Windows Live Messenger. "This is the same Messenger you know and love, only better," says Microsoft. I wanted to try it out.
I knew that it was being released today, so I headed off to the download site to get it. And god! it was one heck of a download at 14.6 MB!! I mean, v7.5 was no more than 8 megs, but fourteen! Anyhow, with a not-so-very slow ADSL connection, it downloaded pretty fast, starting at this speed:

So, well then, I proceeded to install it. The first thing was that they had changed all the Messenger logos in the installer (you see, having never tried the beta version, everything was new to me). After that, you notice that all the systray icons have changed too, for glossy, somewhat better ones. The login page no longer sports the display picture (at least, not for me, it didn't). The entire blue look of the old messenger (starting from v6 I think) has given way to a new, cleaner, streamlined Vista-like feel - and I like it!

The Login Page

The Main Window

There are many new features, too, like making phone calls (think Skype and Google talk). But as far as I gathered, I have the non-US edition (at least that's what the installer said) - I'm assuming phone calls 'n' stuff is only in the US. Then there's shared folders (share a folder with your contact), Offline chatting (not tried it yet :) ), and more. You can even search your contact list, and even change the color scheme of the main window, to suit your mood or visual style. Oh yeah, and it creates a new group called "Non Instant-Messaging Contacts", which contains all your hotmail contacts.

Get it now: Windows Live Messenger 8.0

Update: I tried out the offline chatting thing....it's pretty nifty - contacts recieve the messages when they sign in; that's pretty useful, especially if your connection gets disrupted or something. But I don't know if it's backward compatible.
Update: Soon, we'll be able to chat with Yahoo users on Windows Live Messenger!

-- Sahil