100 things we didn't know this time last year

You can learn alot of things in 365 days, thankfully, the BBC has compiled a list of the things we didn't know this time last year.
A sneak peek :

14. It's possible for a human to blow up balloons via the ear. A 55-year-old factory worker from China reportedly discovered 20 years ago that air leaked from his ears, and he can now inflate balloons and blow out candles.

18. If all the Smarties eaten in one year were laid end to end it would equal almost 63,380 miles, more than two-and-a-half times around the Earth's equator.

22. The length of a man's fingers can reveal how physically aggressive he is, scientists say.

29. When faced with danger, the octopus can wrap six of its legs around its head to disguise itself as a fallen coconut shell and escape by walking backwards on the other two legs, scientists discovered.

Flexible Keyboard

Here are photos of a flexible silicon keyboard my uncle sent me. Pretty cool.

Oh yeah, the PSP

I've not written much at all about my PSP ever since I bought it, mainly because I didn't know what to write about or didn't have time. The PSP is high-ranked in almost all decent Top Ten gadget lists all over the web, and could possibly be the most revolutionary handheld device ever made. The first time you pick up the device it will be hard for you to keep your eyes of the TFT screen, the PSPs most noticeable element. The screen is 110 mm/4.3" (diagonal) 16:9 ratio TFT LCD, sporting a 480 x 272 pixel resolution capable of 16.77 million colours. In other words; the best screen ever put on a portable device.
The PSP has tonnes of games at the moment, but the device is being bought mainly to exploit it and run homebrew apps and games. Picture yourselves as Sony, its kind of scary when your Unit sales exceed your game sales by a huge margin. A few months after the consoles` original release somewhere in December 2004, the firmware was cracked by a group of spanish coders. Since then, Sony have released 5 critical updates, 4 of whom which (to my knowledge) have been cracked.
If you're into portable entertainment, you must have a PSP. The amount of music, videos, games and/or apps you want is limited only to the size of your memory stick, not forgetting Wi-Fi internet access. Be it podcasts, DVD movies, UMD movies, magazines or music, the PSP can store it all. But above all, the PSP is worth every dollar thanks to its 1001 multifunctional uses.

Podcasting 101

Ever since I got my PSP, I've been doing everything an iPod can't (except the iPod Video.. lets not go there) Since podcasting is so popular nowadays I thought of looking around places and selecting some of the best that are worth downloading. Podcasting started becoming popular around 2004, it is the term used when RSS Syndication is used to keep track of, distribute and download media for mobile devices (originally the iPod; hence 'pod'casting) If you're a proud owner of an iPod or any other mobile device, you might want to put your memory stick to good use by having a look at some of the casts/content below. Podcasts are really handy when you're too busy to read the latest news and/or happenings, just a quick download and you're good to go.

Diggnation with Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht

“Diggnation is a weekly tech/web culture show based on the top digg.com social bookmarking news stories.”

Gamespot presents The HotSpot

"GameSpot editors recap the hottest news and trend in the gaming industry from the past week!”

Extremetech.com Podcast
“News, reviews and technology updates from ExtremeTech.com.”

Boagworld.com Podcast
“This podcast covers all things relating to web design. Whether you are a website owner, designer or developer hopefully this show has something for everybody. Each episode includes news, review and hints and tips.”

PC Gamer podcast GamersDaily
“The official podcast of PC Gamer Magazine”

TWiT (This Week in Tech) Podcast
“Your first podcast of the week is the last word in tech. Join Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, John C. Dvorak, and other tech luminaries in a roundtable discussion of the latest trends in digital technology. Winner of the 2005 People’s Choice Podcast Award for best overall podcast and Best Technology Podcast. Released every Sunday at midnight Pacific.”

The Mac Cast
"A Macintosh show for Mac geeks by a Mac geek. News, reviews, opinions and commentary about all things Macintosh. The MacCast also offers Mac help via email and a call in Hotline.”

MuggleNet Podcast
"MuggleNet.com's new podcast, appropriately titled "MuggleCast", is an informative weekly talk show dedicated to everything Harry Potter."

Post-Christmas Post

Merry Christmas to all of you, and thanks for reading the blog every once in a while. I've actually got 4 readers on Feedburner (Yayy haha). If you look to the right, there's a movie poll, if you have time, vote :)

Featured Link - If you have an iPod here are stuff you can do with it | A How-to Wiki on how to do lot's of things
Featured Software - Pando A 3mb 'small' program used to transfer huge files between PC's.

Ha ha, look at this idiot..

Merry Christmas .. from Uttorent

Look what popped up while I was using Utorrent :

Dugg

Stuff that you should see / should be knowing :
Google Zeitgeit / Microsoft buys Opera /Clearest image of our Milky Way obtained by Astronomers /Halo 3 on sale? /Cracking Wi-Fi protected access / iPod Nano. Playing video! / Volkswagen Transparent factory in Dresden /Minimize Firefox to tray /Xbox 360 on a 35ft theater screen. Close to life size while playing /

Peter Jackson's King Kong

This year will be looked back at and remembered with many events and happenings that occured during the course of this year. King Kong is one such event. 72 years since the original King Kong released in theaters, the all new Peter Jackson-directed King Kong was released this month. The movie itself has a runtime of 187 minutes - thats quite long for a movie, and some may say that a three hour movie would be boring and too long to watch. King Kong is everything but boring. Peter Jackson was given 200$ million to play around with to make the new King Kong movie, and after watching it, I can say that every single dollar put into it was worth it. Up till today, King Kong has grossed 66.18$ million in the box office.
With a cast consisting of actors such as Jack Black, Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody, Peter Jackson is able to make the movie even more exciting. The CGI sequences are so realistically done, and the CGI characters garner such emotion that its hard to believe they were computer-generated. Every other minute of the movie is pure CGI (hard to tell) and adds to all the excitement and confusion that occurs during the intro of the movie. This review itself does not convey what all the fuss is about; you'll just have to go see it to experience another one of Peter Jackson's pieces of art.

UT 2007 Media

Screenshots.
Gameplay footage.

HowTo : Watch TV on your PC

Here a some freeware software that let you connect to channels that stream tv and especially live sports events. Includes all channels such as the Champions League, Uefa cup, Wrestling MTV and custom stations such as gamerTV .
Sopcast - Click the link, download, unzip and select Sopcast.exe. Double click a stream/channel and it should automatically open up in WMP.
Pplive - Click the link, download, run and go here to see the channels list (does not come with the software).

Courtesy - http://www.ghacks.net/2005/12/19/watch-tv-with-your-pc/

Featured Links - How to run more than one Operating System on your PC | The worlds first photograph | Learn Javascript basics |
Featured Software - Windows Live Messenger 8.0 a.k.a MSN 8.0

A history of Google

At first, the term 'Google' was meant to boast about how much of information the search engine could be able to search. Google was originally named 'Googol' - the word that represents the number 1 followed by 100 digits, the name Google was used after Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an investor who then addressed a check to 'Google'.
Google was originally started in 1996 by two PhD students from Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They proposed the idea of a search engine that was based around the relationships between websites as they thought this would give better results. The project was first called Backrub, as it rated a sites popularity based on its backlinks.
The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998. After some initial stumbles, Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. The sale raised $1.67 billion, of which approximately $1.2 billion went to Google.
The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control. The IPO gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Not to mention, at the moment their market capital is $115 billion.
Google is renown for its famous corporate culture. Many people dream of working for Google, with their enticing perks and benefits, Google receives 150,000 job applications per month! Currently, Google employs 4,989 people (they employ on average around 9 people a day)
If you are employed by Google here a some of the perks you are entitled to :

• Free cafeteria meals
• Free use of laundry machines
• A child care center
• A free annual one-night ski trip (resort destinations vary depending on office location) Dog-friendly offices
• On-site doctor
• Engineers can devote 20 percent of their time to projects of their choice

Apart from the perks, Google uses ingenious ways to recruit new staff (Click to see the Google Labs Aptitude Test). One question asked: "In your opinion, what is the most beautiful math equation ever derived?" The Gaussian integral, a complex mathematical equation used in studying the kinetic molecular theory of gases among other things, has been suggested as a smart answer by some on the Internet. Another question involved filling a blank rectangle "with something that improves upon emptiness," leaving applicants scratching for a subjective winner. Also, the famous Google mystery billboard, where people would have to solve the problem inbetween curly brackets which then reveals a website.

Some excerpts taken from http://talkgold.com/forum/r49501-.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google .

Redesign

Here are some banner blueprints I was designing in photoshop. If you want to comment, click the title of this post.

Whats going down

Top Gear's Bugatti Veyron episode was aired a few days ago. I have to say, the Veyron HAS to be the most incredible thing ever created. Besides being the most expensive car in the world, it has 1001 horsepower with a level of acceleration unheard of in the sports car segment, propelling it from 0 to 60 mph in just three seconds, and past the 200 mph mark in a mere 14 seconds! For pics of the Veyron, check out my Flickr slideshow.
Enough about the Veyron, more about Chronicles of Narnia : The Lion, With and Wardrobe. This movie started off at a slow pace and it seems ages for it to actually reach the climax of the story, do not watch this if you're impatient. However, once it reached the climax, it was really enjoyable. I thought this movie resembled the LOTR movies alot, the only difference being this movie (based on the book) was meant for kids. Near the end of the movie, the story took quite a twist and made it all the more exciting, I'd rate this movie 7/10; watch it if you can.

Whats on the news: NSA Spies on the US. Here's an excerpt from the NYT:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

Check out the Smart Stuff blog which features cool and, more importantly, smart products. They review and feature new and simple products intended to make life easier, and by extension, help you live smarter. The featured products are pretty cool.

Featured Link - The Cute Overload blog has nothing but pictures of adorable animals and character toys (haha :/)
Featured Software - Sweepi (Will make your system quicker and more efficient by deleting useless accumulated data)

Im hoping I get luckier than this guy.

Torrent hack and Ajax

Hey again. There's much happening at digg.com, such as Torrentfreaks guide to speeding up torrents. The guide doesn't contain old advice such as, "cap your maximum upload rate at 80% of your ISPs upload rate", (if you didnt know; do it!) it also contains a helpful link to a SP2 TCP/IP max connections hack. In other words, a legit program that safely lets you manually set the number of half-open connections.
Let me explain; Windows SP2 limits the number of half-open connections or SYN to a maximum of 10 (the previous being 65,000), the purpose being - it is supposed to slow down virus spread as their methods are to spread to a number of random IP's. The consequences of having a limited amount of connections is that it affects some software such as P2P clients and Bittorent clients. Enough technical jargon-talk if you want, click here to read all about it. After going through the guide and installing the TCP/IP hack, my downloads increased by a considerable amount, so based on experience; it's worth a try.

If you haven't heard of AJAX lately you have been living under a rock. AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript + XML :

isn’t a technology. It’s really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways.

To read an article on the basics of AJAX, click here.
Christmas is coming up, somebody get me a Oculas :)

Featured Links - Top Twelve Dream Gifts of 2005 (dream on..) | Not just your normal Firefox tweak guide (Must see)
Featured Software - PC INSPECTOR File recovery (What the title says + it's FREE. Recover accidentally deleted files!)

Xbox360, Welcome to Japan

Chronicles of Narnia : The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe released yesterday, the movie is based on C.S. Lewis' timeless adventure based on the four Pevensie siblings -- Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter -- in World War II England. Surfed a site the other day that claimed the Xbox 360 was not meant to play games while stationed vertically, it seems that discs get damaged pretty easily in some cases. Well, that does not put things in an optimistic way for Microsoft as sales figures of the Xbox360 in Japan are claimed to be lesser than the sales figures of its predecessor on release day.
Also, make sure you check out Del.icio.us. It's a social-bookmarking application that hit the big time Friday when it was acquired by Yahoo. It works like this: When you find a site you want to keep, you put it on your del.icio.us account with descriptive tags you invent to keep track of it.
Lastly, I'll let you in on a little secret about Bill Gates; he plays World of Warcraft. Shhh! Keep it down.

Watched - Aeon Flux
Featured Links - Utorrent 1.3 115 KB | XPize 4.2 Beta

Featured Skin - Royale Vista VS by dobee (Preview)

X-Men 3 First Look

Here are photos from the upcoming X-Men 3 movie. Click here to view them.
Also, to watch the trailer for X-Men 3, Click here.

The Protect-Your-PC post

Hello again. Spyware, Malware and Adware can be one harmful and at the same time annoying. Spyware is define as software that sends information about your web surfing habits back to another website. Often you may notice popups appearing at odd times or you may notice that your web browser's home page has been redirected to another site. Even if you dont get popups or browser issues, I strongly recommend taking some of the procedures listed below as no PC is immune to spyware.

Step 1 : Viruses
To start off with, take a free virus scan from either Panda Activescan or Housecall. If the scans show that you have viruses click Delete to remove all infections

Step 2 : Windows Update
Many people don't seem to have Windows Updates turned on. This can often lead to consequences such as Viruses and backdoor exploits, so therefore turn it ON. To do this, head on over to the Windows Update website and download and install all critical updates for your PC.

Step 3 : Scan for Adware/Malware
One of the most common adware is 'Coolwebsearch'. To check whether your PC is infected by it, download CWSShredder, extract the file, run the program and remove infections if there are any present.

Download Ad-Aware SE Personal, a free spyware removal tool. Once you download it, be sure to run the update tool before scanning to get all the latest spyware definitions.
Or if you are running Windows 200, XP or Server 2003 download Microsoft AntiSpyware (beta) from here.

Next, download HijackThis from here (Download zip, extract, store in its own folder e.g. C://HijackThis)

Once you have done this, click Scan. After it finishes scanning your PC, you will get a list of items similiar to the one show in the picture above. To analyse these results, hit Save log, save the log somewhere on your PC and head on over to this site to analyse the results. If you have any problems or need help, leave a comment on this post (Click the title to leave a comment).

Some parts taken from this article.

In December

I was surfing digg.com and saw a digg on the houses of Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Steven Jobs. Pretty impressive, also be sure to check out Tiger Woods` house. Wow.
Watched Lord of War over the weekened, pretty good movie that revolves around the life of a guns dealer who goes the world over supplying guns to the most notorious dictators in the world, eventually he ends up facing his own conscience. The movie is pretty much about the devastating effects of gun deals in the world its worth watching ( 2 hours playing time).
In some other stuff, I've posted a link to the 'Music In Maldives' blog, which is all about educating, promoting and documenting music in Maldives. Its a free online project, which you can take part in yourself. Have a look at it, and if you have anything to contribute, feel free to post. Stay put for tomorrows post where i'll get a hold of some utility programs to help search for rootkits.

Watched - Lord of War
Featured Links - Mouse 1.0 (Highly addictive) | Music In Maldives (Must See) | THE Very Best Freeware Utilities
Featured Software - ewido Security Suite