by Sujoy on October 15, 2008
Have you always wanted to get out of a boring situation where there is your boring auntie to meet and all she can talk about is how her son is making a fortune. That’s when you wanted some friend to call you up and say, “Dude you need to be here”. Friendly crank calls are a big need of the day, be it to escape your boring aunt, your boss or a lousy housewarming party. And in case your friends are too busy to co-operate, no worries anymore.
Get hold of this awesome thing available for FREE. Yes, free. It’s called GetMOOH (Get Me Out Of Here). It’s as simple as this. Fill in your name, your country code, your mobile number, select the time and date when you want the call to come to your phone. Select from a range of voice samples, and you could even practice to the given samples with your preplanned replies. [Continue Reading]
Now this is a very basic tip that involves editing values in the Registry. So, if you are not game enough to play with the Registry, I’d suggest stay out. But if you are willing to have a faster shutdown, read on. Go to Run [ Windows +r, or start Menu ,Run]. And then, type ‘regedit’ ( withouth the quotes) to go to the registry editor.
Now go and expand the explorer folder that reads :HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Next go to the tree structure to its child elements to SYSTEM, and then CURRENTCONTROLSET and inside it select Control.
[In case you didn't follow that, the entire path is :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CURRENTCONTROLSET/Control]
Now on the right side, you will see a file called WaitToKillServiceTimeOut. By default, the value set for it is 20,000. To accelerate the shutdown speed change it to something smaller than 20,000. May be 1000 or any number dear to you. And voila! Jobs done and you will sure notice the difference.
But yeah, please try it at your own risk, and do know how to undo it, incase the shutdown speed is a bit too fast for your taste.
See the cute little sun shining on my WordPress page address bar above? Or the very familiar ‘g’ on the address bar when you go to any Google page . That’s the Favicon. (So sorry, IE 6 users can’t see it ).And why is that minute design detail necessary. Well, it works more like a brand logo of your website/blog rather than just another design feature. You of course want to project your blog as a brand , a service which is recognisable. Labnol.org has the favicon of ‘D i’ as in Digital Inspiration. Now it is just a piece of little code to be included in your WordPress package and we’ll get to that in a while.
For those who host it on Blogger, by default the Blogger favicon should appear, but then, that can also be done away with. Now back to WordPress. Go to the Theme Editor page in your Admin console. Now if you don’t know how to reach there, once you LOGIN to your WordPress Admin page, click on the Design tab, and then click Theme Editor. GO to the Header php file titled header.php (surpisingly).
Now typically, this is where you include the code for the favicon. First and foremost, upload your desired Icon ( a .ico file) on any image hosting service ( photobucket, flickr..you know the names) or you can host it on your own server where you have hosted your wordpress. This is more advisable so that whenever you change your theme, your favicon would change as well. Anyway, typically, the icon goes in the theme folder itself. Now if it is included within the template folder itself, this is how the code will read.
<link rel=”shortcut icon” type=”image/ico” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/favicon.ico” />
You have to include this code in the header.php. Almost anywhere, but I prefer to keep the code a bit clean by including below the code for the navbar:- the bar which has the link to the pages. And once you are done with it, click update and voila, your WordPress blog is now Favicon Branded. Flaunt It.
by Sujoy on June 15, 2008
Netiquettes as we call it, is an essential part of our virtual lives-something which we have started to be quite dominantly participating in. As for geeks like me, I have been more inclined towards virtual lives and online social networking because you get to experience comments, suggestions and information which is independent and free of any pressure. So be it social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook and the like, or the zillions of Internet forums out there which span across the usual discussion topics like Technology, Web 2.0, hacks, rumors or simple plain tabloid stuff, to even niche and downright specific topics like Astro Physics or the latest episode of Naruto, all of these are being dicussed among the existent and happening forums all over in all languages imaginable. But something is very common in all these forums. And that is the presence of some malicious entity called the Spammer. He/She has the most annoying and irritating online attitude and if detected by the active members shall be reported to the Admin who then takes corrective measures through warnings or might even ban him. But then, these people do strike back with multiple profiles or gang up with some other offline pals . You surely don’t want to join that league. Like socialising in real life, online communities should have a maintained decorum . No questions that we are given the right to have our freedom of expression, but we also have to understand the responsibility of carrying it. Having said that, here I have put some of the points from the long list of Netiquettes to be followed in an Internet Forum.
1. Simple plain- Ignore douche bags.
There are too many people out there jumping out for attention, raising questions (often controversial and offensive at large). This of course at times, taking advantage of their anonymity that the Internet provides. The best way to deal with them is to give them a thumbs down by just staying away. If no member responds to any of their posts/threads, they’re sure gonna be left all alone in their perfect world and they can have all the fun of their anonymity.
2. Godwin’s Law.
The law states :
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
As clear as that. If the conversation is getting lengthier by the day, someone in the thread would display Hitler like tendencies. So if you are the one who is invoking Hitler like approaches, you have already lost the whole point of the discussion. [Continue Reading]
