Blogging with Vinay at Desinotes http://desinotes.com Internet, Technology, Personal Ramblings, Humour Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:57:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 en hourly 1 © 2003-2006 reachvk@gmail.com () reachvk@gmail.com Internet, Technology, Personal Ramblings, Humour reachvk@gmail.com No no http://desinotes.com/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/powered_by_podpress.jpg Blogging with Vinay at Desinotes http://desinotes.com 144 144 Burj Dubai is at a height of 818 meters! http://desinotes.com/burj-dubai-is-at-a-height-of-818-meters/ http://desinotes.com/burj-dubai-is-at-a-height-of-818-meters/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:44:38 +0000 Vinay http://desinotes.com/?p=1026 I had written long back that Burj Dubai has raced past the CN Tower. A couple of months ago the final height of the Burj Dubai was announced after it reached 818 meters (2,684 ft). The height of the Burj Dubai was kept a secret until recently. Of course it was expected to be in the range of 800 meters; so it has lived up to its promise. Burj Dubai as you all know will become the tallest tower once it opens, and it is already the tallest unofficially. At 818 meters it’s almost a Kilometer high. I went around the Burj Dubai Downtown area and caught a glimpse of it from right next to the Dubai Mall (one of the largest malls in the world that opened recently). I thought the Burj Dubai Tower looked really tall. The tower can be seen from anywhere in Dubai and can be used as a reference point to navigate your way when you are driving. The construction is 80% complete and the official opening could be the in January 2010 (probably New Year). Currently work on the interiors and some external glass cladding wok is in progress. Burj Dubai is likely to retain its position as the world’s tallest structure for a long time. With the ongoing global crisis there might not be any contenders in a long while to beat the record of the Burj Dubai. Nakheel had announced a 1 kilometer tower – “The Nakheel Harbour & Tower” last year but it either on hold or will not take off due to the ongoing recession.

The building is part of the two square kilometer (0.8 sq miles) development called “Downtown Burj Dubai” at the “First Interchange” along Sheikh Zayed Road. The tower’s architect is Adrian Smith, who worked with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill until 2006. The total budget for the Burj Dubai project is about US$4 billion, and for the entire new “Downtown Burj Dubai”, US$20 billion. The tower is being constructed by a South Korean company, Samsung Engineering & Construction, which also built the Petronas Twin Towers and the Taipei 101.

Close to the Burj Dubai will be a record-setting fountain system at a cost of US$217 million, illuminated by 6,600 lights and 50 colored projectors, it will be 275 m (900 ft) long and will shoot water 150 m (490 ft) into the air, accompanied by a range of classical to contemporary world music.

I leave a couple of photos that I took recently.

burj-dubai-apr-09

burj-dubai-march

burj-dubai-may-09

]]> http://desinotes.com/burj-dubai-is-at-a-height-of-818-meters/feed/ More Ways to Speed up Your PC http://desinotes.com/more-ways-to-speed-up-your-pc/ http://desinotes.com/more-ways-to-speed-up-your-pc/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:49:02 +0000 Vinay http://desinotes.com/?p=1020 In continuation of my previous post on improving your computer performance try the below tips also.

Adding memory:
The most effective way to make your PC perform better is to add some extra RAM. Ram chips have become pretty cheap and if you double the RAM the improvement can be seen immediately. What you need to know before upgrading your RAM is to know the type of RAM that your computer needs to avoid compatibility issues. Do remember that for older computers increasing RAM may not help in a big way, the reason being that older systems have many types of software, CPU and other issues, so Ram may not be the answer.

Do a clean start:
When you load Windows it automatically starts many programs at start-up. The more programs you include in start-up the slower you PC can become. Also some of these programs might run in the background slowing you PC. So take control of this and select programs that you would like to start automatically. Depending on the version of windows that you are using the process of selecting the programs differs. Type the words “Start Up” in the search menu in Windows Help to get directions for the specific setup.

]]> http://desinotes.com/more-ways-to-speed-up-your-pc/feed/ Make Firefox do Spelling-Check in Web Forms http://desinotes.com/make-firefox-do-spelling-check-in-web-forms/ http://desinotes.com/make-firefox-do-spelling-check-in-web-forms/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:39:37 +0000 Vinay http://desinotes.com/?p=1013 The Firefox 3 browser comes with a useful built-in spelling checker. If you posted a message in an online forum or used Google Docs you can see it work. A red line will appear under a misspelled word. You can right click the word for spelling suggestions. It’s a nice feature but its short coming is that it does not work in Web Forms. However it’s easy to make the spelling check feature work in web forms.

Do the following:
Open Firefox, type about:config in the address bar, press enter. In the Filter field type spellcheck. Right-click layout.spellcheckDefault, and click Modify. Raise the value from 1 to 2. Restart Firefox. The spelling checker will now work in most online web forms.

]]> http://desinotes.com/make-firefox-do-spelling-check-in-web-forms/feed/ How to Watch a Movie while Downloading it http://desinotes.com/how-to-watch-a-movie-while-downloading-it/ http://desinotes.com/how-to-watch-a-movie-while-downloading-it/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:15:53 +0000 Vinay http://desinotes.com/?p=1005 I came across this useful stuff and thought I must share it with you all. This is a brief account on how to watch and download full length films simultaneously from various film hosting websites on the net.

STEP 1 - DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL FIREFOX AND VLC MEDIA PLAYER
Mozilla Firefox browser can be downloaded by clicking on this image
VLC media player can be downloaded by visiting their website.

STEP 2 - ADD DOWNLOADHELPER TO FIREFOX
Start Mozilla Firefox click “tools” then “add ons” then select the “get add ons” option and type “downloadhelper” into the search box and click on the “add to Firefox” button on the right hand side of the downloadhelper information screen.
Firefox will tell you it needs to restart to complete installation.
Once Firefox has restarted you will notice an icon on the left hand side of the address bar that looks like 3 interlocking grey balls.
This is the downloadhelper icon - whenever you visit a website that has media files built into it the downloadhelper icon will change colour and begin moving - this is downloadhelper telling you that it can download media files from the webpage you are on.

STEP 3 - FIND AN ONLINE FILM THAT YOU WANT TO WATCH / DOWNLOAD
The easiest way to do this is to type “watch movies online” into Google.
Google will offer to take you to various websites – One very good resource for movies is at watch-movie-links.net

STEP 4 - BEGIN TO DOWNLOAD THE FILM
Once you have found an online film that you want to watch the Downloadhelper icon will change colour and begin rotating - this is downloadhelper telling you that it can download media from the webpage you are on.
Click on the tiny triangle next to the downloadhelper icon and it will show you what files are available to download.
Check that the file you are about to download is not an .flv file.
Any other file type will do (.avi / .mp4 / .wmv etc.)
Use downloadhelper to download the file to anywhere on your computer.

STEP 5 - BEGIN TO WATCH THE MOVIE
Wait until at least 7mb of the video file has downloaded then open the video file using VLC player.
VLC media player will play incomplete media files and will buffer a downloading media file. VLC media player is the best media player out there. It plays almost any type of file.

Source: Jhonny

]]> http://desinotes.com/how-to-watch-a-movie-while-downloading-it/feed/ Test Your Internet Connection Speed http://desinotes.com/test-your-internet-connection-speed/ http://desinotes.com/test-your-internet-connection-speed/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:53:14 +0000 Vinay http://desinotes.com/?p=986 You are paying to your service provider every month for your internet connection. Do you know whether you are getting the download and upload speeds that you are meant to get? Why not cross check whether your ISP is providing what you are paying it for? Do a free test of your broadband connection speed at a speed test site. Speedtest is a service of web-diagnostics from Ookla. Ookla is a company that builds and operates easy to use web applications that provide network diagnostics for things like connection speed and latency testing. All you need to do is to go to their site and click on the test button and within less than two minutes a diagnostic report is given by speedtest. The report will include your connections average download speed, upload speed, ping and how much time it would take to download a 3 minute MP3 file, a 35 MB video clip and a movie of 800 MB. Screenshots of the results that I got are as under.

Speed test results

Speed test results


download-test-results

download-test-results

The results compare correctly to my broadband speed of 256 Kb/s from my service provider ETISALAT (Emirates Telecommunication Company). I do take about 8 hours to download an 800mb movie. However in terms of comparison speeds I was surprised to find out that my average download speed of 0.25 Mb/s is way below the Asia average download speed of 4.08 Mb/s and way below the global average of 5.33 Mb/s (screenshot not enclosed). The UAE average download speed is also at 1.55 Mb/s. So what does it mean…? Is it about time I upgrade my connection speed? Is 256 Kb/s is very slow…?

To test your connection speed click here

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