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Showing posts from September, 2009

How to set dpi and size of photo in mm or cm?

Ok, so you might have come across some sites that ask you to upload a photo, but also tell you that it must meet some requirements like these: Measurements: 35mm wide and 50mm high Minimum resolution: 150 dpi Format: JPEG file Should be a colour photograph The photo size should be less than 200KB First of all, since the website is asking you to upload a photo, the use of ‘dpi’ (dots per inch) in the minimum resolution requirement is wrong. It should actually be ‘ppi’ or pixels per inch. ‘dpi’ is strictly used only in hard copies, printers and printing, and has no meaning in computer files or soft copies. You may want to read this page for a good explanation of the difference between the two, before you proceed with the tutorial: DPI and PPI Explained You will need a good graphics editing software to set the ppi and measurements of a photograph. Windows Paint is very basic and does not provide this functionality. Sophisticated software like Adobe Photoshop would most likely pr

The Curse of QWERTY

Here are the results of a comparison of the usage of Dvorak and QWERTY keyboard layouts to type the article quoted below. The total number of keys pressed to type the article is 23093.        Dvorak              Qwerty       Distance 333.4m 586.2m Same hand 22.90% 36.65% Same finger 2.594% 5.603% Number row 1.157% 1.582% Top row 23.68% 51.29% Home row 66.15% 29.96% Bottom row 8.997% 17.15% Finger Usage Dvorak       7%   9%   13%   13%   --   16%   14%   14%   10%   QWERTY       7%   8%   18%   21%   --   20%   8%   11%   3%   Excerpt from The Curse of QWERTY | Gadgets | DISCOVER Magazine : O typewriter? Quit your torture! by Jared Diamond From the April 1997 issue , published online April 1, 1997 q - w - e - r - t , y - u - i - o - p, q - w - e - r - t , y - u - i - o - p, q -

Periscope for webcam

I was just thinking about the latest notebooks having built-in webcams, thus eliminating the need for an external USB webcam… well, they don’t quite eliminate the need. The problem with these built-in webcams is that they are immobile by themselves, and to capture something other than the notebook user, the whole notebook has to be repositioned. This problem does not occur with external webcams, which can be moved around independently of the laptop (notebook). Well, I came across an interesting ‘gadget’ that tries to solve this problem… for Macbooks. Though I believe it can be easily adapted for other notebooks. Meet the Huckleberry. Supposedly it should give the built-in webcam the ability to view what’s behind the screen, such as the person sitting in front of you, or the lecturer if you’re in a lecture theatre. Well, it does solve the problem of spinning your laptop 180 degrees to take a shot of what’s behind the screen, but it doesn’t quite solve the immobility problem. Well,

Default Bullet of Word changed to Up or Upward Arrow

If, for no apparent reason, your Word shows upward arrows (or some other weird symbol) instead of the usual black dots as its default bullets, don’t waste time doing any of the following: Clicking Reset button for every bullet style Office Diagnostics Office Setup’s Repair option Windows SFC (System File integrity Checker) Repairing Font Cache Deleting “Normal.dot” or “Normal.dotm” templates Deleting “List Gallery Presets” key from registry Deleting “ListGal.dat” file I wasted my time, but I can save yours. Your “Symbol” font is missing. Get a copy of the “Symbol” font from your friend’s computer (with same Windows version) or from any source and install it. Full discussion here: Office Discussion Groups – Word Application Errors – Default Bullet of Microsoft Word changed to Up Arrow (Upward Arrow)

Group, Ungroup and Regroup disabled in Word

I was editing a Microsoft Word document which had a collection of shapes and text boxes grouped together. I wanted to modify some of the shapes, and therefore I had to ungroup them. But when I right-click the group and open the Group menu, all three options namely Group, Ungroup and Regroup are completely disabled or grayed out. I couldn’t figure out what’s wrong. This group of objects is perfectly ungroupable, and I can even select objects within the group. However, Microsoft Word 2007 is not letting me ungroup it. I searched the Internet for a solution, but did not find anything very useful. The closest I came across is this statement: “The type of Text Wrapping doesn't make any difference as long as it isn't In Line with Text.” ( Link here ) Anyway, I changed the text wrapping of the group of objects from ‘In line with Text’ to ‘Tight’ and viola! I could now ungroup it and edit it. The document got a bit messed up when I did so, but after I ungrouped, edited and regro

Java Programming Hiccup! – Binary File Handling

I discovered something interesting in Java Programming. You may have come across output streams such as FileOutputStream , BufferedOutputStream and ObjectOutputStream when learning about binary file handling in Java. All of them have a particular method called flush(). The descriptions provided for this method for the last two output streams are as follows: BufferedOutputStream: Flushes this buffered output stream. This forces any buffered output bytes to be written out to the underlying output stream. ObjectOutputStream: Flushes the stream. This will write any buffered output bytes and flush through to the underlying stream. As for FileOutputStream, the method is inherited from OutputStream , which gives this description: Flushes this output stream and forces any buffered output bytes to be written out. The general contract of flush is that calling it is an indication that, if any bytes previously written have been buffered by the implementation of the output str