Google Local on Palm Treo 650
Here comes the first one:
I wanted to intsall google local on this device, but Google local says it doesn’t support Palm and Brew based phones. But there was a catch, it says it supports the Java based phones. So I installed the IBM’s Java micro edition from Palm’s website, which is free. But then when you try to download the generic google local, it just downloads the link and that too on the card. So whats the trick?
Start the IBM Java application and click on install, type this URL there and you are good to go.
google.com/glm?brand=Generic&model=Advanced+MIDP2&agree=yes
Euro English !!
The European Union commissioners have announced that an agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty’s Government concluded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phased plan for what will be known as ‘EuroEnglish’.
In the first year, “s” will be used instead of the soft “c”. Sertainly,sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard “c” will be replased with “k”. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” sound will be replased by “f”. This will make words like “fotograf” 20per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to arrive at the stage where more komplikated revisions are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, that have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent “e”s in the languag is
disgrasful, and they would go. By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” by “z” and “w” by “v”.
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou”, and similar revisions vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand on anozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
Ever had problems while installing XP SP2 on OEM machine?
If you ever hit the problem that your WinXP SP2 installation hangs while in the installation process (for example while “Checking Product Key” or something alike) try this:
1) Go to the CMD prompt.
2) Then type cd \windows\inf and make sure we are in that directory.
3) Then type ren oem*.inf oem*.old, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)
4) Then type ren oem*.pnf oem*.old1, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)
5) Then goto start – run – type c:\windows\inf and you will see the files in the folder.
6) Then find the file by name INFCACHE.1 and take a backup of it to desktop (by copying it to desktop) and delete the INFCACHE.1 from c:\windows\inf.
7) Close all windows and reboot the computer to safe mode and start the installation of SP2 and it should go fine.
Sanatan Dharma by Swami Vivekanand
HD Upconversion DVD Player
After my recently found interest in converting home movies from analog to digital format, I thought it was about time to investigate in a new DVD player which could support all formats. In the quest, I found about some DVD players which can upconvert regular 480i and 480p signals to high-defintion 720p and 1080i signals.
Requirements:
- Be able to play all the formats (DVD-A, SACD, and DivX will be added benefit.)
- Be able to convert Standard Defintion or SD (480i) Enhanced Defintion or ED (480p) signals to High Defintion or HD (720p and 1080i). Confused about all these singals? I will write about them in detail in my next post.
And googling revealed there are three good contesters for this category.
- LG LDA-511 (Same as LG DVB418)
- Panasonic S97S
- Samsung DVD-HD850
(I am not mentioning prices as they might change by the time you read these).
I went and bought LG DVB418 from Bestbuy. Hooked it up to my receiver and HDTV, The picture quality is awesome, sound is good. It plays all of my backup DVDs on DVD-R and DVD+R, I haven’t tried a DivX and MPG4 disk yet. And in attempt to upconver the signal here is what I learned.
My HDTV does not support 720p but 1080i only. I bought my 36″ Panasonic HDTV (CRT) in 2003, so this is one of the drawbacks of adopting to new technologies too soon. Second, its not a widescreen TV.
The first problem of having ability to play only 1080i is not actually a problem. But when I upconvert the signal to 1080i it becomes 16:9 format signal or wide screen image. Which does not look good on my letterbox HDTV.
And, the LD DVD player upconverts signal only on non-copy protected movies over the component ouput, on HDMI output however it does not have any problems. And yet again, my HDTV (being 3 years old) does not have HDMI input.
So much said, now I am reconsidering whether I need an upconverting DVD player or wait till I buy a wide screen plasma TV 
Update:
Finally bought the LG DVD player. Its awsome, hackable to support all region DVDs. Upconverts regular DVD to high definiton and has crisp picture quality. And yes, you just burn your DivX files to a DVD/CD as a regular file, no need to convert them as DVD-MPEG, put the disk in the player shows you the directory listing. Select the file and bang…now you can fit 4 movies in one DVD
About SD, ED and HDTV
Well, let me stick with NTSC signals here because thats what I have to use 90% of the times.
TVs basically show still images, changing so fast that they look like video (or movies). In NTSC format this is done 30 times in a second or what is called 30 frames per second (30 fps). So they had 1/30 of a second to show a frame. This picture or frame consisted of 480 horizontal lines.
Old fashioned TVs could not handle this information so fast. So they used to divide this picture of 480 lines into odd and even number lines. So to show one single frame they had to do two attempts. Dividing the time alloted to show a frame by 2. In the first half or 1/60 of a second they show the odd number lines (1, 3, …439) and in the next 1/60 of a second they should the even numbered lines (2,4, …480). This scheme is called interlacing giving the name 480 interlaced or 480i or Standard Defintion TV (SDTV).
This worked fine for a while till bigger screens like 60″ started coming in. With them the interlacing scheme showed jagged lines because if an object moved between showing odd and even numbered lines, the borders of the object were jitterred.
Then came the progressive scan or the ability to show the full frame in 1/30 of a second. No need for interlacing. New chips and processors can handle this and much more. This is whats called 480p or 480 lines, progressive scan also called EDTV or enhanced defintion TV. The resolution for these two types was 640×480. (Ratio 4:3)
Then the two wide screen formats came in 1280×720 and 1920×1080. The aspect ratio changed to 16:9. But 1080 signal is still coming as interlaced called 1080i. People thought a progressive signal is better than interlaced, even with less information so cameup with 720 lines of progressive signal called 720p. Both of these are called high defintion or HDTV signals. Both have advantages and disadvantages. 1080i has more information but interlaced, 720p has less information but is progressive.
What will be the next thing?? 1080p. A signal with 1080 horizontal lines with progressive scan.
Siddhuism
1. Statistics are like bikinis… what they reveal is suggestive, what they hide is essential!
2. Spit on your hands! Take the black flag! And start slitting throats!
3. Wickets are like wives… you never know which way they will turn!
4. He looks like a brooding hen over a China egg!
5. It is very difficult to kill a man who is hell bent on committing suicide!
6. He is as innocent as a freshly laid egg!
7. When you are dining with the demons, you’ve got to have a long spoon!
8. If ‘ifs and buts’ were ‘pots and pants’ there would be no tinkers!
9. The ball went so high it could have got an airhostess on its way down!
10. This team is like bicycles in a cycle stand… one falls and the entire row falls!
11. The scoreboard is running faster than an Indian Taximeter!
12. The batsman is like a three-wheeler. Sucks a lot of fuel, but cannot go beyond 30 per hour..but is there always when you need.
13. The wily fox is back… it is an ill omen when a fox licks the lambs!
14. A big outcry but no outcome!
15. All that comes from a cow is not milk!
16. Just because a rose smells sweet, you do not use it in the soup!
iPod Problems? Here is a solution.
Answer: Try following steps.
1. Hookup the iPod to a power supply using the Firewire cord (connect to the AC outlet and not to a computer.)
2. Put the iPod in sleep mode by pressing the Play/Stop key and holding it for a while.
3. Reboot the iPod by holding the Top button (Menu) and the Enter button in the middle for a while. After a while you see the Apple logo and iPod reboots.
4. Repeat the step 2 and 3 again.
5. Restart Windows and if you are using Win XP make sure no other user is logged in (Two people can be logged in simultaneously on XP by the method of chosing switch user instead of logging off. Make sure you dont do that and you are the only one logged in.) Uninstall any Real Player that you have installed.
6. Re-install the latest version of iTunes from Apple’s website.
7. Now try connecting the iPod again using the Firewire or USB. And wait for a while if iTunes does not start, do it yourself but give some time before that like a minute or two. If everything went well, now you should be able to see your iPod in iTunes.
Q2: Still no luck?
Answer: Try following steps.
1. Install the latest iPod updater (on a different computer if available).
2. Connect using the USB or Firewire cable and Restore the iPod. Updating only does not help. If you had the music on iPod which you dont have a copy of, try saving the music on your computer with vPod or ElhPod applications.
3. Try the steps above again.
The Truths about Las Vegas
Perhaps chief among erroneously held beliefs about Vegas is that gangster Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel was the progenitor of the modern-day Strip when he built the Flamingo, which opened Dec. 26, 1946.
In truth, the Flamingo was the third casino on what’s now known as the Strip — it followed the trailblazing El Rancho Las Vegas, destroyed in a 1960 fire, and the Last Frontier, site of the current-day New Frontier hotel-casino.
Still, there are plenty of curious tales about Vegas that sound like urban legends — but are true. Next time you’re in town, amaze and delight your traveling companions with these tidbits of Sin City history and trivia.
Mandalay Bay. The towering statue of Vladimir Lenin standing in front of Red Square, the casino’s tony vodka-and-caviar lounge-restaurant, is missing a head that was lost, then found in a thrift-shop warehouse. The head now sits in the restaurant’s vodka freezer in an acrylic block that serves as a table.
The head of the statue — a replica of one in the real Red Square — was removed shortly after it was erected because of complaints that it lionized the father of international communism — and to mimic the fate of so many Lenin statues throughout Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. The head had been accidentally packed up with other items the casino was donating to the thrift shop; warehouse workers discovered it.
Caesars Palace. Outside in the new Roman Plaza at this casino’s south entrance is a seated four-headed figure surrounded by images of elephants.
The Brahma Shrine, a revered icon of Thai Buddhism, is similar to one built for Bangkok’s Erawan Hotel, which had been plagued by construction delays until the shrine was installed. At Caesars Palace, some visitors kneel in prayer and light incense at the good-luck shrine before taking on Dame Fortune.
Even the name Caesars Palace has a quirky background. Jay Sarno, who built the casino, created the name with the intentional omission of an apostrophe. The simple plural form of Caesars was meant to signify that everyone who visited was an emperor. Sarno sold the place in 1969 but continued to return and died in one of the hotel’s suites 15 years later.
Main Street Station. Another Cold War-connected curiosity can be found at the other end of the casino action. To the north in downtown Las Vegas, Main Street Station — a budget-priced casino-hotel — has something in common with CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in southern California: a chunk of the Berlin Wall.The casino has its piece of history in the men’s restroom, where it anchors a line of urinals.
Bally’s Las Vegas. Many know that when the current MGM Grand, at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue, opened in 1993 with more than 5,000 rooms, it was the largest hotel in the world. Less known is that the hotel now known as Bally’s Las Vegas, farther north on the Strip, opened in 1973 as the MGM Grand and at the time, it held the distinction of being the world’s largest hotel. After a fatal fire in 1980, the resort changed ownership and names. MGM Grand. Debuting 12 years ago with an ill-conceived Wizard of Oz theme, the MGM Grand had statues of Judy Garland and the rest of the Yellow Brick Road coterie at the main entrance. It wasn’t long before Toto was kidnapped — with the hotel even receiving ransom notes. In time, the whole Oz crew was dumped.Also early on, the MGM Grand’s entrance was noteworthy for a massive lion reclining on its paws that visitors passed beneath upon entering the building. The leonine entranceway turned out be another bad idea and was replaced with a gleaming bronze lion that now stands sentinel outside the front door.
Among the reasons the original got the heave-ho was that some Asian gamblers felt that by passing under the lion, they were being symbolically devoured by the beast — very bad luck.
The Palms. Also in deference to some of its Asian visitors, the trendy hotel-casino on Flamingo Road has eliminated the numeral 4 from its floors; the number has the same connotation as No. 13 in other cultures.No. 4 is also absent among floors in the new Wynn Las Vegas resort.
Monte Carlo. With 3,002 rooms, the hotel-casino in Las Vegas has more guest rooms than the entirety of the real Monte Carlo in the principality of Monaco.Mirage. The debut of this Steve Wynn hotel is considered a seminal event in the evolution of modern Las Vegas. When it opened in 1989, the Mirage was the first major resort constructed on the Strip in 16 years and its cost, $611 million, was more than the combined dollars used to build every casino-hotel that preceded it on Las Vegas Boulevard.
In the 16 years since the Mirage went up, at least a dozen major casinos have followed on the Strip.
Bellagio. While the Tuscan-inspired grand hotel is a familiar Vegas landmark these days, it was conceived as a much different place: as a blue glass tower on an island surrounded by a lake two to three times larger than the existing one. Visitors were to cross a bridge to get to the building.
After the Bellagio opened in 1998, children under 18 were barred from the building unless they were guests of the hotel and accompanied by someone over 18, and strollers were banned outright. The prohibitions no longer exist.
Flamingo. If not the actual fountainhead of the Las Vegas Strip, the Flamingo holds the distinction of being the longest continuously operated casino on the famous stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard. However, not one bit of Bugsy Siegel’s original casino — christened after the nickname of his actress-girlfriend Virginia Hill — remains.