A new era of portable storage is here!

April 27, 2006 at 8:24 am | In 06 + Techies Territory | No Comments

Just when we are getting familiar with floppy disk, they came out compact disc (CD), which later can be utilised by any normal user as in CD-R and CD-RW (I used to remember CD being an unmodifiable hi-tech device as in Audio CDs and VCDs). And once I get to know how to burn a CD, they tempt me with DVD and all its alliances, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/+RW, DVD-RAM, or DVD+R DL. Check on DVD.

Now, I can't even afford to buy a combo drive yet, they pin me down to the floor with new generation disc, Blu-Ray and HD DVD. Below are brief descriptions from VideoHelp.

Blu-ray Disc (BD) is a next-generation optical disc format meant for storage of high-definition video and high-density data. The Blu-ray standard was jointly developed by a group of consumer electronics and PC companies called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). As compared to the HD DVD format, its main competitor, Blu-ray has more information capacity per layer, 25 instead of 15 gigabytes, but may initially be more expensive to produce.
The site.

HD DVD (High Density Digital Versatile Disc or High Definition Digital Video Disc) is a digital optical media format which is being developed as one standard for high-definition DVD. HD DVD is similar to the competing Blu-ray Disc, which also uses the same CD-size (120 mm diameter) optical data storage media and 405 nm wavelength blue laser. HD DVD is promoted by Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, and, most recently, Microsoft, HP [1], and Intel.
More

I might as well pack up all my old 4 gig harddrives and throw them away. (Even there have been new small scale harddrive larger than 4 gig the size of a coin!) Blardy hell… I must've lived in a stone age still.

Conspiracy Theory!?!

April 27, 2006 at 4:55 am | In 07 + Titbit Theory | No Comments

I just received this mail from my mom while jotting something in this blog. Most must’ve read this. Anyway, here:

Dearest all,

Very clever and interesting write up and ideas sent to me by a friend. I’d love to know how long it took someone to work this out but:

1) New York City has 11 letters
2) Afghanistan has 11 letters.
3) Ramsin Yuseb (The terrorist who threatened to destroy the Twin Towers in 1993) has 11 letters.
4) George W Bush has 11 letters.

This could be a mere coincidence, but this gets more interesting:

1) New York is the 11th state.
2) The first plane crashing against the TwinTowers was flight Number 11.
3) Flight 11 was carrying 92 passengers. 9 + 2 = 11
4) Flight 77 which also hit TwinTowers, was carrying 65 passengers. 6+5 = 11
5) The tragedy was on September 11, or 9/11 as it is now known. 9+1+1 = 11
6) The date is equal to the US emergency services telephone number 911. 9 + 1 + 1 = 11.

Sheer coincidence..?! Read on and make up your own mind:

1) The total number of victims inside all the hi-jacked planes was 254. 2 + 5 + 4 = 11.
2) September 11 is day number 254 of the calendar year. Again 2 +5 +4 = 11.
3) The Madrid bombing took place on 3/11/2004. 3 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 4 = 11.
4) The tragedy of Madridhappened 911 days after the TwinTowers incident.

Now this is where things get totally eerie:

The most recognised symbol for the US, after the Stars & Stripes, Is the Eagle. The following verse is taken from the Quran, the Islamic holy book:

“For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle.
The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced:
for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah and there was peace.”

That verse is number 9.11 of the Quran.

Unconvinced about all of this still ..?! Try this and see how you feel afterwards, it made my hair stand on end:

Open Microsoft Word and do the following:
1. Type in capitals Q33 NY. This is the flight number of the first plane to hit one of the TwinTowers.
2. Highlight the Q33 NY.
3. Change the font size to 48.
4. Change the actual font to the ”WINGDINGS”

What do you think now?!! Freaky hey?

I’m freaked out all right! By the guy who wrote this! He must’ve a hell lotsa time to do this! Humans!

Bitmap to Vector image conversion

April 27, 2006 at 4:44 am | In 05 + Tackling Things | 2 Comments

I have always been troubled by wanting to change some images into vector image. We all know that most images we saved in our harddisk are bitmap graphics. For those who are wondering what the h*ll am I talking here, check this link.

I have always been using Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator to design something. But problems always occur when comes to image editing. Most pictures that I got are either to low quality, small or having jagged edge. And 1 thing comes to mind is always if only this image is a vector. So, I surf around the net to seek for solutions.

I found out that Illustrator do support raster to vector conversion! But when I used it, I find the result not satisfying. Either I’m too dumb or my Illustrator is too old. Hmmm… I ended up using the function “cutout” in Photoshop to transform the image. Okay but still not good enough (the bitmap is still bitmap).

Links below taken from here.

Illustrator CS2 Tracing tutorials
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/…
http://media.studio.adobe.com/link… [movie - Control Colors with Live Trace]
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/…

Illustrator How-To: Turn Bitmap Images into Vector Art
Transforming the jagged edges of raster images into the smooth curves of vector art isn’t hard to do using Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace feature in Creative Suite 2. But the end result can look simplistic. For more sophisticated images, you’ll need additional help from Illustrator’s path-editing tools and from your image editing application. Here’s what you need to do.
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/… (older versions of Illustrator)
http://media.studio.adobe.com/linked_content… [pdf file] (for Illustrator CS2) [movie file]
http://www.adobe.com/tips/illcs2ttlvtrace/… [pdf file]

My solution is here. All the while, I’m using too much Adobe to actually forget that I have Macromedia Flash. Flash uses vectors most of the time. Maybe the solution is there? And true enough, there is.

When you check on the menu on top of Flash, you’ll definitely see “File Edit etc…” Look for “Modify”, click it and “Trace Bitmap…” is there. Make sure you have selected an image before you do this.

Here’s a link that teach you what “trace bitmap” is all about.

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