Things that MICROSOFT Could not Explain!

MAGIC #1
Found that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the Computer which can be named as “CON”. This is something funny and inexplicable? At Microsoft the whole Team, couldn’t answer why this happened! TRY IT NOW, IT WILL NOT CREATE A “CON” FOLDER

MAGIC #2
For those of you using Windows, do the following:
1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type “Bush hid the facts” (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.
Noticed the weird bug? No one can explain!

MAGIC #3
Again this is something funny and can’t be explained?
At Microsoft the whole Team, including Bill Gates, couldn’t answer why this happened!
It was discovered by a Brazilian. Try it out yourself?
Open Microsoft Word and type
=rand (200, 99)
And then press ENTER And see the magic?..!

Magic #4
Did you know that a flight number from one of the planes that hit one of the two WTC towers on 9/11 was Q33N. In Notepad / WordPad or MS Word, type that flight number i.e Q33N. Increase the font size to 72. Change the font to Wingdings. ….. u will be amazed by the findings!!!

Have a try!

Click on the link above to visit Google homepage and type in “let it snow”.

Press enter key or click the search button. And you should see the search result page start snowing. It is something similar to the “do a barrel roll” that the google search result page will actually do a barrel roll, if you search for those words (do a barrel roll).

If you let it snow for some time, your whole search result page will start to “frost up”, something like you are having the snow out of your window. You can even use your mouse to write on the “frozen” screen.

At the “frozen” search result page, you can click on the Defrost button to clear up the view to your search result.

Have a try!

I bought a new Scientific Calculator, Casio fx-570ES. You can click on the link above for more information about the calculator. Previously I am using Casio fx-570MS until recently I left my calculator at my hometown. The function for both of them are similar, and I am being told that the newer fx-570ES support more calculation function/feature which are not available in the older model.  The one on the left is fx-570MS, (belongs to my housemate) and the one on the right is my new fx-570ES.

Normal functionality of the new calculator doesn’t give much problem to me, location of the keys similar to the new one. One thing that really bugs me on the new calculator is they remove the number prefix (like milli, nano, pico, Mega, Kilo, …) on the new calculator, and they change the combination of the SHIFT + Number to other functions. I will say I rely a lot on this function on my previous Scientific Calculator for the calculation of timing in my coding work.

Casio fx-570MS number key with the number prefix (f, p, n, u, m, k, M, G, and T).

Casio fx-570ES number key without the number prefix.

I don’t know if they did research on the usage of the number prefix, but for me it is really a big disadvantage in the newer model. So, what I did to “tweak” this new calculator is I write in the number prefix myself to the new calculator.

So, writing the number prefix to the calculator will not magically turn the calculator to function the way we want, but, let me explain on how I really “tweak” the calculator or improve the usage of the calculator.

The table of the number prefix (get it from wikipedia):

The method I use will only applicable for the prefix, nano, micro, milli, kilo, mega and giga, which I have written the symbols above key number 3, 6, and 9. In the older calculator, what we normally do is we key in a number, press SHIFT, and press the number prefix to apply that prefix to the number we insert previously.

For the new one, what I actually did is I write the number prefix next to the number of x10_­^x for that prefix. For example, for kilo, the x10_­^x for kilo is x10_­³ . So, instead of pressing the SHIFT + k prefix on the old one, I will be pressing x10_­^x + key number 3 on the new one. Example of inserting 8milli to the calculator:

Steps for inserting a kilo prefix in the old calculator:

Steps for inserting a kilo prefix in the “tweaked” new calculator:

So, for prefix kilo, mega and giga, the steps will be x10_­^x key + the number prefix key. For mili, micro and nano, the steps will be x10_­^x + ‘-’ + the number prefix key. For example to insert a 8 mili to the calculator, the steps will be:

So, for the prefix on the top left of the number key we can simply insert x10_­^x + number prefix, for the prefix on the top right of the number key, we will need to insert x10_­^x + ‘ – ‘ + number prefix.

I am not sure if this method do improve the usage of the Casio fx-570ES for you. The feedback from my housemate is one can simply memorize all the x10_­^x number for the prefixes. But for me, this really ease me in using the calculator, sort like making the prefix functionality back to this new calculator. Please comment on your thoughts, and for those who are having the same problem as me, try it and do leave comments.

I have created a BustATECH Google Chrome Theme, mostly based on the colour arrangement of www.bustatech.com. For the complete Theme Creation Guide, click on the link above. The screenshot of BustATECH Google Chrome Theme.

I took around half day to learn on how to create a Google Chrome Theme, editing images, and finally its done. I will say it is quite simple.Simply follows the instruction from the Theme Creation Guide and you will have your customized theme. For those who likes this theme or want to try out this theme, please get the theme from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hnohflgafpephcmdnnghnhappjbdfbko. Open the link using Google Chrome, and click the Add to Chrome button. It takes few seconds to download and your Google Chrome theme will automatically switched to Bustatech theme.

Opening www.bustatech.com under Google Chrome with the BustATECH Google Chrome Theme installed, you will have same theme for both the page and Google Chrome:

Remember to rate the theme if you like it, and you can leave comments on what you think about the theme.

One disadvantage of using iTunes over Windows Media Player is it doesn’t allow me to control the Play, Next, Previous using my laptop multimedia key. You can go to Edit > Preferences, and browse to the Advanced tab.

Under the Advanced tab, there is a checkbox allows you to Minimise iTunes window to system tray and Enable full keyboard navigation, but none of these will enable the Multimedia key control for iTunes.

The solution I found is to use a small application called HKTunes. You can visit their website at http://code.google.com/p/hktunes/. You can download the Portable edition or the Setup file from the Downloads tab, or you can download the files from the end of this article. At the time of this writing, the latest version is V1.7.

Depends on which one you like, for me I use the portable version that I can simply copy paste to my harddisk, create a shortcut or pin it to taskbar to easily run it. After downloading the file, unzip it and store it to some place in your harddisk. For example, create a folder called Portable Application under your C Drive, paste the extracted HKTunesPortable to the Portable Application folder.

Go into HKTunesPortableV17 folder.

There will be 2 files, one is HKTunesPortable and another one is changelog.txt. Right click on the HKTunesPortable and choose Pin to Start Menu. You can also create a shortcut to the HKTunesPortable on your desktop, depend on how you want to run it.

Now, one nice thing about this little application is it will automatically run iTunes once you run it. Which means you can now delete your iTunes shortcut and use this HKTunesPortable as your HKTunesPortable+iTunes shortcut. After the shortcut is done, try to run the shortcut and you should have the HKTunesPortable and iTunes opened.

Try to press the Play button on your keyboard, and your iTunes should be start playing. If you enabled the Minimise iTunes window to system tray, you can make iTunes minimize while you can control the Volume, Play/Pause, Next and Previous.

To edit the setting for HKTunes, you can right click at the HKTunes icon on your system tray, can click Edit config.

It will pop out a small windows where you can edit the hotkey for the available list of Function.

For me I disable both Volume Up and Volume Down hotkey because I want to use my Volume multimedia key to control my laptop master volume, and I will leave my iTunes at maximum volume.

If you don’t have Play, Next and Previous key on your keyboard, you can also choose other key for those function under this Edit Hotkeys, which make this HKTunes useable even for keyboard without multimedia keys.

I believe this is very useful application and there is no noticeable slowdown due to this application. My Windows Task Manager shows this HKTunesPortable use only around 4,596K of memory which should be fine.

Try it today!

Download

HKTunesPortableV17.zip

HKTunes SetupV17.zip

From now on, you don’t have to worry about the problem above, or use my method of searching about the image. Google has launched the Search by Image (http://images.google.com/). Watch the video to get the idea of this new Search by Image.

The Search by Image basically allows you to search using any image file. You can capture the image using your camera, save image from webpage, just any image file.

Below are some example of images I search using Search by Image (all the images is captured by Nokia N73 camera)

The image of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” book.

The search result:

The search result is quite impressive, that it shows all the related information of the book as well as places to buy the book.

My spectacle

The search result:

The result is not very accurate, showing only one spectacle in all 20 similar images result. But if you insert “spectacle” keyword to the “describe image here” box, you will get better result.

Overall this new Google Search by Image is a very useful extra tool in a search engine. It is a newly launch feature, and I believe they will for sure keep improving it. Most of my friends give a thumbs up for this features, and they are saying that they’ve waited for a long time for similar feature to be available. Hope you’ll like it..

http://images.google.com/

Since around 10:00PM PST (11 May 2011), blogger goes into read-only mode. If you visit blogger homepage (link above), you will see this:

Click on the Blogger Status, you will see list of status updated by guys from blogger. The latest one says that all posts since 07.37 PDT on (11 May 2011) have been temporarily removed. It also says that they expected that everything will be back to normal soon. The latest status is posted on 04:25 PDT on (13 May 2011).

Hopes that they can fix all the problem and everything back to normal.

Update

Blogger back to normal.. I am not sure about the exact time that blogger back to normal, should be around midnight lastnight (14 May 2011) at my timezone +8GMT. Hope they solved all the problem and Happy Back to Blogging to all!

One good news for all Angry Birds fans, you can now play Angry Birds on your Google Chrome. Click on the link above (make sure you are using Google Chrome), and click install.

After the installation, you should have the Angry Birds icon located under Apps in your New Tab.

Double click on the Angry Birds Icon to start the game, let it loading for a few seconds…

And you should be able to play.

The whole interface is quite similar to what you’ve seen in iphone or Android version, but there are some differences in the levels available. The 1st one Poached Eggs, similar to what you have in iphone and Android.

The 2nd one is different, Chrome Dimension, which is not usually seen in iphone and Android, I haven’t try it yet, because you will have to pass through the Poached Eggs to unlock this Chrome Dimension.

The 3rd one, is More Coming Soon!, not clickable, but I believe this version of Angry Birds for Google Chrome is only demo version, so, they are still working in adding more playable levels to this Angry Birds for Google Chrome.

For this Angry Birds web apps, you can actually run this web apps even in Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari (for Windows). Simply visit the link http://chrome.angrybirds.com/ on the Mozilla, IE or Safari, and you can play Angry Birds on the browser you use. But for the game performance, I think the game run best under Google Chrome, maybe because the game is design for Google Chrome (even the link is chrome.angrybirds.com).

Have a try, and please comment if you have anything to say about the game.

Updates

I made some mistake about the Chrome Dimension level. I said that in order to play Chrome Dimension, you’ll have to pass through all Poached Eggs levels, that is actually a mistake. Under the Poached Eggs levels, you will find Google Chrome icon in the game. Like these examples:

If you are able to hit the Google Chrome icon, then you will unlock one level under Chrome Dimension.

I’ve unlocked 3 levels under Chrome Dimension.

These Chrome Dimensions levels use buttons in Google Chrome as the object in the game, like the Favourite button, back button, setting buttons, and if you notice, lots of Google Chrome icon is integrated into the background image, like the cloud, the Google Chrome flowers.

Have a try! Please comments if you have any new discoveries in the this Google Chrome Angry Birds.

Click on the link above to visit PhotopicSkySurvey. Its a very nice project by Nick Risinger, who had travel 45,000 miles by air and 15,000 miles by land to get the total of 37440 exposures. More information about the project on the site.

At the main page, click on the INTERACTIVE 360 to have the 360 view on our Milky Way galaxy. Using the control at bottom of the page, you can view the Constellations and Objects, zoom in, zoom out, and view in full screen.

I even capture one of the fullscreen view as my wallpaper.

Thanks to the creator of the site for the very nice project, and hope you’ll like it. If you really like the project and would like to donate to the creator, you can do so at the main page, and click on the Donate button for donation through PayPal.