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Top 10 Dinosaurs That Aren’t What They Were
Time to reset our imaginations. Wonder what Calvin would’ve done.
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Radiation dose chart with quite a lot of real life reference points
Month: March 2011
My first Android – the Samsung Galaxy S i9003
It’s been a while since I posted manually to the blog. Hopefully, that’ll change with my new phone with the wordpress app.
I got the phone last week and have been playing around with it ever since. It’s got Froyo on it and I’ve installed a ton of apps on it already. The experience has been quite similar yet different from my iPod touch. The app availability is quite similar, but the always connected nature of the phone opens up a new bunch of use cases.
I’ve been making use of the gps quite a bit with the My Tracks asp in particular to plot the routes I take. There have been some wow moments, particularly with the Google Goggles app. The built in tethering feature is also really handy though a bit of a battery hog. I’ll be posting more on the apps later with help from appbrain.
Battery life has however been on the poor side (most likely due to my heavy use) with almost 2 charges being required per day. Then again, my iPod doesn’t do much better if I use it heavily either. I’m currently using a Vodafone prepaid connection with 3G enabled on it. Speeds are pretty decent and a great leap over the GPRS days for sure. I also appreciate the openness of the Android platform as it allows one to work across apps quite nicely. There’s also the App Inventor to create your own simple apps.
I also had plans to buy a tablet – most likely the ipad – this year. However, the Android platform looks really promising on the tablet too, and in a year or so we should be having a well populated Android market for tablets to go with some very good hardware. That said, the iPad 2 remains the best tablet for the next few months.
And last but not the least, swype rocks. I wouldn’t have dreamt of typing out this post from my phone otherwise.
Links for the week ending 21-03-2011
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Short Stories: Mrs Packletide’s Tiger by Saki
Used to be part of the English CBSE textbook. Quite a humorous story
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Photo editing 101 star rating shoots aperture lightroom | Chase Jarvis Blog
A handy guide to trimming the number of photos to edit
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Canon lenses vs Nikon lenses 2009 – 2010
Nice roundup of the Canon & Nikon lens equivalents. Includes image quality ratings & price.
Links for the week ending 14-03-2011
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How To Sync Your iPhone To Multiple Computers – iSmashPhone iPhone Blog
A handy little workaround
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Rock-Paper-Scissors: You vs. the Computer – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com
A neat little version with a learning computer or a learned one.
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You may use your class notes & Feynman
Since Caltech has an honor system most exams tend to be take home and open book. The instructor for the class will write any special directions at the top of the exam. For a freshman physics exam one year the instructions read:
You have 3 hours. You may use your class notes and Feynman.
“Feynman” of course referred the Feynman physics lecture notes which are published in three volumes.
On reading these instructions one particularly alert student grabbed his exam and raced across campus to Richard Feynman’s office. He handed the exam to Feynman explaining that the directions clearly indicated he was a valid resource. Feynman glanced over the instructions and agreed. He wrote out the exam in less than half an hour, and got a perfect score! -
Custom firmware that lets you enhance your camera (Canon 5D MkII & 550D supported as of early 2011), kinda like CHDK for the P&S cameras.
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A lot of lens reviews from users, including ratings.
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Article from the last millennium – all about the cuteness factor in Japan that impacts everyone starting from business to the government.
Links for the week ending 07-03-2011
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Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 | WinRumors
An interesting concept plus a test of patience
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Sloppy Google – The Search Operators
A sloppy & sluggish version of Google
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Quite a lot of things to learn about exposure with a bunch of handy tips & references.
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DIY – Release Cable for Canon DSLRs | DIYPhotography.net
Quite a handy DIY. It also supports the shutter half press.
AB's Reflections 