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Pretty convincing, and it blurs out the names & ids if you want
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Generate a Random Name – Fake Name Generator
Handy for times when you don’t want to give away your real details. Could also be used to generate name\addresses for countries that you don’t reside in.
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News from The Associated Press
No surprises here. Anyone with an MBA or even an ounce of common sense could’ve seen that Groupon’s current business model is shaky at best, especially in the long term.
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Apple’s Lower Prices Are All Part of The Plan – NYTimes.com
If you ever wondered what Tim Cook was doing in the last decade, then this is pretty much the article that defines his role as the COO
Month: October 2011
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the tech discontinuity & more
Have you found it odd that the first book (The Lightning Thief) in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is bereft of cell phone references? I certainly did, and found a likely explanation in the series’ wikipedia page – the book was written in the mid 1990s (Rick Riordan completed the manuscript in 1994), but published only in 2005. Those were the days when cell phones were a lot less commonplace, and kids certainly did not carry them around. In fact, it was probably not that common among adults either. However, the remaining books more than make up for this technology gap (and even offer a post facto explanation for demi-gods not carrying cell phones).
Coming to the series itself, Percy Jackson and the Olympians was one of the first series that I have read from start to end after the Harry Potter series ended. Incidentally, I also happened to buy all of the books from the Kindle Store and read it across 3-4 devices (on my Samsung Galaxy S & iPod Touch using the Kindle Apps, and my laptop using Amazon’s Cloud Reader – the furthest read location sync is really handy). This was one of the rare times that I also happened to watch the movie before reading the book (unlike Harry Potter, LOTR etc.). I did like the movie when I saw it – quite entertaining with a bunch of special effects.
However, after reading the book and the entire series, the differences stand out and makes me wonder if they even intend to make movies from the remaining books. And the differences run far deeper than Percy’s pen-sword being a click type vs. a capped one. They’ll really need to rewrite the entire series if they want to bring out sequels, particularly because the main characters are a lot older (already look to be past their 16th birthdays), there’s no Oracle to give out prophecies and the key antagonist – Kronos – is not featured in any way (the latter two could be retrofitted I suppose). I also wonder how Percy is going to take the dip in River Styx when Charon seems to be ferrying people across thin air. The movie however went all out on the tech front with Percy using an iPod Touch as a mirror to defeat Medusa.
Getting back to the books, there’s another bit that seemed a bit forced and that was the reference to 9/11 and Ground Zero in the later parts (Annabeth’s dream of building a structure on Ground Zero) while it doesn’t come up in the Lightning Thief. This is another piece that gives away the fact that the first part was completed much before the others, and might have even had a reference to the Twin Towers in it which was subsequently edited out.
All said and done, the series did make me interested in Greek mythology and had me return to playing Titan Quest (Steam had a sale which coincided with my book reading, and I got Titan Quest & its expansion for $5) and long for Age of Mythology. Now, if only there were some Percy Jackson mods for these games…
Interesting links (weekly)
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A List Apart: Articles: Organizing Mobile
Focus on content first, navigation second seems to be the mantra
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Focusing on content first, navigation second gets people to the information and tasks they want quickly.
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15 years of Download.com | software-downloads.jpg (620×2667)
Shows you the technological progress we’ve made in 15 years too. Just look at the way the computing power has increased & at the same time reduced in cost.
Most stats show the difference between 1996 & 2011. It could’ve done with an intermediate period circa 2002-03 when Win XP was at its peak, especially for browser share (IE had ~90% of the market). -
by Lemony Snicket – OccupyWriters.com
13 interesting points of which this one sounds ominous:
“11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.” -
A radical development that allows you to focus photos after they are taken. Would require a proprietary format I suppose, but it does take you closer to the way we actually see the world. The image quality didn’t look that good in the gallery, but that’s beside the point for a first gen device.
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Here Are Four Charts That Explain What The Protesters Are Angry About…
Many ways of looking at these charts:- Proof that the world is becoming flatter- The wealth for entry level employment is being transferred from US to developing economies- Outsourcing works
On a side note, even Hollywood acknowledged that the entry level wealth is moving east in the Karate Kid remake… -
Definitely not an Android fan. I agree with the bit about the feel of the OS, but not the app variety on the market\app store.
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The Great Tech War Of 2012 | Fast Company
A pretty long read
Working around Steam issues with hybrid mobile GPUs
I have an Optimus enabled Acer Aspire 5750G with the NVIDIA 540M, and I have purchased quite a games (mostly ones on sale) on Steam over the last few months. The games work pretty well and the GPU is powerful enough to play them at the native resolution of my laptop.
I did find some games playing sluggishly even though they had pretty moderate requirements. The worst was in store when I tried playing the game Hoard. This game continually crashed to the desktop after showing its loading screen saying that reuben.exe has stopped working. I did some investigation into the matter and found a helpful thread on the game forum discussing this issue wherein lots of people with mobile hybrid GPU config (both NVIDIA & AMD\ATI) have faced crashes.
The fix that worked for me was this one:
Navigate to the folder that holds the Reuben.exe (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\hoard\win32) and right click on the app, select Run with this Graphics processor. Then select Choose Default. When the next screen comes up click add and then navigate to the folder and select reuben.exe.
Looks like while Steam was correctly getting autoselected to the nVidia chipset, Hoard was getting the integrated.
NVIDIA by default uses its GPU for Steam, but not for all the games on Steam – especially the Indie games. This also explains why many games are slower than expected, as the integrated Intel HD graphics is not that powerful. So, if you are having trouble with games on Steam, go to the Manage 3D Settings section of the NVIDIA Control Panel and add profiles for your games on Steam, setting them to use the NVIDIA processor as shown. Steam stores the games in the folder – C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common by default, and the main game executable will be within the subfolders.
On a side note, another issue I face frequently with Steam is that it takes quite a long time to launch games, and the duration seems to be dependent on the network speed. Haven’t found a workaround for that other than to launch Steam in offline mode, which seems to prevent it from trying to check for updates online on every launch.
Interesting links (weekly)
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Bluestacks :: App Player for Windows :: Run apps fast on your PC or tablet
Useful utility to run android apps on Windows
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Steve Jobs: Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer? – Quora
A case of conventional vs alternative medicine\treatment
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My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters | Politics News | Rolling Stone
Sound advice, but who’ll bell the “bull”?
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The Man Who Inspired Jobs – NYTimes.com
Edwin H. Land, the genius domus of Polaroid Corporation and inventor of instant photography, and in many ways similar to Jobs both in terms of taste and in terms of the career path
Interesting links (weekly)
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A VC: Minimum Viable Personality
How do you make an interesting product that engages the customer and builds loyalty?
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ifttt / Selective delicious bookmarks to wordpress blog
An easy way to post your bookmarks to your blog. This ifttt recipe posts only bookmarks with a specified tag.
In case you have not checked out ifttt already, it’s a really handy service that allows you to program the different online services that you use & even integrate with SMS services. -
Daring Fireball: Tynt, the Copy/Paste Jerks
Ever wondered why you end up with extra text containing links when you copy text from certain sites? Tynt is the culprit behind. The post includes ways to disable the behaviour.
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If you use Chrome, you can install this Tynt-blocking extension, which does just what it says on the tin. However, you wind up getting a dialog box each time you encounter a different site using Tynt.
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replay your terminal recordings online! (capture shell terminal recording and replay online),
Quite a bunch of screencasts. Plus, you can upload your own.
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The world’s oldest running car up for sale
Way back from 1884, and steam powered at that.
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Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind
Just the beginning, but a start nonetheless
