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2008 witnessed the re-launch of TheStasis.Com as Binary Turf. There were twists and turns along the way as TheStasis found and moved to a better domain - binaryturf.com. Moving to the dedicated server was a big leap forward as the site rose in popularity. Later as things progressed I quit my job to serve the open source community in general…
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2008 witnessed the re-launch of TheStasis.Com as Binary Turf. There were twists and turns along the way as TheStasis found and moved to a better domain - binaryturf.com. Moving to the dedicated server was a big leap forward as the site rose in popularity. Later as things progressed I quit my job to serve the open source community in general targeting specifically the Firefox users. It is a chance to explore my creativity and my dreams. Amongst all this the blog developed a professional voice and high usability as the subscriber numbers rose. Here are the top 10 posts of 2008 for you.
What topped your list?
When you feel bored and bound to your desk and you wish you could have some fun, it's time to try something exciting. What if you could swap a trivial file for another? Head on to FileSwap and upload any file (you must not upload copy-protected stuff) less than 500kb. What do you get in return? That's a surprise - you get another file uploaded by another user. What a great way to kill time! Try out FileSwap and tell me what you get in return.
After the release of Wordpress 2.7 it was the turn of Chris Pearson to take notice and release Thesis version 1.3.3 - a Wordpress theme. Thesis 1.3.3 is a premium theme for Wordpress with various options. The new version is basically a bug fix and compatibility fix for Wordpress version 2.7. A detailed changelog is available on the announcement post at the Thesis Blog. So if you run on Thesis, version 1.3.3 is another reason to consider upgrading to Wordpress version 2.7.
Sometimes you just wish you could save all that cryptic html as pdf so that when you are offline, the page shows up exactly as you saw it online. HTM2PDF is an online converter that allows you to do just that. Enter an URL and hit "convert". It will then provide you a link to save the PDF to your desktop. It does a text to text and image to image conversion instead of converting everything as image. This comes in very handy as you can select copy and paste text to other text applications as required.
Additionally HTM2PDF allows direct input of HTML to convert to PDF. Go and give it a try.
Why would you need a seal? Well, an impressive seal could be used to brand your website or better yet be placed in the header to cast the first impression (better yet use it in your email signature). The Official Seal Generator is an online tool which will generate a seal for you with the text and logo of your choice. It has extensive customization options and a list of over 2413 emblems for you to choose from (and the developer is willing to take your request for a custom emblem). So no more struggling with Photoshop.
Head on to the Official Seal Generator. Enter the text that you'd like to use at the top and bottom of the seal, select the borders and the emblem. Hit go to see your seal and if you are not satisfied, customize it further.
My intention is not to persuade you to question or validate the speed that your ISP provides you (because most of the times the actually speed you get at your end depends on the environment). But at times you really want to calibrate your application according to the internet speed that you get on your computer. This is one tool meant just for that. InternetFrog's speedtest is one tool which allows you to benchmark your internet connection speed. Just like most of the other tools, the InternetFrog's speedtest is based on the java virtual machine which works by uploading and downloading predefined size of data in the background.
You'll need to get the Java Runtime which you can get from the Java Runtime download page (in most of the cases it will already be present on your browser). Quit any applications that may be using the internet connection because you don't want them to interfere with the internet speed. Head on to InternetFrog speedtest. In a few seconds it will provide you with the test results. What's the speed of your connection?
Hate shortcuts because you can't remember them? I use shortcuts to impress my friends and show off the techie I am. But then there are a few things you can only do with shortcuts (or at least I haven't figured a way out). Check these out.
- F1- Help. If an application is selected this opens the related help. On the desktop it opens the Windows help.
- F2 - Rename a file or a folder
- F3 - Hitting F3 in windows explorer opens Windows Search.
- SHIFT + Right Click - Displays right context menu containing hidden commands. As an example you can get an option to "Open Command Window Here" if you use Shift+ Right click on any folder. On a file or a shortcut you can get options like pinning the item to the start menu.
- CTRL + SHIFT + ESC - Open Task Manager
- CTRL + ESC - Open Start menu, much like pressing the Windows key.
- Windows Key+D - Show desktop / toggle
- Alt + Tab - Toggle between the current and the last active window
- SHIFT+F10 - It is similar to right clicking any object, it opens up the context menu obtained by right clicking. During Windows setup it opens a command prompt to let you do some cryptic work.
- Windows Key+Pause/Break: Open System Properties dialog box.
- Windows Key+L - Lock your computer-screen.
- CTRL + ALT + DEL - You tell me
What do you do when you have to copy and paste long text between two computers? I used to email the text to myself and open up my mail on the second computer and copy the text from there. Not anymore. With CL1P.net this is simplified to a three step process.
- Create your Clip: Here you have to enter a URL of your choice starting with http://cl1p.net/. For example I'll enter http://cl1p.net/test. You will access the same on your other computer.
- Enter your Text: Now access this URL on your first computer and enter the text here.
- Retrieve your Text: Access the same URL from the second computer and you can now access the same text from here. Just copy and use as required.
This online tool is free of course. Just head on to CL1P.net and bookmark it. These things come in handy when you need them.
Warm wishes, have a safe and happy holiday season! I just took out some time and compiled four builds of Firefox vs. 3.0.5 and 3.1 beta 2 for SSE and SSE2 processors. Optimized for performance on your specific machine and processor these builds are compiled from the original Firefox source without any modification. These were being requested for quite sometime and I was just not able to squeeze out the time as I was busy shifting my residence (by the way the new Terrazzo floor is still undergoing the grinding work and coming out nice and shiny).
So here they are for you - optimized Firefox builds. They are installers so you can install them to a location of your choice. You can install them in parallel but in order to run them side-by-side with the official builds or different profiles for that matter you'll have to set the environment variable "moz_no_remote" ti "1". If you are only running one Firefox instance at a time you needn't bother with the environment variable - just install and fire-up. By the way if you don't like the installers or want the zipped builds which run without installing all you have to do is just ask
