mindspill

CAPTCHA's used to digitise books

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:01:46 GMT

CAPTCHA's are those annoying pictures with characters on them that you have to type to prove to a website that you're human. They're meant to prevent automatic programs to mimic humans and spam. While they undoubtedly are a great good for the internet, they're also a bloody waste of time. The inventor of the CAPTCHA's Luis von Ahn, realised this and decided to put this human effort to good use - to convert old books into electronic form.

Listen to this interview with Luis von Ahn at the IT Conversations Network

HDR photography tutorial

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:38:52 GMT

Today I came across an easy to follow tutorial on how to create professional HDR images. This technique lets you combine multiple pictures of the same subject taken at different exposures to create "a perfect picture" with no under or over exposed areas.

After my camera decided to die just in time for the warranty to expire I abandoned photography for a while. After reading this tutorial today I just feel like giving myself a very expensive Christmas present.

The Ryan McGinnis tutorial - Found via Hackzine

How-to extract an mp3 audio file from a google video to load it to your ipod

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:46:09 GMT

Are you so poor you cannot afford a video ipod, yet you still want to get the best out of google video presentations?

Google techtalks are talks and presentations about a diverse range of subjects which make perfect candidates for ipod listening. For most of the talks you can afford to sacrifice the powerpoint presentation and listen only to the audio. To extract the audio from a google video follow these steps:-

Software Required:-

1. Locate the file you want to download and save it to disk. This saves a gvp file of around 2kb on your drive.

2. Open the file with google video player. When you open the gvp file with google video player a gvi file is created. The gvi file is the actual video file (around 300mb for an hour of video). The default folder on windows is \my documents\My videos\Google videos.

Step 2 alternative:
     i. Open the GVP File in Notepad
    ii. Copy/Paste the URL into your browser
   iii. Get the GVI File with .avi as the extension. (remember to rename back to .gvi)

3. Convert the gvi file into an avi file using GVI2AVI, to be able to manipulate it.

4. Use media coder to extract the mp3 file from the avi file

a) Add the avi file by dragging the file to the window
b) Unselect the "enable audio" from the video tab
c) Set the audio options to lame mp3 encoder and enable audio
d) Click on start to extract an mp3 file from the avi file

Quick and Easy way to backup DVDs

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 04:57:29 GMT

I can't explain why when I borrow DVDs from friends my usually dormant sysadmin nature kicks in. All of a sudden I get this urge make a backup of their DVDs just in case. We all know that backups should be kept offsite so from the kindness of my heart I offer to keep the backup copy of the DVD myself. After all they wouldn't want to lose their collection if their house goes on fire.

For some cruel reason some movie companies try to dampen my altruistic spirit and make it very difficult to make backups by adding encryption to the DVDs. Guess they're right when they say that there's no room for kindness these days.

Well, I keep doing my best to help friends, and until today these are the most effective ways to copy DVD's. I'm in no way an expert on this, in fact I keep asking my brother how to do it and the reason I'm writing this down is not to have to spend another hour on the phone with him.

Required Software:

Clone DVD
DVD Shrink
DVD Decrypter

1st attempt: Use Clone DVD to make a clone of the DVD and copy it. This is the easiest way to copy but the least likely to succeed.

2nd attempt: If Clone DVD doesn't work then try DVD shrink. (This never worked for me but apparently it sometimes does)

3rd attempt: Extract the DVD files using DVD Decrypter than use Nero (or any other writer software) to burn on DVD. If the extracted files are greater than the DVD storage size then use Clone DVD to write the extracted files to DVD.

Play the ripped DVD
You can play the ripped DVD without having to burn it using VideoLan. This software lets you to play a DVD from a folder retaining the menu structure and chapter markers of the DVD. (Link found through hackszine)

Searching for Excel Tips

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:03:02 GMT

This week I had to learn some advanced Excel techniques. As usual I went to the web to look for some ideas on how to achieve what I was looking for. When looking for information on such a broad and popular subject Google isn't my favourite engine because it tends to return many results of services and courses offering excel tuition rather than the actual tips. I used the following resources to get a much more focused set of results and ideas about what I was looking for.

Del.icio.us - This got me started in the right direction. The first couple of bookmarked sites here linked to several other Excel resources literally flooding me with Excel information.

Google video - A video hosting site might not be the first place to come in mind when looking for excel stuff. After I searched for 'excel reporting' in Google Video I found a whole series of 2mins shows by Mr. Excel on how to power-use excel.

These are some of the best sites I found after searching these sources and linking sites

My Excel Pages - Loads of Articles on Excel
Juice Analytics - Nifty Information Representation blog with several articles on Excel with how-tos
Perceptual Edge - Information Representation Papers and Research
Contextures - Good examples and how-tos on advanced excel especially on Pivot Tables

Logging on automatically in Win XP

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 05:17:20 GMT

If you've got only one login profile on your windows XP computer you can turn off the nagging login screen when the computer restarts. This simple procedure lets you specify a user with which the machine will automatically logon on startup.

Click Start -> Run, and type control userpasswords2.
Clear the 'Users must enter a username and password to use this computer' check box.
Click Apply.
Enter the user name and password you wish to automatically log on with, and then click OK.
Click OK again

Reference: Auto Logon to Windows XP

31 Quick Tech Tips

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 05:33:28 GMT

I managed to finish the Tip a Day project. This is a list of all the tips in the series:

Tip 31: WinXP Funnies

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:37:41 GMT

For the last tip of the series these are some windows XP funnies (Easter Eggs).

Win solitaire automatically by pressing ALT + SHIFT + 2
Make windows speak slang.
1. Open the control panel
2. Open speech -> properties
3. In the preview box type crotch
4. Press preview voice
5. Instead of crotch the voice will say crow's nest
Save a text document with the words "bush hid the facts". Open it with notepad and the words are replaced by square boxes.

Reference: The Easter Egg Archive

Tip 27: Automatic log file

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 03:54:47 GMT

It's 4.30pm on Friday. The weekend is at the corner but there's one thing in the way. The Weekly Report. The last thing you'd want to do is think what you've done during the week and write the report. The solution?

Use any text editor, GTD TiddlyWiki or a plain piece of paper and write down tasks as you complete them during the week. Come Friday afternoon all you need to do is to type the list in the report.

In notepad if you save a file with .LOG (caps) as the first line, each time you open the file the current date and time is added to the end of the file.

Tip 17: Currency conversion with Google

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 06:11:24 GMT

Need to convert a currency quickly? Just type in your query in simple English to Google and you'll get the answer. You can either use the currencies full name or the three letter currency code. For example:

250 New Zealand Dollar to USD (specifying New Zealand dollar will avoid confusion with other dollars)
9000 Philippine Pesos to GBP (specifying Philippine will avoid confusion with other pesos like the Mexican Peso)
25 Euros to ARS (ARS is the Argentinean Peso)