Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

April 1, 2007

Installing Debian without burning CD’s

Do you want to install Debian on a system thats running Windows but doesn’t have a working CD-ROM (Like my current laptop)? Earlier you had to try to install it using floppies and other methods that didn’t always work but now there’s an easier method:

You can now download a “Debian-Installer Loader” from their project site which is basically an exe file which you can run as a regular exe file. Once you run it, it will work for a few moments and then it’ll ask to reboot your PC, at which point you’ll be given the option to run Windows or Debian. Choose Debian and you will end up in a regular Debian installer interface.

Here are some Screenshots of how the installer looks like.

I haven’t tried it yet so I can’t personally verify how well it works but so far I have heard only good things about it. If you try it out let me know how it works out.

Thanks,
Suramya

March 16, 2007

Legally watch World Cup matches online in near real time

Filed under: Interesting Sites,Tech Related — Suramya @ 6:07 PM

I am not a big cricket fan (Understatement of the year…) but this is something really interesting. As some of you might know the cricket World cup is currently going on and is a big craze in India/England/Australia/and a lot of other countries.

Now Sky Television has the exclusive rights to broadcast the matches live so if you want to watch the show live you have to pay them for it. There’s nothing wrong with it but in places that don’t have SKY TV it becomes and issue. There are websites that broadcast the matches live but they are illegal and usually very slow with horrible picture quality.

There is a website called cricinfo.com that solves this issue in a very unique way:

Cricinfo 3D is based on public domain information gathered by our scorers who record a number of factors such as where the ball pitched, the type of shot played and where the ball goes in the field,” said a Wisden statement. “That data is then fed as an xml to anyone who has Cricinfo 3D running on their desktops and the software generates an animation based on this data.”

The match coverage is delayed by between 3 and 12 balls during the match and its still in Beta so might not work perfectly. But still Pretty cool eh?

Check it out: http://www.cricinfo.com/3d/

Thanks to OpenDotDotDot for the link.

– Suramya

March 8, 2007

Scribd: YouTube for documents

Filed under: Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 3:24 PM

Found this really interesting site called Scribd that lets you upload documents and share them with all visitors of the site. Sort of like what YouTube lets you do with video’s.

There are some pretty funny documents that people have uploaded, e.g. Scribd – A Guide to Grading Exams.

Check it out when you have some time to waste.

– Suramya

March 1, 2007

Open Source Alternatives

Filed under: Computer Software,Interesting Sites,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:09 PM

Using open source doesn’t mean that you have to run Linux. Its just that Linux has sort of become the flagship of the Open Source Software (OSS) and whenever a person talks about OSS the general perception is that you need linux to enjoy/use OSS. But thankfully this is not true. Even on my Windows system most of the applications I use are open source. e.g. OpenOffice for word processing, Firefox for browsing, GIMP for image manipulation etc.

Now a major problem which newcomers have is that its difficult to figure out what Open Source alternatives are available for a given popular commercial software. The Open Source Alternative website attempts to solve this issue by giving a listing of the various OSS alternatives available for a given proprietary program.

Check it out, you might find some software that replaces the current program you use thus saving you a lot of money.

– Suramya

December 26, 2006

LCD Window Kit

Filed under: Interesting Sites,Tech Related — Suramya @ 4:50 PM

Here’s a different twist of the usual mod where users modify their computer case so that you can look into the innards of the CPU. In this version, instead of creating a window looking inside we put in a LCD monitor in the CPU. Which looks really cool. Below is a pic of what it might look like.

main.jpg

I have a flat screen sitting under my desk from an old system I bought a couple of years ago so maybe I will try to set this up sometime in the near future when I get some free time.

The site has some other really interesting projects also. Check it out if you are interested in DIY projects.

Source: Inventgeek.com – LCD Window Kit

– Suramya

December 12, 2006

PikiPimp: Add some bling to your photos

Filed under: Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

Interesting site. Allows you to upload photos and then add stuff like hats, beards, bikinis, jewelry and more to create new images.

Check it out: PikiPimp

Thanks to Monkey Bites for the link.

– Suramya

December 10, 2006

Mp3Realm: A new Mp3 Search engine

Filed under: Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 5:24 PM

I have blogged about multimedia search engines before but all the ones I have used so far are slow/cluttered and don’t give very accurate results. Another issue was that a lot of the songs that it returned were not mp3’s instead they would be wav/ra/wmv etc.

I just found this new search engine called: Mp3Realm which addresses these issues. It only indexes mp3’s, the interface is minimal (something like Google) and it returns relevant results. In all a pretty good engine. Lets see how long it can stay up.

Check it out: Mp3Realm

– Suramya

December 8, 2006

Send greetings using Google maps

Filed under: Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 3:17 AM

This is a really cool implementation of Google maps. Since a lot of buildings in the world look like letters it is possible to create a message using these buildings. So Jesse Vig went ahead and created geoGreeting.com. Its a cool implementation and I love it.

Check out this message I created as a test and then try it yourself

Thanks to Userfriendly.org for the link.

– Suramya

December 7, 2006

Proof that you really can find anything on eBay

Filed under: Funny News,Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 8:17 PM

Ok, now I know you can buy anything on eBay.

Earlier I spoke about paying a company so that ‘cool’/pretty people leave messages on your myspace page so that you look more popular than you are. Then Michelle pointed out that you can pay another company that calls you on your cell so that you sound more popular than you are.

Now I just found this auction on eBay where this girl is promising to be the winner’s MySpace girlfriend for a month.

Do people really care so much about looking cool/popular? Are they really that shallow?

– Suramya

December 4, 2006

Fake Your Space. a.k.a. Desperate to look cool and popular

Filed under: Funny News,Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 7:14 PM

How desperate are people to look cool and popular on social networking sites? A lot it seems… Check out this site called: Fake Your Space

From the site:

Welcome to Fake Your Space. You have found a new and exciting service which offers help to all the men and women out there who don’t feel like they are popular enough on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. If you are tired of seeing everyone else with the hottest friends and want some hotties of your own, then this is the place for you.


You can pick the hottest looking friends to leave you messages. We have a wide selection of men and women of all ethnic backgrounds.

So for $0.99 a month you can have your profile populated with a lot of hot looking men/women.

Whats next? A fake calender that shows you going out on a date with a hot girl (With links to fake photos) when you actually spent the evening watching re-runs on TV?

God, some people are so unbelievable..

– Suramya

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