My Tech Adventures

If you have been using TFT LCD monitors for quite some time, you might have come across different short-comings of LCDs including the inability to produce quality black levels and the performance of the tubes (CCFL). A CCFL Assembly Although these problems are being worked upon including the move towards LEDs for backlighting, you can still improve the performance of your LCD and extend its life as well. First of all, CCFLs are just like the normal tubes used in homes for lighting, a high voltage inverter circuit is used to turn them on and operate them. Just like the "tubes", LCD backlights have two shortcomings; limited start-up cycles and reduction in brightness with age. An ordinary tube-light However, the way to extending their life, also comes from the way ordinary tube lights work: 1. Set the brightness and contrast to 80 % from monitor controls. This helps the lights to start-up easily. 2. Use software to control brightness, c

Finally! If you still need dial-up support and cannot pay Linuxant ( http://www.linuxant.com/ ) for full-speed conexant soft-modem drivers, then, you can try out the drivers offered by DELL here (Ubuntu 7.04) or here if you know your stuff (latest ... recommended!). It might be old news to you, but, for me (broadband packages not attractive enough ... use on-campus net for my downloads), the lack of full-speed driver support was the biggest hurdle in adopting Ubuntu as my main OS. And sometimes, you just have to fall back to dial-up to troubleshoot your broadband! I downloaded and installed the drivers as per instructions given on the download page ... and I was able to surf the web with full speed , on dial-up of course! There are some stability issues ... let's see what I can do! ....

Hi Again! ASUS has launched the Essentio CS5110 MiniPC with full HD 1080p support. Packed with innovations, the ASUS Essentio CS5110 is a Mini PC that features exceptional graphics performance as its main focus – and is the world’s smallest Desktop PC equipped with a fully embedded discrete graphic card to give you high definition movie pleasure and smooth gaming fun. See the specs!

Wow! According to two geophysicists, Guangmeng Guo and Bin Wang, in China, unusual cloud formations can predict major earthquakes and can be used as an EWS. During their research, they observed (using satellite images and thermal images)that sixty four to sixty nine days prior to earthquakes hitting particular areas, clouds showed a gap precisely about the fault line and also that the temperature had risen for the area. The reason can be that the hot temperature caused the gap in the clouds by causing the water in the clouds to evaporate. However, other scientists are skeptical about it. Still, if its true, it goes to show that you must pay attention to your random theory and processes courses! Source: The Press Association

Hello People! With Windows Vista being a major resource waster (dubbed Windows ME II by theinquirer ) ... and SP1 not helping at all ... Microsoft seems to be anxious to get the next version out as soon as possible. If you look down upon the pathway to Vista, you'll come to know that the true next gen windows was supposed to be Blackcomb with Longhorn being a gap-filler. However, it took Microsoft five long years to finally deliver it due to shift of the codebase from winxp to win2k3 shifting the timeframe. Balckcomb is now expected for 2011-12. That wouldn't help Microsoft, especially when Linux & OSX are eating away its share. So, here comes Windows Codename 7 (previously codenamed Vienna ... and now 7 ... as Windows Vista is ver 6). It is expected that Microsoft has learnt its lesson and this version of windows is being developed upon the MinWin kernel (supposed to cut the bloated code) with emphasis upon touch and digital entertainment (the rest is the same as any win95

So this is it ... my first post on my first blog ... didn't know that I would be doing that going through my MBA classes ... well ... gotta go ... wait for my next post ... I'll tell you about what's this blog is going to be about (hint: Title) ... bye!