Snappybytes

[HOW TO] Create folders in start menu

2012-02-14T00:58:00.000Z

 If you have way too many applications installed on your computer (like in my computer) and you spend some time trying to find the desired application in the start menu, then a good way to save time and find your application easier is to create folders inside the start menu in order to categorize your applications.

To do this simply follow the steps below:

Click the start menu button
Right click All Programs
Click Open All Users
Open the Programs folder (Inside this folder you can find all the applications you have installed)
Create a new folder and give it a name.
Place inside the new folder you've created the applications you want.

For example: You have various internet applications such as Firefox, Chorme, Utorrent, JDownloader.

Create a folder and name it Internet, then place the above applications inside the "Internet" folder.

Thats it! You now have all your apps categorised and you can find anything you want easily.

[HOW TO] Fix MBR - Booting problem after deleting Linux

2012-02-01T17:48:00.000Z

If you are using Windows and Linux in the same computer (dual-boot) then you know that each time you start your computer the Linux boot screen appears and you can select either Linux or Windows. One day I decided that I no longer need Linux so I deleted the Linux partition using the disk management tool.

So straight to the point. What happens is that when you delete the Linux partition, a part of Linux stays there and each time you are trying to start your computer you will see the Linux boot loader, but this time it will be corrupted so you will not be able to choose Windows and therefore boot and use Windows. How to fix this? Do the following:

Insert your Windows Installation Disk
Press a key when you are prompted.
Select a language and click Next.
Click Repair.
Click the o/s you want to repair.
Open the Command Prompt.
Type: bootrec.exe /FixMbr
Press Enter
You are done! Restart your system.

This will fix your problem.

Chuck Norris Google Search

2011-11-11T23:57:00.001Z

[Rainmeter] - Silva Suite

2011-11-01T21:48:00.000Z

Download Silva Suite

Silva Suite for Rainmeter

####################################

Includes the following:

-Time(Digital Clock, 3 Analog Clocks)

-Date

-Weather

-Media player control

-Uptime

-System Monitor

-RSS Feeds

-World time

-Google Search

-Recycle Bin

-and more to come...

How to Install

1)Make sure you have Rainmeter installed on your machine. If not you can get it here: Download

2)Extract the archive.

3)Double Click the file Silva Suite and click Install.

4)Fonts included

Credits:

Wallpapers:

Deepure by MustBeResult

Wood wallpaper 2 by Oliuss

Wood wallpaper pack by Oliuss

Woody wallpaper by BSA-Danny

Let me know if there are any bugs that I need to fix.

Dont forget to add a comment!

Hope you enjoy!

[Rainmeter] - Kivos

2011-10-31T22:03:00.000Z

Download Kivos 

What is Kivos?

Kivos is a track information skin for
 rainmeter which can display track info, cover art from a lot of media 
players like Foobar2000, iTunes, WMP, Winamp and more. 

Also it supports a lot of media formats(OGG,FLAC,OGA,MP3,MP4,M4A,M4B,M4P,3G2,WMA,ASF,APE,WV,MPC).

--Note:

One simple change to switch between media players.

Just type the name of the player inside .ini file.

How to install

1)Make sure you have Rainmeter 2.1r863-beta or higher installed on your machine. If not you can get it here: Download

2)Extract the archive.

3)Double Click the file Kivos and click Install.

Credits:

 for nowPlaying.dll plugin.

Dont forget to add a comment!

Hope you enjoy!

[Rainmeter] - Clock Launcher

2011-10-31T21:57:00.000Z

Download Clock Launcher 

--------------

Update v1.5 (150711)

--------------

-New improved clock with better looks

-With two skin colours

What is Clock Launcher?

Clock launcher is simple analog clock with 9 launchers.

You can also edit the skin to use your own launchers.

How to install

1)Make sure you have Rainmeter installed on your machine. If not you can get it here: Download

2)Extract the archive.

3)Double Click the file Clock Launcher and click Install.

Credits:

 for Token

Dont forget to add a comment!

Hope you enjoy!

What is rainmeter and how to use it

2011-10-31T21:43:00.000Z

A year ago i when i first joined DeviantART* just to explore those amazing artworks there, i noticed after some time a category called customization. Well, because i am always curious about stuff i opened this category without a second thought.
The first thing you will see there is some categories like desktop screenshots, wallpapers, icons, skins & themes, system monitoring, shell themes etc. Apparently this category is for those people that like to customize the look and functionality of their operating system to make it look better or more user friendly. I found it very intersting and took a deeper look. What i found was a category called Rainmeter. My first thought was that rainmeter is something about the weather because of the "rain"-"meter" but no, it is far from that. 
Rainmeter is one of the best known and popular dekstop customization programs designed for Windows.
You can totally change the look of your windows with dozens of skins and widgets and monitor your system resources like battery power, memory, weather, RSS feeds, email notifications and a lot more. You can find thousands of skins online from websites like DeviantART and Customize.org.
Everything in rainmeter is fully customizable to your taste and needs. You can also create your own skins if you want using a very simple language that you can learn from tutorials and documentations. Anyway, maybe you'll say whats the point of using Rainmeter? I can get the job done without load lots of megabytes on my system. Well this is true, but haven't you become bored with the way that windows looks? Personally i hate the way that windows looks. My android phone looks better :) For this reason i decided to give Rainmeter a try. Since then i don't remember a single day without using Rainmeter. It is awesome. Also you don't have any performance issues using it.

***How to start with Rainmeter***

First of all you need to download Rainmeter from the following link:

- Download Rainmeter. 

Start the program and choose standard installation.
When the installation is finished Rainmeter will start and you will notice a difference in your desktop. This is Rainmeter.
As you can see there are some small widgets that display information about your system for example time, date, RSS feeds, CPU, disk usage and so on.
You can change the position of each widget, add new widgets or download a new Rainmeter skin.
 

***How to download and install Rainmeter skins***

To download Rainmeter skins i suggest to use one of the following websites:

- DeviantART

- Customize.org

Or just search for Rainmeter skins on google.

Also you can start with some Rainmeter skins that i created:

-Clock Launcher

-Kivos

Once you have found a skin that you like download it and extract it.
You will probably see a file with the suffix .rmskin. This is the skin installation file. If your extracted file has no suffix .rmskin but instead is a folder with the skin name just copy the folder to C:\Users\UserName\Documents\Rainmeter\Skins.
Most of the skins when you install them launch automatically. If your skin doesn't launch automatically do the following:

- Find the rainmeter icon on the notification bar

- Right click

- Go to skins

- Find your skin

- Open one of the .ini files

Thats it!

Experiment with your skins, modify them(I will talk about how to modify your skins in a future post) and play around to create the best dekstop possible!
Below you can see my current Rainmeter installation after some modifications. It looks great! 

*DeviantART is the largest online community for artists, where you can show off your work, sell your work etc.

[HOW TO] Change login background - Fedora 15/14

2011-07-03T19:35:00.002+01:00

If you want to change the login background in Fedora 15/14 just do the following:

Fedora 15

Open a terminal and log in as root:

su -

Now type:

su - gdm -s /bin/bash
dbus-launch

Once you type in the above command you will get an output like this(note that your output will be different):

DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:abstract=/tmp/dbus-nOqWeu3v8i,guid=a054a93653376a 1b2b24c1e0000008fb
DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=4571

Now type(replace with your output):

export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:abstract=/tmp/dbus-nOqWeu3v8i,guid=
a054a93653376a1b2b24c1e0000008fb
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=4571

Now to change the login background type the following and change the /path/name with yours:

GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background
picture-uri "file:///usr/share/backgrounds/pic/backblack.jpg"

Thats it! Restart/Logout and enjoy your new background.

Fedora 14

In order to change your background in Fedora 14 you have to put the picture you want to use in /usr/share/backgrounds

Log in as root:

su -

and type:

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source=xml:readwrite:
/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -t
str -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename
/usr/share/backgrounds/pic/backblack.jpg >/dev/null

Just make sure to change the path/name(in this case /pic/backblack.jpg) with yours.

Thats it!

[HOW TO] Install flash player in Linux

2011-07-03T19:35:00.001+01:00

Here is a guide on how to install Adobe flash player to your Linux system.

First of all download the latest release of Adobe flash player.

You can find it here

Choose the .rpm version and click download.

Once the download is complete do the following:

Open a terminal and log in as root:

su -

then type the following to install the flash-plugin:

rpm -ivh flash-plugin-XXX.rpm
(XXX is the release number)

Then(in order for flash-plugin to work) you need to locate the correct file and copy it to plugins.

Type the following:

locate libflashplayer.so

You should see something like this:

/usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so

Now change to ~/.mozilla/plugins directory and type as root:

cp /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so /home/USER/.mozilla/pugins
(USER is your username)

Finally, you need to change the ownership of the file so a non-root user to use it.

Type:

chown USER.USER libflashplayer.so
(USER is your username)

Thats it! Restart your browser and type about:plugins to check if flash-plugin is installed.

You should see something like this:

If the above guide doen't work for you try the following:

Fedora

64bit

Open a terminal and type:

$ su -
$ yum install wget
$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/
labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10_2_p3_64bit_linux_111710.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf flashplayer10_2_p3_64bit_linux_111710.tar.gz
$ mv /tmp/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/

32bit

Open a terminal and type:

$ su -
$ rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release
/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
$ rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
$ yum update
$ yum install flash-plugin

Then restart your browser and type about:plugins to check if flash-plugin is installed.

The Smallest Computer

2011-07-03T19:35:00.000+01:00

Millimeter-Scale Computer Greg Chen

Researchers from the University of Michigan presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco the worlds smallest computer.

As you can see in the photo this tiny computer named Phoenix chip is a lot smaller than a coin with its dimensions no more than 1 cubic millimeter.

"This is the first true millimeter-scale complete computing system" as Dennis Sylvester, a University of Michigan professor said and it was designed to be implanted to the eye of someone who has glaucoma in order to monitor the in-eye pressure.

This computer has:

-microprocessor

-pressure sensor

-memory(that can store up to a week's worth of information)

-thin-film battery

-a solar cell

-a wireless radio with an antenna that can sent data to an external reader.

This computer needs 1.5 hours of exposure to sunlight to charge its battery.

It is always in a sleep mode and it wakes up every 15 minutes to collect data.

Every time it wakes up it consumes only 5.3 nanowatts.

Source: University of Michigan News Service

[HOW TO] Show icons on Desktop in Gnome 3

2011-07-03T19:30:00.002+01:00

The latest release of Fedora 15 lovelock with the new Gnome 3 is quite good by itself but personally I can't imagine my desktop without icons(its way too empty and boring) or the option to right click on the desktop or even the minimize and maximize option. Some maybe like the new Gnome 3 as it is and some maybe not, so for those who don't and want to add some previous Gnome features here is a way to do it:

Install Tweak Tool

Fedora

sudo yum install gnome-tweak-tool

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

When the installation is finished open Tweak Tool and go to section File Manager, then enable the option "Have file manager handle the desktop"

Your desktop is now enabled and you can click and also create launchers as before!!!

It is more user friendly this way in my opinion.

[HOW TO] Create an application launcher in Gnome 3

2011-07-03T19:30:00.001+01:00

If you want to create custom application launchers in the new Gnome 3 try one of the following ways:

Install Alacarte(the easy way)

su

yum -y install alacarte

then press ALT+F2 and type in alacarte or use the Terminal.

2nd way for those who want to go Manual

Do the following:

1)Install Nano*(if its not installed by default):

*Nano is a simple easy to use text editor.

yum install nano

2)Now we have to create the app launcher in /usr/share/applications.(All your app launchers can be found in /usr/share/applications.)

Type:

nano /usr/share/applications/nameoftheapp.desktop

An empty text editor will open.

3)Copy&Paste in the editor:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=
GenericName=
Comment=
Exec=
Icon=
Terminal=false
Type=Application
MimeType=text/plain;
Categories=
Name[en_US]=

4)Type the path and the name of the app you want to use.

Then press CTRL+X. It will ask you if you want to save the file, press Y and then hit Enter.

In order to put your app in the category that you want you have to type the correct category name next to Categories=.

Here is a list with the correct category names: Correct Category Names

Thats it! You can now find your app launcher in the Menu!

EXAMPLE: We want to create a launcher for Eclipse. It will look like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Eclipse
Comment=Eclipse SDK 3.6.2
Exec=eclipse
Icon=/opt/eclipse/icon.xpm
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Application;Development;
Name[en_US]=

[HOW TO] Open a .rar file in Linux

2011-07-03T19:30:00.000+01:00

Fedora

Install Unrar:

# yum install unrar

Then, to unpack the .rar file do one of the following:

$ unrar filename.rar
$ unrar e filename.rar
$ unrar x filename.rar

e and x stands for:

  e             Extract files to current directory
  x             Extract files with full path

[HOW TO] Shut down option - Fedora 15

2011-07-03T19:20:00.000+01:00

If you installed the new Fedora 15 you would probably noticed that there is no shut-down option but only Switch User and Log Out.

How to add the shut-down button:

yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu

or you can press the ALT key when you open the menu and then a Power Off option will appear.

Reality touchscreen from the University of Groningen

2011-06-11T02:20:00.000+01:00

This is a curved touch screen that the University of Groningen created and it consists of:

-3mm dark acrylic layer

-Diffuser in the front

-6 Full HD Barco projectors

-Cameras and IR leds behind the screen

-6 Optitrack v120 slim camera's

-16 infrared emitters

-1000 leds in total

The touch software runs on three computers each with 2 cameras. 

One extra computer combines the output from the three computers and send the data to the screen. In this way they have enough power to detect without problems 100 different touches with a latency between 30ms and 50ms.

They used a modified version of Community Core Vision (CCV) 1.4 in order to use 2 cameras in one computer. The communication protocol is preferable TUIO and they install multi-touch Vista which translates TUIO events to WM_TOUCH events for windows 7.

Source: 1LLUS @Youtube

more info at: University of Groningen

[HOW TO] Install JDK/JRE in Linux

2011-06-10T22:16:00.000+01:00

[HOW TO] Install correctly Nvidia Drivers - Fedora

2011-06-10T22:11:00.000+01:00

Gas or Liquid?...Neither!

2011-03-10T18:34:00.000Z

Watch how the boundary between liquid and gas disappears, as you apply heat to a liquid in constant volume and how these two different states become one whole thing.. The result is not a gas but also not a liquid it's a think called FLUID. After the heat is gone the boundary appears again...just magic or just physics!

The Disadvantages of Travelling at the Speed of Light

2011-03-04T18:49:00.000Z

Many people would think that traveling at the speed of light would be great and would offer amazing possibilities, as you could get to your destination very fast. But if we have a closer look at the physics we will see that the disadvantages overweight the advantages.

First of all, traveling at that speed means that no light could ever reach you, if it was emitted some distance back. So this means that you could not see you relatives or friends waving goodbye as you go or you could never see your home, looking back during the travel. Also shaving or fixing your hair would be impossible during the voyage, as the light reflected from the mirror would never reach your eyes, unless of course you were on a spaceship, traveling with the speed of light. Where, in this case you would be standing still with respect to the light coming from the spaceship’s lamps.

Another major disadvantage, which might seem like an advantage in the beginning but I tell you it is not, is the “time dilation”. This basic physic’s principle states that the faster someone travels the slower time runs for him and in the extreme case of traveling with the speed of light, no time would pass. So when you would return from your journeys to your starting point you would still have the same age whereas time won’t be so polite for your friends, who would have grown old. It will be a lonely, very lonely life. (careful though about that fact because it takes effect only if you leave earth and return again to earth after some time.)

To sum up I would like to point out that many of these are not referring to reality as no one has even reach close to light’s speed and many of the above physics might be wrong too(sorry about that, let me know if so). The above post is just for yours and my own entertainment, going close to light's speed can be dangerous. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

Amazing Facts about Information Revolution

2011-03-04T00:41:00.000Z

What happens if you store all the worlds data in CDs and DVDs?

Did you know that if you stack them up all those CDs and DVDs could reach beyond the moon?

If you ever wonder how much is the world's data storage capacity, the answer that scientist come up with is almost 295 exabytes. That is 295 billion gigabytes or 302080000000000 megabytes and so on. Do you think that this number is little?

Here is way to imagine how much is all this:

"If we were to take all that information and store it in books, we could cover the entire area of the US or China in 13 layers of books" according to Dr Martin Hilbert of the University of Southern California on the BBC's Science in Action. 

Do you remember when you had your first computer with 700mb to 3 GB of hard disk and 100 to 256mb of RAM? Now we have mobile phones and even music players (like iPod) with 10-20 times bigger hard disk space than our old computer. Even the CPU of a new Smartphone today is faster than the CPU of your old computer.

Imagine how fast technology has changed over time (we talk about 5-10 years) and also imagine technology the next 10-20 years.

According to a study all computers in the world computed 6.4 x 1018 instructions per second. If you try to do this by hand it will take you 2,200 times the period since Bing Bang!

From 1986 to 2007 scientist calculated the amount of data that held on analog and digital devices. The period from 1986 to 2007 is called information revolution period as human societies transition to digital age. At 2000 75% of the stored information was in an analogue format while at 2007 94% was in digital. Also between this period the global computing capacity increased by 58% per year.

Some other results shows that we broadcast around 2 zettabytes of data (1 zettabyte is 1000 exabytes!). This is like 175 newspapers per person, per day!

Do you think that all these numbers are big? Not at all if you compare them with a human DNA.

"The Human DNA in one single body can store around 300 times more information than we store in all our technological devices" according to Dr Hilbert.

Do you feel all this power inside you? :)

Source:

Science in action - BBC

Caesar's Last Breath

2011-03-03T13:15:00.000Z

History is in the air, I like to say. How true is this? Every one of us may breathe as we speak air from the breath of a famous person throughout history. The proof of this fact is the simple physics in a folklore about Caesar.

Caesar with his last words” Et tu, Brute?” released approximately 1022 molecules of air. These molecules were evenly spread to the already existing 1044 molecules in the atmosphere. So in 1022 of molecules of air in the atmosphere there is one molecule which belongs to Caesar’s last breath.

Now considering the vast amount of molecules we inhale, there is a big chance that we receive the air molecules of any known person.Einstein, Da Vinci, Newton, Napoleon… and every other person you would like to breathe molecules from. That makes us part of history! 

Info:

The last breath of Caesar

How small our world is?

2011-03-01T19:13:00.000Z

Have you ever imagined how small our world is? Let me give you a little push, some ideas to think about when you say “come on, who’s gone walk all this way to go to…(a place of your choice)”.I hope that this post will give you a different perspective and make you appreciate our small planet and it's small distances rather than fill you with despair about how small our world really is.

Earth which in our eyes is huge has a diameter 109 times less than our sun. Our sun now which is large with respect to Earth is considered an averaged size star, as there are stars many times bigger. There is even a star 2000 times larger than our sun!!!  The pictures below might give you a hint of what i am talking about.

Source:

Wikipedia

http://www.funonthenet.in/content/view/555/ 

How to drive a car with your thoughts

2011-02-28T19:24:00.000Z

Schrödinger's cat

2011-02-28T18:36:00.000Z

Schrodinger's cat was a thought experiment made by Erwin Schrodinger in 1935. The experiment itself as the interpretations given are very interesting.

The Experiment:

A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with a device in which there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the device  through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. So this system implies that in the box there is a cat both dead and alive.

Interpretations:

Now, two interpretations were given for this experiment. The first was the Copenhagen interpretation which stated that a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place. Which means that both states(dead- alive) exist before the box is opened. The second interpretation and the most "weird" and my personal favorite is the Many-worlds interpretation. In the many-worlds interpretation, both alive and dead states of the cat persist after the box is opened, but are decoherent from each other. In other words, when the box is opened, the observer and the already-split cat split into an observer looking at a box with a dead cat, and an observer looking at a box with a live cat. But since the dead and alive states are decoherent , there is no effective communication or interaction between them.

Feel free to choose the interpretation which suits you best or even make your own.

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. 

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) English philosopher and mathematician.

Source:

Wikipedia

Achilles and the Turtle

2011-02-28T13:32:00.000Z

Zeno's Paradox of Motion: Achilles and the Turtle

In the paradox of Achilles and the Turtle, Achilles is in a footrace with the turtle. Achilles allows the turtle a head start of 100 meters. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 meters, bringing him to the turtle's starting point. 

During this time, the turtle has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 meters. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the turtle will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the turtle moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the turtle has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the turtle has already been, he can never overtake the turtle.

Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher (490-430 BC). Mainly known for his paradox. This whole paradox is based on a "simple" fact(or not that simple after all), that in order to reach a point you must first go halfway there and before you go halfway you must travel a quarter of the distance and so on. So in a finite distance there are infinite parts which cannot be traveled in a finite time(as they are infinite)!

Source:

Wikipedia