AviDardik.com

AviDardik.com Down Time

Avi — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:26:08 +0000

In what’s now almost a reoccurring annual event, I managed to be a few days late in renewing the AviDardik.com domain again.
So the site was down for a few days, about a week and a half. I’ve finally renewed the domain and everything is up and running again. Even used the opportunity to upgrade to WordPress 2.9.

Google Chrome OS Revealed

Avi — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:23:09 +0000

I was waiting for this for a long time, just an hour ago Google held a press conference and finally revealed the Google Chrome OS details.
To be honest I wasn’t blown away. It was pretty much what I expected.
It’s still interesting and cool. And for better or worse, that’s the direction technology seems to go.

So what it Chrome OS?
Check out this movie:

More info, details and links at the official Google Blog Post

Windows 7 Released

Avi — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:19:34 +0000

Not much to say here really. We all waited for this, we all knew it’s coming, and now it’s reported all over the place.
But it’s huge news of course, there’s no way I’m not posting something about that.

Windows 7 – The best Windows version since Windows XP and its rightful successor – Has been released.

FREE Microsoft Security Essentials Released

Avi — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:45:51 +0000

Microsoft Security Essentials, the FREE anti-malware client from Microsoft is globally released according to Microsoft’s Press Release.
So far it’s been in limited beta only. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and it’s pretty cool. Lightweight and easy on the system.

A free, downloadable, lightweight (and still-to-be-proven GOOD) anti-virus from Microsoft can seriously re-shuffle the consumer endpoint security market in the near future.

How to compress, compact, optimize and shrink PowerPoint presentations

Avi — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:42:11 +0000

This is unbelievably simple. And I could have figured it out ages ago. But I guess it’s only when you really have a need you set out and find the solution.

We all know about this issue, you sit down and author a PowerPoint presentation. You copy/paste a few cool-looking pictures, and when you’re done, all of a sudden, the resulting PPT is a huge multi-megabyte file.
And we all know the reason right? It’s all those images you’ve pasted. While you shrink their dimensions to fit the slides, they’re really all still there at their original size.

I ran a quick search, and indeed, there’s a super easy solution, even built-in into Microsoft Office XP (2002) onwards:

Click on any picture in your presentation.
You should see the “Pictures Toolbar”. If you don’t, choose the View->Toolbars->Picture option from the menus. Click on the Compress Pictures icon.
You will see the “Compress Pictures Dialog” box. Select All pictures in document. If you are sending the file out for screen viewing and review only, then select the Web/Screen option and both checkboxes Compress pictures and Delete cropped areas of pictures.

Voila. As simple as that!
I ran this super simple procedure on a 10MB file, and the result was a 6MB presentation. What a life saver!
You can read a much longer version over at Microsoft’s Reduce the size of your PowerPoint files page…

Also, don’t forget before sending out any Office document on any file to also run the Microsoft Remove Hidden Data tool – So now your presentation is small, compact, safe and private!

xkcd – The Search

Avi — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:26:54 +0000

The AAA (Almost Always Awesome) xkcd does it again. I always felt that the way we’re searching for life out there, and the responses for the interim results, are redicoulous.
xkcd does an excellent job in explaining all this in a single panel:

Finally – A gaming console for women!

Avi — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:40:44 +0000

I recently got my dad a Wii. That’s right. My dad. A Wii.
What can I say, he has a lot of time on his hands and he wanted one.
To be honest, I’m jealous. But that’s beside the point.

The point is this hilarious bit about a Wii-like gaming consoles for the ladies.
Yes yes, it’s very sexist and a bit inappropriate, but hey, it made me laugh!

WordPress Worm Attack

Avi — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:33:19 +0000

This was bound to happen, apparently there’s a worm spreading over the Internet attacking WordPress-based blogs by taking advantage of a vulnerability in older versions.

If you have the latest WordPress 2.8.4 – You’re safe. Well this site wasn’t safe. I had a very old version running. I knew it wasn’t safe, but I was just too busy to upgrade.
This post however about the worm scared me. I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.8.4.

Beyond the fact I’m now feeling safer, I was wowed by just how much WordPress has improved in all this time and versions that were released. The admin dashboard was completely unfamiliar to me.
But it now looks really cool, and managing and posting on the blog feels much smoother now, everything feels much more professional.
Damn, I should have updated ages ago.

In the process of upgrading I also tinkered with other technical parts of this site too. I managed to discover that a traffic analysis WordPress plugin by the name of FireStats I installed many months ago apparently made the MySQL DB 10 times larger in size!
After removing it the DB was reduced from a 30+ MB size to a modest 3MB database.
It might be psychological only, but browsing my blog seems so much faster now.

In any case, the bottom line is that it seems to me like the web site is running much safer, better and faster now. Good for me!

XKCD’s “Lease” – Do you ever feel like that?

Avi — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:15:59 +0000

Do you ever feel like that?
I know I do sometimes..

VLC Media Player 1.0.0 Released

Avi — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:11:54 +0000

VLC media player, the best open source, multi-platform, codec independent, video player is finally out of Beta!

It’s truly the best out there. Supports Windows, Linux and Mac. Will play literally anything you’ll throw at it without installing anything else. I’ve been using it for years now, it was ALWAYS in Beta. Not anymore, it’s now officially released as version 1.0.0.