Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Technology

Firefox extensions that I use

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As you can see, I am currently running Firefox 1.5.0.1 as my web browser. Here are the extensions that I have installed :

  • Image Zoom
  • Fasterfox
  • Adblock – perfect for blocking, you’ve guessed correctly, ads! It can also block annoying Flash animations…
  • FlashGot – connects KGet (which I use as a download manager) and Firefox.
  • GooglePreview – one of my favourites. It displays thumbnails of the websites returned when you search for something using Google.
  • Colourful Tabs
  • del.icio.us – you need to try the del.icio.us service. I’m sure you’ll be hooked. Check the popular links.
  • PDF Download
  • Download Statusbar
  • Wizz RSS News Reader – check it out. It’s a very good RSS aggregator.
  • Reveal
  • Gmail space – use your Gmail account like an online 2Gb disk! It works!!!

By itself, Firefox is really nice. But combined with extensions, it just blows away that piece of crap software from our friends (not) from Redmond :

Presentations made with LyX and Prosper

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LyX is a document processor which acts as a frontend to LaTeX. LyX is mostly used to write articles, reports and books.

LyX can also be used to create presentations (a la Powerpoint or OpenOffice Impress) if a suitable document class is installed (think of a document class as a predefined layout). One example of such a layout is Prosper.

As the documentation for Prosper is difficult to read, I have written my own in PDF format. Here is the LyX file to generate this nice PDF.

Please feel free to comment…

Intel-based Mac mini launched!!!

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Apple has done it again!

The Intel-based Mac mini has just been launched today by Apple. Here’s what you get for $799 (Rs 24,700) :

  • 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo processor
  • 2MB on-chip L2 cache
  • 667MHz frontside bus
  • 512MB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
  • 80GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA
  • Slot-loading SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
  • Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory
  • One FireWire 400 port
  • Four USB 2.0 ports
  • DVI, VGA, S-video and composite video output
  • Built-in speakers
  • Analog & Digital audio in/out
  • Built-in 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet
  • Built-in 54 Mbps AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi (802.11g)
  • built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
  • Apple Remote
  • Mac OS X v10.4
  • iLife ’06

Wow! This is what I call a perfect media center!!! It even has a remote control to drive the Front Row software. Only thing missing is a hardware video encoder. The networking capabilities are simply fantastic. I’m not too sure about the graphics card but this is not supposed to be a gaming machine after all…

There is a less expensive ($599) version with a single core processor.

And, in parallel, Apple has also launched the iPod Hi-fi :

It’s easy to guess its purpose. It sells at $349 which seems somewhat expensive but the sound quality must be top-notch.