Unsolved Mysteries

Have you ever caught yourself thinking that world is very small for even a single person to breathe properly... or it is too vast to explore even during multiple lifetimes? Have you ever wondered if such thing actually exists that is larger than our imagination?... It being so large that you could literally spend your entire life just to understand only a tiny its portion and yet you will be relieved if you're able to do so. However, in reality you will only put yourself in a more vulnerable situation if you actually try to seek that "knowledge". You'll feel as if you're trapped from everywhere and can't get out of its merciless clutch unless you know the entire truth.

Feeling that did you keep yourself busy fulfilling the tradition just like majority of the people do during their lifetime ignoring their existence. Maybe you've deliberately put them aside before even listening to what others have to say about them. If yes you can look at the situation in this way - without communication and looking back at history the wheel keeps being re-invented.

This time I've got a list of documentaries that you might find intriguing because of their mysticism. I'd recommend you to get some (all if possible) of the following documentaries from your local public library (or wherever available) and watch them in your leisure. Some of them are about the history of mankind. Others are about civilization, religion, culture, and the unique beliefs that are mysterious in several ways which couldn't be explained convincingly even by our modern science. You can analyze the viewpoints presented on these documentaries initiated by various school of thoughts. I personally feel that I always have the option and the freedom to believe in what I'd rather believe in especially when exposed to something that I'm not used to. But there's no harm in considering what others have to share either (especially if the message and intention is positive).

Udz ;-)


Buddhism

On karma, reincarnation and other beliefs

• The Tibetan Book of the Dead - A Way of Life - Liberation
• Wheel of Time (2003, Werner Herzog)

Ancient Civilizations

• Lost Civilizations, TimeLIFE - The Maya : The oldest civilization known to exist in Americas with evidence of existence
• Lost Civilizations, TimeLIFE - Egypt : is about the ancient history of ancient Egypt
• Mystery of the Sphinx : is about recent findings which contradict modern academic belief about origin of Sphinx

Prophecy

• The Other Nostradamus : is about Edgar Cayce (1877- 1945) known popularly as 'The Sleeping Prophet'
• The Prophecies of Isreal : is about Biblical Prophecies
• The Oracle : gives insight on how prophecy is practiced even now among Buddhist Tibetan Monks.

(Note: Sorry about the removal of links to the videos due to shutdown of the popular streaming video hosting site http://www.stage6.com/ on Feb 28, 2008)

Is The Time Right?

Everyone says that "the right time is NOW." But I’m still in turmoil about this mind-bending question. Partly because I have my doubts about trusting it and partly I doubt myself that I will be able to take it seriously. It’s true that living life isn’t simple - if you let it become difficult at first. The problem is you won’t exactly know which one of your moves will make it difficult. I mean you won’t exactly know when something is wrong unless it has been proven to be wrong. "Every grown man whom we think have everything is unhappy inside" - this is the assumed universal truth. All the rich people we see are poor from inside in one way or the other. Every King has got the issue of the size of his entire nation to take care of before he could rest in peace. But think about the person who doesn’t have anything. Doesn't he/she still have to take responsibility to get through with the present day in order to continue surviving till very next day? Believe me it’s as tough as a job of CEO trying to handle a trillion dollar corporation (besides CEO will get plenty of assistance). And children, whom we consider to be true to their heart and carefree most of the time are still unhappy because of apparently small problems in adult’s eyes being humongous for them to handle on their own.

So you might be wondering where in the world is happiness? Well, to be honest, I’m also not sure of its whereabouts. I can tell you one thing about it though. That it is some sort of instantaneous moment (something as quick as a spark) within ourselves that gives us motivation to strive for and work harder regardless of facing sorrows in our daily life. It’s the ideal state in which we all will temporarily forget how unhappy we really are and see this world in a completely different light. While we are there - the same annoying object we see everyday might become something worth appreciating. The same situation that might potentially bring us to emotional breakdown will be seen as a road leading to happiness. When we are happy we’d rather be thinking that it’s better that we didn’t have something we wanted dearly but couldn’t have, because of all the positive outcomes that are made possible by its absence.

Well isn’t happiness something to die for? The answer has to be true, but it isn’t for most of us. Why? Because it could only be achieved in long run and some of us might even label it as self fulfilling prophecy. This leaves it less desirable than its false alternative, "pleasure". It is basically short term phenomenon and people are able to get the taste of it quickly without having to incubate it within oneself. Another attribute of pleasure is that it is marketable. By exploiting this attribute we can see that others have created many fancy gears that basically stimulate this feeling by making people enjoying them pay only a little price (be it their money or part of their life). But the downside of it is nomatter how easily you might get instant gratification, it won’t be able to supply you with the aboundand energy which will keep you going during the time of adversity. Although I can’t question its importance particularly keeping those in mind that are enslaved by its divinity in his/her lifetime and have ended up believing that it is the perfect alternative to happiness, which it isn't. But addressing to those who still do believe in the power of happiness, I’d suggest them to gather as much experience in the lifetime as possible, not fussing about whether it will be applicable to them or not, because only experience will make you realize the truth. We can read all about almost anything and get knowledgeable but in the end only experience will make us wiser.

Saying all these I’d like to let one of my secrets out. When I’ve lived my life till the very end - I'd want to die happily. Maybe it's one of your secret desires too...

Question of Sanity in Cyber Era

To find the content that is offensive is very easy over the Internet (I'm sure you already have plenty of stuff relating to this in your mind). In fact, they usually take viral form and spread across very quickly after their release. You don't have to go and search for them - they will literally come and find you. What's missing in the translation of such content is the complete picture, which if you knew earlier you wouldn't have fallen for those to start with. Their nature would be to tap the viewers' emotion and provoke hate and anger towards certain topic it is referring to instead of positively uplifting it. By watching those our very sense will become defenseless and will begin to enjoy what others consider as a form of Entertainment and might even end up spreading them. My implication isn't that watching them is a wrongful deed and each and everyone who produce such content should be condemned. I'm fairly certain that they will continue to be there forever. The only thing I'm concerned about is the message those type of contents deliver to the people exposed to it, including minors who have as much accessibility as adults these days. All I'm trying to suggest is being a viewer you'll have use your best judgment and read between the lines. Mankind is referred to as the most intelligent being there ever lived and will ever be in this world because of the fact that we have a capacity to think. But if we don't think enough - the very reason that makes us superior will be proven as false. And worst outcome is possible if we actually begin to believe in all those messages promoting hate-culture. Till now we've only seen the political geographic boundary as the only thing coming between how people interact in general. But this new medium has got potential, if remain unchecked, not only to reinforce all the negativity that are already present, but also to create new ones which will be much tougher to beat once people start believing in it.

As a test simply visit any of the mass media content delivery sites such as Youtube and try to view the popular content (having at least 10,000 hits) which you personally think is false (I know that some of us will find more things on the Internet that contradict our belief and some will find less). After you've finished watching it try to go through the comment section. You'll be amazed at how many people support the message it is trying to deliver. I don't mean that there won't be anyone like you who doubt its authenticity, but you'll find plenty of people who will outnumber your type (including ones who just started believing in it after watching it). Of course there is a content rating system that lets you flag the inappropriate contents, but I honestly doubt its effectiveness especially if it appears to be friendly but is actually hostile underneath that has a power to disrupt even what seems like the unshakable foundation of our faith system.

So in this era marked by abundance of information, it's up to us to be an all rounded aware person who has got values and principles that genuinely support others' well being. We can view this opportunity of free flow of information as new found democracy which could be shaped into something significant by keeping a positive outlook. Or we can become arrogant and hard-headed who continues to support such disruptive behaviors that undermine others personally and interpersonally and blow away the opportunity we once had.

It is truly up to us to retain our sanity.

Food for thought: With great power comes great responsibility. (Spider Man)

A Must Hear Original Song by an Unsigned Artist

In one of my previous posts a song was featured from a classical music student turned alternative artist, Terra Naomi, who has a great talent. Things weren't ticking before her virtual tour on youtube. After her appearance in this phenomenal community driven mass media so called youtube, her fame skyrocketed in an unprecedented rate. Well she didn't exactly end up getting triple platinum hits or anything like that on the basis of records sold, but she sure became the queen in virtual world as her fan base from all over the world grew amazingly leding her to become #1 most subscribed artist in musician category last year. This definitely moved her ahead in her musical career.

Last night I came across a video from another unsigned artist from UK, zzzzzzzzap, who has about 21 videos on his inventory right now - mostly original (only 6 were cover version performed in his own style). I enjoyed listening to his music which primarily has a laid-back ballad sensation and acoustical in nature. I'm sure he has a very bright future ahead of him.

For now enjoy one of his songs that got hit on the front page (featured section) of youtube.



Here's the comment along with lyrics for this song (unedited) which the artist himself posted on youtube.

"I know I'd told myself I was having a YT break but this song has been slowly writing itself and willing me to post it up.
It's a tad throwaway but I sometimes like that in music - it's not good to take yourself too seriously. I may add to it at a later date..
This goes out to all those lovely people who subscribed to my channel and, in their comments, remarked that my vocals should be pushed up (*cough*, bobsaguitarist..) Hope I didn't disappoint

:|

_________________________
The Ballad of The Existentialist

There's a world outside that window
Would you step into the sun?
Chasing shadows can't be in you
When the battle has been won

Try so hard to verbalise it
Understand it for yourself
Just find your feet and stand beside me
Don't put yourself back on the shelf

Just know that I'll be by my side, you..
The world is sinking deep inside..

Paint a picture, tell a story
Leave a trace behind to see
In years to come you'll call me boring
In your reflection you'll see me

Just know that I'll be by your side, you..
The world is sinking deep inside..

__________________
Peace"

How We Lost Simplicity

“Bring forth what is true
Write it so it’s true
Defend it to your last breathe”
- A famous mathematician

As a child, I was raised to grow up with the idea of 'truth' being finite. I was told that everything could be explained in simpler terms. And that every question has got a simple and effective answer.

But later as I grew older and got in a position to think for myself, I found out that all of those childhood concepts happened to be just a shielding shell that’ll make us want to live our life without entangling ourselves in the web of consistent uncertainty that we don’t see coming at us. And so called 'truth' was rather flexible and definitely was infinite. It was flexible to an extent that all the false statements could be proven as if they were true. Only thing required was the majority, which could be attained in many ways. One of the ways is through shrewd politics, and the other one is through the realization that we often term as ethics. I mentioned politics first because it is a tool often misused by people whenever they’ve to declare something as truth - even if it was in-fact true. The politics add drama to the otherwise boring situation that might cause any fun loving-easygoing person to lose his/her interest in it faster than a lightening vanishing into a thin air.
Again we are programmed to give attention to the odd and irregularly dramatic news because those are the ones getting hit on the front page of every news. (How else do you all think Hollywood is able to keep its entertainment business alive by focusing on rather simple concept and extending it into an hour and a half movie which you HAVE to complete because you don't know how it is going to end?)

All we can do is helplessly hope for the 'real truth' to be discovered such that the unreal ones won't mutate our thoughts with their logical trapbox. I've referred them as logical because if you notice carefully you'll find most the unreal ones have logical appearance to them which is very deceiving and are quite hard to prove their falsehood. Especially if you believe in logic rather than open-ended thinking (for the sake of simplicity), it's bound to trap you and make you its victim who doesn't know how to think outside of the box. But the ones who actually think outside of the box won’t believe into something stupid like these right away. They’ll insist on gathering more proof behind the truthfulness of such statements, which might actually take longer than anyone is aware of. This might trigger the person coming up with simple answer to redecorate it by attaching sufficient bells and whistles so as to convince those who oppose their thoughts. And by the time they've finished decorating with all the flares and creating never before heard or seen footage, the concept will be so complicated that even the 'real truth' will seem as if they're absolutely fickle.

By that time we'd have lost the significance of simplicity in the quest of finding it.

Check The "Internet People" Out

If you've been watching the popular videos on the net over the time, especially on youtube, then you might know all the people that this video is talking about. Creator of this animated video has portrayed each and every one of them distinctly such that you won't miss to identify even with their brief on screen appearance. And best part is backing original soundtrack which is absolutely hilarious.

September 11, 2001 Tribute

(Photo courtesy: *Micky*)

Firefox Tweak - Speed it Up

We all know that Firefox is a great browser which beats its only competitor, Microsoft Internet Explorer, in many ways. Its primary features are bullet proof security, extensibility, and usability in general since it complies 100% with W3C standard - all of which seems to be seriously missing from its rival.

But lately I've been having difficulty using Firefox. The main reason being the browser taking unreasonably longer time to load even the simplest site - like vanilla Google.com (not even iGoogle). I guess most of you are facing the similar problem in the newer releases of Firefox (esp above v1.5). In case you are experiencing this I'd like to assure you that you're not alone. At first glance the problem seemed like it has to do either with the network outage, memory overload, or one of the gazillion unknown potential reasons that could be causing the faithful Firefox to become slow and pathetic. But luckily, after bit of an analysis, it is evident that it has got nothing to do with any of the above mentioned causes. And the good news is that it could easily be fixed by tweaking the configuration of the browser and overriding its one of the not so useful built-in restriction.

Note that the effect of the following method could only be witnessed by the users having broadband connection.

STEPS:
1) On your browser address bar type about:config which will take you to the configuration page of the browser displaying various parameter that browser loads during application startup.
2) There you have to find three different entries and change each of their values as indicated.

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" by double clicking it
Set ""network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" by double clicking it
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 25 by double clicking the entry and entering number in the inputbox. This means it will make 25 requests at once. (This doesn't work in dial-up since such network has the limitation of handling only one request at a given time)

3) Create a new entry named ""nglayout.initialpaint.delay" by Rt. clicking anywhere on the body of browser and selecting New > Integer from the pop-up menu. Then set its value to "0". This is the amount of time browser waits before taking any action on received information.

4) Close the browser and restart it in order for the changes to take effect.

That's about it. Now your browser should be loading pages at a faster pace than before.

Happy Surfing!!!

Note: To those using IE, its highly recommended that you switch to Firefox. You can download this free application by following the link provided in the right column of this site in the section "Download Cool Tools"

Cincinnati Labor Day Fireworks 2006

This is a partial video footage which my friend and I managed to capture last year during this time of the year (Sep 3, 2006 to be specific). We watched the show from riverside of Newport, KY. Even though this video is incomplete it includes the ending fireworks sequence, which is a must see for anyone who haven't seen it before.



Following is the you tube user 5chw4r7z's video taken from a height that captured the beautiful waterfall type firework display which both of us missed in our shot.

Voki - Get The Interactive Avatar For Your Website

Hey its me once again coming to you with the finer things Web 2.0 have to offer. Today I've come up with a tool to make your social experience interactive. The site is called Voki.com which lets you create your avatar, aka 'Voki', that interacts with the visitors of your site by delivering your message to them. You can also send the personalized voki to your friends via e-mail.

The site lets you create your voki, which could be an anime figure (like mine), a classic figure resembling real life people, a cartoon, an animal, or simply a random character out of fiction. It even lets you tweak small details such as the color of its hair, its vitality and so on.

Another feature that I particularly liked about the site is that it lets you record the message, you intend to deliver through voki, in number of ways. You can either create your message by uploading your existing audio track stored on your computer, or recording the message in real time through your microphone attached to the computer, use the integrated Text to Speech utility, or even let the voki audio center call you (automated) and get your message recorded through your phone (which would be more convenient to some if they are creating voki for the person who is currently one the road...I guess). Jokes aside - recording via the phone feature is in fact an awesome idea that could have many potential applications especially by other net based companies.

There's more than one way to use voki. Already people have found out innovative usage for it. One RJ, Gary Craig, have used voki in his website to imitate Bill Clinton and deliver message in a hilarious way. There could be millions of use for this type of cool tool. Its your job to figure out.

Well, this is all I have for you right now. Be sure to tune in next time to get more insight on undiscovered tools, tips 'n tricks, and information on other interesting stuff that I come across while exploring the web.

Jamstudio : Create Your "Garage Band" Without The Band

Jamstudio is your destination on the Internet to create your own music, even if you don't have any knowledge on how to play musical instrument. The free version of this flash based application hosted on the site lets you experiment around with the various loops produced by basic instruments such as Drums, Acoustical Guitar, Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, Piano and Electronic Synthesizer in order to create your composition. But the more interesting loops are available through the sound add-on, that is free for a time being, and is planned to be charged on a subscription basis in near future.


When you visit the site you'll be provided with the Help which will walk you through the entire application in 7 simple steps. Then you'll be set to create your masterpiece. The App lets you save your songs after you've registered (for Free) and gives you the option to share with your friends through e-mail.

...So Rock On!!!

You can download the songs I created with Jamstudio by clicking on the following links. Just to clear the confusion - The site doesn't give you the option of exporting your creation in MP3. I used the application that came with my soundcard to capture the music that was being played back from the Jamstudio and saved it as MP3 manually.

Zombie Clone
Sweetest Melody

Labor Day 2007 Fireworks in Cincinnati

Here are the pictures I shot during the 31st Anniversary of WEBN fireworks that was held yesterday in Cincinnati on the banks of Ohio River. I've been attending this event for past 3 years. Each year to get different perspective, I've been going to the different location from where you can view this spectacular half an hour display organized by WEBN, the Rock Station of Cincinnati. This year I went to Eden Park, located on the top of the hill from where you can get a real nice view of Newport, KY, and Downtown Cincinnati separated by Ohio River. I admit that it can't beat the sensation one gets from watching the fireworks from the river bank itself (which I did last year), but there's no way I could've captured the entire firework as it happened if I was so close to the scene. And the best part is that I didn't have to waste any time on traffic after the show was over. Last year it took about 2 hours just to get home directly from the place of event (via driving route of 15 minutes in normal condition). Besides, I also avoided getting temporarily deaf due to the loud sound produced by the explosion.

So taking consideration of all these things I'd say yesterday's location is definitely worth visiting again.



External Links:

The Kentucky Post: Word of mouth (and fireworks) launched Riverfest
The Enquirer: Cincinnati fireworks going global
WEBN Rock Station
Cincinnati Bell

HDR Photo Stream

Hi guys, I've uploaded some of my HDR images which I've been working on with lately in my flickr account. You can check them out and tell me how you feel by giving me feedback.



You can download any of them, include them in your collection, distribute them as long as they are in their original form. If you're going to use any of them for the commercial purpose please let me know.

Hope to get your feedback,
UDz

Anatomy of Viral Linking

Have you been thinking about making your blog popular and wished that there was a simpler way to do it other than by implementing complex SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques and painfully analyzing the traffic while hoping it to grow in a rate you originally anticipated?

Well I'll tell you about a sure way to boost the authority of your site in Technorati, and ranking in Alexa - especially if it isn't high already. I want to thank my friend Ice Dragon for this tip which I didn't put into consideration earlier.

One of the ways to promote your blogs is to follow the these four easy steps:

1) Copy the set of links provided by the viral linking project websites. (there are plenty out there on the blogosphere)
2) Put your link to the top of the list.
3) Post it in your blog explaining how works and encourage others to do the same. (The explaining part doesn't have to be as complicated as in this website)
4) Check back from time to time for all those who added your site on their list. If their site isn't already on your list then make sure you add them after you've discovered it via Linkbacks.

And that's about it! Simple, isn't it?

Wondering how this will work??? I'll brief you on the process if you aren't already familiar with it.

This technique is based on what is known as viral-linking or speed-linking. It is termed like that because it spreads like virus once you post it in your blog and encourage your readers to do the same. After they've done what you did earlier, you'll be getting back links to your blog (this is also known as blog reaction in Technorati meaning that other site is pointing a link towards your site). In the end everyone on the list would be referring to everyone else. So your authority goes up.

This is considered to be very useful especially to get higher page rank in search engines like Google, and to increase authority in Technorati, which otherwise would easily take months - even years. What makes it even appealing is that the back links that you get from the sites in your list would most probably be hosted under different Class C IP addresses in a different part of the world, which is given more weight than backlinks coming from those hosted under the same.

For advanced users:
To check if the list of sites fall under different class C addresses use this tool.

One of the ways to check pingback is by visiting Technorati and clicking on the Authority icon of your site. Say, if the authority is displayed to be 3 then upon clicking it you should be able to see all three sources from which you are getting the ping (aka blog reaction).

Just be sure to check the ping of your site time to time and add the link of the new sites to your list that have added you. To make sure your site is added to the list of previous sites you might need to send message to the author if they accidentally forgot to check their backlinks.

I'm sorry that I'm not able to provide you with any link this time. You'd have to go to other websites participating in such project in order to get the list of links. I just wanted to give detail on how viral linking works.

If you found the info useful (or you noticed that I missed something) you can leave your feedback via commenting on this page. I'll gladly get in touch with all my readers ASAP.

Build Your Own 2-Channel Guitar Recording Studio Without Expensive Studio Gears

I'm posting this to follow up on what I promised in my previous article Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle). Originally I thought of telling you guys how I connected my guitar using only my computer and recorded the demo sound I posted in my above post. But with the bit of research I've been able to come up with much useful setup that is equivalent to 2-Channel Audio Studio specialized to record guitar w/effect + vocals simultaneously each in 44.1 KHz frequency, which is equivalent to CD Quality (I haven't gotten a chance to check on other settings. Maybe you can try and tell us about your finding).

I used my P4 2.4GHz desktop for this project that is equipped with 3 sound cards (including 1 built-in SoundMAX sound card). Usually I'd only be using my PRIMARY sound card (Audigy SE) most of the time which I purchased especially to experience EAX sound effects. But this project utilizes all three cards to record sound from two different sources to 2 separate tracks simultaneously. The best part is even if you currently don't have 3 cards right now you can easily find them in the market without burning the holes in your pocket since they are pretty ordinary ones (I'd suggest you to get the ones supporting the latest version of ASIO low latency WDM driver. Hint - most of the non Creative counterparts will support those drivers, even the primitive ones like SoundMax).
One thing you'll have to do though is get your hands on decent multi-track audio editing software, and Guitar Effect Processing software. I currently use Cool Edit Pro 2.1 (which is now acquired by Adobe and is sold under the name Adobe Audition) and Amplitube 2. Both of them are great tools.

Here's the the chart which tells you exactly how my devices are all connected. The configuration should be pretty self explanatory with the presented description. Just click on the image to enlarge.



You can let me know how you felt about it by commenting or writing to me at udz.blogger AT gmail.com

Related Articles:

Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle)
Guns N Roses's Sweet Child O Mine Guitar Tracks

Music Videos Dedicated to Beautiful City, Kathmandu

The following video features photographs of different parts of the city. The background music is performed by one of the legendary Rock musicians - Bob Seger. The song is called "Kathmandu" which appeared in his album titled Beautiful Loser released in 1975.


"What To Do in Kathmandu?" is yet another music video telling a typical Kaliwood/Bollywood style story where the bad guys (guys in black) are after good guys (those in regular clothing running away from the bad guys).


To learn more about my hometown please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathmandu

Guns N Roses's Sweet Child O Mine Guitar Tracks

Here's another guitar mix that I created. But this time its intro of G'n'R 's Sweet Child O' Mine . The program is still bugging me with latency problem when I try to record guitar sound with heavy effects. But with lite effects it tends to work fine.

Related Articles:

Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle)
Build Your Own 2-Channel Guitar Recording Studio Without Expensive Studio Gears

Youtube Launches New Service That Lets You Edit Your Videos Online

I created WebXplorer account on Youtube last week. An hour ago I was fooling around with one of the Nepali music videos, which I finished creating, by adding different soundtrack (Perfect Circle's - The Hollow) as the background music instead of the original. I was thinking of using Youtube Remixer (BETA) tool to do this stuff, but it kept giving me error after error. Therefore I ended up using Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1 which is a free video editing utility that ships with Windows XP service pack. I uploaded the contents, both original as well as remix, to my WebXplorer account on Youtube for you guys to see. Tell me what do you think about it.

Youtube Remixer is actually Adobe Premiere Express Edition. It doesn't have jam packed features. For that you'll probably need Pro tools such as Adobe Premiere Pro Edition. But once it becomes fully operable* it will allow you to create the video like the one I've created using Movie Maker without using any other tool besides your web browser.

Some other sites offering similar kind of video editing service are jaycut.com, jumpcut.com,
motionbox.com, dabble.com, eyespot.com, mojiti.com (Only lets you add annotation to your videos), photobucket.com among dozen others.

Screenshot of Youtube Remixer (The New Feature Available to Youtube Members)

I'm a newbie on video editing so please don't expect much from my video.



*Currently the feature of adding external audio to the video isn't available.

We Feel Fine: An Improvising Digital Art Masterpiece

Talking about our feelings have you ever imagined what would it be like to represent the aggregate feelings of all the human beings on this planet? Neither did I. But a digital programmer/artist Jonathan Harris did that and has accomplished to a certain degree (at least covering those who wrote their feelings online in their personal blogs) by creating a web-based program called “We Feel Fine.”

He considers himself as storyteller. He believes that the people all around the world are similar in many different ways but we all have trouble seeing that because we have gaps. The gap could be due to our language, ethnicity, wealth, religion, age, gender, sexuality, education etc. And we all try to define ourselves by those, despite of things which we have in common.

One of the things that is common to all of us is the very deep need to express ourselves. There’s nothing new about the self expression. We try to rectifying by various means such as creating art, writing poems, singing songs, scripting editorials and sending them into the newspaper, gossiping with friends. What's new about the way it is happening now is that it is happening through our expression on the Internet. People have been leaving behind foot-prints that give their moment of self expression.

He tries to bring those foot prints together via his program that collects the data representing feeling from many different sources across the Internet. Later the program interprets it graphically in the form of beautiful animation or the still photograph that tells the story. One of the cool features of the program is that it lets you view the result based on the feelings of the people falling only in certain demography -Such as the feelings of girls who are in their twenties. The summary of these types of data could be a very useful for different research purposes. Who knows, it might even solve the mystery of leading cause of suicides and will help to device the prevention instead of having many different specialists on this subject aiming in dark without such relevant information collected from the mass.

Here are some of the inspiring photographs that was generated by the program by linking thoughts with the pictures that are found in the same page.

www.flickr.com

You can view his presentation on 'We Feel Fine' at TED.com by clicking on the following link
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/144

To view Jonathan's complete works visit his website http://www.number27.org/.

Note: You need to have JAVA Runtime files installed on your computer in order to run the program 'We Feel Fine'. You can follow this link and click 'Download' button next to 'Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 Update 2' to get the latest version.

Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle)

I've just finished composing multi-channel guitar track using only computer and my Epiphone Les Paul Special II connected via line-in of one of the the sound cards. The purpose if this experiment is to show how you can hook up your guitar to your computer and be able to turn it into a music recording station. This is useful if you are a hobbyist who doesn't want to spend a lot buying expensive hardware that does the purpose - or if you simply want to play your guitar using your favorite guitar effects without needing costly gear. It is possible to eliminate the guitar amplifier if you have decent computer sound system or headphone. I am going to update this post and put more detail about this project later with all the information you might need to set up one of your own.

For now enjoy listening to these short tracks that I composed:
Perfect Jingle.mp3 : Created using RHCP Type clean guitar solo performed in blues scale (my best effort to sound good playing solo). Note that the delay was caused by about .15 - .30 ms latency due to the loopback guitar input through line-in (which is basically slow) and delay due to processing the effects by CPU (making it even more slower) which basically screwed up timing of the lead.
Perfect Jingle - (Without Solo).mp3 : You can add your own guitar or any other instrument solo to this file.

Distribution of theses files as well as modifying the content as long as original composition credit is unaltered is permitted.

The rhythm chords are Am, Dm, G, Cadd9 and (Cadd9/E7 each strummed once towards the end) played in order.

If you've created anything special by using above file(s) then you can upload the content to the web and can share its link with me and other readers of this site. I used http://www.hotlinkfiles.com, which of course lets you hot link the freely hosted multimedia contents (Nice!). If you want to use it just for one time and don't care if the contents will be made available to public, in that case you'll be better off using public uploading feature in the site that lets you skip the entire registration process.

You can contact me regarding any of the issues/suggestions in this or any other article.

Related Articles:

Guns N Roses's Sweet Child O Mine Guitar Tracks
Build Your Own 2-Channel Guitar Recording Studio Without Expensive Studio Gears

Amazing Motion Detecting CG Animation in Flash

Click on any of these images to open the corresponding flash demo which detects the cursor motion and follows it. Pretty impressive!

The company's homepage features an avatar which is even more interactive than this one. For instance, you can tickle her nose and watch her sneeze, or ring the bell to get her attention. Amazing, isn't it? What's even more amazing is that the entire animation was created by using only a single photograph of the subject. The 2D to 3D rendering is done by the software which enables the avatars to be interactive. There's a tremendous possibility of this technology being utilized by all sorts of industries. Imagine a web based tutor that interacts with its students, or the e-commerce sales assistant that makes the buying experience as close to the real life as possible. What about web based interactive games in which the character interacts to your every set of complex cursor moves - just like Wii-motes detecting your hand motion? Due to all these wonderful possibilities I believe that we'll be seeing more of these in the future.

Source: Motionportrait.com .

numbr : Disposable Phone Numbers That You Can Use

Hey, have you ever wanted to get a phone number just for a temporary activity/project? For instance you wanted to sell something in the Craigslist and list your number in which you could be reached, or list your number in the classifieds in the newspaper. What about if you are dedicated to your business but don’t want to give your cell phone number to your partners that is accessible all the time? We all value our privacy and have life so we all wish something of our remains private. Don’t you wish that the number you gave for the above purpose just disappeared so that you won’t have to terminate and reinitiate your contract just because of this kind of costly publicity?

Well if the answer “Yes” to any of the above questions then you should definitely check out the site http://numbr.com which is being increasingly visited day per day for the very purpose. This site lets you secure a randomly generated phone number in your own area code (if you are located in any US city) that you could distribute to your temporary contacts. Instead of calling you directly in your original number your contacts will call the number you got through numbr which will get routed to your original number keeping it secret all the time while you get the job done the way you wanted it to be. Those numbers are disposable. Meaning once the time limit of keeping the number active, ranging from an hour to as long as a month, which you could choose during the setup expires, it will no longer be yours. But you can always sign-up for another one without burning a hole in your pocket since it is available free of cost. The site provides plenty of features to make its service convenient to its users. The service gives features such as blocking all calls from blocked Caller IDs, filtering calls of telemarketers, screening the call before you reply (very useful feature), setting private hours in which you don’t wish to be disturbed by incoming calls, access to your call logs, voicemails and many-many more.

One cool feature that has recently been added is iNumber widget which lets you record a personal greeting that you can embed in your listing, blog or any of your web-page. The reader can then choose to call you after going thru your greeting in your numbr.

The history of the company tells us that its name was originally called Craigsnumber that was developed for the use of users of Craigslist who are trying to post the classified ads to the site. numbr is following the footsteps of its ancestor by providing this unique service for free.

The introduction of services like these would make millions of applications possible that will help to make web a better place.

If there’s any other application that you could think of besides what is mentioned above then let us all know about it by posting comments. If you have any suggestion regarding this article you can reach me at udz.blogger AT gmail.com

		Listing online? Protect your privacy.
		Get your free numbr
		http://www.numbr.com

Pay Only Flat Fee of $6.95 For Using eFax Account for 3 Months

This is helpful especially if you are running a short term project, hunting job, or doing anything in which you require a Fax number that you need to send or receive. For this problem what’s better solution than eFax?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with eFax, it lets you send and receive paperless Fax using your computer (via e-mails and attachments) which is traditionally sent and received by using Fax Machine that runs on paper. This surely isn’t much of a commodity now a days especially since the technology has progressed tremendously.

Ok, lets be clear that, the technique which I’m going to share with you might work in your case but isn’t guaranteed due to the involvement of human factor in the form of Customer Representitive. I’m going to tell you what you must do to make it work like in my case.

First of all eFax lets you sign-up for 1 month free trail easily by only giving your credit card number (which won’t be charged until the beginning of billing cycle if you willingly keep your account open or if you forget to cancel it). BTW most of the authentic trial schemes found on the Internet work in similar fashion. If you step ahead to one more day than your trial termination date then it’ll charge your account with whopping $16.95/Mo subscription fee + $10 one time setup fee. One way to avoid this is REMEMBERING to cancel your account before trial period is over. Or if you aren’t done using your fax number and hope to continue using the same number for some time in the future (say for additional month or two) then you can try doing what worked in my case. If you don’t care about having the same number then you can cancel the previous account by the end of trial period and sign up for new one freely by using different e-mail address and credit card.

In the end of trial period you can go online to their site and go to Chat with customer representative feature. This is the only way you can cancel your eFax account, i.e. by chatting with the customer rep (availability is 24/7).
(Link to the chat page is https://www.efax.com/en/efax/twa/page/chat . This could also be found by following the link http://www.eFax.com/cancel)

This is what you must do after that:
- Talk to the representative in a friendly manner and tell him/her that you wish to cancel your account. You may try this trick even if you do not wish to cancel to give benefit of doubt.
- They may ask you for the reason you want to cancel your account – tell them that it is too costly for you to continue using this account.
- At this point they will make an offer that you could continue using your same number for as less as $6.95 that’ll be valid for entire 90 days period from the day you signed up to eFax. So roughly calculating you’ll still have 60 more days before your account is charged fully.
During this time you can use as much as 30 Pages/Month for sending efax and 130 Pages/Month for receiving faxes without additional charge. If you exceed these limits then you’ll be charged additionally based on how much extra you’ve sent and received.
Note: that the starting day of the offer is the day you signed up for the account – and you’ve already used first 30 days.
- You may want to verify that there’s no more additional charge they are taking from you besides what’s stated just to be on the safe side.

The technique presented in this article is valid as long as the company has the similar backup subscription plan to retain their customer. Or it might also depend on the mood or the reaction of the customer service representative. So be patient and try to be friendly to them – it’ll pay off.

If they didn’t give you an offer instantaneously then you might want to ask them if they have any discounted plan – after all you told them that you’re leaving because it was too costly, right? It tells them that you’ll stay if you are given a discount. By convincing and making you to stay, even at half the price of other regular customers, they are still gaining positive rating. So give them a chance to make a best offer to do that. You’ll never know what’s in the bag for you unless you become patient. I’ve listened to many such cases like these from my friends which have convinced them to continue taking the service from the same company they would otherwise have quit due to the high service charge.

So next time you are in the end of the service contract period you know what to do, Right?

Facebook Code Leakage

Recently there's been a code leakage of the most popular Social Networking websitesite Facebook.
Its written primarily in PHP.

You can get the copy of Source Code of Homepage and Search Page from the following website.
http://facebooksecrets.blogspot.com/

One Stop Lyrics Search Engine

Seekalyric.com is the one stop site for searching lyrics. While listening to the MP3 tracks via Seeqpod.com (featured in the previous post), Seekalyric.com provides an excellent accompaniment to deliver the accurate lyrics. It is very user friendly which displays most of the portion of lyrics in the same window without needing to be scrolled down as in the case of other lyrics search engines.

Listen to Your Favourite Music Online Without Subscription Charge

For those who are looking for free online streaming music, the site capable of searching music like Seeqpod.com might be the ultimate destination. The site is an online music search engine having an integrated player. The cool thing about this site is that you can create a playlist of songs you wish to listen to and be able to access it later by logging on to the site through any other computer having an internet connection. It lets you search the MP3 files hosted by other sites and stream to your desktop. You also have the option to share the playlist either through e-mail or by embedding it on your blog, if you have one However it doesn't let you save the music from its interface. But there a simple trick that will do the task.


Hint:
To save the the track that have been buffered by Seeqpod go through the following steps:
1) As soon as Seeqpod finishes buffering the file go to your browser's cache (Firefox users could type in about:cache into the address bar to reveal the location of browser cache)
2) Look for the file recently added by sorting out according to Date Modified (firefox in this case gives a meaningless filename) Usually a mp3 song will be 2-4MB in size (or could be more depending on the encoded bitrate and length of the song).
3) Or find the suspicious file if under IE temp folders since its unpredictable to tell where would it be among different temp folders by sorting out according to the date modified.
4) Copy the file to another folder... rename it... and enjoy playing it as many times as you like.

Note: Windows users must turn on the option to view hidden files and folders to be able to access the file in the stated location. You can easily do it by dbl. clicking My Computer, click menu item Tools > Folder Options... , on the popup window click View tab, and search for Hidden Files and Folders option. Finally select Show Hidden Files and Folders > OK to enable viewing hidden files on the system you're working on.

Using Firefox to retrieve this is easiest since there is only once browser cache location unlike multiple folders utilized by IE. Hence, making the recently added file easier to find .

The site also has the video feature which I personally didn't find as attractive as its audio player. The search result is also not as extensive as what you'll get while searching audio.

Other notable features are share feature which will let you share your playlist with your friends via e-mail. The "Discovery" button which will let you listen to recently discovered music that SeeqPod has found on the Web. It is helpful if you aren't sure what you want to listen to.

By looking at how the songs are added in the discovery window we can guess that the site uses some sort of webcrawler that indexes the media files (particularly MP3 and AVI) inside the site which will be retrieved later when someone searches using the particular parameter reflecting the file.

Here's a sample playlist that I created earlier. Sample Playlist.

Another site that lets you do the similar stuff is B3ta.cr3ation . Whichever you choose to visit enjoy the free music that these sites provide as long as they last because I'm pretty sure that RIAA is going to get on their tail pretty soon.