Posts tagged "tech"

It’s more of a generic desktop this time around. While Rainmeter is back for the shot, they all close when I turn on Crysis 2! With the game takin up most of my time, I don’t have much left to give to my lappy. As one can see from the post here I’ve done quite an overclock to get the game running smoothly (and no fire yet!)

Well, to get down to the elements of the desktop on display—there’s a whole new Rainmeter 2.0, running some components from Enigma, as well as a few custom scripts to control foobar2000, and a Word of The Day skin; and a beautiful Windows 7 theme, Soft7.

Tools and Skins used:

Rainmeter 2.0
Enigma
Soft7 for Windows 7

PS: Back to Crysis 2 now! I’ve been away from it too long!

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Yeah that’s right… 6300 3DMarks in 3DMark06 on standard settings…

System Config:
Dell XPS M1530
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T7250 (2M Cache, 2.00 GHz, 800 MHz FSB)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256MB GDDR3 (OC@680/990) 195.62 drivers
3.00 GB RAM / 250GB 5200 rpm HDD
Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7600

Default GDDR3 8600M GT’s Clocks are 475/702 which give a Base Score of ~4200 3DMarks… That is a monstrous 50% increase for an approximate 40% overclock! And the amazing thing is that there’s only about a 4ºC change in peak temperatures… Have a look at the babe…

This babe plays Crysis 2 at a passable 30fps with Advanced Settings@1024×768… Astounding for a 4 year old laptop!

PS: To be a little on the safe side, it would be advisable to overclock to 650/950 or so… That is considering the game crashed with 690/990 clocks in less than a minute…

(edit: 05/05 2011) After loads of gaming—almost done with Crysis 2, played quite a bit of SimCity 4, restarted Unreal Tournament, even took a jab at CS again—I must say, it is completely stable for all ranges of games at 630/940…

I’ve also got a lot of traffic querying for original clocks and best drivers. So here’s a bit of info:
The 8600M GT comes (or rather, came) in 2 variants—one with DDR2, and another with GDDR3. The bandwidth difference makes the Effective Memory Clock at 800Mhz (400×2) for DDR2 and 1404Mhz (702×2) for GDDR3. The rest of the clocks are same.. So here we go:

DDR2 GDDR3
Core 475 475
Shader 950 950
Memory 400 702

And as for the best drivers, I have noticed that 195.62 drivers I use here tend to be unstable, and specially so for games like SimCity 4. The latest nVidia Verde drivers—267.76—did fine too. In fact, I have them on right now…

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The last post showed an ultra-cluttered desktop, albeit highly information packed. What I have today is a minimalist desktop—one I adopted a few days back—after having issues with the default Win7 theme in Foobar2k. The screenshot features the FlureVS, and Foobar2k.

So, to get something like this, you’d need the following:
FlureVS
SBD Start Orb
Monolite-plus-mod-v5

and obviously, Foobar2k and Windows 7 😀

I’ve also done some modding besides the stuff I’ve just mentioned, specially in the Foobar2k theme, and little stuff like font sizes, etc in the Win7 theme.

To get the name on the Taskbar:

  1. Create a blank folder having the name you want
  2. Create a toolbar pointing to the folder
  3. Done!

To install the mentioned theme:

  1. Get and run Universal Theme Patcher (you’ll get loads of links, so no worries about that)
  2. Patch the system files (this step is necessary to use shell customizations, which almost all themes rely on)
  3. Copy theme files to WindowsResourcesThemes
  4. Open the .theme/.themepack file to install theme
  5. Done!

To get the clean desktop, either delete/move all the stuff or Right-Click (on desktop) -> Show -> Uncheck Desktop Icons.

Enjoy the minimalist experience.

PS: If you’re reading this, seriously try Foobar2k once. You’ll forget all other MusicPlayers

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That previous desktop customization was pretty basic compared to the one I’m putting up today. I know that one looked better (less cramped,) but this one packs a hell lot more data in the screen. It’s Rainmeter backed up by a set of Gaia walls, and surprisingly, Windows Gadgets!

Some of the info on display:

  • Weather (3 Days forcast, Current Day details)
  • CPU Usage Graph
  • Swap, RAM Usage Graph
  • Network Usage Graph (Download and Upload)
  • CD Art (displayed from iTunes)
  • Sunrise, Sunset times; Moon phase
  • Disk Space (there’s even that nifty li’l Recycle Bin)
  • RSS Feeds
  • Outlook Tasks
  • Wireless Connectivity

Hope you guys like it…

Tools and Skins used:

Rainmeter 1.3 beta
Enigma
HUD Vision
Weather
Arcs
(You’ll get Enigma+Arcs in Rainmeter by default)

Wallpaper:

Gaia 08 Suite

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Things have been quiet on the blog for a while now. I’ve been busy with foobar2000, the semester project, etc among other things. I’ve finally got time to post an update. I’ve been working on this (not quite so) new feature in Google Books, called My Library. It is to, in their words, “help people harness the power of Google search within their own personal book collections.”And it has somehow got me to set up the library, something I’d done back in an Orkut app in First year.

Well anyway, here’s the Library so far. It’s got almost all the books I’ve read in college (68 and counting) 😀

Here’s a li’l screen shot. I’m really grateful for this tool. And I must add, it’s one of the few things Google’s got right.

 PS: As an afterthought, this not so new feature has been around since 2007, so I think it qualifies as old 😀

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“Browser Wars” is a metaphor used to refer to the Market Share that each of the browsers have/enjoy (have it any way you please.) Here I compare how the same browsers compare in their share of this blog (Um yeah, I am a bit conceited.) Well anyway, here’s the data.

It is pretty obvious why IE has been losing out their market capitalization for a while now. You may not forgive me for presuming, but I’ll just assume you have and go right ahead (and like I’ve mentioned here, you would be better off forgiving.) In a blog visited almost entirely by the youth (but mainly engineers at that,) it is obvious that Mozilla and Google’s offerings have almost entirely overshadowed the Microsoft’s native Internet Explorer. This seems to suggest that any computer savvy person seems to prefer installing a browser besides IE.

While I keep track, I don’t often bother to change browsers just because something new is out. But it seems that even among the young folk, there are many who don’t seem to keep a track of their browsers and their updates. So I’m gonna go on one of my rants as to which browser to pick. In fact, I’m doing that even as you read this.

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I’ve always wanted to put up a screen of my desktop. I’ve been modding theme files and customizing it since the WinVista days. And finally, I get myself to do it. Hope you guys like it…

Yes I know it says “variation”, but I haven’t modified Gnometer. I’ve just used it in a different way… The basic idea was to put all the feeds and internet grabbers in one place, and sysinfo in another. And Gnometer comes with a handy toolbar too! And of course, the ever handy Enigma icons for Sunrise/set info, moon phase, etc. Boy, I do LOVE my desktop.

Tools and Skins used:

Rainmeter 1.3 beta
Gnometer
Enigma
Arcs
(Don’t worry. The links are just for reference. The themes come by default in Rainmeter now…)

Wallpaper:

Leaf Cutter Ants

I’ve been using Rainmeter since 0.1x (Feb 2006). It’s been a wonderful journey. I have a series of pics to show, starting from my first desktop, to Enigma and more. And maybe someday I’ll get around to doing it. Till then. Ja ne.

PS: Know what? The day’s finally come! But I don’t have as many pics as I thought… Do check out the desktop evolution post.

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C++:

template <class BidirectionalIterator>
bool next_permutation(BidirectionalIterator first,
                      BidirectionalIterator last) {
    if (first == last) return false;
    BidirectionalIterator i = first;
    ++i;
    if (i == last) return false;
    i = last;
    –i;
    for(;;) {
        BidirectionalIterator ii = i–;
        if (*i <*ii) {
            BidirectionalIterator j = last;
            while (!(*i <*–j));
            iter_swap(i, j);
            reverse(ii, last);
            return true;
        }
        if (i == first) {
            reverse(first, last);
            return false;
        }
    }
}

An amazing piece of code! This is the next_permutation() function in the Standard C++ Library, defined in <algorithm>. And the best part… it’s O(n) complexity.

Iterators are a generalization of pointers. That should make it much easier to understand 😀
It checks for the initial conditions of 0 length and 1 character strings, and then iterates through the given string from the last character to find the next largest permutation. 

What I wonder is it’s response when we enter Alphanumeric data, or even Mixed Alphabets (Smalls and Caps). That should break it. 🙂

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Key features

  • Quad-band GSM and quad-band 3G support with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
  • 3.5″ 16M-color LED-backlit TFT capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 960 px resolution
  • Scratch-resistant glass front and rear, with fingerprint-resistant coating
  • 1GHz Apple A4 SoC; 512MB of RAM
  • 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and touch focus
  • 720p video recording at 30fps
  • Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
  • GPS with A-GPS connectivity; digital compass
  • Active noise cancellation with a dedicated secondary microphone
  • Excellent audio output quality

Main disadvantages

  • Hardware design is prone to reception issues
  • MicroSIM card support only
  • No Flash support in the web browser
  • No true multitasking for all applications
  • FaceTime video calls work only over Wi-Fi
  • No file transfer over Bluetooth or USB Mass Storage mode
  • No hardware shutter key for the camera
  • No FM radio
  • No stereo speakers
  • No microSD card slot (Somewhat compensated by a 16/32GB inbuilt memory)
  • No smart dialing
  • Too dependent on iTunes for loading multimedia content
  • Bluetooth v2.1
  • Poor loudspeaker performance

One would think the iPhone fans would know better. The only good part is, its $199! Sadly enough, it doesn’t apply to us Indians. (It’s about 50k+ here)

Source: GSMArena.com

PS: A thing I saw recently… looks like it’s real sturdy… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=950ufxJe1Uw

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lol… I was wondering about what I could write in here… before eventually realizing the images were pretty much self-explanatory… I never really thought about how much memory a simple internet browser could take! I don’t know what made me check the PC usage stats either. But when I did, was I in for a huge shock! Imagine Chrome taking up 1.25GB RAM. It beats the previous high by GTA 4. I would’ve been unable to browse the internet on my previous PC!

For comparision, here’s a list of RAM Usages:
NFS Most Wanted – 220MB
GTA San Andreas – 200MB
Bioshock – 500MB
NFS Shift – 680MB
GTA 4 – 1.2GB

No need to worry though. Even if you use Chrome, getting into such a mess would be almost impossible. I am yet to meet anyone who has 40+ tabs open at any given time… You can see the tabs open in this window, and I have two windows open. Calculate…

And for a better perspective, here a screen of the Windows Task Manager. 90% usage of 3GB is quite something…

I have some interesting posts lined up for the next few days. If I manage to do them on time, that is…

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