Learning Journey

Go green, protect the environment, save the planet

Green is everywhere these days — in the news, politics, fashion, and even technology. As globalization makes the world become smaller, it becomes increasingly easy to see how the lives of people, plants and animals are closely synced up with one another.

More and more people are beginning to understand the impact of going green by adopting energy saving measures recycling or consuming only organic products to save our planet. Environmental consciousness is even beginning to extend into the business environment and having an environmentally friendly workplace is becoming more than just a trend today.

It is the time that each individual takes up the cause personally and works towards saving the environment. We have the power to control most of our choices and, therefore, the impact we create: from where we live to what we buy, eat, and use to light our home to where and how we vacation. All these activities can have global impact. Although there are small but valuable contributors we can make individually towards creating an eco-friendly environment and make this world a better place to live in.

As for example, we can eat more organic foods to decrease the amount of pesticides we consume. Choosing organic foods means helping promote organic agriculture and responsible land use. It helps protect the environment from overloading with toxic chemicals. We can also grow our own delicious, healthful organic food. Start small, even with just a single plant or two. Buying local means supporting the local economy and reducing the greenhouse gas emissions required to get food from its origin to your plate.
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OCR to help generate search text in scan document

Digitizing a magazine article or a printed contract is often a common needs. We could either spend hours retyping and then correcting misprints or we could convert all the required materials into digital format in several minutes using a scanner and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. Although scanning pages would be an expensive and time-consuming undertaking, the benefits are huge.

OCR is a process of converting different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files or images captured by a digital camera into text or word processing files that can be easily edited and stored.

OCR is a field of research in pattern recognition, artificial intelligence and machine vision. It has been used to enter data automatically into a computer for dissemination and processing. This technology has enabled such materials to be stored using much less storage space than the hard copy materials. OCR technology has made a huge impact on the way information is stored, shared and edited. Prior to Optical Character Recognition, if someone wanted to turn a book into a word processing file, each page would have to be typed word for word.
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Page Description Languages - PDL

Earlier on in history, printers viewed text as text, and graphics as graphics. A page was created from a combination of separate entities. The page images can be created by having raw text like, the word “Hello World”, combined with Escape codes and possibly embedded graphic pictures. Different programs have different file formats.

To overcome this problem, Page Description Language (PDL) is developed. PDL is a language to describe the graphical representation of ink and toner on sheets of paper (or other output devices, like monitors, photo typesetters, etc) in a higher level than an actual output bitmap.

Instead of sending raw text to the printer, a PDL output file is created and sent to the printer. Basically PDL instructs the printing device exactly how to handle text, graphics, and pictures in reproducing the page layout created by a computer user. The ‘page’ could be of any size, color, or resolution the printing device can handle.

By having PDL, an application programmer could concentrate on making his program to output result in a standard PDL - with description of his printable page. The printing device developers could focus on making their devices with related PDL literate.
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Which image file type to use - GIF, JPEG, PNG

There are quite a number of image file types available such as PNG, GIF, JPEG and etc. What does each of these file types mean, and which format should we use especially in web site?

In the case of web site design, in order for users to view an image, they need to download it. In this case, slow internet connection or limitation of mail box size is something to be considered. In the worst case, an email system may reject to receive any email that is too big in size. Graphics in their natural state are too big to be quickly downloaded over the Web, so you have to compress them. As such, file size is usually the most important criteria in choosing a format for the web, or to send images by email.

The other important criterion when choosing an image format is image quality. There is typically a trade off between file size and quality - you can compress an image to a smaller size, however, you may need to sacrifice its quality. So, having a fair balance between loading time and quality of the image is not an easy task.

GIF — Graphics Interchange Format

GIF is an indexed format. This means that it uses a fixed list of colors instead of encoding every color separately.

Graphic images are normally not continuous tone. Graphics are drawings, not photos, and they use relatively few colors, perhaps less than 16 colors in the entire image. GIF is very efficient for images with a small number of colors, like a five-color corporate logo.

GIF files can be saved with a maximum of 256 colors (This is called as 8-bit color - 256 is 2 to the 8th power). Typical photographs have many more colors than that, so saving a photograph in GIF format will usually result in very poor quality. Even worse, with 256 colors, the file will usually be larger than a full-color JPEG version of the same image! The lesson is clear: don’t use GIF for photographs, only for simple icons and logos.

The GIF format offers two very useful features: transparency and animation. With transparency, you can make an icon with a clear background. This means that if you place a transparent GIF in a blue table cell, the background color of that image will turn blue. GIF only allow single-bit transparency. This means it does not allow for partial transparency; a pixel is either fully transparent or not transparent at all.

GIF can be animated - which allows you to create images that move. This is another reason GIF became so successful. Most web browsers support animated GIF images.

GIF can also be interlaced. This is a way of saving a graphic so that it loads progressively — appear first with poor resolution, low-detail version is loaded, and then successive layers of detail are added. This allow the viewer to get a quick idea of what the picture will look like while waiting for the rest. This is beneficial in many situations, as it gives the impression of a speedier download.

JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group

The 16-bit JPEG format was designed with photographs in mind. It is capable of displaying millions of colors at once, without the need for dithering, allowing for the complex blend of hues that occur in photographic images. Read the rest of this entry »

Quickly get indexed in Search Engine - Google, Yahoo! and MSN

Majority of people today use a search engine to find what they need. So it is good to have your website indexed in search engine like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. However, getting a web site indexed by search engine is not an easy task for a webmaster.

From my experience so far managing some web sites, following are some of the way you may find useful in getting your site indexed quickly by search engine like Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on.

The basic, but most important is to create a website with good content. The more original it is, the better!

Another important step you should not forget is to use the search engine webmaster tools - Google webmaster, Yahoo! site explorer and so on. This is a service provided by Google & Yahoo! to help index your site. Also, remember to submit your website XML sitemap to these tools.
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Six Actions toward transmitting desire into reality

According to Napoleon Hill, the author of “Think & Grow Rich!”, the method by which DESIRE for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent, consists of six definite, practical actions:

1. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say “I want plenty of money.” Be definite as to the amount. (There is a psychological reason for definiteness which will be described in a subsequent chapter).
2. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.)
3. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.
4. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.

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Wishing vs. Believing

There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it.

In his poem “My Wage”, Jessie B. Rittenhouse has stated that:

I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.

For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

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IE 8 Beta 2 not yet compatible with Google toolbar

I upgraded Internet Explorer (IE) in my computer from IE 7 to IE 8 (Beta 2). Everything working fine, until I tried to install Google toolbar.

Somehow, Google toolbar is not able to be installed with IE8. I use the Bookmarks Tools of Google Toolbar so far in managing my favourite site. Having no other choice, I have to uninstalled it and reinstalled IE 7 …

Until Google Toolbar is officially supported, it is good to wait before upgrading your Internet Explorer - this is what I learned yesterday.

CutePDF Writer - Freeware for PDF generation

CutePDF Writer is the freeware for PDF creation. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a virtual printer. This enables virtually any Windows applications which has the print option to create PDF documents.

In order to use it, just select the CutePDF printer and click the print button!

It is free for personal, commercial, government or educational use! The best thing with CutePDF Writer is there is no watermarks in PDF generated! No popup Web ads! Now even supports 64-bit Windows.

You may download CutePDF Writer from here.

FlvPlayer4Free - play FLV file downloaded from Youtube

One of the way to download video from Youtube to your computer is to use the following web site:

http://clipnabber.com/

Just paste the Youtube web page address (URL) for the video into the Paste URL and then click FLV download link to download the video in FLV format.
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