Google

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Number Stations

It began with me getting curious about those funny random word sites that mess up google searches so often. These sites usually chinese in origin have nothing in them but random words. Even the htm file names are random words.

eg

vintage american family baby scale 30 lbs pounds limit vintage...
45x74 winchester model 1890 62a slide action .22 extractor
primitive ...... height 10 x width 7 speedo fs2pro men's
completed cross stitch mallard duck audi ...

Jumping from one page to another led me to this page which talks about "Number Stations" . If you have listened to shortwave radio, you must have come across these stations which have some person just reciting and repeating a sequence of words or numbers. I had never paid attention to it, but its amazing how deep the rabbit hole goes. At the very basic level these are supposedly government sponsored stations which communicate with spies.
Found this amazing BBC radio documentary on that topic. Download it from this page. Just 6 mb, its worth it. Do a search in Wikipedia for Number Stations for further info.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

WiFi @ Home



The glamour of lounging on the sofa or bed or anywhere in the house and browsing the net on the laptop seemed so inviting. I also needed a semipermanent connection between the desktop and the laptop as my USB drive network (copy to USB drive - take USB drive to the laptop - paste into laptop) was getting a little tiresome. Then there is internet sharing. And most important of all, multiplayer games :). All this is now possible. I got a wireless router installed at home (Thanks again to Sachin) and the fun has started. Now I can also chat with my wife through yahoo messenger. Ahh!! reminds me of those pre marriage days. Anybody for a LAN party?

Monday, September 24, 2007

Neat Image

Troubled by noise in your digital camera pictures... no worries, help is at hand. Consider buying Neat Image, a nice little program to get rid of noise. It relies on device noise profiles which combined with an algorithm specifically geared towards digital photography, give very good results. Another must have for digital photography enthusiasts.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Google Flight Simulator

My HDD crash disconnected me from the online world for a couple of weeks and look what they found. Google has been upto its tricks as always putting in some nice easter eggs. This one is a Flight Simulator in Google Earth. Not the clumsy one you saw in Excel some year ago, but a good one using GE imagery, with a couple of planes and some Airports thrown in. Go here to read about it and how to activate it.
Talking of flights, a sad bit of news this Sunday with ColinMcRae dying in a helicopter crash. Rally fans and gamers need no introduction of ColinMcRae. Its just so sad that he died so suddenly.RIP.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Caller Ring Tune

For those who have been wondering, what is that song on my caller back tune... here is the video. Yeah..a really old song.