Monthly Archives: May 2005

New Photoshop CS2 – 11th version of the worlds mos…

Adobe systems recently released the 11th version of Photoshop – Photoshop CS2. Photoshop has been around for 15 years now and the new features that CS2 offers are still more surprising to see.
The vastness and complexity of the software is undefined(there are at least 95 Photoshop how-to books, three Photoshop magazines and four annual Photoshop conferences – no wonder you don’t get a Photoshop how to do book with the software!!).

Most of the improvements are administrative rather than creative. To reduce complications with the staggering 494 menu commands that Photoshop has to offer it is the Edit menus dialogue box which comes to the rescue where you can hide commands you never use and highlight those used most often.

It also comes with bridge, a new graphics browsing program which resembles IPhoto from apple. It looks like a slide sorter which displays all images on your HD as thumbnails, you can sort them , crop, rotate ,give star ratings to them and much more. More importantly bridge also applies certain transformations to sets of images all at once without interrupting work on Photoshop. It can also convert file formats for various formats of images in a few clicks.

Bridge also connects to Adobe’s online photo service where you can buy professional photos from services such as Comstock and Getty images but each photo costs no less than 200$!!

Some common features include everyday tools such as a new feature using which you can quickly remove red eye. The spot healing brush is one more feature which can remove something from a white hair to an entire body. The Wrap mode enables you to bend or twist an image as a whole into any shape.

with all these new features and more the new Photoshop is definitely the ultimate software for image-editing.

Intel Pentium processor Extreme Edition

In a very basic sense, having a dual core processors is the equivalent of having dual processors in your system. However with dual core processors, you get the advantage of both “processors” being able to fit on a single chip and fit into a single socket. There are disadvantages to this as well, like having to share a FSB and the problem of having nearly two times the heat coming off of the same processor.

Because of those reasons and more, the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor runs at 3.2 GHz, well below the 3.8 GHz models on the Pentium 4 line that are available now. Here is a quick run down on the specs of this processor:

  • 3.2 GHz dual cores
  • HyperThreading capable on each core
  • 2MB total L2 cache
  • 800 MHz FSB
  • 64-bit support

Now, if that doesn’t mean anything to you at all, don’t worry, we have some benchmarks to show you how it all turns out in the full review.
The DivX encoding application does however improve the performance, and because of that we see a good performance gain over even the much faster 3.73 GHz P4 processor.

The multitasking test you see above is based on a new benchmarking methodology created specifically with dual core test setups in mind. You can read all about it here, in the full review.

another 15 – 20 min. programming question…….

this program is also based on triangles.
Make a program in any programming language (preferably c++ but any other would do)
which will take as input three values they are
1] length of base of triangle(in cm)(eg. 5 cm)
2] the angle opposite to the base(eg. 60 degrees)
3] the ratio between the other two angles (eg. 1:8)
the program needs to use the above input data to calculate the length of the altitude of the triangle.

eg.
————-
Input:
10,90,1:1
————–
Output:
5 cm
———-
this should keep you busy for some time. 😉

Firefox coins celebrate success

This might come in some kind of quiz. So I’m posting it.
“What did Mozilla Foundation do to celebrate Firefox’s 50 millionth download?”

How obvious. They issued COINS. Just like any normal person would, of course.

Here’s a summarized version of the article from BBC:

Firefox, the open source web browser, has been downloaded 50 million times since its official launch in November. To celebrate, the Mozilla Foundation, which led its development, is giving away commemorative coins to people who have done the best job promoting it. The 50 coins were specially designed by one of the Foundation’s volunteers.

Firefox is Microsoft Internet Explorer’s (IE) main rival. Many like it because it is easily customised, while others like its tabbed browsing. This means that instead of opening a new browser window for each page a user wants, it opens a new tab in the same single page. Although Firefox has been downloaded 50 million times, this does not necessarily mean it has the same number of individual users. IE still has a grip on more than 86% of the browser market, according to web analytics company OneStat.com. But Firefox has clearly gained ground on IE. It has so far not had as many security problems as IE, and when there has been a problem, it has taken less time to fix because it is an open source piece of software. This means that anyone with the right skills can access and modify the code. It also means people are free to adapt the software’s core code to create other innovative features, such as add-ons, RSS news feed readers, or extensions to the program.

The coins were designed by volunteer Jamey Bojé

Programming Question[v.v. simple]….

make a program in any programming language which takes input from the user in the form of x,y and x1,y1 where x,y and x1,y1 are location of points on the screen
E.g. 10,20 and 20,30
the program has to give output in the form x2,y2 where x2,y2 is the location of any third point to which if the other two points are joined gives an equilateral triangle on a grid of any size.
All such possible points should be given by the program.

E.g.
——
Input:
2,5 and 4,5

——
Output:
3,3.3 and 3,6.7

====
where 1,1 is the top left corner of the grid

Note: this is a very simple question meant for junior programmers only .Please post answer/queries in comments.

The Chaos Theory and the Domain Square 2005

Today was the auspicious day when domain square 2005 for classes vi-ix was to take place. We installed the games via the lan connection as the cd roms where disabled in Lab 6. Anyways, as registeration was accepted only via the net or by personally giving me or bharat the names, we expected only 40 students to come, but we were worng. You see, students hardly follow the insructions given to them and such can be the case seen in the break today. More than 100 students flocked in front of lab 6 and the whole basement was filled with students, none wanting to listen to anybody and maintaing any decorem, there was utter chaos. It was more of a stampede, but with the help of Mukesh Nagpal sir and a few d2 members we finnaly managed to disperse the crowd. Also the students of class ix had gone for some trip, therefore the event for them had to be postponed.After that we came up with a decent strategy. Students now were called from there sections personally by us. We even allowed the unregistered members to participate. After many rounds, the winners from classes VI, VII, VIII were finally chosen. 75 or so students participated and out of them the firsts from classes VI,VII,VIII are as follows:-
From VI-Dipanker VI-F
From VII-Shreshth VII-J
From VIII-Mannan VIII-A
This competition although had a chaotic start came out rather smooth,decent and fair. Nobody was left out and we had a good time hosting it. I would also like to apologize for the horrendous beginning but well all’s well that ends well. I would also like to thank the following people for making Domain Square 2005 a success:-
Mukesh sir
Mukesh Nagpal sir
Bharat
Abhijit
Rasagya
Gaurav Mishra
Mannan
Digvijay
Aviral
Shubhajit
Ananya
I apologize if i have missed out any names.

Thanking you

Manas Gautam

p.s. competition for class ix and x-xii will be held later.

Tiger Unleashed

Meet the world’s most advanced operating system. Again. Instantly find what you’re looking for. Get information in an instant with a single click. Mac OS X Tiger delivers 200+ new features which make it easier than ever to find, access and enjoy everything on your computer.

The new Dashboard hosts nifty mini-applications called widgets that appear instantly and keep you up to date with timely information from the Internet. View stocks, check weather forecasts, track flights, convert currency and units of measure, even look up businesses in the phone book. Similar to Exposé, the Dashboard zooms across your Desktop at the click of a function key. Your favorite widgets appear with up-to-the-second information, then disappear just as easily, so you can get back to what you were doing.

Spotlight illuminates every corner of your Mac, searching across the Finder, System Preferences and Mac OS X applications including Mail and Address Book. Perform a Spotlight Finder search that goes beyond mere filenames and location to scour content and metadata. Find the location of setting controls in System Preferences by running a Spotlight keyword search. Set up Smart Mailboxes according to Spotlight queries – email with specific contacts, email about a particular keyword – and Mail files away your messages automatically. Create Smart Groups in Address Book using Spotlight searches on card content including birthdays, anniversaries and location. Everything on your Mac gets a chance to shine.

….And Guess what? We got Tiger running on our school’s iMac.

Cliquez ici for complete details