I’m Jacob Thomas

Well here i am…passed out of Loyola and my identity as a ‘male chauvinistic pig’ is wearing off rapidly (and presently taking part in the promising online alumini movement of Loyola.)Lafest!Ah,the sweet memories of classes we skipped for ‘genuinine’ reasons like “Designing the official website of Lafest”,”Designing the brochure”,”Tshirt designing”.For about an enormous chunk of the time alloted to this so-called “designing work for Lafest”,many of us used to lurk in the most darkest of maps in Counter Strike.

Yeah that’s right!.

Terrorists ..

We used to gun down every single one of them….brutal,barbarous..

(We had to finish the website,brochure,tshirt after that!!!!).

“Guys!2 more maps to go!Lets give them all we have ”
“Ahoy captain!” replied other members of the “Lafest designing team”.
Battle after battle,the war was far from over.(We still had to do the website,brochure,tshirt.!!!!!)

Just when we thought we had wiped off terrorists from the face of the earth,an ominous figure emerges from the server room,smiling devilishily.

“Poyi!LAN connection poyi!!!!Sir..please sir”

Shijo Sunny interrupts a typical start to the ‘Lafest designing works’.

I used to sit in front of the computer with a Photoshop blank document in front of us.Adjacent to my (pentium 4,64 MB RAM,20GB)computer,Arun (fellow counter terrorist) had just finished completing ‘a state of the art’ Tshirt design and was busy polishing with some techniques i still don’t have a clue about.With sounds like “Oooo” ,”Wow!”,”Aaaaa” rising and mixing into a weird tempo,DP comes in.

“You boys have worked hard!”.(Sure we did!).

I stretch myself to look at another computer monitor.Norton scanning for viruses.Please refer the image below because i was speechless back then.I still am.

To my back i find a very optimistic Sidarth Aredath working on a innovative brochure layout.Impressive indeed!.It was an instant hit.

We had a ‘Computer Co-odinator’ for the first time in the history of lafest.We has doing what he knew the best.Typing!I had never seen a guy use MS Word like that before.Typing in all the schedules,Result sheets,Tabulation sheets.He was truly dedicated to his job.Lakshya Sharma!(Sigh!..Wish he had thought about the video coverage of Lafest 2K5).

Lafest is always a good experience for loyolites….School students excercising their talents in things they have done never before….Like hosting a event website,designing what they wear,brochures.

Lafest 2K4 had a unique post Lafest CD compilation.It was so unique that it had seperate activation module for every single CD which included CD copy protection,The video was encrypted in new formats and could not be be hacked into easily.The only possible way to view the events was to buy a copy for 20 rupees.The interface was truly professional.The most amazing fact is it was done by one person. Rahul ‘Asti’ R(our senior).The stress is on ‘one’ in the previous sentence as i find it impossible for a 12th grader to setup just an extensive array of applications for a school event.I don’t think anyone currently studying in Loyola can acheive that singlehandedly.We, a group of 5,tried to do a similar presentation,ended up studying just how to make good buttons in Flash. What it proves is Lafest brings our the best out of the student be it designing,managing or organising.Our unsuccessful but spirited effort was a way of learning new things.It gave us sufficient knowledge into imaging,certain computer softwares and most importantly how to put up a good,decent and a decorous presentation.

Lafest did that for us.

Vishnu Gopal,another senior had prepared a slideshow on the creation of Lafest websites.The guidelines were to keep the site,simple short and sweet.

2004

2005

2007

What actually began as a frantic effort to make ‘any website’ now has become quite a task.The evolutionary process of Lafest websites finally brings out the uniqueness and the singular form of every year’s designing team. Evolutionary in every sense?.May be not.Over the years the lafest websites are seen to have a gradual increase in complexity well disguised under an evasive cover of ‘a good design’.But then Doesn’t it look good?

I have moved from

http://upwardautodidact.wordpress.com/

to my independent blog at

http://jacob.opdyne.com/

The change?.I may attribute it to many reasons..The most sensible one would be the advanced networking available from the dynz.net.All the members may soon get an own blog as we are working on a multiblog support module for Vestec CMS.Besides I like to do my experimenting too with a lot of PHP applications,frameworks and sorta…

Well lets see where the ‘revolution‘ takes us…Later…

This is a tribute  to a meliorist who found himself in the unfathomed depths of
his deep desire  for serenity and peace in his very own “Dystopia” .Well if i am looking for a
element of pathos for this crusader then at the end of this article i
can be sure that my qualitites of a fellow human being are stretched to the maximum.

Yes ,this noble-minded person had the courtesy to start a deputation where human instincts
are given values.He was confided to look after himself on this earth . God gave him full
authority over the rest of the living beings when he planted the seeds of  anger,lie,and deceit in himself.
Why?..A question of due importance..Anyway here,I will try to unravel some of the attributes of this
only surviving hominid…With a brain volume of nearly 1400 cc (What’s in there?) and a being
distinguished from other living beings by its superordinate intelligence,upright posture.

He thinks there is hope even in the desperate of situations.He clings to his life trying to avoid what fate decides.
The element of selfishness is always ready to emerge from him.He neglects what others say about him.
He laughs upon his fellow beings and finally finds himself diminished to the level of a bug.Why..?Why doesn’t he realize
how stupid his deeds are.?Why doesn’t he come back to his  well being .Why does he hestitate to live a good life..?
Why does he want to be trodden down to the dirt by his own fellow beings.?

This exploration into his state cannot be of a inquisitive nature..nor can it be speculative..It sets before us  infinte
theories which can never be answered absolutely.There is one thing we can deduce from this situation,
the identity of the being.

It was a dark dull night.He walked down to the river shore and sat on the damp ground.It was raining intemperately.
The grass on the land seemed to come alive with a spontaneous piquancy.He sat there and looked down.His image
on the water twined and wavered due to the ripples on the surface.I tried to make out who he was..With a posed expression
his mind flashed him a familiar face;Sad and lonely…It was me…

Well i have been wrestling through a hell lot of PHP,CSS,HTML recently to come up with a decent version of opdyne wordpress theme called ‘halcyon‘.It is not finished yet,but some local testing found it to be good looking and efficient.

Yep,That’s the index page.No scrolling.I have used moo.fx to apply some distinct classification to various sections of the blog thanks to Will’s suggestion.Whether it is a user friendly approach to the site..hmm..I will only know that once i release the official site.Apart from that we adopted a Black-Gold(to be more precise,orange #FFCC33) color code.Duh!That was quite a challenge.

The graphics look cool?.My friend Arun produced such spectacular banners for us in 3 hours.I guess it is not about the time taken but the brilliance of such an art that is to be emphasized here.I don’t know when the theme will be finished but for now enjoy the screenshot.

Naah,I haven’t done the official ‘closing down my blog’ post yet.And i do not plan to do so.The reason for the long break are 2 reasons.One is my college admission and the other is concerned with dear old wordpress again..I was building a wordpress theme.Well i don’t plan it for any public release as it is for ‘Opdyne‘,a community i planned with my friends.The answer to “Whether it is finished?” is hesitant ‘no’.

I am no master at PHP and the contents of the wordpress 2. folder are still pretty much greek to me.I tried my best to learn about making themes and integrating to own websites.But yes,I haven’t given up.I just feel it requires more than 20 days.Hehe.

Believe it or not ..I got a TV that is 1 year younger than me.The company is called Dyanora.(The model number just faded away.)It has never gone for a visit to any service station in all these years.Be it Plasma,LCD or any any other CRT TV,I still like watching my Dyanora.
Design?..Hehe nothing much than a black box with two holes in the sides(supposedly the speakers.)
Channels?.Woah!,A whopping 30.(Ah! the sweet smell of irony..)
It has no seperate video,audio inputs,but ya .one RF port.
I sure like to congratulate the company for their support and services all these years.2 years ago,they closed down the official service center.(Actually they merged with Thompson).Apart from a few snags in its path he has worked fine.
Now i have fitted in a Philips Chassis.(R::The old remote just refuses to work and my cable connection has some 112 channels.)

RMVB is one container format you never want to show your back.Infact if you do that you will be missing a lot of good things.Come on…I am not kidding.Well..I do not blame you guys for i too hated files with an .rm extension.But recently RealMedia has developed a spectacular format for variable bitrate streams..’Real Media Variable Bitrate’ or simply rmvb.Files in AVI format,(especially the ones encoded with DivX or XVid) were widely popular in 2001(still pretty famous..).I came across these RealMedia formats due to anime download sites.Actually it was Inuyasha(Ep. 11) that i downloaded first.The size of an 27 minute episode was 33 MB and the quality was decent.Back then there were times when i even felt that i was the only one using .rm files

Well what is really the fuss about rmvb format?.Nothing much..It is smaller in size compared to .mpg and .avi and can be used for storing media files.RMVB is a contrary to other formats(even .rm) because of its Bitrate settings.Variable bitrate varies output data per time segment.Unlike CBR(Constant Bitrate),VBR gives higher bitrate for complex sections in a media file and segments of less complex nature are given reduced bitrate.So the net result being,the file’s size reduced dramatically.

Size?..A 24 min ‘LOST’ episode in rmvb can have a size of 85 MB whereas an AVI version can have anything from 125-200 MB.(Above that it must have an uncompressed avi..you are nuts!)That’s definitely an advantage with rmvb right?.

The next Factor,

Quality..hmm..I have eyes and they tell me the quality is almost same to an .avi equivalent.Don’t believe me?.Screenshots please!!.Hey Mr.Forse has some for us.

Support for advanced content, such as chapters, subtitles, meta-tags, user-data,streaming media?.

A plain but sure yes.

Moving on..

Portability.Uh Oh..It seems like we have reached problems at last.If you have a computer system and a real player..Fine!.I once said about ‘rmvb’ to a friend.After a strong debate, he remarked.

But i am sure that my DVD player supports only DivX and not RealMedia..

True,RealMedia is not supported by players available now but this may soon be done.(I hope so.)Mp3 files too have such a problem.Some such files are now being encoded using VBR and these files are not found to compatible with other players.So listening to your car stereo,remember..it is ‘CBR encoded mp3′ (or even Average Bitrate).The encoders and the decoders have to be a little more complex if we have to hear VBR files.But sure technology is changing.We can emphatically hope for more advanced gadgets.

Now that i have blogged a lot i feel like downloading a movie.Let me search..hmm..Pirates of carribean:Dead Man’s Chest.Got it! 635 MB(DVD Rip.DivX).Woah!!That’s simpy too much…I got to add a nice extension to my search..hmm..Voila.374 MB!.Ya Guys it is none other that ‘.rmvb’

Now that the internet is on a turbulent ramification in all directions,many old concepts are being reiterated on the basis of developing technology.One such concept is Desktop.Yes desktop..the place where you have your ‘My computer’,'Recycle Bin’ and many more of your tools you need to survive in this advanced period of time.What about this desktop?You may ask..Nothing has really happened to it nor am i going to critique some new widgets or applications.The concept of desktop has been refurnished to an online adaptation.Online Desktops..Webtops.David Bouley explains it well in the home page of EyeOS.

Imagine being able to sit down at any ordinary computer in an Internet cafe or public library, start up the resident web browser and access your personal desktop - along with your applications, messages, and information - with a click of your mouse button. Then, when you’re done, you simply close the web browser to have all of the documents you’ve just worked on safely stored on your remote server, leaving nothing on the computer you’ve just been working on. This is the goal of the mobile desktop and operating system called eyeOS.

EyeOS is one such website described as “the Open Source Web Operating System.”..Open source hmm..Absolutely a FREE zone,Guys!!.You can check its live demo here .

The term ‘webtop’ is said to be coined in 1996 and is also known as ‘network oriented desktop’.The topic being new to me lead me to an unexpected array of vast web based applications.To name a random one.Writely,The Web Word Processor,which though is related only to documents is impressive.What sucked me into this was when a friend suggested to me about ‘Desktop two‘.A site which offers the users the look and feel of a desktop.So does eyeOS post an impressive version of a webtop tagged under freeware.Desktop two offers upto 1GB in the free account.

The features include

• Address Book
• Blog
• E-Mail
• Global Settings
• Hard Drive
• IM
• Programs
• Mp3 player
• Office suite

That’s a lot right.Wait till you hear the rest.The latest entity in web development,Ajax,creates a new class of such webtops know as online Ajax desktops.You should have come across small sites that allow you to tag,bookmark and arrange your contacts,favourites etc right?.But you always found it to be hard organising all these information.That’s when such webtops come in handy.
Dion Hinchcliffe classifies the features of Ajax Desktops as

1. One Stop - Centralized online consumption of content and services
2. Accessible Anywhere - Roaming accessibility from anywhere with Web connectivity
3. All Your Data - Easy integration of most existing information sources including e-mail, calendars, bookmarks, news, blogs,pictures, etc.
4. Engaging, Fun, Fast - Rich, interactive experiences that match native software
5. A Platform that Grows And Evolves - Open platform for in-browser third-party software add-ons (Live.com’s Gadgets and Pageflakes’ Community Flakes)
6. Real Software Not Just Data - Increasing integration with Web 2.0 software applications like word processors, messaging, and wikis, plus rich Javascript widgets
7. Intelligent Consumption - Ad-hoc, decentralized, user guided content filtering and mashup creation.

Protopage,PageFlakes,Netvibes,Live are some of the more popular webtops available.Cosmopod,Goowy are also variations that are worth checking.

Java Comes up with a site called java desktop community to promote its GUI support.Sun Microsystems introduced the Java Web Start framework e in 2001. It provides the most essential feature for a Webtop.JNLP is the protocol Web Start uses for this purpose.Anyway,The concept of desktops has definitely evolved.Whether my computer will be running on a pure web based operating

system ..hmm..A probable development in the coming years.Maybe..As all speculations regarding the future ends,I too rely on Mr Time to tell me the future.I leave with some screenshots from desktoptwo.com

Foxit Reader is a free reader for PDF (Portable Document Format) documents. You can view and print PDF documents with it.

Well Adobe reader was my long time tool for viewing .pdf files(What!!is there a problem?).

Features:Definitely,I could view the files.

The problem was that it used a lot of space and took a hell lot of time to load.Recently i came across this Foxit reader.I downloded the setup in 1 min(1.5 MB only) and then uninstalled Adobe suite.Installing Foxit was really a boon..I mean it was fast,simple and had all the neccessary functions…and all it took was a 2 MB of space.

License Type :Freeware

Download it from here

A science fiction suspense anime TV series created by Geneon Entertainment and Manglobe that began broadcasting in Japan on 25.February 2006 Saturday 7:00pm on the WOWOW satellite channel. It is directed by Shukou Murase, with screenplay by Dai Sato et al.. Ergo Proxy features a fusion of 2D digital cell animation, 3D computer modeling, and special digital effects.

Well thats what wikipedia has to say about Ergo Proxy.I saw a few episodes of this series(about 23 episodes are there.).To begin with,this series has one of most amazing animation details in recent times.Right from the start we get sweet old reminiscences of the Ghost in the Shell series.Both of these series fall into the same genre,cyberpunk.Artificial Intelligence,technically elevated robots and sophisticated computer networks are the basic fortification of these two anime series.The creators have tried to make Ergo Proxy as a carefully contrived,upscale alternative of Ghost in the Shell.Ergo Proxy was premiered in HDTV with 5.1 Digital sound.This series was one of the most anticipated series of 2006.

But the biggest challenge is how the writer has created a investigation procedure in a very believable fashion.I mean.. he is dealing with the future and that can be gestated only through imagination.The way he has sets the stage and the environment definitely
gets you a feeling that we are looking out to the future.The instruments,imperial computer networks with dazzling visual display technology has become a primary ingredient in a cyberpunk series.(Thanks to all those movies tagged under sci-fi).So does Ergo Proxy come out with its own version of such entities.

The characterization is also done with special emphasis on the story.The series revolves around Ril Mayer who is investigating about a virus called Cogito which affects a class of robots called Autoreivs.The robots have been conceived by the creators in a weird fashion quite contrary to the normal looks.But the uniqueness in design easily surpasses this minor glitch.The other but most important character,Proxy has a fantastical and monstrous built.

The theme or the story line is deep,dark and needs a instant,superfluous attention to the smallest of details.I am not sure whether this was done on purpose to make this series under the genre of the fast-paced science fiction with a vehemence on the story line.Although for a while you find it difficult to understand what it is really about,the story unfolds clearly in the later episodes.

Oh wait i have only seen 4 episodes..