Technology – Adnan's Den

Kung Fu Panda with Firefox3

Well it’s not like that Kung Fu Panda was released with Firefox3! It’s my weekend that came with Kung Fu Panda and Firefox3. So the heading should be “My Weekend: Kung Fu Panda with Firefox3”. But… well… I couldn’t resist myself to do that joke! 😀

At last I’ve watched it! Yeap… I am talking about the animation movie Kung Fu Panda. I’ve been waiting for it. And this waiting was over in this weekend. Actually I always waiting for a good quality DVD print. But my little sis could not bear the awaiting any more and she bought it (and of course with my money) though the screen quality of the DVD was poor. The film is surely worth watching. The film is about panda named Po, who dreams to be a kung fu warrior. Only problem is his bulky body which creates the barrier to become a warrior. But things changed when he was accidentally picked up as the Dragon Warrior by the Tortoise Master Oogway (though Oogway continuosly claimed that choosing Po was not any accident). When Po became the Dragon Warrior, it was obvious that he have to face the evil snow leopard warrior Tai Lung, the former student of Master Shifu. Now it’s Pos’ responsibility to defeat him. But one little proble: Po doesn’t khnow the Kung Fu! I was stunned by the opening of this film. It opens with a hand drawn 2D animated sequence which resembles to Samurai Jack. Traditional Dreamworks opening was also changed!

Another surprise for me in this weekend was the Firefox 3. I’ve been a fan of FF for a long time. FF2 was great for using over the IE7. When I was introduced with Opera and Firefox, I barely used IE since then. Though IE7 has some good features which were not included in FF2, I liked FF2 because of it’s ease of use. And now it launches the version 3. First impression after opening the FF3 was just “WOW!”. A cool interface with all buttons in appropriate palces. I’ve not used it so much yet, so can’t discuss all the new features. But one thing amused me, FF3 can zoom the page with text and pictures together.

Well… a pretty good weekend, huh? An worth watching movie and the new upgradation of the best browser in the world.

Bangladeshi Blog Aggregator: β version launched

UPDATE: Now we’ve a new Bangladeshi Blog Aggregator named BDBloggerz. All Bangladeshi bloggers are requested to submit their own blogs there.

For the last few weeks who have read and commented my post about Bangladeshi Blog Aggregator, they will be happy to know that Russell has kept his promise. He has launched the Beta version of the Bangladeshi Blog Aggregator. At last it has done. It is just the beginning. This site needs more polishing and needs an enormous way to go. But it can’t go that long without our support. As a Bangladeshi Blogger it is our duty to make a smooth way for this site. Previously some site has been lunched for the same purpose, but they failed to sustain. We hope that this time it will be a successful project.

By setting up the site, Russell did a tremendous job for all of us. We the Bangladeshi Bloggers at last got our own Blog Aggregator. We hope it will not only be a Blog Aggregator but also be a Bloggers Community for Bangladesh. Therefore I am inviting all the bloggers of Bangladeshi origins to join this aggregator.

As the site is in testing mode I have some suggestions (though I’ve mention some key features in my previous post).

As a blog aggregator I think the site needs a 3 columns theme. As a personal site a 2 column site is more suitable than a blog aggregator. Cause it has to show more thing but in less space. User may not have that much patience to scroll through the whole site. 3 sidebars instead of 3 make this job easier.
In the first page the posts are displayed in full length. A full length post does not fit in a blog aggregator. It would be more decorous if only a few lines (as excerpts) for the post (under the post heading) is displayed.
Any one have any design sense so that we’ll have a gorgeous logo and some blog badges for this newly introduced aggregator? So that we can put on them in our own blogs.

As the days go by, we hope more suggestions will come from the bloggers to develop the site.

Book Worm!

I am well known as a book worm, at least I knew that. From childhood to till now I am a great enthusiastic of books. I can read my favorite books again and again. No tiredness at all to read them repeatedly. By the way not all books allure me. Suppose the text books. I am not a text book lover (if you knew my academic background then you wouldn’t hesitate to believe 🙂 ). I love adventurous, thriller and comedy books including comics (from Asterix to X-Men). It was hard to believe that I was going to bed at night without a novel or comics. But now it is reality!

Suddenly I have discovered a new of me. Now a days I am always surrounded by text books like “Continuous and Discrete Signals and Systems” by Soliman-Srinath, “Digital Signal Processing” by Proakis, “Signal Processing and Linear Systems” by Lathi and “Analysis of Linear Systems” by Cheng. So what is the secret of being so much text book lover? Well… this semester in AUST, I’ve made a bold movement. “Linear System” is considered to be one of the most tough course subject in entire under-graduation course work of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department. It is not only reason why other teachers are not willing to teach this subject. One of our assistant professor Monjur Morshed (who regularly conducts this course) took this subject to an artistic level. From that point no one is interested to share a subject like this with him. And I’ve chosen this subject to teach the students this semester! The subject is not tough but it is tough to keep pace with Monjur Bhai (as he is conducting other two sections of class from total of four sections) and to hammer out it to students’ thoughts. I don’t know whether my students are studying hard as me. I am always trying to convince them to stick out with the subjects. But you know students are students, they won’t study unless the exam knocks their door. Sometimes my mom wonders seeing my passionate relationship with those textbooks “…whether you’ll seat for exam?”.

I’ve read my last books (of course non-textbook) just a month ago. One of them was a collection of Bangla short stories of Porshuram and the other was “Patriot Game” by Tom Clancy. Woh … I am missing those books terribly. I heard something of Summer Vacation of AUST which’ll probably be started from the next week for a whole week. I am waiting for that vacation … eagerly and anxiously. At least I’ll get touch with my pleasant companions.

Pics from Sadia Aapu: George Boole's Home

Today I received an email from Sadia Aapu (one of my colleagues in AUST). She sent me some picture of Cork City (Ireland) where she is currently staying. Among those she sent me some pictures of George Boole‘s house which is happened to be in neighborhood of her house. Boole is famous for inventing the Boolean Algebra which is the master key of all the digital logics applying today’s electronic and computer technology. I am sharing those pictures with my readers.

First experience of Windows Vista

I’ve just installed Windows Vista Ultimatum in my laptop. I got the copy from Minhaz Bhai. Then I took it just for test, as I’ve never experienced Vista before. When I first installed it, I was so much puzzled about the tools, because it was little bit difficult for me to find out where the necessary tools were as it seemed a bit hazy to me. It has a stunning visual. But I am sure who are using KDE of Linux or UBUNTU, will not be amazed by seeing the visual feature. I’ve been using UBUNTU for the last few years, and I believe that Windows Vista has nothing special or unique features which are not in Linux.

I like the gadgets that appear on the right side of the desktop. Specially the RSS Feed gadget which I think is very useful. Start menu becomes more clumsy as the sub-menus open within the main menu. The main drawback that I’ve noticed is that the driver’s scarcity. My laptop’s blue-tooth functionality couldn’t be installed for some dumb security reason! Every time I wanted to install the device from the original CD provided by DELL with my laptop, it shows the security center message, which in turns terminate the whole installation process.

Windows Vista requires more than 9 GB memory space and minimum 1 GB of RAM. It’s a high requirement. UBUNTU with the same facilities requires only 2 GB memory space with a RAM of 256 MB. I don’t know whether other software will run in Vista or they will also be blocked for so called security systems. But in the first glimpse it could not win my heart which had done by Windows XP. My suggestion is that, if you’re buying new PC’s with Vista installed in it then it is ok, otherwise the unavailability of the drivers will be troublesome. So if you’re using Windows XP, I don’t think you should upgrade your PC only just for Vista.

Voter List is in Web

For the first time Bangladesh Election Commission has published a web site containing the complete list of all voters of the country. Any one can access the site through internet. To access the information one has to provide the 17 digits PIN (printed in the back of the slip which was given after taking photograph), birth information (format has been given) and a verification code (printed on below). Take a look on the screen shot I’ve given below.

Main disappointment is there is no link of this site in the Bangladesh Election Commission’s website. As BEC is manipulating this process it is common sense that there should be a link to the Voter List site. Another drawback is that if any information is incorrect then there is no option to make it correct, except a text field which is used for Comments purpose. Probably they put the box to get message from the user for any inconvenience or mistakes. In my case, I saw some severe mistakes and I used the Comment Box to send them feedback about the mistakes. But it has been more than 10 days that I saw the informations were unmodified. I still don’t know how to resolve this.

The bright side is, the whole site is build in Bangla Language. So people will feel comfort to use the site. They also provide the Bangla font that will be required to view the page. Overall Bangladesh is advanced to the recent technical world another step. Hope the site developers will take necessary steps to make the site more matured by giving the users option to make correction in their information. Whatever this is, it is indeed a great job!

LabAid Cardiac Hospital – Reality Bites!

Today while I was surfing the WORDPRESS tags (which I often do), I found several post regarding LabAid under the tag Bangladesh. And all of them indicating the dark side of LabAid. That made me curious, why on earth people abhoring LabAid so much. I personally didn’t get any chance to be acquaintanced with LabAid, so I had no idea what services actually they served. For those who don’t have any idea about LabAid, it is a cardiac hospital in Bangladesh. On television they broadcast an aesthetic advertise which surely convince any patient enough to get admitted to LabAid. Watching that ad on TV anyone can be persuaded that LabAid is the #1 cardiac hospital in Bangladesh. But the articles posted in WORDPRESS, redefined LabAid from a completely new angle. They take more than a handsome amount of money as their SERVICE charge, but if it is their SERVICE then where the word HUMANITY will hide itself?

To read the full article please click here. To read posts on other blogs of WORDPRESS regarding LabAid click here.

Gaming Car from SUZUKI

They named it Suzuki SXBox Xbox 360 Concept Car. It has been designed on the concept of XBOX360. From the picture two XBox 360s, 2 projectors, 2 LCD screens are visible. Also the green neon light give this car a gorgeous look. But the green rims makes it hideous. I personally prefer shimmering alloy rim. Whatever the rims look like the shape is super sporty.

For more information please visit here.