ckunte.com » Technology

ICE

Chyetanya Kunte — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:42:57 +0000

Our last vacation to the Black Forest and to the heights of Titlis taught us one thing about taking children on a long driving trip. That it is a test of their endurance to sit through for 6-9 hours at a stretch, in those barely comfortable mandatory child car seats. In particular, the drive to Freiburg in one day covering 702km (9 hours on the road) was a personal feat I vowed never to repeat again—for the sake of children. The fact that they never ever complained makes me feel even more guilty about having put them through this.

So this October when we were on yet another driving trip, we took many timeouts, and drove no more than 5-6 hours in a day. In addition, a day before we began our journey, Sneha and I went shopping and bought Philips PET719, and mounted it on the back of our car’s front seats.

Going by responses from the otherwise lull passengers in the back, I suppose they enjoyed it.

But it wasn’t until we came home and unpacked a couple of days ago I realized that this portable DVD player was much more than just ICE. In fact, it is so good that it virtually makes my current DVD player in the living room a dinosaur. (PET719 can play data DVDs, DivX, and AVIs, PhotoCDs, VideoCDs, as well as data CDs with music in mp3 format!)

On the downside, it wouldn’t recognize a film in mp4 format. So, I installed Avidemux on my ubuntu desktop to convert it from mp4 into avi, before burning the converted file as a data DVD. (Go to System > Administration > Software sources and select multiverse before running sudo apt-get install avidemux in a Terminal.)

Update: If you burn more than one AVI file on to the DVD, then the portabe player provides you with a file menu—to choose the film you’d like to play—much like the mp3 data CD. That I think is incredibly nice. So on a single 4.7GB, you could easily have 5-6 films. Handy, I’d say.

Technology frees our minds

Chyetanya Kunte — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:32:53 +0000

NYT: “Technology doesn’t dumb us down. It frees our minds.”

Quantum cryptography

Chyetanya Kunte — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:40:49 +0000

Nature: “Quantum cryptography can go the distance.” (I think I had read about the progress earlier.)

Lively

Chyetanya Kunte — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:52:49 +0000

Is Lively Google’s own (decentralized) dig at SecondLife?

Energy

Chyetanya Kunte — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:46:55 +0000

Economist: “The future of energy—a fundamental change is coming sooner than you might think.” I have to agree this one in particular about producing energy from geothermal sources, is an idea I hadn’t come across earlier.

How the web was won

Chyetanya Kunte — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:59:09 +0000

Vanity Fair: “How the web was won—a history of the internet in the words of people who made it.” (via.)

Weakest link

Chyetanya Kunte — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:05:58 +0000

This story about how weak rivets could have doomed the fated Titanic (via Abi) proves yet again that connections are often the weakest links in structural integrity.

My educated guess on Titanic’s failure until now had been hinging on uneven material microstructure (or molecular level grain distribution) at subzero temperature in steel—as the primary cause. In this of course, I assumed that connections were taken care of. It appears they weren’t.

Lacking innovation

Chyetanya Kunte — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:26:58 +0000

Anand Mahindra: “Thus far, India’s brand of innovation has been identified with the IT industry, but is it truly innovative? Is it really game changing? Ironically, you can now look to the old smokestack industries for inspiration.”

Internet black holes for kids

Chyetanya Kunte — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:28:32 +0000

BBC: “Safer Internet Day is being marked around Europe with events to educate children and parents about net dangers.” Reminds me about Policing the net.