Raanan Recent Activity

RE: Travel to Bolivia by Raanan

Raanan — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:46:09 GMT

Hi,

Bolivia is a good place to travel. After traveling most of the countries in southern America, I can say that if you take simple measures and act reasonably, you do not need to worry for your safety. Of course, bad stuff can happend to you over there, but on the other hand you can get robbed in every major city these days.

The best tip would be to try to evade the routine track and find things you want to do and see, even if not "everyone" does them as well.

There are many things to see in Bolivia. I'll name few of them.

Starting from the south, there's the amazing "Salar De Uyuni" - the biggest salt desert in the world, with great salt lagoons the house Flamingos, beautiful sunrises and landscapes the trigger your sense of balance (and camera). Else to do there is a visit to Potusi and it's mines, and Sucre (the official Capital City of Bolivia). from sucre you can visit neighboring villages and enjoy a calm city with markets and gardens.

From Sucre, you can either travel Cochabamba (great nightlife, and a base for traveling Villa Tunary, a shelter for abandoned wild animals) or Santa Cruz (ever greater nightlife and a 2 hours bus ride to Samaipata ,a nearby village from which you can tavel and see some Inca relics and "Amboro" National Park). Even further east you get inside the jungles. Not many people travel these, as the jungles northern of La-Paz are relatively safer to travel.

La-Paz, which is located in the center-west of Bolivia, is THE capital city. It offers everything, from numerous markets, restaurants, cinemas and so on. on the other hand, poverty is seen everywhere. La-Paz is rather high so it's cold there, most of the year (when it's not very cold, I mean). From La-Paz you can take almost every activity you can think of - climbing mountains, visiting jungles and swamps (Rurrenabaque), riding bicycles down a narrow-frightening road, trip to the amazonas jungles up north, the amazing village of Sorata and many more. mind the food you eat and the water you drink in La Paz, though.

to the west you will find the village of CopaCabana , which lies to the shores of Lake Titikaka. it offers great views of the lake and a nice 3-4 days walk to Isla de Sol, another Inca relic.

The best tip for you - Explore and find out wehrever you go, talk to travelers and read people's own experiences. I would highly recommend you to but "Foorprint Bolivia" - the best traveling guide I've seen.

Good luck!

RE: restoring old photos by Raanan

Raanan — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:51:35 GMT

As mentioned above, converting it to digital and then fixing it in Photoshop or similar application, would do magic to it. You can make scratches go away, gain the original colors and make is almost new.

RE: Was windows stolen? by Raanan

Raanan — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:33:34 GMT

This is incorrect.

The first company to come with the idea of graphic User interface (instead of user interface (UI) which involves typing commands, like DOS), was Xerox, though it wasn't developed into commercial applications.

Apple later took this idea and crated an Operating System fot their Macs, which was partially graphic.

Interesting to say, is that thanks to MS Excel for Mac, Apple's sales rose high. MS did understand those days that the Graphical UI of the Mac's is something worth sticking to. The competitor, IBM, did not have a graphical UI, and MS intended to fir into this gap.

Microsoft had DOS at that time, and only in 1982, Microsoft unveils "Microsoft Windows", which was an extension of the MS-DOS operating system that provides a graphical operating environment. Windows features a window management capability that allows a user to view unrelated application programs simultaneously. It also provides the capability to transfer data from one application program to another.

in 1988 MS released windows 2.01, which was a major change as it had some ideas similar to Apple's software (like overlapping windows). Apple filed a suit that stated that MS violated the working agreement between the two from 1985, by creating an OS, similarly resembling the Mac OS.

Apple Computer saw a resemblance and filed a 1988 lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that they had broken the 1985 licensing agreement.

In their defense, Microsoft claimed that the licensing agreement actually gave them the rights to use Apple features. After a five-year court case, Microsoft won. Apple claimed that Microsoft had infringed on 170 of their copyrights. The courts said that the licensing agreement gave Microsoft the rights to use all but nine of the copyrights, and Microsoft later convinced the courts that the remaining copyrights should not be covered by copyright law. Bill Gates claimed that Apple had taken ideas from the graphical user interface developed by Xerox for Xerox's Alto and Star computers...

So, eventually after 5 years, in 1993 the trial ended and Microsoft won. No doubt, this was the beginning of a new era in the OS market, as MS was now free to further develop Windows.

RE: Keyboard shortcut for switching between tabs in Firefox 2 by Raanan

Raanan — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:31:26 GMT

here you go:

click Ctrl+Page Up to move to the previous tab, or Ctrl + Page Down the the next. You can also try Ctrl + # (a number, on the upper numbers line) to a select a specific tab.

I also recommend using "Tab Catalog" add on - really makes life easier.

RE: Mat or Shiny? by Raanan

Raanan — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:24:18 GMT

Only your own preferences and what seems better.

There's no difference what so ever, so choose what ever you like most. I stick to mat, as shiny sometimes creates annoying reflections when viewing it under certain light.

RE: Grainy pictures by Raanan

Raanan — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:11:09 GMT

Choosing a camera that fits your needs is important. You should first consider what range of prices you're talking about. I assume that around 250$ (1000-1200 NIS) you could find something appropriate. Take in mind that small size sometimes means fragile or delicate structure, and banging it against rocks might not do well to it.

Make sure you check each of these suggestions, as they are only suggestions for small, cheap, and generally good quality cameras. Each has it's own pros and cons, so check it out and decide on your own.

If size is what matters most, you should take a look at Casio's Exilim EX-S600 which is pretty tiny and rather cheap, though the image quality is not superb.
Sony DSC-W50 is slightly bigger, but offers higher image quality.
a bit more pricey is the Canon Powershot SD550 and the Panasonic DMC LX1, though the last one is a bit bigger.

Good luck!

RE: Grainy pictures by Raanan

Raanan — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:50:39 GMT

In order to understand "graininess" in pictures, you should first learn about films.

Films are composed of Silver Helide grains, attached and located on a plastic sheet.

Each film has it's own level of sensitivity to light. This level is usually referred to these days as "ASA" or "ISO", after a standard it was based upon. Anyway, the higher the ISO is, the more sensitive to light the film would be.A "fast" film (one that has higher ISO, thus needs less light in order to capture something on it) would have bigger grains. The smaller the grains are, the less sensitive to light a film becomes, but the final image has more details.

As a general conclusion, high ISO films ("fast") are more suitable in situations of low light (as the film needs less light), and low ISO films are more suitable for intense light.

Another thing is that the more sensitive to light the film is (high ISO), the more it is prone to develop graininess, as the large grains are sometimes visible by human eye without any magnification.

What all this has got to do with your pictures?

One time use cameras, usually contain high ISO film, because you could film with it indoors and outdoors, and most of the scenes would be captured OK. The big minus is that graininess sometimes occur.

Next time, it is better to buy a cheap digital camera and set it to automatic exposure - this way the camera decides which ISO to use in each of the pictures, and in overall you get finer results.

P.S - digital cameras emulates ISO, although the same sensor is used for each of the pictures. This is a topic for another answer, though

RE: Enlarging a photo by Raanan

Raanan — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:29:38 GMT

It depends on how large is the print you want to scan for the purpose. Even if you intend to scan a negative. you should try and scan it a the highest quality available.

I assume that a normal 10X15 (cm) image could be resized 3-4 times bigger which will bring it to about A4 size. try enlarging it in photshop, and see what you get.

You can also try and use dedicated software (like Genuine Fractals) I also suggest reading here as well.

RE: Buying an Iraqi dinar by Raanan

Raanan — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:15:39 GMT

Think of it this way:

The Iraqi dinar did lose some 98% of it's value in the last years. Which means that relatively speaking its very cheap.

However, it doesn't mean that it can't lose 98% more in the upcoming years (or months)!

Iraq is far from being stable, and you can read the bad news about the political\economical\military situation there, in every magazine and newspaper.

A wise advice, as always when it comes to investing your money, would be to wait and keep your money safe aside. Don't let yourself get caught by rumors.

RE: Is there a way to make Windows ME more stable without installing a newer OS? by Raanan

Raanan — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 17:08:29 GMT

Windows ME is probably the worst edition of windows ever created.

Making it more stable is impossible, but you can make your life better by upgrading your memory. The best tip for you would be to install Windows 2000 which is not so bad (although compared to winME everything is not so bad) or even windows 98. Just don't stay with ME.

RE: Essential software by Raanan

Raanan — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 17:03:05 GMT

A hard one, no doubt.

I think that FireFox is the answer for me. I can't stand MS IE.

Although, life without winamp, TotalCommander , winRar or Photoshop would be difficult.

RE: HDD safety by Raanan

Raanan — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:12:59 GMT

One should really put an effort in order to scratch a HDD plate. the discs themselves are protected and sometimes even have some shock resistance. If the HDD is running, however, it is easier to do a damage since the plates are constantly turning around.

In other words - as long as you don't slam it, drop it or shake it in a rage of fury, it should be all safe.

RE: Plugging out the computer by Raanan

Raanan — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:07:07 GMT

You could harm your HD drive, but mostly you will create some and rubbish temporary files due to improper shutdown off all processes and tasks.

On the long run, I assume your computer might suffer from hardware damages. Network cards, HD and other expansion cards are pretty sensitive to sudden voltage "jumps".

RE: From where the "gangas" river in india starts?and where it end? by Raanan

Raanan — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:59:29 GMT

The Ganges starts up in The Gangotri Glacier in the Uttarakhand Himalayas. From there, another river named Alaknanda joins it, and the two form the Gangas. The river then continues to flow east, where other small rivers join it before it finally empty into the northern part of the Bay Of Bengal.

RE: Subtitle with avi file on dvd by Raanan

Raanan — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:51:36 GMT

You can do it, but it takes some time and practice. Don't be put off the task of course

read this guide for instructions.

RE: Automatic WAV to MP3 conversions by Raanan

Raanan — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:47:13 GMT

try this piece of software which I find perfect for this task:

wav to Mp3

Good luck!