Raj Agrawal

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A Handful Of Reverse Printing Technologies – ‘Un-print’ A Paper

March 25, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

UPCOMING TECHNOLOGY – This technology sprints it’s way into one of the most innovative ideas put forward in recent times. Everyday, countless number of papers are piled/ shredded for disposal, once the purpose of the paper prints have been served. These papers earn the possibility of re-printing on over and over again, only if there existed easy and accessible ways to un-print them. To achieve this possibility, guys at University of Cambridge have figured out a way to un-print content from print paper by vaporizing the toner ink, without any sort of damage to the paper. This ‘un-printing’ process renders the paper re-usable. On similar lines, Toshiba already has a commercialized Un-Printer.

With precise blasts of a green laser having length of four billionths of a second, the target paper can be easily made useable for re-printing content. This newly proposed technique is said to be 20 times more efficient than re-cycling. And that’s a lot of eco-friendliness on hand. But, this technology is still being perfected at the University of Cambridge, hence there is time until you can get your hands on the Un-Printer.

Toner-print removal from paper would allow paper to be re-used instead of being recycled, incinerated or disposed of in landfill. This could significantly reduce the environmental impact of paper production and use. Previous work on the subject has explored the applicability of ultraviolet, visible and infrared (IR) lasers under nanosecond pulses for toner removal – An excerpt from the journal of The Royal Society.

This is how reverse printing technology from the University of Cambridge works,

Illustration

You should also note that Toshiba already has brought out a similar product that uses a ‘special toner’ to print content on any regular paper and erase them conveniently. So with this, only content printed with a ‘special ink’ can be un-printed.

Filed Under: Technology

The Most Entertaining Games Of 2012 [ iOS]

February 22, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

The iPhone has become an important handheld games system to even rival the established platforms such as the Nintendo 3DS and Sony PSP. Apple has unexpectedly won a substantial share of the casual gaming market and has managed to attract major production houses and hobbyist developers. Fuelled by the surge in iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch customers, the iOS games market is going from strength to strength. So here’s our recommendation on five of the most enjoyable iPhone Games Of 2012.

Infinity Blade 2 

Infinity Blade 2
Infinity Blade 2

Developer: Chair Entertainment Group

Price: £4.99 from iTunes

Infinity Blade II builds on the stellar success of its immensely popular predecessor, but sticks to the same winning formula of challenging swordplay, ghastly enemies and beautifully rendered 3D cut scenes. The stunning visuals throughout the game make a strong impression, and it’s obvious considerable effort has been made to utilise the graphical capabilities of the iPhone 4S.

Infinity Blade 2 continues the story arc – with the powerful God King defeated, the main character Siris must explore exquisitely rendered environments and vanquish a selection of hideous foes. Every enemy defeated gains you Experience Points which can be used to upgrade weapons and armour, and eventually acquire the Infinity Blade. The touchscreen controls are used to great effect and there are dozens of new weapons, collectible items and several play modes. Although the first game was criticised as being too easy, the countless new features and improvements in Infinity Blade II should help to extend its longevity considerably.

Gameplay Video:


Cut The Rope

Cut The Rope
Cut The Rope

Developer: Chillingo Ltd

Price: £0.69 from iTunes

Cut The Rope is one of those simple but maddeningly addictive little games that really shines on the iPhone. The objective is to feed candy to a tiny green monster called Om Nom, but the candy is attached to ropes that you must cut at just the right time and place to collect stars and advance to the next level. As you progress throughout the game, the challenges become fiendishly hard and there are ever more obstacles to overcome.

Like many iPhone games, the concept is basic but it works well on the small screen. Cut The Rope is a polished and hugely playable game, and the countless extra levels to unlock and hidden items to collect ensure that you’ll be playing it for many months.

Gameplay Video:


Where’s My Water?

Where’s My Water?
Where’s My Water?

Developer: Walt Disney

Price: £0.69 from iTunes

Where’s My Water? is a lovingly crafted physics-based puzzle game from Disney, and one of the most popular games for the iPhone. The objective is simply to get water to Swampy the alligator so he can take a bath, by digging a route for it to flow through the rocks above and collecting strategically places rubber ducks along the way.

The idea is basic, but it’s not always straightforward and it can be extremely frustrating to figure out how to complete each level. Disney’s trademark cartoon look is apparent throughout, and the game should appeal both to adults and children.

Gameplay Video:


Galaxy on Fire 2 HD

Galaxy on Fire HD
Galaxy on Fire 2 HD

Developer: FISHLABS

Price: £6.99 from iTunes

Galaxy on Fire 2 HD is an astounding 3D space combat and trading game that has an interesting storyline, dozens of varied missions and simply gorgeous visuals. The new HD version has considerably improved high-resolution graphics compared to the original Galaxy on Fire 2, and takes full advantage of the A5 processor in the iPhone 4S. Most of the action is presented in a third-person perspective behind your ship (as the role of unlikely hero Keith T. Maxwell), except when docked at space stations where you must interact with other characters to discover missions and earn money once completed.

The Galaxy on Fire series demonstrates the vast potential of the iPhone as a platform for complex games, with great graphics and intricate gameplay mechanics. While many people are drawn to the well known casual gaming hits such as Angry Birds, Galaxy on Fire 2 represents a quantum leap in graphics and interaction, and will surely appeal to anyone that enjoys the old-time PC classics such as Elite and Freelancer.

Gameplay Video:


NFL Flick Quarterback

NFL Flick Quarterback
NFL Flick Quarterback

Developer: Full Fat Productions Ltd

Price: £0.69 from iTunes

NFL Flick Quarterback is the latest sports game attempting to cash in on the popularity of American Football. While it’s appeal may not be immediately obvious to UK gamers, the combination of behind-the-player camera angles, accessible gameplay and great graphics means it’s sure to find a few new fans.

Choose your favourite team and, as the team quarterback, simply flick the ball to make a variety of ambitious passes. The controls are intuitive and, despite a few fumbles, overall NFL Flick Quarterback satisfies as an accessible introduction to the complexities of American Football.

Gameplay Video:

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: iOS

Manually Install Software/ Apps On Any Linux Distro

January 26, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

Most of windows users who switch to Linux are befuddled when they download a software and end up with a file with extensions like “tar.gz” or “tar.bz2” contrary to straight away setups, as seen on Windows OS “.exe” or “.msi”.

Windows OS users are accustomed to installing software by downloading a setup package, and following through the installation wizard and complete the installation like a PRO. On Linux the story is quite different, you may get a handful of apps which are available as setup files, but many apps are archives of source files. The process of installing software from these source files may seem arduous for Linux newbies but once you understand the procedure you will find it’s really easy.

Requirements

Build Tools

These are the tools required for compiling the source files. The method to install these tools depend on your distribution.

The packages required on Ubuntu/Linux Mint can be installed be executing the following command in the terminal,

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential kernel-package libncurses5-dev bzip2

On Fedora, execute the following,

sudo yum -y install gcc ncurses-devel

The command begins with a “sudo” because root access is required for installing packages, if you do not have access to the root account then you cannot install these.

The procedure

Once you’ve installed build tools you are ready to compile and install the software.

Steps involved:

  1. Extract
  2. Configure
  3. Compile
  4. Install
  5. Clean

Step 1: Extract

First we need to extract the source files from the archive. Execute the following commands to extract the source:

tar -xvjf ‘archive name’ (for .tar.bz2 files)

tar -xvzf ‘archive name’ (for .tar.gz files)

Example,

tar -xvzf bison-2.3.tar.gz

extract
Screen 1

After extracting the sources navigate into the source directory, there you will find README file, you may want to read through as it contains details about the ‘to be installed’ software, the license, and instructions for installation.

Step 2: Configure

In this step we need to configure the software. To configure you just need to run the configure script using,

./configure

In this step the script checks whether your system is ready for compiling the sources. If you did not install the build tools you may get an error message during the check.

Once the script has finished it’s execution without any errors it will generate a “Makefile” in the source directory.

The Makefile is required as it is used by the “make” utility to compile the sources.

conf1
Screen 2

Step 3: Compiling

After the “configure” script has been successfully executed and a “Makefile” is generated, you can start compiling the software by executing the following command

make -j’number of cpu cores+1′

Example,

make -j3 (without spaces in between. Enter 3, if your processor is Intel core2duo)

compile
Screen 3

Step 4: Installation

Once the compilation is finished and there are no errors, your software is ready to be installed.

To install execute the following command,

sudo make install

makeinstall
Screen 4

Step 5: Cleanup

During the compilation process many temporary files are created that you no longer require. You can delete those files to free up disk space by executing,

make clean

clean
Screen 5

You may want to keep the Makefile though, as it will be required if you wish to uninstall the software.

To uninstall the software execute,

sudo make uninstall

uninst
Screen 6

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: linux, ubuntu

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