Mies van der Rohe's 126th Birthday

If you visit Google's homepage today, you will be pleasantly greeted by a modern architectural model with the words "Google" cleverly coloured into the glass panes. This model serves to mark the birth of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a German architect who gave birth to our twentieth century architectural style.

Juan Gris' 125th Birthday

Today, I woke up to find a pretty artistic picture on Google's homepage. It seems to be made up of different textures, surfaces and objects. Upon further probing, I discovered that the picture was to celebrate the 125th birthday of Juan Gris, a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France for most of his life. His works are thought to be critical in showing the evolution of an innovative artistic genre called Cubism.

Not Enough Time?

If you are thinking that 24 hours a day is not enough, then I guess its a good time to review what your doing each day now. What are the things that are redundant and unnecessary? Things that can be dropped. You might just be surprised by how much time you've managed to free up.

- BuLaDiFu -

Akira Yoshizawa's 101st Birthday

Today is the 101st birthday of Akira Yoshizawa. He was considered to be the grandmaster of origami and the one who popularized it from a craft into a living art. During his life, he was estimated to have created 50,000 or more models, however only a few hundred of them were diagrammed in books for others to learn.

Some Problem with Fraps

Today I finally got some free time on my hands and so I decided to write a review about this game that I recently came across called Magic Campus. As I started trying to take screenshots of the game using Fraps, I noticed that all the screenshots came out black except for the browser portion. Thinking that it might be a browser compatibility issue, I switched from using Firefox to Internet Explorer. However, using Internet Explorer didn't work either as Fraps did not even bother churning out any screenshots.

Only after a brief search did I realize that Fraps only works with stuff that runs using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology. (I guess Fraps isn't "omni-workable"....Hahaha)

Anyway, I doubt that taking screenshots will cause me much trouble as I could always use the good old "Print Screen" and paste into "Windows Paint" manually. However....recording a video would and thus I spent nearly the whole day trying to look for an alternative to Fraps for recording the game clips.

If you asked why it took the whole day, I'll probably reply you with why wouldn't it? The Internet is huge...with treasure hiding amidst garbage. Furthermore, danger lurks in the form of attracting unwanted viruses, malware and spyware while you search for what you want. Anyway, just be satisfied to know that the surfing and searching, scanning and installing, then uninstall and scan again took me the whole day. ^_^;

For the time being, I've settled upon using this free software that I've found, CamStudio, as a backup to recording game clips in the event that Fraps fails to do so.

As for how good this CamStudio software will be? You'll find out soon enough (from the game clip) when I've managed to get the review of Magic Campus out. That is....after I've managed to figure out how to use this thingy...Hehe.

- BuLaDiFu -

Electric Car Problem

Lately, automobile makers are all rushing to push out new electric car types. Its all over the news and you'll inevitably hear of it now and then. However, the news will also state about how the car can only travel 200+- km with a fully charged battery. Furthermore, to recharge the battery will take hours and you can't expect a person to stay immobile while waiting for it to be recharged. Especially if he's traveling long distance. With this recharging problem, these electric cars are pretty much drivable only within cities as a daily transport.

However, would making a car like that which have been thought up by writers of anime, manga and sci-fi stories ever so often be a possible alternative around this recharging problem?

Instead of giving the electric car only ONE battery, why not modify it such that it can take in multiple batteries? If one battery can only run 200 km, definitely three fully charged batteries can go 600 km right? Just make it possible for the electric car to switch from one battery to another once its nearly depleted.

Secondly, if the batteries are easily removable, then all we have to do is remove the depleted ones and place in fully charged ones. Then those depleted ones can then be recharged however long they want without needing us to stay there and wait for it to be charged. Wouldn't that be quicker?

- BuLaDiFu -