Sep
13
How to increase your MPG?
Filed Under Howto | Leave a Comment
In the era of increasing gas prices everybody are interested how to increase their MPG (miles per gallon – used in USA) or respectively decrease gas consumption l/km (Used in Europe and most of the world).
This is not a simple task and it is mostly a function of how car is driven. Here are some tips.
- Take a look at car consumption that manufacturer put in your manual. Usually this is the optimum value you can reach – so inform yourself about it before you buy the car.
- Try carrying as less as possible “useless” stuff in your car – heavier your car is more it will consume
- Avoid putting stuff on the rooftop such as car-tops if you do not need them.
- If you have 2 cars try to use them appropriately – do not use SUV for your shopping when you can do it with your hatchback (SUV consumes usually 2+ l/100km more than compact class car)
- Maintain your car according to manufacturer instructions – inflate your tires to nominal pressure, change your oil regularly,replace your air filter, maintain your ignition system (change spark plugs and cables) etc.
- Do not use A/C when you can open your window
- Do not drive on highway with full open windows – This will break car aerodynamics (true for 60km/h+)
- Do not speed – most of the cars are manufactured to be fuel efficient at the speed around the speed limit and if you drive faster you consumption increases.
- …..
Some of those “tricks” are common sense, but thinking about them when driving will allow you to safe money….
Sep
11
How to recognise telemarketing fraud?
Filed Under Howto | Leave a Comment
In addition to be annoying and time consuming some of telemarketers are real crooks. According to fraud.org here are six signs to recognise fraudent telemarketer and best action is to say thank you and hang up.
- Demanding that you act immediately or else miss out on this great opportunity….
- Promising that you can win money, make money, or borrow money easily…
- Refusing to send written information prior to your purchase or donation
- Trying to scare you into buying something
- Insisting you wire money or a courier will come by to pick up your payment
- Refusing to stop calling after you ask them to stop.
If you recognize one of those signs better say “NO, THANK YOU” and hangup.
Sep
6
How to predict the weather without TV forecast
Filed Under fun | Leave a Comment
Scientifically predicting the weather is something really hard, and you need a lot of information and powerful computers to do it. So how our grandparents were able to predict weather without watching TV forecast.
wikiHow published interesting article of how this could be done.
Sep
6
How to add Google repository in CentOS
Filed Under google, Howto, Linux | Leave a Comment
Google is adding more apps to his Linux repository.
They also have script to setup repositories, but unfortunately it does not recognize CentOS and yum enabled distribution. I’ve added this code to check if yum is installed:
# Check if yum is installed RHEL v5 and CentOS 4.x and 5
if [ '/bin/rpm -q yum' ]; then
PACKAGEMANAGER=yum
Resulting script is here:
NOTE: After downloading the file just rename it from .txt to .sh and run with the shell:
bash google-repo-setup_CentOS.sh
Currently you can find there only picasa and google desktop
Sep
5
Fix wine fonts in CentOS
Filed Under error, Fix, Linux | 2 Comments
I use wine from rpmforge repository.
It works well, but all system (bitmap) fonts are missing. DAG could not confirm this as bug, but several other CentOS users confirm that this problem exists.
How to fix:
Install wine (You need rpmforge repo enabled)
yum install wine
Install msttcorefonts
Follow these instructions
move /usr/share/wine/fonts to fonts.old (if already exist remove c:\windows\fonts folder too)
cd /usr/share/wine
mv fonts fonts.old
It is done.
You can use wine and all fonts appear.
Sep
5
How to fix problems with RPMforge
Filed Under error, Fix, Linux | 4 Comments
Recently site http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/mirrors-rpmforge went down and this broke my YUM. Here is the error:
Setting up repositories
Could not retrieve mirrorlist http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/mirrors-rpmforge error was
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-2, 'Name or service not known')>
Error: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: rpmforge
As a solution I’ve edited manually my /etc/yum.repos.d/mirrors-rpmforge
vi /etc/yum.repos.d/mirrors-rpmforge
And commented out problem site.
Then edited /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo
vi /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo
And commented live list and uncommented file. Like this
#mirrorlist = http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/mirrors-rpmforge
mirrorlist = file:///etc/yum.repos.d/mirrors-rpmforge
Now YUM it is back. Still get some mirroring errors, but at least I can use it.
Sep
5
Will wireless replace all wires into house?
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High definition video transmission was latest territory where wires had monopoly.
Now AMIMON announced their new wireless product (WHDI) capable of transmitting uncompressed HD video.
 AMIMON’s WHDI technology is based on a unique video modem approach. WHDI supports delivery of uncompressed 1080p (with equivalent video rates of up to 3 Gbps) in a 40MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band, in compliance with FCC regulations. Uncompressed 720p, 1080i and 1080p 24/30p (with equivalent video rates of up to 1.5 Gbps) can be delivered in a 20MHz channel, conforming to worldwide 5GHz regulations. Range is beyond 100 feet through walls (entire home), and latency is less than 1 millisecond.
Lower resolutions fit in 20MHz and fit worldwide.
They also announced that firs products will be available next year.
Sep
4
Hotmail Upgrade
Filed Under news | Leave a Comment
Hotmail recently without much noise upgraded user e-mail storage space from 2G to amazing 5G.
Sep
3
Google to publish full news stories
Filed Under google, news | Leave a Comment
Google news moved from simply linking to news stories to publish full stories after deal with four news agencies.
News stories from the Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP), UK Press Association (PA) and the Canadian Press will now be hosted on the Google News site. In addition Google will detect duplicate stories.
Sep
2
Google Earth = Flight simulator
Filed Under google, news | Leave a Comment
It is reported that new version of Google Earth includes a Flight simulator of F-16 or SR-22.
It seems that this goodie is included only in Windows version.