There has always been a time when you wanted to edit or to do something with PDF document but you couldn’t because its in the form of a PDF. The normal feature of changing a PDF back to its original form is quiet expensive and finding the right tool for it is sometimes annoying, but somebody came along and made this simple site which can change a PDF to .Doc or .Rtf format. I have taken some pretty intricate and complicated PDFs with images, styles, and formarts to see the output but this site has handled it wonderfuly. So a free conversion tool, this online tool from PDFtoWord does the job perfectly.
Link: PDFtoWord
I was contacted by Zain to try out their new 21.6 Mbps E-Go and put it through the loop and see what its all about. The packaging seems to be nice and small, got a post-paid chip to try it out, took it out of the box getting it ready to plug into my HP Mini 5101. Just to keep in mind the 7.2 Mbps connection of Zain would get around 200 ~ 300 Kbps, so I kept this in mind when I was testing it out.
Its the usual plug and play scenario that everyone is used to, and piece of equipment is even a little better with the new setup. Its a sliding USB connection so its nice and compact, this is the Huawei HPSA+ Slider Model, fits nicely in any bag or pocket even. When you plug it in the USB emulates a CD so your software is installed and launched right away. I went into the technical details of it and trying to mess around it a bit, I had a few places in mind to test it out. When I first heard 21.6 Mbps I took it with a bit of skepticism and thought why not try it out and see what results I get.
Plug it in, configured the connection for the 3.5 G connection and went to my FTP Server which is co-hosted in Europe(Secret Location) to see what I could download a few large files and see what I would get in relation to numbers. I picked a 2.4 GB file to download and it started off at 450 Kbps which is faster then a 4MB land connection, I was impressed right away, its faster then the old 7.2 MBps E-Go right away. As I gave it time the speed fluctuated between 480 Kbps to 960 Kbps, and then I took it a step further, I got into my car and start stopping in different locations to test it out from the 6th ring road to Bida’a to Salmiya and back. I was impressed, there is a fluctuation in speed but it held solid between a 4MB to 9MB connection at 4:00 pm on Friday which is peak pressure time on the network, and so I’m assuming that late night surfing or downloading is going to be even faster then that.
This isn’t a long term test, so I’m going to try it a little bit longer to see what else I can get out of it. Now Zain has an excellent product on their hands with the possibility of great service, they will be giving Internet Service Providers a run for their money but they have to do two things, price it at an acceptable price and keep the service level at a high level. (Click on some of the images to get larger version of the graphs)
I tend to buy a majority electronics or any other item online through Amazon, for the simple reason of convenience and consistency. Even with dealing with outside vendors you can take a look at there feedback through Amazon and decide if you want to buy through them or not, and they make the whole process very easy. There are some sites that I would like to purchase from them but two things come up, either they don’t ship to mail forwarder or the shipping address has to match the address on the credit card.
One thing is that I tend to buy certain hardware directly from Amazon for the sake of their return policy. They have the easiest non-hassle return policy I have seen from any company, you just click return item, then you specify which item you want to return for a reason, you get to choose a replacement for it or a refund, a refund takes some time but the replacement is instantly sent out. In my case I ordered two Western Digital 2 TB drives, one was faulty and one was fine, so I asked for a replacement and its already shipped out, same thing happened before and they shipped it out, they asked the damaged item be sent back within 30 days or you would be charged for the replacement. This happened before and the process was perfect, the only cost is the cost of sending the item back from Kuwait.
Now this is an interesting concept, turning 15 bikini clad girls into musical instruments for a cool song. I didn’t think the song won’t come out as good as it did, must have taken them sometime for the girls to get the beat right and that seems to be some cool conductive ink.
I have been neglecting Anime for about 4 weeks now and this is the result, about 116 GB of data that I missed to get as well as episodes I was following. It was after that business trip that I started archiving some shows that I wanted and expanding the material and media on WHS that I put Anime on the back burner thinking I would get to it later. A week turned into two, then that into a month and then realizing that I had so much to download it would be enormous if I didn’t start now. So one evening I went through about nine to ten pages from the torrent site which added up to more then 270 torrents that I to sift through and choose which ones I’m downloading and which I am skipping. Some were new shows, some were current shows and some were old shows released in high definition which I had to have to watch later. At this point I really have no clue where to start with a new anime, I keep getting excited when I find a new anime to watch which is interesting but then I get lost, not knowing what to choose next.
I have had this on my to do list for over a month now, and instead watching a movie or some anime I decided to work on rewiring my broadband setup since some items have reached the end of their lives and started acting screwy. I ordered a D-Link DSL-2640B to replace both my Thompson (Qualitynet Modem) and Buffalo Airstation Router. I took a look at the area behind my desk and computer and its nothing short of a nightmare to try to figure things out. I had a few items that I wanted to disconnect and rewire but that would require shutting down everything and doing it the right way so I left that for later, just the network cables alone add up to more then a dozen wires. So I unpacked the D-Link modem and powered up to configure it before plugging in the RJ-11 (telephone) cable, and as usual I tried doing things from memory, but I messed up Qualitynet’s setting so I called them up and got these details:
- Login type: PPPoA
- VPI: 8
- VCI: 35
Configured the modem which logged in right away, while on the phone the guy told me that I entered the wrong password and asked if I want to set that as the password, which was helpful but I prefered to keep the old one after remembering it. Then I went on to configure a few port forwarding, the wireless, the DMZ zone, and a few other details. This modem is pretty good with lots of customizing capabilities, the menu is a bit lacking in ease but if you figure your way around there is a lot you can tinker with in the device. After 20 minutes I got a call from Qualitynet on my mobile telling me my connection disconnected and they were asking if everything was ok, I was pleasently surprised, I told them I kept messing around with it and it had to reboot every time I made a major modification. Overall I’m very happy with this setup, initially I haven’t seen any problems so I’m hoping that things go smoothly and it turns out to be a solid modem/router.
Disconnected:
- 6 year old Maxtor Network Hard Drive (250 GB) which was a lot back then
- Thompson ADSL Modem from Qualitynet – Didn’t have any features and was acting up a bit
- Buffalo Airstation – Lasted me a good 4 years before giving up, I think the 2 meter fall from a high shelf ended its life span.
This helped free up some sockets, I got rid of a lot of wiring, I cleaned up the rear area of my computers which was still dust filled. I’m trying to lessen the amount of cables and equipment I have, minizing after knowing your needs is a lot harder then it seems.
Now is probably the ugliest plane I have seen and who would have thought something that neglects aerodynamics can fly. No wonder its called the Airbus Beluga, its damn ugly, make sure to play in HighQuality (HQ).
Who said the Japanese didn’t like Spiderman, they turned him into a hybrid of Bruce Wayne with all the gadgets and a Japanese Mecha Robo with his own giant robot to be called upon when needed. The best part of the Japanese is that they integrate robots into anything, gotta love the theme song.
These are the latest Hi-Def movies that I have managed to get my hands on and its on my server at this point. Some are for archiving purposes and some are new movies that I want to see which I haven’t seen or ones that I want to watch again like Fast and Furious. Some are itneresting movies, which I will get a chance to watch at the beach house. The main shows have ended but we haven’t finished them all yet but we still have a few left to watch over this summer. But there are still a lot of movies to watch, I’m making my TV list for this summer too and its turned into an interesting list of shows.
- 17 Again 2009 720p
- Austin Power Trilogy 720p
- Big Nothing 2006 720p
- Bottle Shock 2009 720p
- Boy A 2007 720p
- Bronson 2009 720p
- Duplicity 2009 720p
- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 2000 720p
- Doctor Who Planet Of The Dead 2009 720p
- Explicit Ills 2009 720p
- Fast And Furious 2009 720p
- Fatal Attractions 1987 720p
- The Legend of Zorro 2005 720p
- The Secret of Moonacre 2009 720p
- The Uninvited 2009 720p
Most of everyone I know has either Showtime or Orbit or both even, I know we have both because certain people want certain channels. Especially the sports channel line up, every person who watches any sport has Showtime especially the football fanatics. Now this has been a long time coming, the merger between the two biggest media providers in the Middle East and North Africa. I think its a great move, now we just have to see what the packages are going to be starting August 1st. I don’t know when they will be using one machine, which will be a lot less headache, and I know that art is shifting some of their broadcasting technology so I don’t know what that means for the line up. It will probably take some time for the technology to be unified, but I hope they find a solution for consumers to use one box and that will be one less headache.
Link: DigitalProductionME