KudaBoalha's Weblog

Back to blogging

2011-04-27T11:51:00.002+05:00

It has been almost three years since i posted on this blog. Looking back to my first post "Addicted to Fish" brings back memories of days spent immersed in the Internet, browsing to be amused, inspired or informed.

This is me getting back to blogging, hoping to bring you evermore interesting posts, information, and thoughts. I am looking forward to writing about PHP, android applications and any other information which might be of use to you.

How to increase Bittorrent speeds - Part two

2008-06-13T11:17:00.005+05:00

The second most important thing to do when downloading with bittorrent is to find torrents which has a good peer/seeder ratio. Peers are the one who are currently downloading and seeders are the ones who have already downloaded the file and are giving away for upload.
The best choice would be a torrent with a good number of seeders and peer number half that of seeders.
There are many private trackers which you could use. Most of them require that you maintain a certain ratio of uploaded and downloaded amount. Meaning, if you download a 750 MB file. You are expected to let others download from you by uploading 750 MB's. Thus making sure others will have the opportunity to get the file.

Some of the most famous trackers are:
www.thepiratebay.org
www.demonoid.com
www.mininova.org

You cant find a comparison on of torrent trackers here http://comparebt.blogspot.com/

Hope this has been useful to all, leave a comment or opinion and wait for more.

How to increase bit torrent speeds - Part One

2008-05-12T04:37:00.005+05:00

There are a couple of ways which you can employ to improve your download speeds while using bit torrent. I have been an avid user of torrents for quite some time. Here I am going to share with you, some of the settings or tricks by which I try to attain the maximum allowed bandwidth and download speed.

Always use PEER GUARDIAN

This is the most important thing to do when you are downloading using torrents. Remember, when you sometimes download that 'movie' or download that series and your bandwidth graph shows you’re your download speed is the maximum available bandwidth of your connection, but the progress bar does not increase as it should, and the hash files or wasted files size keep increasing. This happens when you are trying to download a poisoned torrent.

You can search more about poisoned torrents, but for the moment you just need to remember that this will cause your torrent client to download a lot of unwanted hash/waste files which are trying to appear as genuine content of the file you are attempting to download. Most of the time, this is being done by people who are trying to give you a hard time because you maybe downloading their content or movie.

You can prevent these people from connecting to your computer and sending you waste files by using peer guardian. Now you won’t have to wonder why the file which is supposed to be downloaded within 3 hours is taking days to finish.

What peer guardian does is, it has an updatable database of IP addresses which people have found to be actively poisoning torrents. It also has other categories of IP addresses which you could prevent from connecting to your computer, such as known government IP addresses, known educational bodies IP addresses which might be monitoring P2P for studies purposes, etc.

So to conclude, Peer Guardian will assist you to be partially invisible to monitoring bodies such as governments, movie companies, and so forth. It also helps you to download the content faster by preventing known computers from sending you fake files or waste data. This is a must have tool for any bit torrent user.

I almost forgot… Peer Guardian is open source software, thus you don’t have to worry about it having a backdoor or spyware which might be collecting information about you.

I will continue with the second part in the next post. Do let me know your thoughts or questions in the comments.

Torrent client software : http://www.bittorrent.com/
Peer Guardian software : http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

Which is the best Bittorrent client?

2008-04-16T23:55:00.005+05:00

I got a call from a friend the other day, he wanted to know the best torrent client to use. I gave him a short answer, µTorrent. Actually µTorrent has now been acquired by BitTorrent Inc. so lets refer to it as BiTorrent client from now on. I have to mention both these clients because, initially µTorrent was written in C++ and was a closed source freeware. Before BitTorrent acquired µTorrent around end of 2006, before then BitTorrent client was written in Python and it was an open source client.

I have used many torrent clients over the years, Azureus, Opera, BitComet, KTorrent, µTorrent. i find BitTorrent to be the least resource intensive and also the amongst the best featured clients out there. Even the installer file is only 853KB. Imagine that,nowadays you don't find that many installers which you can put on a floppy disk.

BitTorrent gives you all the features which you may have been using on other clients, in a very efficient and small package, and it does not have a huge memory signature as some of the famous clients like Azureus.

The funniest video on youtube, HILARIOUS!!!

2008-04-11T05:48:00.003+05:00

gets me everytime...

A president who puts interest of his nation before himself

2008-04-10T21:15:00.004+05:00

This is a thought provoking read. Depicts various aspects of Gen. Musharraf's life and how he came to lead a nation on the verge of falling apart. Describes in detail, the plots and executions of many attempts on his life. Talks about his various experiences under different leaderships, and how these have been taken into account for the betterment of the nation.

I came to know about this book from the Jon Stewart's Daily show, where he interview's president Musharraf regarding his memoir. Unfortunately Jon Stewart did not bother to read the book, thus not much information on the contents of the book were given.

This is one of those books which makes you picture the actual scenes in your mind, which forces you to read till the end. A book which leaves you feeling that you have actually gained some knowledge on the subject, yet instigating a lust for more information on it.

This books starts with the childhood experiences and interactions which define the course of a man, and moves onto the life of a soldier which helped build character. The reasoning of a strategist who analyzes without being emotional, and finishes off with a leader who puts the interest's of his nation before himself and popularity.

This book actually contradicts some of the information which we have come to know from the media. After reading this book, one might feel that there is more to what is being portrayed.

I find this book worth blogging about, and i would recommend it to others. Yet my knowledge on politics and current affairs is limited, and i am reluctant on making a judgment based solely on this book. I would say that this book invokes respect.

ENGADGET VS GIZMODO

2008-04-10T05:13:00.002+05:00

As with many of you who are interested in being up to date with technological news, i too go about taking my daily doze from various tech sites and blogs. Most frequent being Gizmodo and Engadget. Over time i have come to notice that a very high percentage of the breaking news and articles are practically the same on both these blogs.
i have been too lazy to go about running a proper comparison to see which blog actually brings the news quicker and comes up with more original content.
Then again, one might argue that there are many other tech blogs to satisfy ones needs, i am just mentioning the onces which i am familiar. If you happen to know of a better place to take the daily dose of tech news, do let me know.

Chemical weapon to instill fear in the enemy

2008-01-19T21:16:00.000+05:00

Now, the US Army is trying to track down and harness people's smell of fear. The military has backed a study on the "Identification and Isolation of Human Alarm Pheromones," which "focused on the Preliminary Identification of Steroids of Interest in Human Fear Sweat.

This will enable them to target an area with pheromones which will make the enemy combatants fear any given trigger. On its own, the alarm pheromone would not do much. But given an external trigger, such as a loud noise, it could influence people to start stampeding like spooked cattle. Then again, the bee alarm pheromone triggers attack rather than flight, and the Viennese study suggested something similar may apply to humans -- or are there multiple pheromones involved? Whatever is going on, this research is likely to uncover some novel and powerful ways of manipulating human behavior.

Read more here

Bionic eyes: Is this the future of computer display

2008-01-18T00:59:00.000+05:00

We have all seen movies which show images and various other information being displayed seamlessly in front of the eye. As if floating in front of the eyes. Well, the days are not far when we will be able to do the same in real life.

Engineers at the UW have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.
There are many possible uses for virtual displays. Drivers or pilots could see a vehicle's speed projected onto the windshield. Video game companies could use the contact lenses to completely immerse players in a virtual world without restricting their range of motion. And for communications, people on the go could surf the Internet on a midair virtual display screen that only they would be able to see.

The prototype device contains an electric circuit as well as red light-emitting diodes for a display, though it does not yet light up. The lenses were tested on rabbits for up to 20 minutes and the animals showed no adverse effects.

A full-fledged display won't be available for a while, but a version that has a basic display with just a few pixels could be operational "fairly quickly," according to Parviz.

Read more here : http://uwnews.org/

Is this how Telemarketing is done? great video.

2008-01-17T01:43:00.000+05:00

Simply hilarious video showing supposedly India's best telemarketer, outstanding video.

Photobucket goes mobile

2008-01-16T22:59:00.000+05:00

Photobucket.com has launched their mobile site, allowing everyone, easy viewing and uploading of photo's to their online albums using mobile devices. Users can access the mobile site using http://m.photobucket.com

Mobile users will be able to:

Browse existing personal and public Photobucket content directly from mobile devices
Upload photos and videos to Photobucket from mobile devices
Share photos and graphics with individuals via email from mobile devices
Search Photobucket’s billions of photos and graphics
View a variety of featured photos and images every day from the Photobucket Mobile home page

Spy sunglasses, anyone can make

2008-01-14T10:49:00.001+05:00

Build a pair of spy sunglasses under $40 using off the shelf products. This is too easy anybody can do this. Does this mean that i have to be careful the next time someone stares at me with sunglasses. This little project involves a pair of tinted sunglasses, MiniDV camcorder and a small spy cam, all of which is available anywhere these days. Give it a try, you might end up the next 007.

iphone trogan has been found!!!

2008-01-12T18:43:00.000+05:00

A Trojan meant for the Apple iPhone has been discovered by F-Secure and Symantec, who have warned iPhone users to be careful about installing third-party applications. The malware, variously called "113 prep" and "iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep" which is supposedly iPhone firmware 1.1.3, which broke cover last week, but when owners ran it all they saw was a message saying "shoes". but trying to remove it leaves the iPhone software damaged.

Is Microsoft readying to buy Logitech?

2008-01-12T08:02:00.000+05:00

Word is going around that Microsoft might be getting ready to accuire Logitech. The software giant is reportedly considering a bid worth just over $9 billion for Logitech, which is currently valued at around $6.3 billion. Microsoft themselves hold dominion over a huge portion of the current computer accessory and peripheral market, with their lines of keyboards and mice found in office and desktop environments everywhere. If they were to acquire Logitech, they will become, the world’s most dominant peripheral force.

Eee PC from Asus - Is it the future of mobile computing?

2008-01-12T07:16:00.000+05:00

Eee PC stands for "Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play". The ASUS Eee PC is a 7 inch 'sub-notebook' designed by ASUS and Intel.

- Running a Xandros Linux base and coming with pre installed linux apps such as OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, Skype, Tux Paint.

- This beauty uses a solid-state drive for storage (instead of a hard drive) which consumes less power, allows the device to boot quickly and makes it less susceptible to shock damage.

- Some of the features include web cam, Wifi b/g, 3 USB ports, multi media card reader.

- Best of all the price starts around $200

Specification

Model Name	Eee PC 8G	Eee PC 4G	Eee PC 4G Surf	Eee PC 2G Surf
Display	7"	7"	7"	7"
Intel CPU & Chipset	●	●	●	●
Operating System	Linux Windows XP compatible	Linux Windows XP compatible	Linux Windows XP compatible	Linux Windows XP compatible
Ethernet Communication	●	●	●	●
WLAN	●	●	●	●
Memory	1G (DDR2)	512 MB (DDR2)	512 MB (DDR2)	512 MB (DDR2)
S.S.D. Storage (Solid-State Disk)	8G	4G	4G	2G
Camera	●	●	-	-
Audio	Hi-Definition audio Stereo speaker Microphone	Hi-Definition audio Stereo speaker Microphone	Hi-Definition audio Stereo speaker Microphone	Hi-Definition audio Stereo speaker Microphone
Battery	4 Cells: 5200 mAh, 3.5hrs*	4 Cells: 5200 mAh, 3.5hrs*	4 Cells: 4400 mAh, 2.8hrs*	4 Cells: 4400 mAh, 2.8hrs*
Weight	0.92 kg	0.92 kg	0.92 kg	0.92 kg

Sri Lanka on the brink of war again!!!

2008-01-08T10:05:00.000+05:00

Sri Lankan Civil War is an ongoing conflict on the island-nation of Sri Lanka. Since the year 1983, there has been on-and-off civil war, predominantly between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers), a separatist militant organization who fight for the creation of an independant state named Tamil Eelam in the northeast of the island. It is estimated that 68,000 people have died in the war since 1983 and it has caused significant harm to the population and economy of the country, as well as leading to the ban of the LTTE as a terrorist organization in 32 countries including the US, Australia, the countries of the EU, and Canada.

The possibility of a lasting peace were raised when a cease-fire was declared in December 2001, and a ceasefire agreement was signed with international mediation in 2002. However hostilities renewed in late 2005 and the conflict has continued to escalate, resulting in the deaths of over 4,000 people since November 2005. The government has launched a number of military offensives against the LTTE since July 2006, and driven the LTTE out of the entire Eastern province of the island, and on the fifth anniversary of the signing of the agreement the LTTE declared they would "resume their freedom struggle to achieve statehood". The government's forces also claimed recently to have destroyed all the large arms smuggling vessels that belonged to the LTTE. Just after the government's military commanders expressed their hope to win the war in the near future, on January 2, 2008 the government formally announced withdrawal from the ceasefire agreement.

Please read further.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Civil_War

Demonoid.com Down again!!!

2007-11-09T16:17:00.000+05:00

Almost anyone who downloads torrent files would have utilized demonoid.com. It provides with both public and private torrents for download. Some of the most popular torrents and torrent uploaders use demonoid. Registration for this site is hard to come by, I myself tried for one month before i got opportunity to register myself. new user registration is available for a couple hours of a couple of days in a month.

Today when i tried demonoid.com the site is offline. displaying the following message. "The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding."

This is another sad day for all torrent downloaders. They have tried to bring down demonoid.com before, but the dedication and support of the admins and users have prevailed. Hopefully this time demonoid.com will come back even stronger, Hang in there demonoid.com.

Smoking Pot. :) Not what you think.

2007-10-31T10:59:00.001+05:00

Guess this fellow didn't read the warning. LOL

Is it the way you do it? or is the the people doing it?

2007-08-19T01:13:00.000+05:00

You may have known many ways of doing something, and you may have done it many times. does it mean you can change everything for the better by changing the way things are done, without bringing about any change to your attitude?
When you have many people working their best to achieve something, trying to prove their point, or trying to change your views. Why not stop and take a look around you. Is it only the system of doing things which needs a change, or does everyone need to get their priorities straight?
No matter what the method, if the everyone involed are genuinly interested in going foward and working towards the benifit of all, then we are bound to end up in a better place.
We didnt come this far by depending on a system or by following a set of rules, it was our determination and our genuine love to make this a better place. People have sacrificed their lives for us to be here. Don't we owe it to them to try and put our selfishness behind.
It is not the systems fault, the fault is within us. Each and everyone of us should stop and take notice what we are doing wrong and put the benifit of our nation before our needs.

Is Male' now the same as Gangs of New York?

2007-07-29T02:55:00.000+05:00

Now a days you hear all these stories of people getting stabbed, or people getting beaten up by gangs. Gang violence seems to be a common occurrence in male'. Kids with sticks and swords, playing gangster.

Whom do you blame for all this?

Do we continue blaming the government or various other parties?

Who is responsible?

I for one, believe most of the responsibility lie on the hands of their parents. Parents who have lost control over their kids. Who are incapable of keeping their kids from the streets.
Most of these kids are no more than 12 or 14 years old. They are not adults. They are children who have lost their way.

We hear all these stories about parents mistreating their children, beating or manhandling them. We pay attention, and go as far as condemning such behavior. Which every responsible citizen must.

Yet when was the last time we took into notice, the children who have not been cared for? Parents who let their children roam the streets. Parents who never no the whereabouts of their children.

When you bring a child into this world. You take upon yourself the responsibility to take care of that child. You take upon the task of providing that child with education, material support, emotional support, and to teach that child proper ethics and behavior.

Some of the parents amongst us have failed miserably in bringing up their children, thus others are left to carry the burden, the inconvenience and to bear the horrific acts these kids perform in their neighborhood's, to their properties and loved ones.

It is not these kids alone who should be punished, their parents should have to bear the responsibility. Authorities alone cannot solve this issue. Each and every parent should practice their duties, and if need be, should report their children's wrong doing.

No child enters this world a murderer, or as a criminal. They are made such by their upbringing and exposed environments and failure of their parents.

Own a paypal account using your bank of maldives credit card

2007-06-04T16:03:00.000+05:00

Most of us have browsed Ebay and various other internet sites which accept Paypal service. Quite a number of sellers at Ebay accept only Paypal service. Until recently it was not possible to purchase from those sellers, even when u owned a Bank of Maldives credit card.
Now Paypal service has started accepting credit cards from Maldives. This is good news for all the Maldivians who have browsed Ebay and drooled over great bargain deals on various items.
Paypal also allows you to accept credit card payments though them, and the buyer doesnt need to have a Paypal account. The process of setting it up on your site is really too easy. This is great news for small auction sites and blogs.

Is this your next windows mobile phone.

2007-05-21T02:37:00.001+05:00

Recently we have seen a flood of windows mobile devices amongst us. Here is another reason for you to start saving for your next windows mobile.

Pictures have been leaked of a new device, code named HTC Elf. Comes in white color, and is supposed to be announced the coming month. here is the specs

Predecessor Model: HTC P3400
Dimensions: 56 x 105 x 14 millimetres

Mass: 110 grams (battery included)

Software Environment

Operating System: Windows Mobile 6 Professional

Microprocessor

CPU: 32bit Texas Instruments OMAP 850

CPU Clock: 201 MHz

Memory, Storage capacity

ROM capacity: 128 MB (accessible: 35.46MB)

RAM capacity: 64 MB (accessible: 47.89MB)

Hard Disk capacity: Not supported

Display

Display Type: color transflective TFT , 65536 scales

Display Resolution: 240 x 320

Display Diagonal: 2.8 "

Sound

Microphone: mono

Speaker: mono

Audio Output: Proprietary jack

Cellular Phone

Cellular Networks: GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900

Cellular Data Standards: CSD, GPRS, EDGE

Call Alert: 64 -chord melody

Vibrating Alert: Supported

Control Peripherals

Positioning Device: Touchscreen & TouchPad

Keyboard: Not supported

Directional Pad: Not supported

Jog / Scroll Wheel: Pressable rotary scroll wheel

Interfaces

Expansion Slots: MMC, SD, SDIO

Serial: RS-232 , 115200bit/s

USB: USB 1.1 client, 12Mbit/s , USB Series Mini-B (mini-USB)

Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0

Wireless LAN: Not supported

Multimedia Telecommunication

Analog TV: Not supported

Analog Radio: Not supported

Built-in Digital Camera

Main Camera: CMOS sensor, 1.9MP

Built-in Flash: Not supported

Power Supply

Battery: Lithium-ion polymer , removable

Battery Capacity: 1200 mAh

Click here for more picures

How to double your blogs readers

2007-05-20T00:49:00.000+05:00

Some of us spend quite a lot of our time to write and post varying topics of blogs. Yet only a few get their deserved number of readers. The question is how to acquire exposure for your blog. How to let the world know that your blog is online and being posted to.

Pinging, pinging allows various websites, and search engines to know that your blog has been updated with a new post. This makes them list your blog as updated on their various sites.

This is much the same as what www.mvblogs.org does. mvblogs.org pings the sites which are in their list every two hours or so automatically. (am not sure of the duration between pings) For this to happen, you have to first enter your blog address into their list. Almost all of you have done that, haven't you.

There are various other sites, using which you can ping your blog to have it listed on their updated blogs. But most of these sites require you to ping their servers manually every time. The best thing to do is use ping engines, which allows you to ping tens of different sites with just one click.

Why are you still reading this, go out there and start pinging your blog and double your readers.
Here are some of my favorite ping engines.

http://www.pingoat.com/

http://pingomatic.com/

http://pinger.blogflux.com

http://technorati.com/

If you want to find more engines to ping or learn more about pinging blogs, read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_blog The list there should keep you occupied for days.

Hope you find this helpful in bringing more readers to your blog.

How much is your blog worth in "money"

2007-05-15T02:33:00.000+05:00


My blog is worth
$2,258.16.
How much is your blog
worth?

Have you ever wondered how much money your blog is worth? Do you want to know how much your blog is worth? Ever since AOL acquired Weblogs, Inc. (http://www.weblogsinc.com) in 2005 including, Engadget (technology), Autoblog (automotive), Joystiq (gaming), Cinematical (films) to name a few, bloggers around the world have wondered the same thing.

In order for you to value your blog, you will have to register your blog at http://technorati.com. Because the tool uses Technorati API to calculate your blogs worth. After your blogs value is calculated, you will get a custom code to display the value on your blog, same as the picture displayed above.

You can enter your blog address here to calculate how much your blog is worth (if u try to calculate without registering with Technorati, your blogs value will be $00.00) :
http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/

If you want to try this another way, you can do that at at blogshares.com

"BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by incoming links."

Worlds most popular mobile phone

2007-05-14T06:57:00.000+05:00

Mobile phones are becoming cheaper by the day. Billions of mobiles have been sold since their introduction. Yes the title of the world's most sold phone goes to Nokia 1100. This candy bar phone with the flashlight and cheap price has sold over 200 million units since its introduction in 2003. That is 100 million units more than ipods, 150 million more than motorola razor, and 85 million more than sony playstation 2. This phone has also earned the title of the Nokia's 1 billionth phone to be sold, it was sold in Nigeria.

Mankinds greatness incentive and its ruination.

2007-05-12T10:41:00.000+05:00

Humans have come so far and achieved so much in so little time. We have left the confines of this tiny earth, visited the depths of the deepest ocean, waged bloody wars, helped thousand other species.
What drives us to do these things, what incentive is there? As each and everyone of us form inside our mother, our parents starts hoping for our future, and as we grow from the little toddler to adulthood and beyond, we carry hope in our hearts. Hope for our own future and others. Hope for our kind and the rest.
Hope propels us to try and help another who has done wrong. It makes us invest our thoughts and labor in others whom we are not responsible. Hoping something good or bad will come from it.
We conquer continents and mountains hoping we could bring good and benefits upon us or others. We kill, murder and slaughter others, hoping to help ourself or for the benefit of mankind. We take the burden or raising our children, hoping that they will grow up to be successful and self reliant.

hope makes us bring a life to this world, and it sometimes propels us to take the life of someone else. Hope is mankind's greatest incentive and yet its ruination.

Addicted to fish

2007-05-12T04:42:00.000+05:00

Nope, i don't mean the type of fish u find at the local fish market. The other day i was asked by a friends kid to help him install the game Feeding Frenzy on his computer. Unfortunately for the little guy, he didn't have the exe file but an already installed folder of the game. So i tell him this and get back home.

Later that day bored as usual i thought of downloading the game, and a few clicks later i have the latest version of feeding frenzy. Just a few more clicks and minutes later i have it installed and running on my computer.

Now comes the part about "High scores". The highest preprogrammed score is 12500, which is easily beatable. That should wrap it up, should it not?? Nope, then we have the "Food Bank Score" and the "You have earned the rank of " designation. After completion of every stage you get 1 food bank score for every fish u ate, and your rank increases after passing a particular food bank scores. After you finish all the levels, you can start over again while building upon your previous food back score and rank.

It is such as easy game to play, plus u are not required to click the mouse button, just to move it around to maneuver your fish.

I have finished all the stages again and again, i have completed all the stages 13 times, yet i keep playing it even while chatting, browsing, reading my news feeds, even blogging. I never seem to get bored of this game, which is very unusual for me. Somebody just get in there with a spear and kill that fish.

Now i hope non of you download and get addicted to feeding frenzy.