How to resize pictures with MS Paint

Whether it be uploading a picture in an application form, or embedding a picture in a webpage, the resolution and size of a picture is an eternal horror for most of us.

Making a user load a full-HD picture that is embedded in small a 100 X 80 box in your website is a sheer waste of megabytes. Over sized pictures blow up the size of each webpage, increase loading time and gives your users a big reason to stop visiting your website altogether.

Most of us have also have experienced the irritating 'picture is too big' message when we try to upload out photo for competitive exams and application forms for a myriad of purposes. 

Most users are usually stumped in such a situation, and often has to rely on 3rd party software and online conversion tools to get the job done.....all the while the solution was right in front of them, in good old MS Paint.

This extremely familiar software has went from a random graffiti wall to a powerful yet simple picture processing software over the years. And now, I shall show you how to resize pictures easily with paint. What I'm about to show you is really a no-brainer, but there are a large number of people (Probably including you, if you came to this post and read this far.) that doesn't realize this method exists.

NOTE:The following screenshots have been taken in Windows 8.

So I have a picture of size 186kb here, that I would like to reduce to below 100kb.

1)Open your picture in paint. Right clicking and choosing 'edit' will do the job.

2)Now choose 'Resize'.

3)Now you can enter the the new size in percentage or in pixels under the 'resize' box. I'm going to set the vertical and horizontal percentage to 50, to half it's size.

4)Now click ok, and save the picture. You're done! Now my picture is down to just 49kb:

That's it! Hope it helped!

Debug your Javascript code easily with JSHint

This one is for the rising Javascript coders and webpage develeopers.

While most of us is bound to have a IDE at hand to help us in sorting through the multitude of errors and warnings bound to turn up in any script, small and large, there is still a vast amount of programmers who code in notepad. They get pretty much no help on detecting errors in their program.

This is were http://www.jshint.com/ comes in.

This user friendly tool detects every error in your code with the efficiency and accuracy of any professional IDE. In fact, even if you have an IDE, you may still want to use this because of it's easy and friendly interface.

In fact, there is no interface. All you do is paste your code on the left, and the errors are shown immediately on the right side.
It also shows a few useful metrics that can't be seen on most IDEs.

Once you load this page, there is no need of the internet again. The page can process your code and display the errors offline as well.

As a result, this is something all devs should know, and use.

2048 : Casual gaming rejuvenated

The viral game 2048, created by Gabriele Cirulli,  should already be known to most of you through Android and iOS apps. While casual gaming is not exactly done on PC, giving the game a go at http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/ is a perfect way to turn boring hours into a fun mental exercise.

This game creates the deception of a slow and relaxing game where you tap away at your arrow keys carelessly to see the blocks slide into one another with grace, as higher powers of 2 pop out at their place. However, as the tempo builds and the numbers climb into higher powers, you will find yourself digging into the annals of your cerebral cortex and think several moves ahead to find that perfect move that will ultimately display the number 2048 on the screen, winning the game.

But the best part is that despite the fact that you will find yourself glued to the game all the time you try it, never taking your eyes of screen for the fear of interrupting the process of calculating the long chains to proceed to the next power of 2 happening in your brain, your brain will never end up feeling burnt out and exhausted. Nope. Instead, it will scream for more.

In essence, you get a nice brain workout, a time-killer, and an epic casual puzzle game with an incredible replay value all in one go.

And the feeling you get when you finally do beat the game (And take a screenshot of it to show off to your pals) is unmatched.

The magic of Alt Codes

Ever thought how company names in the ever-boring license agreements and 'Terms and Conditions' that show up while you install your favorite game come with a '©' copyright symbol?

Well, that's the magic of alt codes. Ever heard of it ?

Simply put, alt codes are codes that you enter in the numpad of your keyboard while holding down the alt key to print certain characters. The code of the © symbol is 0169. So to get the symbol, you have to hold down the alt key, and enter '0169' in your numpad.

NOTE: Alt codes only work on your numpad. The numpad refers to the numbers arranged in a 3 X 3 grid on the right side of a standard keyboard.

There are thousands of printable characters using alt codes, including all the alphabets, copyright symbol, stuff like ☺, ╬, ♣, ¼ and much more. Memorizing a few useful alt codes will allow you to create patterns and symbols to customize plain .txt files to an extent you've never known before.

A few useful alt codes are shown below. If you want a complete list, go to http://www.alt-codes.net/ .

Symbol	Code
☺	1
½	171
¼	172
Æ	146
Ä	142
è	138
Σ	228
√	251
∞	236
™	0153
®	0174
•	7
©	0169

Create cool ASCII text with ASCII generator

Have you ever wondered how all those video game walkthroughs on gamefaqs.com start with the name of the game written in a cool stylized way using keyboard characters only?
Did you think that the person who wrote the guide is so good at computers that they are able to make graffiti out of keyboard characters?

Well, while it is possible for some to make such text using their keyboard only, most people just use an ASCII generator to do it for them, such as www.network-science.de/ascii/

This website gives you a simple user interface, where you have to type in the text, select a font from a huge batch varying from a few basic fonts to ultra-uber cool graffiti and out-of-this-world futuristic fonts, and hit the "do it!" button to generate your ASCII 'text image' in the text field below, ready for being pasted onto anywhere you desire.

Many of these fonts also go beyond the stuff printed using your keyboard, and uses ASCII characters to posh up the resulting text even more.

Oh, and as a bonus, you can change the stretch, width, adjustment and enable text reflection. Pretty cool, huh?

Samples:

_|_| _|_|_| _|_|_|_|_| _| _| _| _| _|_|_|_| _| _|_| _| _| _| _| _| _| _| _| _|_|_| _|_|_|_|_| __ ___ ____ /__\ / __)(_ ) /(__)\( (_-. / /_ (__)(__)\___/(____) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _(_)_ _ (_)(_)(_) _ (_)(_)(_)(_)(_) _(_) (_)_ (_) (_) _(_) _(_) (_)_ (_) _ _ _ _(_) (_) _ _ _ (_)(_) (_)(_)(_) _(_) (_)(_)(_)(_)(_)(_) (_) _(_) (_) (_)(_) _ _ _ (_) _ (_) _ _ _ (_) (_) (_)(_)(_)(_)(_)(_)(_)(_)(_)