Learn to Google the correct way!

     Everyone knows how to use the world's most popular search engine (And the most visited website, for that matter), right? No!

     Most of us, statistically about 90% of all Googlers, don't know how to use the search engine to it's fullest extent. We enter a general phrase we want to search for, and hope Google will turn up things we are looking for. There are, however, much better ways to use Google to ensure that you will get just what you want, every time you search.

     Google's advanced search options can add several modification parameters, but the best kind of modifications are done as you type in Google's search bar. Here are a few important ones:

" " →  Double quotes: Searches for an exact word or phrase. Doesn't bother for near-matches.

-<query>    →  Minus sign: Excludes a term from a search

~<query>   →  Tilde sign: Searches for related terms as well

<year>..<year> →: Searches for a time range

site: →:Searches for hits in a particular website.

     This infographic below sums up all such Google tricks and a few useful keyboard shortcuts for browsing. Totally worth checking out!

Youtube-Mp3 for fast, quick and efficient conversion

     Long ago, AGZuniverse  informed you about video2mp3, a great online tool for converting youtube videos to mp3 and downloading them on the fly. But many has since experienced problems with that site, probably due to overloaded servers unable to process to many requests. Here comes in another converter tool, which has been around for longer than video2mp3 : www.youtube-mp3.org/

     Why anyone would want to use such a tool requires no description, as nearly every internet user has those moments when he comes across a great song, speech, quote or background track in a video on Youtube, but decides not to grab due to the hassle of having to download the video first, trim it, and then convert it to mp3 using local/online converters. It's a waste of data, considering you have such services available.

     It's fast, with videos being converted and made available in a matter of seconds. The site being impaired due to server load is unlikely, as shown by it's longevity. The only downside is that the maximum quality is 128kbps, which may not be enough for some. But it's surely something to try out!

AdBlock may not always be your friend

     Installing a good quality Ad-Blocker is now one of the first things to do once you're done setting up your new browser. With stores of vast plugins supporting Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, the world's two most popular browers, this process is now as easy as it could ever get. 

     But what many don't realize is that Ad Block can block more than those annoying flashy ads that seem to clog up every other website. Sure, these softwares are up there with the most useful and most downloaded in their respective stores for a reason: They are damn useful, and they get their calls right 99% of the time.

     An advertisement or two may slip through every now and then. Hardly a problem. But the real issue is when ad-blockers block components of a website that stop it from functioning properly.

     The good news is, getting rid of this is as easy as turning off your ad-blocker. But first, you have to confirm if it is really the source of your issue.

     So you have ventured into a site that seems to work improperly. Go ahead, right click anywhere on the page and choose 'Inspect Element'. (Or just hit Ctrl+Shift+I). If you are running ad-blocker, chances are you will see errors (Specifically, the error: "ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT") on nearly every website that has ads blocked. But if you are on a trusted page that you know for a fact does not show ads, (Like a form submission page in most websites or a governmental website) and the errors are still present, turning off adblock will get the site running normally most of the time.

     If you find that adblock is blocking an essential plugin that websites normally use, such as jQuery and BootStrap, it can cause completely abnormal behavior, and turning it off should fix the issue once again.

     You cannot fully capitalize on the services of such technical gizmos unless you know when to and when not to use it. This awareness is imperative for happy and safe networking. Hope you enjoyed!

=)

PicoCTF: Hacking challenge

     All the ones among us who show a keen interest in computers and programming, at some point or the other, is bound to have marveled at hackers navigating green falling matrices in Hollywood films, or wondered how hackers go through the most secure firewalls on the planet after reading news reports of hacker strikes or after finishing Dan Brown's novel 'The Digital Fortress'. 

     While using one's ability to steal sensitive data and turn lives of several innocent users into misery is a highly condemned practice, ethical hacking, or white-hat hacking, is an important skill that must be possessed by anyone looking to get into the field of system securities. Unfortunately, the majority of the present generation, while being well versed and quick to adapt to cutting-edge technological innovations, knows little about the underlying layers of security and their possible exploits.

     Whether you are just a tech junkie trying to learn more, or someone looking for new challenges in cryptography and programming, or someone genuinely interested in learning more about the field of security and encryption, Capture The Flag competitions or CTFs are just the right place to swing by. However, many such competitions are aimed at experts and sets the bar of standard very high, almost too high for newcomers to take up. This is where PicoCTF, a CTF challenge set up primarily for students, becomes just the perfect place for you. While the original PicoCTF 2014 competition is long done, all the challenges is still open for everyone around the world, to try out totally for free.

     While classic Vigenere Ciphers and simple substitution ones to modern-day XOR ciphers serve the main course in cryptography, brilliantly crafted codes in languages ranging from Java to assembly language provide plenty of reverse engineering fun. Add web exploitation and other interesting challenges to the mix, and what you have is an entertaining, non-boring, and educational series of challenges sure to thrill anyone willing to spent some time on it.

     Totally worth taking a look at!

Online Java IDE

     If you are a programmer, or even if you just code as a hobby, you will know how important having a well equipped IDE is for the creation and debugging of code.

     While web development can be handled easily using the built-in tools that come with popular browsers such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, certain other languages such as C++ or Java requires an IDE hundreds of megabytes in size. While it is strongly recommended that you go for a full IDE (Especially considering how most of them are free) if you are working on something serious, having to download and install a large file just for the execution of a few lines of code you picked up on the way can be a tedious process.

    In such cases, online IDE's are the way to go. These are websites that allow you to write, compile, debug, and execute code while using minimal data as the IDE is located in the website's server.

     I made a post about an online C++ shell a while ago, and now it's time to look at a Java IDE.

http://www.compilejava.net/ does the job beautifully well, no questions asked. 

It claims to be a Java compiler created in PHP, and allows you to key in code or paste source and see the compiler as well as the program output as the program runs. You can even enter command line arguments if necessary, and the whole thing comes with a number of delightful markup formats.

     Oh, the compiler is fully online, completely free to use, and no annoying registrations are required. Truly a great service!

Grab your free copy of The Byzantium now!

     The Byzantium, the novel published by Aswin G, the author of this blog, is FREE on Amazon on October 25, 2015. Make sure you grab it!

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015NE5M46?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Original post describing the book : http://agzuniverse.blogspot.in/2015/09/the-byzantium-aswin-gs-debut-novel.html

Want to count words in an article?

     The first and foremost thing we look for when we start off writing an essay or article is the word limit. Whether it is an official limit set by others or just a personal limit to control the size of your work, knowing how much words are in your document is always a pain to find out.

     While it's not difficult to know exactly how much words are there in a text, thanks to Microsoft Word's handy feature that displays the word count on the status bar, knowing how much words that actually count towards the word limit is the real trouble, as a usual word count excludes all common words such as 'the', 'and', 'is' etc. 

     The website www.wordcounttools.com is a perfect solution to this, giving you a complete analysis of any piece of text. You can upload text in a wide variety of file formats or paste it into the given box, and you get quite a bit of details regarding the text. These include, word and character count, unique words count, difficult words count, readability level and much more.

A particularly useful feature is the keyword density indicator, which shows how often you use unique words. This becomes really useful in removing excessive repetitions of the same word in an essay, article or story, instantly making it better.

Timezone conversion

We've all been at that point of frustration because we just cannot find out the timing of that football match in our own timezone. Sure, the official site says CET 7pm, but that means nothing to me. In the end we've always had to hunt down timezone conversion sites to do the work for us.

Thankfully, there are quite a few, like:

5) EveryTimeZone
www.everytimezone.com
What I love about this site is it's simple description: "Never warp your brain with timezone math again"

Unfortunately, it just allows you to see your local time and the equivalent times in 14 evenly spread timezones across 3 days. Still, pretty handy, and dead easy to understand.

4) WorldTimeBuddy

http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/
World Time Buddy is a tool that allows you to calculate the time on any day, across any amount of time zones of your choice from all the timezones in the world.

Really useful, but reading time zones will take more than just a glance, as the interface is not exactly simplified.

3) TimeZoneConverter

http://www.timezoneconverter.com/
Time Zone Converter is much tidier and simple to use: You set the date, key in the time, and choose the from and to conversion options for timezones.

Quite a step forward from the previous two, and really nice to use.

2) TheTimeZoneConverter
http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/

This website's URL may have only a 'The' extra, but it is massively different from all usual timezone converters. This one follows a simple and stripped-down design. Like, really, really, stripped-down design.

That's pretty much all it has.

The flip side to this simplicity is, you can't convert timezones for days other than the current one. But really, it's all you need.

1) TimeAndDate

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Time and Date is perhaps the best of the bunch. An elegant user interface easily allows you to convert between every relevant timezone including compensation for things like daylight saving, and also has a catalog of national time zones and other extras.

So next time you decide to find out whether you would have to stay up all night to watch your fav band's live show on TV, you know which site to hop on!

The Byzantium - Aswin G's debut novel

     Hello readers,

     I'm extremely happy to announce that my debut novel, The Byzantium, has been published and is available for purchase as an e-book on Amazon. I've been working on what is a relatively short novel (at 117 pages on Kindle) over the last few months, and now it's live and ready to be read.

(Link to purchase the book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015NE5M46?*Version*=1&*entries*=0 )

     The history and geography specialists (or Age of Empires specialists, it depends.) among us will know that Byzantium was the capital of the Byzantine empire and the old name of Constantinople, which in turn is the old name of Istanbul. However, The Byzantium has nothing to do with this city, and is in fact, set in a parallel world in an unnamed planet orbiting the star Procyon.

     This book is crafted to be a mystery suspense thriller with all the elements of a detective novel, but it also branches out to capture raw human emotions and questions the fundamental aspects of life, and our notions regarding them.

     Here's a sneak peak at the prologue of the book. An extended preview can be viewed on Amazon.

     The Byzantium is avaiable for purchase on www.amazon.com at 2.99$, and at comparable prices in other Amazon marketplaces as well. Please do stop by and take a look.

     Hoping you'll enjoy,

     Aswin G.

Achieve 'True Randomness' with random.org

    It's fairly easy to make a random number generator. Nearly all programming languages have a function build in just for random number generation. Randomization is a very important aspect in several things, ranging from the probability of a player taking a good touch factoring in their ball control and angle of ball reception in FIFA to daily lotto draws.

      While the generic random() function might get you acceptable results, none of them are 'truly' random, according to www.random.org  . Those functions are pseudo-random, that is, their number generation is predictable to an extent. And if it's predictable, it's not random. Right?

     So random.org offers us 'true' random number generation, based on atmospheric noise. This enduring service has existed since 1998, and is being used for many things, such as lotto draws and online games.

     The site offers many services, free as well as paid. It's worth checking out if you are searching for something that's truly random, no questions asked.