Start Windows 8 in safe mode

     Starting windows in safe mode is an extremely important step in troubleshooting bugs and problems in the operating system. Thing is, not many people know how to do that. Solving bugs and fixing issues in a computer can go a long way beyond a simple virus scan. So read on, and find out more.

What is safe mode?

      No use in learning to boot into safe mode if you don't know what it is, right?

     Safe mode is essentially a secure 'shell' where the operating system disables most drivers and programs except the core components of Windows. This allows you to identify whether the problems that prompted you to try safe mode came from the operating system, or another program driver.

     Some programs that integrate themselves into the very core of your system, such as antivirus programs, require booting into safe mode to uninstall completely. Most viruses fail to run in safe mode, so it can be used as a last-ditch effort to save and backup the data in a heavily infected computer.

How can I enter safe mode?

     There are multiple ways to enter safe mode, we shall look one below.

     Go to the start screen and search for 'run'.

In the windows that comes up, type in 'msconfig' and press enter.

This will open the System Configuration window. Go to the boot tab, check 'Safe Boot' and click OK.

A prompt shows up, giving the following message:

Now you can either click 'Restart' to go into safe mode, or choose 'Restart later', finish all your work, and restart the computer like you normally do.

Hope this helped :)

ConvertPad on android

     In this article I'm showcasing yet another popular android app that is a must-have for any user. One of the many reasons why smartphones are so popular is that it can do so much more than what one would expect it to. When handheld phones became globally popular over a decade ago, it's built in calculator was praised widely for allowing calculations and conversions in daily life to be done with relative ease.
     Now, smartphones have taken it to the next level, featuring dedicated conversion apps that allows for conversion between more units than you probably knew that actually existed in the world.

     One of the best free conversion apps available on Google Play Store is Sunny Moon's ConvertPad.
It's many features include multiple language support, currency exchange conversion and of course, a plethora of units ranging from length, area and weight to typography, sound and and even shoe size.

     In short, this app offers any and all units you can ever hope to actually find useful, and it allows for seamless, accurate and quick conversions between these units in a clean and resourceful user interface. The 10 million plus downloads and the 4.4 rating is testimony to the app's popularity and effectiveness.

Oh, and it's just a 5mb download.
Totally a must-have!

Pokemon teambuilder

  This is again a post for the many Pokemon trainers out there, especially for the ones who prefer competitive battling.
 
  Making a team is the first step in competitive Pokemon battling. No time spent wading through grass and visiting Pokemon centers and no money wasted on repels and escape ropes. It's just pick a team, make it, and go.

  While starting out on online battling is really easy, becoming a player good enough so you can go into any match with confidence and expecting nothing short of victory is a process that takes time, patience and skill.

  And once again, a really good team is the secret to the best player's mind-boggling winstreaks. Most teambuilder offer nothing more than basic information. Sometime you might end up mounting weaknesses while lacking coverage in certain types while teambuilding. The result will be a disastrous team that crashes down like a pack of cards against a prepared opponent.
 

  But once again, the internet comes to the rescue. The peeps at teammagma has made an exellent online teambuilder that illustrates your team's weaknesses and coverage in easy-to-read graphs so you can test 'em team cores and figure out deadly combos without even playing a single match.

  It's definitely worth a try if you're a Pokemon player.

Extract album art with ID3 Album Art Extractor

   It's a given fact that there is no human being (Or animals, for that matter) alive who doesn't enjoy listening to songs. Whether it be rock, pop, folk or EDM from the 80's 90's or the 'naughts, everyone who owns a phone is guaranteed to have a playlist loaded and ready to roll.

     Whether you download your songs from the internet or buy original album CD's, album art is a thing that has been part of music ever since the digital era. Simply put, album art is an image file embedded within the song that shows up as a thumbnail while the song is being played or previewed.

     While the album art of most songs is just a quick Google Images search away, you may come across custom album art or certain unique pieces that are just not so easily available on the net. And there is nothing so much frustrating as the inability find something on the internet.

     If you've been the victim of such a situation, you should know that you can save your bandwidth as well as your time by using a simple software to extract album art as image files.

     ID3 Album Art Extractor by Preston media is a free, lightweight and efficient software that does the job with absolute gusto.

     You can download the 356KB (!) software from here. Once you're done, you can run the program and follow simple steps to pick the folder that contains your songs, choose the kind of images you need to extract, and even define user access to the art folder before hitting finish and watching this brilliant piece of software do it's job perfectly.

Hope that helped!

Compass apps on android

This article is about the marvelous device that is literally with everyone on the planet: smartphones.

Chosen as #1 on multiple lists of 'greatest inventions of the 21st century', smartphones are a computer, watch, alarm clock, sticky note, calculator, telephone, messager, gaming console and newspaper all in one. In fact, in can be a whole lot more than that with the right apps. An android device, having access to the largest app store of all the popular operating systems, have a massive potential to go from a fancy phone to a device you just cannot live without.

I hope to introduce many of these insanely practical apps over the weeks, but let's start with something simple: A compass.

If you didn't know it already, the sensors in your device most probably includes a magnetic sensor, which can be used to make efficient and accurate compass apps. Smart app developers out there required no invitation when this sensor become commonplace, resulting the availability of multiple compass apps on the Google Play Store.

Some of the best include:

Compass, by gabenative
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gn.android.compass

Smart Compass, by Smart Tools co.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.sira.compass

Both are up-to date, have a small download size (Less than 5 mb), totally free and absolutely reliable.
If you don't have one installed by now, go ahead and pick one. Right now. You never know when you're gonna get marooned.

Best of Tumblr

Tumblr, the micro blogging site owned by Yahoo, is known for it's constant flow of thought-provoking articles and hilarious jokes contributed by a massive international user base. But finding the absolutely best over-the-top blogs that will have you rolling on the floor laughing (Literally ROFL) will take some work. Thankfully, some guys have made it their mission to compile the best of Tumblr into one roller coaster ride of a website: http://best-of-tumblr.tumblr.com/

Cheers!

Fancy the world ending?

No? Too bad. There are people all over the world believing in and preparing for everything from zombie apocalypses to alien invasions. While hardly any of these may make sense from a logical viewpoint, all such events have garnered cult followers around the world who firmly believe in doomsday.

Regardless of whether you want the world to end or want to save the world when it ends (Or simply read stuff, whatever.), these guys have some interesting info:

http://www.disastercountdown.com/

What is a Supernova?

These massive explosions in the sky that radiates more energy than entire galaxies and lead to the formation of black holes are a fascinating astronomical phenomenon.
Interested? Read about it here : http://www.space.com/6638-supernova.html

Just FIFA stuff

No, I'm not talking about the organisation. Certain websites around the internet are heaven for EA's FIFA franchise fanatics. Like me :)

Might wanna visit these, if you like playing the smash hit video game series:

http://www.fifplay.com/

http://www.fifatutorial.com/

HTML entity codes

What are HTML entity codes?

Well, they are 'encrypted' forms of every character that can be displayed on the web, recognizable only by HTML. They are commonly used to bypass the browser botching up special characters when reading the HTML code, as HTML entity codes are converted to special characters and are not recognized as part of the webpage code.

They come in extremely handy not only for developers, but also common users when trying to print certain characters in blogs, forums etc that allow the WYSWYG(What You See Is What You Get) editor to be turned off.

Every character also has an ASCII code, which has it's own uses in programming and markup languages.

Here's a complete list of HTML entity codes and ASCII decimal and hex numbers of all characters:

http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm