The Sudanese Girl

This is the Pulitzer Prize winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine. It depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards a UN food camp, located a kilometre away.

The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including Kevin Carter, the photographer, who left as soon as the photo was taken.

Three months later he committed suicide due to depression.

He said: Dear God,

I promise I will never waste my food no matter how bad it can taste and how full I may be. I pray that He will protect this little boy, guide and deliver him away from his misery. I pray that we will be more sensitive towards the world around us and not be blinded by our own selfish nature and interests.

I hope this picture will always serve as a reminder to us that how fortunate we are and that we must never ever take things for granted.

Let's make a prayer for the suffering in anywhere any place around the globe and send this friendly reminder to others. Think and look at this when you complain about your food and the food we waste daily.

Adding Laptop Memory

Last week, I decided to add more memory to my Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop. Its about 3 years old now and only had 256MB RAM! To be honest, I should have added more memory ages ago, but just couldn't be bothered. I only use my laptop for email and internet anyway.

I logged onto crucial.com and ordered a 1GB 200-PIN SODIMM 128Mx64 DDR PC2700 Pb-Free upgrade for my laptop. The total cost came to £68.14 (£57.99 + £10.15 tax) and it arrived the next day - I wasn't expecting such a speedy delivery!

I shut-down my computer, disconnected all cables, closed the display and turned it upside down on my desk. I slid out the battery as shown below:


I then loosened the captive screw in the memory module cover and removed it, revealing the 256MB module and an empty slot:



I unwrapped the new module and slid it into the empty slot at a 45-degree angle until it clicked into place. It required quite a bit of force.


I then closed the cover, put the battery back in and powered up.

As the computer booted, it detected the additional memory. I then went to Control Panel > System to check me new memory which was indeed 1.25GB.

Its amazing how much difference this has made! All my applications, such as Firefox and Eclipse are so much more faster and the system as a whole is much more responsive.

Bonus Day

Feb 6th was Bonus Day - a day that everyone looks forward to with eager anticipation. However, its also a day of doom and gloom. No work gets done because people are either ecstatic or aggrieved over the size of their bonus. You're not allowed to discuss the amount of your bonus with anyone as it is a sackable offence! People try not to reveal their true emotions and when asked about it usually respond by saying that they are "content" and "not particularly happy nor particularly disappointed". Some people think they have been ripped off because they are earning a small proportion of the very large sums of money they are making for the bank.

Almost everyone in the bank gets some kind of bonus. A secretary might receive between 6-10% of his or her salary. People in back-office functions, such as public relations or IT, might get 40% to 60%. The big money, though, is "front-office" traders who make four or five times their annual pay!

So how did I do? I made AVP (Assistant Vice President). I'd just like to thank all my colleagues, friends and family for their support and kind wishes. Cheers!

Recovering Deleted Files

When you delete a file using Windows Explorer, the file is normally be moved to the Recycle Bin, unless you used "Shift+Delete". While it is in the Recycle Bin, the file can easily be restored without any problem. So the first thing to do when you want to recover a deleted file is look in the Recycle Bin.

Nothing on your drive is permanently removed when you delete it. Whenever you delete a file Windows simply marks it for deletion by changing one character in the file table. The entire file is still sitting on your hard drive, but it is hidden from view. Windows then allows other files to write over the space where it resides if required, but the file is not gone from your hard drive until it is completely overwritten at some point. This means that you can actually recover files that have been 'permanently' deleted, but you will require special software to do so.

RESTORATION

The best utility I have found to restore deleted files is a small free tool called Restoration. Upon start, you can scan for all files that can be recovered and also limit the results by entering a search term or extension. You can then select a file and click 'Restore by Copying' to recover it - however note that the file may not be complete since portions of it may have already been overwritten, so there is no guarantee you can recover an entire file this way. The chances of recovering the file intact decrease the longer you leave it - because the longer you leave it, the more likely it is that the computer will reuse all or part of the file's disk space for something else.

If you have accidentally deleted an important file, try and minimise any further disk activity. Do not start an application, save files, defragment your hard drive or even reboot Windows for example as these all aid in potentially overwriting the area where the file is sitting. Don't even leave your system idle for long periods of time either, since by default Windows XP starts defragmenting your hard drive in the background when idle. Run an undelete program like Restoration immediately.

Permanently Deleting Files

Restoration also provides the option to permanently delete files so that they cannot be recovered.


ISOBUSTER

If you want to recover deleted or damaged files on a CD or DVD, you will have to use a utility like IsoBuster. However just like hard drive data recovery, there is no guarantee that any usable data can be recovered from a damaged or deleted disk - particularly if it has been erased.

Windows System Tools

These are useful tools which will tell you all you need to know about your Windows system:


BUILT-IN UTILITIES

• MS INFO
  Start > Run > msinfo32
  System information.
  You will need to have the 'Help and Support' service enabled


• DEVICE MANAGER
  Start > Run > devmgmt.msc
  Displays your hardware devices which you can choose to update or uninstall


• DIRECTX DIAGNOSTICS
  Start > Run > dxdiag
  The most useful function for DXDiag is its ability to create a text file with all your major system information, including your main hardware specifications, driver files, and environmental settings.


• MSCONFIG
  Start > Run > msconfig
  Allows you to select which programs are automatically launched when your computer first starts up. Also allows you to stop/start services.


• REGEDIT
  Start > Run > regedit
  Launches the Registry Editor. The Registry contains information that Windows continually references during operation, such as profiles for each user, the applications installed on the computer and the types of documents that each can create, property sheet settings for folders and application icons, what hardware exists on the system, and the ports that are being used.

EXTERNAL SOFTWARE

• System Information for Windows
  SIW is the System Information for Windows tool which can be downloaded from the SIW Website. "Everything you want to know about your computer."


• CPU-Z
  You can download CPU-Z from the CPU-Z Website. Provides you with everything you need to know about your CPU, such as its name/number, core stepping, package, voltage, cache information etc. It will also tell you about your system's current Bus speed under the CPU tab, your full motherboard details under the Motherboard tab, and your RAM's complete details under the Memory and SPD tabs. Note that for information to appear under the SPD tab you will have to first select the slot(s) on the motherboard that your RAM stick(s) occupy, otherwise the box will be empty.


• NERO INFOTOOL
  You can download the Nero Disk InfoTool Utility from the CD Speed Website. It is a utility which analyses and displays the most important information about a drive, disc, configuration and software. The information can also be printed or saved to a text file.


• JDiskReport
  You can download it from JGoodies. Illustrates with the help of graphs, how much space the files and directories consume on your disk drives and it helps you find where space is being used up.