How fiber optic internet works

April 23, 2012

Fiber optic technology has paved the way for a new type of technology and its effects on home services.

Everything from TV, phone, and even internet services have been positively altered due to the advancements brought on by fiber optic technology. With internet services in particular, this new form of connection allows for the internet to go in a direction that it has not always been able to go. Fiber Optic Internet is a step forward toward an unstoppable internet connection.

A spool of fiber optic cable

How Fiber Optic Technology Works

The use of light to transmit information such as signals and images through an optical fiber is what Fiber Optic technology refers to. Info is transmitted from place to place as pulses of light travel through fiber-optic strands of optically pure lines that carry information in digital form and travel over long distances to arrive at the other end of the connection. Continue Reading

 

Graphene 1.7: What to know before upgrading

April 22, 2012

As at this time of writing, Graphene 1.7 has been sent up the pipe to the WordPress.org Theme Repository. Here’s what you should know before you upgrade.

Note though that it might take anywhere from several hours to several weeks before the theme is published on the repository, as each theme is reviewed by the WordPress Theme Review Team before they are made live. In the mean time, let’s see what’s coming to your WordPress-powered site with Graphene 1.7, and what to look out for. Continue Reading

 

Bog, rockfaces, and stars – the Kauaeranga Valley hike

April 20, 2012

I was desperate to get out of the city and into the bushes. Sitting and working in front of the computer day after day after day really sap the life and enthusiasm out of you. I needed a break, and cities with their concrete jungles just won’t do it for me.

So I invited a few friends to join me for a 2-day hiking trip in the New Zealand backcountry. I had planned the trip last year but it didn’t materialise then due to other commitments and circumstances. This time, I was determined, regardless of how the weather’s like.

The place

The Kauaeranga Valley is located at the heart of the Coromandel Forest Park in the Coromandel Peninsula backcountry, about 2 hours drive away from the Auckland City. We rented a car and started the drive early in the morning so that we can start our hike early.

Along the way while we were driving over a hilly area, we suddenly saw an area fully covered in mists as far as the eye can see. A few hills jut out of the mist cover, like islands in the middle of a vast ocean. But this was no ocean. It was purely mist, so thick and low. We’ve never seen anything like it before, and we were driving straight into it.

I brought along my DSLR camera, and my friend used it to capture this rather surreal photo.


Yep. Like a scene straight out of a zombie apocalypse. We could almost see them loitering around. Continue Reading

 

How monitors produce colour

April 8, 2012

You might have known already that most monitors produce colours using a combination of only 3 colours. Those three colours are red, green, and blue, and that is what RGB stands for.

In most monitors, each pixel is divided into three subpixels, with each subpixel displaying one of the three colours. Each subpixel can vary its brightness to 256 levels (8-bit), from level 1 being essentially off, and level 256 being essentially turned on at full brightness. By combining the three subpixels with differing brightness, each pixel can then produce 256 x 256 x 256 = 16.7 million colours (24-bit).

I captured the photo below of my Samsung monitor’s screen, and blew it up so that you can actually see the individual subpixels and how they are combined to produce the blue colour of the text. It’s something you see everyday but never realise you do. Time for some appreciation, eh?

Close-up photo of my Samsung monitor. Click on the image for the full-sized image.

 

A speck of dust

March 26, 2012

All of humanity’s existence is but a blip, a mere speck of dust against a backdrop of stars.

From the dawn of human existence, from Adam to Aristotle, from Ptolemy to Avicenna, from Copernicus to Galileo, from Newton to Einstein, and to the end of it – however that may be – all the whole of it is but a tiny quark against the galaxies of the universe.

Yet humanity concerns itself with matters that are way beyond laughable given this context, so true it is then that ignorance is bliss. He struts about his daily life, bickering and warmongering, fooling himself into believing that he wields such a power, until that blip disappears forever and that speck of dust obliterated to nothingness, not even a trace mention in the history of the worlds.

Yet some, some peers through his pipes and glasses, through the thick veil that envelopes his world and see beyond his existence. So much grandeur, so much power, so much wonder, so much mystery. Alas, so short a lifetime is, for he can only dream of one day taking to the stars. One day that may never come.

But man, no matter how he wishes to escape this illusion of power, this illusion that he is the master of the worlds, must earn a place in his society. So he struts along, avoiding most of the bickering and warmongering for he knows of its pointlessness, but strapped nonetheless in the mighty currents of arrogance. After all, if all of humanity’s existence is but a blip and a mere speck of dust, what then is a single man?