If you can install just one and only one add-on to your Firefox browser, let it be Adblock Plus.

The internet is a wonderful place, but it can be better. Internet as an advertisement medium has been growing bigger and bigger every single year. More and more companies, organisations, and websites are putting ads all over the internet. Almost everywhere you go, you’ll see those banners floating around the contents you want. Sometimes they’re benign, just a little text links pointing to websites or services that are relevant to the content you’re viewing. At other times, they’re just downright annoying, offering you prizes you could never win, or explicit images that are sure to draw unwanted attention from your friends and families passing behind you. Even worse, there are times when the only thing separating your wonderful computer from streams of obtrusive and abusive pop-ups and, the most dreaded of all, viruses and worms and spywares and what-nots, is just a single click to that fancy colourful banner image.

So yeah, there’s no doubt to that: the internet is infested with ads. They annoy us, they slow down page load, and they can trick us or appeal to that side of us we’re not so proud of.

Which is why you should never miss out from installing the Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox. It blocks almost all ads from every page you view, not just hiding them from your view, but completely blocks Firefox from even loading the ads. The result? A faster-loading, cleaner webpages everytime.

How to install Adblock Plus add-on:

1. Make sure you’re using Firefox (duh).
2. Go to Adblock Plus add-on page.
3. Click on the green “Add to Firefox” button.
4. It’s likely that a yellow bar will pop-up on top of the page, saying that “Firefox prevented this site…”. Click Allow at the top-right of the page.
5. An add-on installation window will pop-up. Wait a few seconds and click Install Now. Firefox will then download and install the add-on. When finish, close and re-open Firefox (or just click Restart Firefox).
6. When Firefox restarted, you’ll likely be presented with two pop-up windows:
   • Firefox add-on window notifying you that a new add-on has been installed. Just close this.
   • Adblock Plus filter subscription window. Just choose EasyList (USA) and click Subscribe.
7. Kiss those ads goodbye.

Note that the add-on may cause some problem with Yahoo! Mail or other websites that won’t show their content without showing ads (nasty, I know). If that happens, just disable the add-on for that particular page or website, by right-clicking on the red Adblock Plus icon at the bottom-right corner of your browser window and click “Disable on…”.

Notice that sound in Windows whenever some error came out when using your computer? Or that short music that came out everytime you start Windows up? There’s a myriad of default sounds that came with Windows, and they accompany all sort of events that happen in your computer. And because most of us have been using only Windows OSes for our entire computing life, we have  became quite familiar with those. Some annoy us, some make our hearts beat faster, heck, some even made us swear.

But take all those sounds, add a tad of creativity and a certain supply of free time (and boredom), you’d get something else. Somebody actually combined and mixed those sounds into a song, and I have to admit it’s rather impressive (and amusing as well).

There’s a few variant of songs made entirely from Windows sounds. This particular song below is composed by a person that goes by the name Robbi-985. From what I know, he was the first person that originally created a song from Windows sounds. He used only the sounds from Windows 98 and Windows XP.

Click the play button below to listen:

You can view the original video posted by the author on YouTube.

Many people don’t realise that there’s much better alternative than having to log in into the online Google, MSN, Yahoo! and other similar web-based email accounts everytime you want to check if there’s new emails in the Inbox, or write and reply emails, etc. Using email client software instead of having to log in to these web-based email accounts will save a lot of time, not to mention you’ll never miss another email again just because you forget to check your Inbox. This tutorial will guide you to install and configure an email client, so that you’ll never have to log in to web-based email accounts again.

This guide is intended for the regular bloke on the street, with no in-depth computer knowledge. So even if you’re wondering what the heck is an email client, just read on (and be patient, this guide is quite lengthy) and I’ll help to see you through.

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I wrote this little software that generates as many prime numbers as you want. That’s all it does. Using this software, you can determine the nth prime number, where n can be very, very large. The first version of the software can generate up to around 10¹⁴ primes. I have since improved it to remove this limitation. I don’t actually know what is the limitation now, but I’ve tried generating 10³⁴ prime numbers and the program still works! Note though that I haven’t actually let the software generates that many prime numbers. Doing so will take lots of time!

Algorithm

This software doesn’t use any particular mathematical formula to generate the prime numbers. Instead, it checks every single odd number by dividing it with another odd number from 3 to see if that number is divisible without a remainder. As such, the prime numbers it generates is guaranteed to be a prime number, every single one of them.

Speed

I have optimised the algorithm to minimise the software’s processing time, and at current version it is able to generate up to the hundred-thousandth prime numbers and write it to file in just about 1 second on a 2.1GHz dual-core Windows Vista machine.

You have to bear in mind, however, that in order to know what’s the ten-millionth prime number, for example, the software needs to determine all the other 9,999,999 prime numbers that precede that ten-millionth prime. That’s a lot of calculations and iterations to be done, even for a computer.

Screenshots

License

As with all the other contents of this website, this software is licensed under this particular Creative Commons Licence. You are free to share – to copy, distribute, and transmit the software – as long as you attribute the software to me. You may not use the software for commercial purposes. However, I do grant anybody the right to alter, transform, or build upon this software.

Source Code

This software is written in C. Contact me if you want a copy of the source code.

Disclaimer

I do not take responsibility for any loss or damage that results from the usage of this software. No warranty, expressed or implied, is provided with this software.

Download

Click on the appropriate link below to download the software. I assure you the file is virus-free, but as a precaution, you might still want to run a virus check on it using any antivirus software you like, in case the file is tempered with without my knowledge.

Windows: Prime Number Generator (zipped, 5kb)

For the technical: MD5 – 94aeb4699bec57617c7a9c312e51a7e5

No lengthy introduction, straight to the point. In this post I want to recommend 3 useful sofwares that can be of great help to you if you are currently studying in college or university. All these three softwares can be downloaded legally for free.

FreeMind
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/

FreeMind is a free mind-mapping software that lets you create mindmaps using your computer easily. It’s a completely free open-source software and especially useful for taking notes and project organising, as well as planning your work such as organising your Final Year Project or drafting your thesis, among other things.

The screenshot on the left is taken by me. Head to FreeMind’s website for more screenshots of the software.

My impression on this software when I first use it is that it is surprisingly easy to use. Go give it a try.

Evernote
http://www.evernote.com

Evernote is a specialised note-taking software. With it, you can type your notes directly into the software, or take a screenshot of a web page, clip a particular part of a web page that you find to keep, and you can even take pictures using your camera of a product label, for example and keep it in Evernote so that you will not forget it. It is especially useful if you’re doing research for your college or university assignment. Another cool feature is that evernote has a built-in optical recognition capability, that is, it is able to recognise texts in your captured pictures or screenshots and allow you to search for it using its search function.

Apart from that, Evernote also allows you to register an account (for free, of course) on their server, after which all the notes you insert into your Evernote software will be synchronised (i.e. copied) to your account on their server. You can then access your notes from any computer or device that has internet connection, including your friend’s computer who doesn’t even have any idea what Evernote is.

WordWeb
http://wordweb.info/free/

WordWeb is an English dictionary software that uses Princeton’s WordNet database, and has 150 000 root words. Once you’ve installed it, it sits queitly there on your computer’s notification area (the bottom right corner of your screen where the time and volume control usually sit). Whenever you come across any English word that you want to look up for its definition, just point your cursor to that word and hit CTRL + Right Mouse Button, and WordWeb will instantly pop up to give you the definition of that word. The software also have a thesaurus function.

I’ve been using this software for a few years and find that it’s extremely useful (even if you’re a native English speaker) while being lightweight (it doesn’t consume much system resource). The software also makes a distinction between American English and British English, which is useful for language consistency in your written work.

I’m using the Pro version of WordWeb, but you have to pay for that.