Rohit Mordani’s Blog

http://rohit.mordani.com/panoramas/bayarea/sf/sf3/sf3.htm

This panorama of Seattle from Gas Works Park is amazing ! I think the Seattle trip (2008) was one of the best for my Panoramas

http://rohit.mordani.com/panoramas/washington/seattle/seattle2/seattle2.htm

This is one of my favorite shots ! This is a panorama of Seattle from Alki on a beautiful summer night. This panorama is composed from 7 exposures – each exposure was taken for about 30 seconds.

http://rohit.mordani.com/panoramas/washington/seattle/seattle1/seattle1.htm

A panorama of 20 vertical images that I took from San Bruno Mountain State Park

http://rohit.mordani.com/panoramas/bayarea/sf/sf2/sf2.htm

This shot was taken from the top of the Empire State Building.  This is a composition of 5 photos…

http://rohit.mordani.com/panoramas/nyc/nyc1/nyc1.htm

17 vertical images stitched together. Looked like someone was getting married there that weekend:

http://rohit.mordani.com/panoramas/monterey/pebblebeach1/pebblebeach1.htm

Someone at work asked me if I could show him some of my panoramas.  I do have panoramas stored all over the place (Gallery, flickr and facebook) but that doesn’t showcase my work too well, so  I decided to find a better solution.  I had seen a panorama of Denali National Park a while ago on the internet and you could zoom in and out of it using a flash based viewer. I hunted down that panorama again and saw that software that was being used to display it on the web. I downloaded it too (its called zoomify) and I created my own panorama from it, which you can zoom in and out of.

So this is going to be a new section of my blog where I shall showcase some of my good panoramas. Here is the first one – of course of the city !

This panorama is comprised of 7 vertical images and HDR generated and tone mapped in Photomatix.

http://rohit.mordani.com/panoramas/bayarea/sf/sf1/sf1.htm

I know there are a lot of people out there who want have wanted a certain piece of music as a ringtone for their phones but they just dont know how to get that. This blog post is for those people ! Well – you do know how to use the computer ! So here goes. I use this process all the time and have created some awesome ringtones ! My friends all ask me to make them a ringtone now !

STEP 1: The source

YOUTUBE + DownloadHelper plugin

YouTube has a ton of shit and it probably has exactly what you are looking for ! Be it a commercial that you liked that had a certain piece of music (you probably dont even know the name of the music at this point) or something that is in a movie ! You will find it in Youtube. So head over and find that piece !

Now, the next part – Downloading the video that has the music piece.  You need to have Firefox for this step. If you already do then head over to http://www.downloadhelper.net/ and download and install the DownloadHelper add-on for firefox. Once you have done this, go back to YouTube and load the video you want. On the top left hand corner of the video you will notice a little 3 ball icon. Clicking on this will give you an option to download the video. Download it – It will be a file with the .flv as the extension which stands for Flash Video. Save the file to your computer. We will need this for the next step.

If you already have an MP3 that you want to start with to create the ringtone then you can skip directly to STEP 3.

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The other day I was talking to JWM and we were talking about some shortcuts in Eclipse and Firefox and it struck me that I use a LOT of shortcuts all over the place and that I really like it. To me a good user experience is not only the eyecandy but also the usability and most of all – the shortcuts and the easter eggs !

Thinking back, I guess I started using shortcuts when a friend of mine challenged me to use Windows without a mouse ! I won that challenge. After that I started using Pine to check email and that had a lot of shortcuts too ! I guess that stuck around with me ! I still use pine to check email and love it !

To come to think of it – this is the reason why I love VI ( the editor) as well. VI is all about shortcuts and commands to enter to get the work done – no point and click ! This is also the reason why I love QuickSilver on the Mac !

Here are some of the shortcuts I use (and in the program that I use). These are not your regular Alt+F4 to close a window or your Ctrl+C to copy text !

FIREFOX

• Ctrl + T                 : Open a new tab
• Ctrl + W                : Close the current tab
• Ctrl + R                 : Refresh a page
• Backspace             : Go back one page (in the history stack)
• Alt + Left Arrow    : Go back one page (in the history stack)
• Alt + Right Arrow  : Go forward one page (in the history stack)
• Ctrl + L                 : Jump to location bar
• Ctrl + Shift + L     : Force jump to location bar – good for those pesky Flash pages (thanks JWM !)
• Ctrl +Shift + R      : Force a reload of a page (override the cache)
• Ctrl + Tab             : Move between tabs in the forward direction
• Ctrl + Shift + Tab : Move between tabs in the reverse direction
• Ctrl + Shift + T     : Open the last closed tab (Very helpful when you accidentally close a tab)
• /                           : Brings up the search dialog. Same as Ctrl+F or  Ctrl+G. BTW Ctrl+G also searches for the next occurrence of the keyword that you were searching for
• F11                       : Full Screen mode
• Ctrl + Enter          : After you type something in the URL bar it appends .com and loads the page at that url
• Shift + Enter          : After you type something in the URL bar it appends .net and loads the page at that url
• Ctrl + Shift + Enter  : After you type something in the URL bar it appends .org and loads the page at that url

Find more at : http://www.mouserunner.com/FF_Shortcuts1Printable.html

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I couldn’t believe that the Motorola Q9h doesn’t have an option to turn off the shutter sound while clicking a photo ! I knew this had to be a stupid  registry setting and so I fired up my Registry editor and made the necessary changes and voila !

First of all, you need to download a registry editor for Windows Smartphone. There are a couple of registry editors such as PHM registry Editor, Resco Explorer and Total Commander. I used PHM Registry Editor which is a free tool. Download the CAB file, transfer it to the Q9h using ActiveSync or a memory card and install it using the file manager application on the Q9h. Once installed, run the PHM Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE –>System–>Pictures–>Camera–>OEM. Click on “Values” which is the left soft key. This will bring up another screen with 3 list items:

• ForceShutterSound
• ShutterSoundVolume
• SoundFile

Select SoundFile (center select) and change the Value Data field value to \windows\*none*\. Click on the Done (the right soft key).  Thats it ! You’re done – no more shutter sound ! You can quit the PHM Registry editor. Now, you can set a ringtone of any size !