Auto translate any page without identifying the language

Identifying the language is necessary to translate a web page using Babel Fish or Google Translate.

But the main problem i had was that i could not identify which language the page was in, for example if the page was in Spanish, i would not be able to identify it as spanish.

So what option should i choose in the "Select from and to languages"?

This problem is solved when using Google or yahoo, as it shows the appropriate Translate this page link beside the web link. What to do if you encounter a web page when you are not using any search engine..So the Auto Translate Greasemonkey can be used to lead you to the google page with the Translate this page link.

The Auto Translate Greasemonkey can be improved to directly redirect you to the translated page. But i thought the overhead was too much.

Kembuta on the tree

The kembuta or kembhuta or kemboota or kembota is the Kannada name for the bird. It feeds on other birds, bird eggs, insects, wild berries, reptiles, rats just to mention a few.

It is a rather common bird and can be found on coconut trees more frequently than other trees. I am trying to find its actual name and would appreciate any help.

It has red feathers on a black body. It has been immortalized by its mention in Kannada literature. The actual quote that mentions it goes like this "The Kembuta tried to spread its wings after seeing the peacock spread its wings".

My attempt at paintbrush painting

I tried painting a fish bowl in paintbrush, the default drawing tool that comes with windows OS. It should not be confused with Adobe paint brush.
It seems to show a very pathetic representation of a fish, supposedly gold fish.Bowl however seems to have worked out well comparatively( no comaparitively).

Orange rose-close range photography

The orange rose in the garden seems to look good. It was another attempt at close range photography.

If the camera is very close, the image will be no better than a blur of color. The zoom has to be used carefully to get the picture.

the proper angle has to be selected, to avoid too much shadow. The time of the day and the position of the sun will also influence outdoor pictures greatly.

The futuristic helmet development

The results for the poll how strong is your head are out. A amazing 66% felt that we should wear helmets. And the remaining 33% wanted improvements to be made. The main changes that can be done are-

• Provide a built-in ear phone. (a provision should be made for the wearer to fix the i-pod or walkman to the helmet, rather than wearing earphones below the helmet)
• The curved visor of the helmet leads to a blur image during the nights, due to the head lights. The possibility of using a visor that is more angular (similar to a windshield) should be checked.
• The use of powered visor movement can add more value to the helmet.
• Provision for movement of air. It can be very stiffling to wear ahelmet on a sunny day.

All that said and done, the aim of the future helmet developer should be to make the helmet more appealing. Wearing the helmet can become a trend if it has other attractions apart from providing safety. People may argue about the distraction caused by hearing to music while driving, but the main aim of this post is to have helmets that are better than present day helmets.

Gmail-video response-spam filter

The gmail team has started a behind the scenes video to help them imagine how an email message travels around the world.

I made a very small response with a rather glitchy video. It shows the M-velope being thrown into a filter along with other spam mail. The M-velope then emerges from the filter and moves on. may be i should have taken a print out of the Mvelope and made a real movie!!


Any way this is supposed to show the wonderful spam filtering capacity of Gmail.

Alternative to vehicle horns

We had been given an assignment to suggest methods to reduce pollution. (It was in my 10th grade) The easier (easier to write) ones such as air, water etc.. were already taken. So we ended up with sound pollution.

As Wikipedia will tell you

Roadway noise is the most widespread environmental component of noise pollution worldwide.

Among the various suggestions our group came up with, was an alternative to vehicle horns (which is a major part of roadway noise in India). Rather than using loud horns, a radio horn was to be used. The radio horn was rather simple in design. The horn emitted a signal with the exact location of the vehicle (obtained by GPS-Global Positioning System) along with the exact time with an accuracy of a Milli-second.

All the vehicles will have to carry a radio receiver which will catch these radio waves, and after comparing it with the location of the vehicle and the time , it would decide if that horn was meant for it. (A computer program or still better a IC will do it in real time) As soon as the radio set learn t that it was being honked, it would produce some kind of warning which either involved a blinking light on the dashboard or a horn of much lower magnitude to be heard only within the vehicle that received the honk.

And this became a rather controversial suggestion in the report, the main arguments against it were-

1. What about human beings and stray cattle on the road-they cant have radio receivers! we are talking about INDIA
2. The economic viability of having all this high tech stuff installed. (A legislation ought to solve this problem and the cost should come down drastically when mass produced)

We never thought of implementing it, so we never discovered its practicality. However, it would be great to see it tested.