JohnDas FunDas & Ideas

 Comic Book Reder - .cbr files and .cbz files

Download the sequential image viewing utility.  Free!

The Windows Image Viewer ‘CDisplay’ was written to ease the viewing of images in JPEG, PNG and static GIF format.  This was partly down to the existing programs currently available being too general purpose and thus awkward to use when simply wanting to view images sequentially.

It was written using Borland C++ Builder 5.0 and has been tested under Windows 98, NT 4, 2000 and XP Tablet.

It is important to understand that this program has NO file write capabilities; files are left totally untouched.  A small amount of configuration data is written to the registry but apart from that the computer and its data is left untouched.

Features:

Loads JPEG, PNG and static GIF images which are automatically ordered and presented for viewing one at a time or two at a time.

The images may be in a zip, rar, ace or tar archive file - no need to decompress before reading.

Page through the images sequentially and scroll around pages with single key presses.

Automatic page sizing: none; fit to screen, fit to width of screen, fit to width of screen if oversized, display at specific height, or display two pages.  Resizing uses Lanczos interpolation for best picture quality.

Automatic colour balance and yellow reduction if desired.

No bloat caused by non-essential general purpose image processing features.

FREE.

    To Install:

Click on the link below to download setup.zip.  Unzip and run setup.exe.  An installer will start which will install and run the CDisplay Image Viewer.

Download version 1.8 NOW    

http://cdisplay.techknight.com/setup.zip

        Quick Start:

Run CDisplay.  CDisplay uses the entire display for images; there is no menu so right mouse click for a popup.  Choose load files.  Browse to the pages to read.  The whole directory will be pre-selected - just press go to read.  Or select a range of the files using left mouse click, shift left click and/or control left click (ie standard windows multiple selection keys) and press ok. Alternatively, select one ZIP or RAR file and press ok. The first page is displayed.  Use the space bar, page up, page down, home, end and the arrow keys to view the images.

See the ReadMe file or the help (F1 key) for a more detailed description of usage and configuration.

CDisplay forum

TechKnight CDisplay files

 Parent Directory        17-Jun-2003 10:14      -
 CDisplayDebugKit.zip    22-Sep-2003 01:07   232k
 cdisplay-subtitles.zip  30-Jun-2004 05:26   699k
 examplepages.zip        30-Jun-2004 05:32   1.2M
 setup.zip               20-Apr-2004 06:08   1.1M

davidayton

India decides to lift tsunami alert

Tsunami alert was sounded in Andaman & Nicobar -  Marina beach wears deserted look

The Marina beach in Chennai, one of the longest in the world, wore a deserted look this evening as police asked people who came there to leave, following the tsunami alert issued by the Centre.

Though the state has not issued any official warning, it had asked police to be on alert along the coastal areas and evacuate people, if the need arose.

Official sources said that police are watching the sea to see if there was any ‘unusual wave patterns’.

“We are going to withdraw the alert, we are sending the message,” the official at the home ministry’s National Disaster Management Authority told Reuters. “The technical advice is only to keep a watch until 10:30 p.m. at some places.”

A powerful earthquake measuring 8.2 has struck Indonesia’s Sumatra region, triggering tsunami warnings in the Indian Ocean and sparking panic in coastal areas across south-east Asia.

About two hours after the quake hit, Indonesia’s meteorological agency lifted its tsunami warning and said via a telephone text message that there had been no tsunami.

But Malaysian authorities have reported a tsunami measuring one to three metres in height and heading away from the epicentre of the quake.

The United States Geological Survey increased the quakes magnitude to 8.2 after an earlier measurement of 7.9.

Earthquakes of over 8.0 magnitude are the most violent on the scale.

Indonesia’s Global TV reports several buildings in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, have collapsed, while Metro TV reports some buildings have caught fire.

A Reuters witness says residents of Padang, north of the earthquake’s epicentre, have fled for higher ground.

“The city is in complete chaos. Everyone is heading to higher ground, I saw one house collapsed to the ground. I’m trying to save my family,” the witness said.

An aide to Padang Mayor Fauzi Bahar says there have been no initial reports of casualties.

“Some buildings suffered from broken glass but we have not heard of any major damage,” he said.

Indonesia’s Meteorological agency said via an SMS alert the quake’s epicentre was 159 kilometres south-west of Bengkulu, which is in south Sumatra.

Aust islands among areas warned

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued an Indian Ocean tsunami warning after the huge quake struck at 6:10 pm (9:10pm AEST).

Authorities from Malaysia and Sri Lanka issued independent warnings, as did India for the Andaman and Nicobar islands, and Australia for Christmas and Cocos Islands.

Police on Christmas Island have reported no increase in water levels since the alert was issued, despite the expected time of any tsunami coinciding with a high tide.

They say they tidal measuring instruments have not shown any fluctuations an hour after the predicted time for any wave caused by the earthquake.

Some residents of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand felt the quake and some buildings were evacuated.

Malaysian warning stands

In Malaysia, Mohd Rosaidi Cheabas, director of the Meteorology Department’s seismological division, says it is not following Indonesia in lifting the tsunami warning.

“Right now, the tsunami is already detected over Padang, Indonesia, at a height of one to three metres,” he said.

“We are not following Indonesia. We are still monitoring the movement of the tsunami wave to our region.”

He said the tsunami had been detected by a tide gauge and was not clear on the direction of the wave.

The division estimated that if the tsunami was headed for Malaysia, it could reach the north-western shores of the Malaysian peninsula after midnight AEST.

Malaysian authorities issued a tsunami warning for citizens to stay away from beaches.

Police on the resort island of Penang, hit in the 2004 tsunami, have been mobilised to evacuate people from beach-side hotels and other dwellings, a local government official said.

A huge earthquake struck the region on December 26, 2004, causing a massive tsunami and more than 230,000 deaths.

Indonesia suffers frequent quakes, lying on an active seismic belt on part of the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

- Reuters

Who is Shakespeare - The Bard of Avon ?

Did ghost writers author this playwright-dramatist’s books ? England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon” (or simply “The Bard”) belonging to Stratford on Avon.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. He traveled to London sometime between 1585 and 1592 and began a successful career as an actor, writer, and part-owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later known as the King’s Men). He later retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later in 1616. Few records of Shakespeare’s private life survive and considerable speculation has been poured into this void, including questions concerning his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by others.

A small cohort of contrarian scholars who traffic in conspiracy theories about “who really wrote” the plays of William Shakespeare has been joined by two luminaries of the British stage — Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance — along with 285 other skeptics, who recently signed a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare.

The declaration, which is sponsored by the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, takes no position on who wrote the masterpieces of English drama if Shakespeare himself did not. It merely cites what it characterizes as the skimpy evidence to support Shakespeare’s authorship, and asserts, not very trippingly on the tongue, that mainstream scholars should allow the issue to be the subject of research and discussion — without smirking.

The skeptics also cite a panoply of literary lights, including Charlie Chaplin and Sigmund Freud, who expressed doubt that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. After that lengthy exegesis, it’s unclear whether the skeptics are gilding the lily or just protesting too much. Regardless, they will have some difficulty persuading the virtually unanimous chorus of literary scholars who have dismissed the so-called “authorship question” as nonsense Anyway, those of you who want to read the Works of Shakespear(???) online, here is MIT’s free online library right here for download http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

This was the Web’s first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The site has offered Shakespeare’s plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993.

Announcement: The restoration of the site following a disk failure has been delayed. The text of the plays is available now. The poetry and other services, including the search engine and forums, will return shortly. (Nov. 13, 2000)

For other Shakespeare resources, visit the Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet Web site.

The original electronic source for this server is the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare, which is freely available online. The HTML versions of the plays provided here are placed in the public domain.

The works available are :

Rescuers searching for the adventurer Steve Fossett in the Nevada desert have found old wrecks of planes, some of them from crashes decades ago. Forty-five aircraft are involved in the search for the missing millionaire, who disappeared on Monday while flying alone in his small plane.

Teams have scoured an area of 10,000 sq miles (25,900 sq km) of remote terrain, as yet unsuccessfully.

One object had given rescuers hope, but it was found not to be Fossett’s plane.

It was spotted south-east of the ranch from which Mr Fossett took off, but closer inspection revealed that it was not connected to him.

“Once again, you had your hopes raised and dashed, ” said Nevada Civil Air Patrol Major Cynthia Ryan.

After six days of intensive searches, rescuers have not found any sign of Mr Fossett’s plane, but they have spotted six planes which crashed in the desert in earlier years.

Still hopeful

The discovery of the six previously unknown wrecks underscores the difficulties of finding the single-engine plane in which Mr Fossett was flying.

“That’s always a possibility - that he may never be found,” Lyon County Undersheriff Joe Sanford told Associated Press.

“But I’d like to believe that with our state-of-the-art technology, the chances of finding him are much better.”

News of the old wrecks has prompted inquiries from people wondering if the pilots or passengers may be long-lost family members.

Searchers are holding out hope of finding Mr Fossett, Mr Sanford said.

“With the resources and assets we have, I feel comfortable we’ll find the plane in the near-term,”, he said.

“Whether it’ll be by us, a hunter or a skier, we’ll find it. I like to believe the glass is half full.”

(more…)

Record breaking millionaire (billionaire ?) adventurer Steve Fossett has been missing for a few days now. (Its not Fosett or Fosset - Google corrected me)

Fossett, a Stanford University graduate with a master’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, went to Chicago to work in the securities business and ultimately founded his own firm, Marathon Securities.

He went missing on Tuesday after taking off in a single-engine plane the day before to scout locations for a land-speed record .

Last year, Mr Fossett smashed the record for flying further than anyone in history.

In 2002, Fossett became the first person to fly around the world alone in a balloon. In two weeks, his balloon flew 19,428.6 miles around the Southern Hemisphere. The record came after five previous attempts — some of them spectacular and frightening failures.

It is among dozens of firsts claimed by Fossett in his life as an adventurer, which he embarked on after a successful career in securities. He set marks for speed or distance in balloons, airplanes, gliders, sailboats — even cross-country skis and an airship, according to his Web site.

Fossett has climbed some of the world’s best-known peaks, including the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. He also swam the English Channel in 1985, placed 47th in the Iditarod dog sled race in 1992, participated in the 24 Hours of Le Mans car race in 1996 and broke the round-the-world sailing record by six days in 2004.

In 1995, Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, landing in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Fossett was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in July. He told a crowd gathered at the Dayton Convention Center in Ohio that he would continue flying.

“I’m hoping you didn’t give me this award because you think my career is complete, because I’m not done,” Fossett said.

Fossett said he planned to go to Argentina in November in an effort to break a glider record.

In March 2005, he became the first person to fly a plane solo around the world without refueling. He and a co-pilot also claim to have set a world glider altitude record of 50,671 feet during a flight in August 2006 over the the Andes Mountains.

He flew 26,389.3 miles in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer and the record-breaking journey lasted 76 hours and 45 minutes, beating the former record of 25,361 miles set by the Breitling Orbiter balloon in 1999.

Mr Fossett’s record journey in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer was sponsored by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, who is also known for his daredevil record attempts and followed Mr Fossett in a support plane.

The 63-year-old, famed for his numerous solo flights around the globe by airplane and balloon, is understood to be unaccounted for since Monday.

Mr Fossett took off in a single engine Bellanca at 8.45am yesterday at a private airstrip at the Hilton Ranch in western Nevada but did not return as scheduled.

A friend later reported him missing, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman in Maryland.