Why my "touch" lights works without touching?

I have a nice touch light that I had bought some time ago. It works with a simple voltage change logic but recently started switching automatically (better to say unexpectedly). I started googling whether there are some other people having the same problem and I found out it is a well known problem.
Here is one of the useful links : 
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=551416

I hope you also find it useful.

Passing command line arguments to MacOSX Applications with GUI and more

Several days back, I was working on a Latex document by using Texworks. The people who used Texworks would know that it is quite useful editor with simple but smart features. One of the main drawbacks of Texworks is (perhaps it is the same for most of Latex editors) it is quite difficult to configure the colors of various components such as background. Background color is quite important as it covers most of the editor surface (and so effects the eyes)... \\

From that point I started looking for ways of changing background color of Texworks and came by this link here : http://www.latex-community.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=6921
It explains how to modify the background color of Texworks (which is a Qt application) by playing with some qt parameters... But I had to pass the parameters (i.e. CSS file) to Texworks from command line (which is an Application in my MacOSX). Then I found this link which explains a very simple way of doing it : http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080809181956219

That didn't finish the story yet :) Then I started pondering around the colors, their effects on us... Which colors are more relaxing, disturbing, natural etc etc. Here is a good link that discusses the issue. It seems the tones of green and blue are more relaxing...

Stay tuned.

Simple image processing with Java

Java has a rich set of libraries for manipulating images. I just use very basic features for the time being and I wanted to put a note here for the newcomers like me. To my understanding, Java uses a protocol when loading a resource (url = getClass().getResource(fileName)) and images "should" be considered as resources (ImageIO.read(url)). Of course there can be other ways of doing it but here is a summary to load resources to Java projects in Eclipse and a piece of code to play with images in Java:
1. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8960381/runnable-jars-missing-buttons/9278270#9278270
2. http://www.coderanch.com/t/338329/GUI/java/draw-lines-without-change-background

Stay tuned ...

Four key factors in food selection

I recently got a present book from a very "sweet" person in my life. As you can understand from the way I describe the person who gave it to me the book is about foods. It is called "The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth". I started reading the book and at the very beginning, it came a very important point where four main factors used in the quality rating of foods are listed. I just wanted to list them in this entry:
- Omega-3 fats
- Fiber
- Antioxidants
- Glycemic index

Changing Background Color of an Image in GIMP

Recently I needed to use a simple picture in my presentation. However, the picture had its own background color which was annoying for the presentation template. What I did is the following:
1. I opened the picture in GIMP.
2. There is a nice set of selection tools in GIMP. I used scissor selection tool to choose the relevant parts of my picture.
3. Pasted the selected tool to a new file without background color...

That is it. There is a nice tutorial about the subject here: http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-foreground-select.html

Deforestation and dynamic world forest coverage view

It is sad that the deforestation is still a problem despite the global awareness of environmental concerns. I was caught up with the fact that Ireland, a country that continuously gets rain, has relatively very small forested area. Starting from this point, I came by this link and I wanted to share...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2007/dec/13/forests

Youtube repeated

Today I discovered an interesting link for listening (watching would make less sense) Youtube repeatedly :http://www.youtuberepeat.com The idea is quite simple but smart :)