Shining Fish!

Did you know that some fish glow in the dark? Did you know you may be eating fish that can glow in the dark?

The other day, or rather evening, the lights went off. For a long, long time! At first I used the UPS to power a small light, but that didn't last long. Later on, I went to light a candle which was in the kitchen when I was distracted by a slight light on the platform. I went to inspect it, thinking that some faint light coming in through the window was shining on it. But though I blocked any light that could come through the window, the shine was still there. Faint, weirdly cool, stable luminescence. Then I made out that there was something in a bowl that had small glowing specks. It was the fish my mother kept to marinate!

This fish called Bombay duck, or Bombil shares many characteristics of fish living at a great depth in an ocean. It has phosphorescence that causes it to glow at night. Some good info at http://www.clovegarden.com/ingred/sf_bumaz.html and http://www.indianetzone.com/43/bombay_duck.htm

Though I think this glowing fish is cool, I do not like to eat Bombay duck!

My internet is working again!

You may already know about this, but I thought I'll share this with you in case you don't.

The other day I was really frustrated because my broadband internet would keep disconnecting. The icon in the system tray kept showing that I had internet access, but no pages were able to load. All I got were error messages.

This had been happening for two days, I think. At first I thought it was the heat that was causing the modem to overheat and that's why it wouldn't work. So every time it stopped working, I'd turn the modem off, keep it off for a few minutes and then restart it and mostly that worked. But then, the problem started getting worse. The connection would take longer to start working. Then the connection would drop a few seconds after it was made. It started getting really frustrating.

At one point I realised that I had internet access on my phone but not on my computer. How could that happen? Then I looked it up on Google. And I found this solution from http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/539036/dns-probe-finished-bad-config-error/.

Just change your DNS servers!

What is suggested here is that you change the DNS servers that you use to the ones given above. Of course, I used 8.8.8.8 and 4.2.2.2 which I got from another site.

The steps to change the DNS servers on a computer with windows 7 are as follows:

1. Open Network and Sharing Centre. To do this you can:
click the network icon in your system tray and follow the link that opens the network and sharing centre
or
you can go to Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> View network status and tasks

2. Click on Local Area Connection. A status box appears.

3. Click on the properties button. A properties box appears.

4. Highlight Internet protocol version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click the properties button.

Finally an image to refer to. The connection item IPv4 whose properties have to be changed.

5. Choose 'Use the following DNS addresses' and set Preferred DNS Server and Alternate DNS Server to 8.8.8.8 and 4.2.2.2 respectively.Click OK and your done!

This worked for me and I've had a good connection since then. I'm so glad it wasn't my modem that was giving the connection problems. It's so good to have a working internet connection.

Hope this helps.