Science Fiction Podcasting

22 October 2005 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ interesting review

Couple of days ago I saw a link to Escape Pod science fiction podcast. At first, I didn’t pay enough attention to it, although, I still gave it a quick look. It made its way somewhere deep into my brains and didn’t show up until this evening. You might know that I’m studying English (or, perhaps, polishing it) and always looking for good opportunities to extend and improve my communication skills.

Today I’ve got an idea. Why not give it a try and combine learning with a pleasure of listening to some science fiction? So, that’s how I decided to review the site again and download some issues. I’ve downloaded two of them (#19 Implications and #24 The Death Trap of Dr. Nefario) and, now that I’ve finished listening to them, I’m definitely going to get the rest of them. It’s so wonderful and exciting that I would recommend anyone out there to give it a whirl on the off-chance. Yeah, it’s something special!

I promise, you would find it time well-spent for sure!

Neuromixer AVmixer Pro

10 October 2005 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ interesting

Another cool-looking VJ’ing piece of software — NEUROMIXER AVmixer Pro. I’m not really sure about its characteristics, in fact, it even looks a bit simpler than VidVox applications. But anyway, it is usually whatever you make of it. I saw the guys who painted wonderful pictures pixel-by-pixel with Microsoft Paint application as well as I saw the others who were making crap with cutting-edge Adobe Photoshop. Give it a spin even if are only curious about “How do these VJ’s work?” and, who knows, maybe the world will get another Einstein of light and motion. :)

Here’s the picture for your viewing pleasure:

AVmixerPro

VidVox Grid2/GridPro VJ’ing

9 October 2005 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ interesting

A good friend of mine gave me an interesting link today — the link to a VJ’ing software he found on the net. Those guys — VJ’es — can drive you half crazy with impressive colorful video-performances they have on big parties. In most cases the software plus hardware costs like a middle-sized spaceship. Five years ago no one could even think of having installations of this kind at their disposal, but today we all have an opportunity to release our creativity in full swing. Of course, if you have no imagination or both of your hands grow from wrong places it’s not going to be of a real help to you. For the rest of us addicted to everything ground-breaking, I would recommend to have a look at Grid2/GridPro series of VidVox VJ’ing applications as they apparently reveal some chapters of Black Magic Bible. Beware!

VidVox

You aren’t going to harm anyone, are you? ;)

Book for VJ’s is out

7 October 2005 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ interesting vj

The world of graphics was always exciting. Who from us didn’t wish to create something really coverful and impressive some day? Most of the time I think that it’s not my business and I don’t have time for that, but once I see some really brilliant masterpice of modern art (which is also very simple technically), I start to think “ah, I could do that as well. OK, let me download some painting software and try myself in it once again (as I did it almost thousand of times before).” Yeah, the same thing with a video and video performances. It’s usually expected that when we grow bigger this childish approach to life activities disappears, but, in fact, sometimes it grows bigger following your new possibilities. To be honest, it happens to me very often. That’s why I was really excited to learn that a friend of David Pescovitz has just released his new book called “The VJ Book: Inspirations and Practical Advice for Live Visuals Performance.

Mind-mapping with FreeMind

7 October 2005 ⋅ 3 min read ⋅ interesting

Recently I’ve discovered a terrific tool for brainstorming and thoughts organizing — FreeMind — and it became one of my favorites in the blink of an eye. Everyone, or at least good deal of us, knows what brainstorming is — it’s a process of the exploration of some idea when you analyze its aspects and aspects of an aspects from all sides. Often, people use white- and blackboards to write down their thoughts or just a plain paper for the same purpose. Personally, I always wrote some kind of text, explaining the idea, digging deeper into it. The time wore off and what I found myself doing was dealing with proper statements, language structures, text formating, breaking things into lines and paragraphs and doing other time consuming actions distracting from the main goal — focusing on the topic. Can it be better? Absolutely.

Gmail Drives Windows Shell Extension

6 October 2005 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ interesting

There’s a new Windows shell extension available for lovers of the Gmail service — Gmail Drives. The add-on connects a new drive to your system, allowing to store arbitrary files using a space available at your Gmail account. It could be very helpful. Just think of it as another drive on the net.

Increadible Painting Experience

6 October 2005 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ interesting

Eric Grohe demonstrates unbelieveable creativity. He paints unusual and extremely impressive pictures on the walls. His creations are supposed to bring more colors and space into our grayed out cubicle living, prolonging the space and time. I can swear he has much more works. Does anyone know some other locations on the net to enjoy his wonderful art? Before: After:

Accelerating The Future

5 October 2005 ⋅ 3 min read ⋅ interesting

Yesterday I saw a wonderful post by Francois Gossieaux telling us, the readers, about his own observations of the Web 2.0 evolution. It required some time to structure my own thoughts on this and here I would like to comment just a few of his points and broaden the discussion onto the whole world of software development carried on nowadays.

Many of the new web 2.0 companies are built by a few passionate individuals - and with budgets that fit on credit cards. And forget about traditional marketing expenses - it’s all word-of-mouth, sometimes enhanced with a few dollars worth of search engine marketing - but gone are the days of expensive direct marketing campaigns and traditional promotions. It’s all about influencing the influencers - but more on that later…

Advanced Installer for Java Goes On Mac

5 October 2005 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ java development interesting

Hooray! Wonderful news knocking at the door — Advanced Installer for Java (3.3) goes on Mac; and this is a really big step forward. We, as the proud users of AIFJ, are extremely happy to have an opportunity to build the Mac distributions of our application — BlogBridge — without serious messing with console. When we were choosing the installer for the application our main criteria was the presence of the Windows platform support. The Mac support was preferred but rather optional as we knew how to build a distribution package from the command line or with a console script. Of course, having this process automated means a big boost in our performance. A lot of thanks to you guys!

Also the team reports the following changes:

Inclusion and exclusion filters for Synchronized Folders.

Editing multiple files’ properties at once.

File version override.

Stretched or fixed size switch for dialog banners and bitmaps.

Configurable Merge Modules.

KlipFolio and Future Desktop Thoughts

5 October 2005 ⋅ 2 min read ⋅ interesting

Here comes an interesting piece of software — KlipFolio. It’s the desktop-integrated RSS reader and can do far more than that. It is capable of showing stock news, the weather and lots of other interesting bits of information. Here’s what the authors tell about their creation:

It’s the smallest, smartest and most configurable RSS Dashboard on the planet. KlipFolio can be used to monitor anything you want online–like weather, stocks, Hotmail, news, RSS feeds and even auctions–right on your desktop.