20
Jul 04

A Passion for Visual Effects

Check out what one young guy has done using Adobe After Effects and Premiere to create incredible special effects.


19
Jul 04

Untitled

Joan Crawford trivia: Each time Joan Crawford married, she changed the name of her Brentwood estate and installed all new toilet seats. From a short biography of Joan Crawford.


19
Jul 04

Gmail notifier extension for Firefox

This little add-on for Firefox will check your gmail account and notify you via the browser window in two places. Then you just click the icon to login to gmail. Find out more about it here.


19
Jul 04

Two cultures of Piracy

Japan and America, Two “Cultures of Piracy”:

    Following the logic of the Japanese companies, Condry asks his students whether there are some forms of music they would always pay for and finds that many of them cite music which struggles to survive in the marketplace or where they have a strong identification with the artists. He suggests that like the Japanese fans, American college students are swayed by loyalty and recipricality rather than legality. The solution to the music industry crisis, he argues, is cultural not legal or economic and it involves changing the relations between music producers and consumers to emphasize shared interests rather than economic exploitation. Imagine that!

19
Jul 04

Stigmergy

Understanding group behavior and strategies of ants and terrorists, via Defensetech. Global Guerrillas: STIGMERGIC LEARNING AND GLOBAL GUERRILLAS


14
Jul 04

Quipsmart.com

Due mainly to my love for those concise nuggets of human thought we call quotations, I am starting a site called quipsmart whose subject will be famous quotes and quotations. The challenge is to do something different than the fifteen or so main quotation compiling websites. Initially, I will focus on tracking down an exhaustive and comprehensive selection of quotations by a few select individuals and build out from there. I may need some volunteers if anyone is interested in helping. My other goal is to provide definitive sources for each quotations, which is something I have always appreciated when searching for a specific quotation. Other ideas include: the automatic linking of words to quotation authors and subjects, and hard to find quotations.


14
Jul 04

More Making the Switch to WordPress

The renowned MovableType hacker, Jennifer of ScriptyGoddess, made the switch to WordPress a while back. This bodes well for WordPress tweaks and WordPress plugins. (Yes, WordPress does support plugins to extend its functionality)

Related:

  1. WordPress plugins.
  2. ScriptyGoddess’ post on making the switch
  3. Kartooner: The Move to WordPress
  4. The publisher of Teach Yourself Movable Type in 24 Hours makes the switch to WordPress.

14
Jul 04

Word Press vs. Movable Type

As many of you know, I’ve switched from blogging with MovableType (a perl-based application) to WordPress (a php-based application). Many of the features are equivalent and they both do about the same kind of thing. The main incentive for my switch to WordPress is that I was annoyed by MovableType’s new licensing scheme. When you dig deeper there are other, more specific, reasons why you might want to make the switch. Here is one person’s good review of the pros and cons of each package:

    Installation (10 points)
    Movable Type’s installation is fairly annoying, as installations go. Not only did I have to change all sorts of config variables by hand before installing, I had to figure out the syntax for said variables, which wasn’t immediately obvious (the criteria for “immediately obvious” being whether or not I have to resort to documentation). Then, I had to CHMOD all sorts of files, thanks to MT’s Perl roots. Not to mention running mt-check.cgi to look for a dozen Perl modules… phew. WordPress’ installation is almost fiendishly simple. Run a script to set the database config, run another to install, and be entertained by silly messages along the way. If they would combine the two scripts, it would be nicer, but still— it doesn’t get much easier than this.

    Winner: WordPress

    Continue reading →

13
Jul 04

Article on Cat and Girl: Girl on Overdrive

Here’s an article on Cat and Girl. I didn’t read it, but judging from the website design I’ll bet it’s pretty good. It’s a good article, and makes a few good points I hadn’t noticed.

No one correctly answered the question to yesterday’s post, so I will have to give away the answer. Greta Garbo is the actress in the new banner, but I’m not sure what film the image is from. Here is another good photo of her:

garbo!