News

Turns out my super mario wallpaper has been featured in a collection of "Baddass Super Mario desktop wallpapers". Glad people are enjoying the desktop artwork.

I have been in touch with some one who has kindly offered to send me some computer hardware to do a review on. The only hint I am going to give is that it would be great for HTPC's.

After having used linux from work for several months and being able to do most every thing with it. I am considering switching over to linux as my primary os at home. I already have one linux box running this website and doing some network routing. With my desktop though I need to be able to do more than that box ever does.

I think I am going to go with Ubuntu 9.10 and Compiz as the window decorations as that's what I have at work. The only down side to Compiz is that a lot of the features are buggy and I seam to always lose my desktop icons when using it. I also need to find a way to work with my cameras raw format files. The canon software works great I just need to figure out if it will run in wine or if I would have to use a virtual machine for it.

I will still keep my windows install to run games and such with. Soon though with virtual box supporting 3d acceleration I may just be able to fire up a virtual machine and run the games I have in that.

I am also planing on combining my web server/router and my file server into one. The new setup is going to end up having five drives. Four of which will be in a software raid 5 for security. The other will be dedicated to the os.

I have found a few things very frustrating when dealing with mac machines. Issue one came up Friday and that issue is the fact that there are four different display adaptors for the various macs (laptops and imacs). What is even better is the fact that they are not labeled in any way shape or form. If your going to use some thing non-standard please for the love of god label it so people can find the correct adaptor.

Issue two is the fact that you can not just create empty files in finder. Being a programmer, I do this all the time with my linux box and love to be able to do so. There are other small issues like managing the open windows and stuff like that but we wont get into it. I just wanted to let every one know these issues were out there and yes they are annoying.

I just found an article on md5 and sha1 description. The article says it failed on some but I ran those failed ones threw the tool and it decoded them fine. This is a very good example of why md5 and sha1 should not be used to has passwords. sha256 using the hash function in php seems like a very good option as I can not find any information on decoding it.

Just got a generic 9v adapter for my Boss Metal Zone guitar pedal. Had to make a quick little adapter because the pedal has a positive sleeve on the power  plug. The 9v adapter is a positive center pin so a quick adapter to reverse the polarity was in order. Lucky for me I had the spare parts laying around.

I have started working on a new electronics project. This one is going to be complicated and I hope I can figure it out. I am going to be trying to make a couple sensor modules that include wireless transceiver. Each one will report its findings back to a central location that is equipped with another transceiver. The central location will display that data to the user.

Think of a security system made with microcontrollers and you will have the basic idea. I am going to try and keep the cost of each sensor module to about $20 or under. The system that the sensors will report to will be very cheap, some thing like $10.

fter at least three hours of fighting with the nvidia card I bought (8400) I have found out how to get the RCA out working on it. I was using a cheap little S-Video to RCA adapter but that was the problem. I tried a dongle I had gotten from an older video card. The kind that breaks it out to the YPrPb connection. Now the thing nvidia never tells you is that if you plug a normal RCA into the Blue channel of the dongle then the card will go ahead and output RCA there. Well I hope I can save some one else some time with there media center setup.

I am a little late posting this to the news section but the cowon o2 review is live for every one to read.

I need to get some reviews up so every one has some thing new to check out. I have an PMP review coming up here soon so look for that some time this week.

1. don't re-size my browser window EVER!
2. don't have stupid flash videos of people walking around
3. do not try and redesign the user interface. It has been this way for a long time for a reason
4. do not open pop up ads
5. do not break your content up. I would much rather read a whole lot of it on one page than click next 100 times
6. pictures count as much as text content, maybe more so
7. live chat should not be started by one of your sales people
8. teach me some thing
9. do not just post content from other sites. Link to it an explain why YOU think its cool
10. stop supporting IE6

I am trying to get a couple press passes to go to origins gaming convention here in columbus. I am sure there are more than a few readers who like games like Magic The Gathering.

I just posted the review of S. Darko. The sequel to Donnie Darko the cult movie clasic.

Read the review of S. Darko

Help celibrate another great event today. Douglas Adams birthday. He is the writer of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Take a towel with you today and if people ask let them know what the towel is for. More info about this event can be found at Towel Day.

The latest and greatest project is up in the project section. The Steampunk Fishtank

I just posted some 3d renderings featuring clasic game characters.

Wallpapers

A friend of mine stumbled on this article about a 100 watt led. Sure I have been using 1 watt and 3 watt leds for some time now in various projects and I have even seen some 20 watt leds on various sites around the net. I have never seen any 100 watt leds for sale let alone used for any thing. This guy who bought this led has a decent amount of pictures of the led in action. Burning threw stuff even. I am not sure what kind of DIY project you would use this for but I think it is time to think of one.

100 Watt LED

Well that was a fun day and a half of no internet. Stupid ISP.

I just got done processing the images from this weekends shoot at dillion boat launch and some from Dawes Arboretum a couple weeks back. Also posted some new photos in the generic Photos category.

I updated this page to use h2's for the news titles. Not sure what I was thinking when I used just a div with a class on it. I also added the word News at the top in an h1 tag to help with seo.

The steampunk wallet project has been posted in the projects section.

I have made some good progress on the next project for the site. I am not sure it will be as big a hit as the nerf gun but I hope every one is going to like it.

I just added a link on the lytebox images that will let you view the full resolution images. To do this I added a couple new lines in the the lytebox.js file.

After line 476 you need to add var str = String(this.imageArray[this.activeImage][0]);

On what is now line 478 I changed it from object.innerHTML = "Image " + eval(this.activeImage + 1) + " of " + this.imageArray.length;

To object.innerHTML = "Image " + eval(this.activeImage + 1) + " of " + this.imageArray.length + ' <a href="' + str + '">View Full Size</a>';

Then on after line 484 add these lines:

        object.style.display = '';
        var str = String(this.imageArray[this.activeImage][0]);
        object.innerHTML = '<a href="' + str + '">View Full Size</a>';

The final out come should look like this:

LyteBox.prototype.updateDetails = function() {
    var object = this.doc.getElementById('lbCaption');
    var sTitle = (this.isSlideshow ? this.slideArray[this.activeSlide][1] : (this.isLyteframe ? this.frameArray[this.activeFrame][1] : this.imageArray[this.activeImage][1]));
    object.style.display = '';
    object.innerHTML = (sTitle == null ? '' : sTitle);
    this.updateNav();
    this.doc.getElementById('lbDetailsContainer').style.display = '';
    object = this.doc.getElementById('lbNumberDisplay');
    if (this.isSlideshow && this.slideArray.length > 1) {
        object.style.display = '';
        object.innerHTML = "Image " + eval(this.activeSlide + 1) + " of " + this.slideArray.length;
        this.doc.getElementById('lbNavDisplay').style.display = (this.navType == 2 && this.showNavigation ? '' : 'none');
    } else if (this.imageArray.length > 1 && !this.isLyteframe) {
        object.style.display = '';
        var str = String(this.imageArray[this.activeImage][0]);
        object.innerHTML = "Image " + eval(this.activeImage + 1) + " of " + this.imageArray.length + ' <a href="' + str + '">View Full Size</a>';
        this.doc.getElementById('lbNavDisplay').style.display = (this.navType == 2 ? '' : 'none');
    } else if (this.frameArray.length > 1 && this.isLyteframe) {
        object.style.display = '';
        object.innerHTML = "Page " + eval(this.activeFrame + 1) + " of " + this.frameArray.length;
        this.doc.getElementById('lbNavDisplay').style.display = '';
    } else {
        object.style.display = '';
        var str = String(this.imageArray[this.activeImage][0]);
        object.innerHTML = '<a href="' + str + '">View Full Size</a>';
        this.doc.getElementById('lbNavDisplay').style.display = 'none';
    }
    this.appear('lbDetailsContainer', (this.doAnimations ? 0 : 100));
};

There are a lot of people out there that think DPI or Dots Per Inch, is the resolution of an image on a computer. DPI is not a measure of resolution on computers. It is a measurement of how many dots your going to print per inch. The key here is that Pixels are the measure of the width and height of an image on a computer. For example if I have a 3000x1500 pixel image on a computer the DPI can be any number I want it to be. There is however a magic number of 300dpi which is what you will be printing pictures at. To find out the actual (in inches) dimensions of your final photo. You take 3000/300 = 10 inches and then you take 1500/300 = 5 inches. So your final image is going to be 10x5 inches in size.

This just covers the basics of DPI. Printing can be done with that same 3000x1500 pixel image at 75dpi. In that case you would end up with a 40x20 inch picture. The problem with this is to make the picture that big, will also make it look very bad close up. I believe 75 DPI is what is used on billboard size prints. The key there is that you always are looking at a billboard from a minimum distance of roughly 30 feet. If you were to get with in 5 feet of one you would very easily be able to pick out all the dots that make up the image.

So in the end DPI has NOTHING to do with digital image quality. You can also read more about Resolution vs. DPI

Here is a simple class that I wrote. Pass it a url and it returns a tiny url based on your settings. It implements both cli.gs api and is.gd api. Download TinyUrl PHP Class