To display the most relevant entries to you in priority,
vote for the stories you are interested in
()
and reject those that you are not interested in
()
Bonjour à tous, je suis bien embêtée depuis un moment à essayer
d'ajuster la hauteur de mon corps (et son background color) et de mon menu (et son background
color) en fonction de la hauteur
Chrome
Radiance 1.0
(Other GNOME Stuff)
A simple theme for Google Chrome to make it fit with the Ubuntu's "Radiance" palette.
I've scraped the colors from Radiance's Metacity and GTK+ theme defs, making adjustments where
necessary since Chrome has a rather simplistic theming backend.
Did you by any chance get in on the
early QUE proReader pre-order? Well, we've got news for you that might be good or bad depending
upon your perspective. A pre-orderer just forwarded us an email received from Richard Archuleta,
CEO of Plastic Logic, detailing a shipment delay from mid-April to sometime in the summer, a date echoed by the QUE product site at Barnes
& Noble. According to the email, the delay is due to a desire to "fine-tune the features and
enhance the overall product experience." Now the good news: credit cards have not been charged
leaving disgruntled hopefuls either $649 (for the 4GB WiFi model) or $799 (for the 8GB WiFi + 3G
model) to spend on something else. There are certainly moree-readerchoices available now than when the QUE proReader went up for pre-order on
January 7th -- though not with the same sophisticated business-use approach or big 10.5-inch display... for that, you'll have
to wait for Skiff to ship. Or maybe you'd prefer a fullcolorLCDtablet instead? Regardless, you do have choices. Full email after the break.
Did
you by any chance get in on the early QUE proReader pre-order? Well, we've got news for you that
might be good or bad depending upon your perspective. A pre-orderer just forwarded us an email
received from Richard Archuleta, CEO of Plastic Logic, detailing a shipment delay from mid-April
to sometime in the summer, a date echoed by the QUE product site at Barnes & Noble. According
to the email, the delay is due to a desire to "fine-tune the features and enhance the overall
product experience." Now the good news: credit cards have not been charged leaving disgruntled
hopefuls either $649 (for the 4GB WiFi model) or $799 (for the 8GB WiFi + 3G model) to spend on
something else. There are certainly more
e-reader
choices available now than when the QUE proReader went up for pre-order on January 7th --
though not with the same sophisticated
business-use approach or big 10.5-inch display... for that, you'll have to wait for Skiff to ship.
Or maybe you'd prefer a fullcolor
LCDtablet
instead? Regardless, you do have choices. Full email after the break.
Buffalo Technology has just announced the addition of a new color option for its MiniStation Lite
portable hard drives - shiny, well glossy, gold. This is the sixth color available for Buffalo's
drive, the others being black, red, white, blue and pink.
The portable HDDs measure 81 (W) x 16 (H) x 130 (D) mm, have an USB 2.0/1.1 interface, a power
consumption that can go down to 1.27W, and include the Memeo AutoSync and SecureLockMobile software
for automatically synchronizing with PCs/Macs and easy data encryption.
The Buffalo's colorful MiniStation Lite drives are available in 250GB, 320GB, 500GB and 640GB
capacities priced between 50 and 100 Euro.
Opera Software continues to be on overdrive with the development of its desktop browser so today it
has let loose the first snapshot of Opera 10.51 (for Windows). Available here, Opera
10.51 build 3309 includes the following updates:
Desktop/UI
- Skin tweaking (more native default skin)
- Fixed several common crashers reported via the crashlogging tool
- Fixed DSK-273787 (Inline find toolbar uses Google search)
- Fixed DSK-283210 (Drag & Drop in page broken)
- Fixed DSK-283085 (Icons on customized status bar duplicated on upgrade)
- Fixed DSK-279809 (Wrong accelerator key for CJK)
- Fixed DSK-275798 (Chat notification appears even if chat tab is active)
- Fixed DSK-278443 (Importing bookmarks imports a second "Trash" folder)
- Fixed DSK-276834 (Ini file variables no longer working: %s, %t, %c, %u, %l)
- Fixed DSK-279652 (Deleting bookmark closes/collapses all folders)
- Fixed DSK-274429 (Focus lost when deleting bookmarks)
- Fixed DSK-272965 (Plugins not moved to new window when dragging tab from a different window)
- Fixed DSK-280340 (Use image on desktop doesn't work)
- Fixed DSK-268249 ('Use Integrated Search' searches in google, not in the page)
- Fixed DSK-280390 (The O menu button can reappear when the menu bar is enabled)
- Fixed DSK-274949 (Icon remains in the system tray after closing Opera)
- Fixed DSK-283422 (Crash on startup with old profile)
- Fixed DSK-286209 (Crash when disabling "Encode international Web addresses with UTF-8)
- Fixed DSK-279060 (Minimized tabs don't display after restart)
- Fixed DSK-280780 (Favicon not added to bookmarks due to question mark in filename/path)
- Fixed DSK-282359 (Icons missing from menus in 16-bit color mode)
- Fixed DSK-285442 (Scrolling performance is slower in 10.50 than 10.10 on some configurations)
- Fixed DSK-275546 (No main menu after upgrading)
Core
- Fixed DSK-279742 (Incorrect font used for UTF8 page without lang specified)
- Fixed DSK-284316 (Crashers when syncing against random Link data)
- Fixed DSK-285606 (Opera Link fails to sync when item has no value for id or content
attribute)
- Fixed CARAKAN-1058 (Memory leak in Dromaeo tests)
- Fixed CARAKAN-1138 (Crash when throwing exception from JIT-invoked eval())
- Fixed CARAKAN-1141 (Crash on thejit.org demo (JIT only))
- Fixed CARAKAN-779 (Incorrect toString of accessor properties)
- Further Carakan crash fixes
- Fixed CORE-28353 (Thread migration with cross-scheduler back references cause a crash)
- Fixed CORE-28317 (Cookies received over NPAPI are incorrectly parsed): DnB NOR login fails
- Fixed CORE-17989 (Should allow cookie mode override in ua.ini)
- Fixed CORE-27420 (drawImage called with an image with non-existent source throws)
- Fixed CORE-28379 (Crash when calling opera.io.filesystem.browseForDirectory() from widget)
Mail
- Fixed DSK-255372 (Add functionality to get quote-marks from documentedit)
- Fixed DSK-284837 (Attachments not accessible for sent messages)
- Fixed DSK-284161 (Ghost e-mails in the Trash folder after emptying it and a restart of Opera)
- Fixed DSK-286102 (Message not loaded when it's deselected and selected again)
- Fixed DSK-284168 (Only possible to attach images after inserting an image in an HTML mail)
- Fixed DSK-262824 (Missing inlined image when reopening draft when image has space in
filename)
- Fixed DSK-283465 (Mail is blank when using fit to width)
- Fixed DSK-284781 (Attachments not sent if mail is sent quickly after attaching files)
- Fixed DSK-283709 (Emails container has extra border)
- Fixed DSK-270134 (Welcome mail in Opera Mail shows old logo)
- Fixed DSK-275889 (Quotes missing in mail.css and webfeeds.html)
- Fixed DSK-269693 (Missing option to move mail.css)
- Fixed DSK-286863 (Opera Mail welcome e-mail message not localized)
- Fixed CORE-28422 (Added possibility to get blockquotes as text)
A new Opera 10.50 build for Linux has also been released and you can get it here.
Delta Electronics will start small-volume color filter (CF) production at a 3.5G plant acquired
from Allied Material Technology (AMTC) in the third quarter of 2010, according to company CEO
Yancey Hai.
I've decided my old homepage was bad enough to revisit now that I've got a bit more content
hosted deep within it. I replaced my crappy hand written HTML with tools written this decade, and
threw in some amateur visual design. The software
Firstly, in order to keep the webpage fresh with little effort, I've chosen RSS aggregation as
the method of content generation. Since I know Ubuntu and Debian both use Planet, that's where I first looked. But it seems Planet 2.0
is aging, and the fork Planet Venus brings some
neat new options. It expands the selection of templates, adds a configurable RSS filter step, and
makes the normalization step configurable.
It's also packaged in Ubuntu as planet-venus, making it fairly simple to set up. Deployment was a
little tricky, as the package leaves most of the site configuration to the admin. You'll need
a config.ini (I used /etc/planet/planet.ini), a template dir
(/usr/local/share/planet-venus/theme), a cache dir (/var/cache/planet) and an output dir
(somewhere in /var/www typically). Finally, you'll need to set up a cron job to run the static
output generation script regularly. The script reads all the feeds and parameters in config.ini,
caches the results to save bandwidth on subsequent runs, passes them to the template engine, and
places the final product in the output dir.
When building a lifestream style site, you have to be picky about the kinds of feeds you put in
or it gets Facebook / Twitter style spammy. This is where the RSS filter step can help; Planet
Venus comes with a few filters like 'notweets', and a few stripAds filters to cleanse ads before
republishing. It's the same design pattern I talked about before here with Liferea. In the future I could write
one to add in comment feeds and then filter out everything that fails to meet some strong quality
criteria. Output templates
Planet Venus's real selling point to me is using Django templates. I've been meaning
to learn Django for a while now, and this is a pretty good way to work with the templates portion
of Django. And again, the filter pattern pops up. Here, filters take python variables as input;
in Planet Venus's setup you have access to feed and item variables, as well as planetwide
settings. One example filter might be to simply pluralize a word
based on a variable (yes, you can even handle 'y' pluralization). Another example is the urlize filter that adds
HTML anchor tags to likely URLs (not so great when you already have anchor tags in the filter's
input).
I also use templates to generate an RSS feed. Nothing difficult about it, since the input to
templates is basically an RSS feed to begin with. To reduce the probability of bugs, I translated
a provided example htmptmpl RSS template into
Django, and it's much smaller and clearer to me. Unfortunately, there's a bug in Planet Venus
that prevents the use of multiple Django templates. I've reported it upstream, and I'm sure I can
fix it or work around it. Web Design
I also decided to take a look at CSS layout frameworks, to get up to speed on the subject
quickly. 960.gs is popular, but it's 960 pixel width assumption works poorly with quirky
resolutions found on massive monitors and smartphones. Luckily, I found found fluid960, which is very similar, but implements
fluid layouts. It retains the CSS class names of 960.gs, so tutorials and documentation on one
translate fairly well to the other. Which is good, because fluid960 pretty much relies on you
already knowing regular 960 (I didn't). This presentation
gives a good summary of things you might want a CSS framework for, and this 960
tutorial covers what I needed to know.
Color scheming is probably the hardest part for me. It's simple to pick a color pallate that goes
together, but there is a higher level opportunity to communicate something through visual design.
I could choose a purple scheme to reflect my collegiate experience, or an Ubuntu pallete, but it
seems inappropriate for a personal site. I've got a bit of low level coding experience, so I
could go with a green on black terminal theme, but it's been done to death ever since the Matrix,
and it's basically impossible to beat jwz's version.
Since I'm not really looking to break into web design, I went with a relatively muted color
scheme that organizes the content without distracting from it. Truthfully it doesn't matter all
that much, as experience shows the majority of hits will come via RSS.
Well, that's basically all there is to my automated homepage system. On to more important things,
like setting up a calDAV server or a feed processing tool.
Operating both as solar and dynamo charger, this device also features a diminutive size only W70
× H70 × D29mm and 3 LED lights on the side. It comes with an 18 cm
pull type cable for dynamo charge and a separate 30 cm cable for solar charge along with 3
different color connectors..
Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer, with small size, fast launch speed and rich feature
set. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7. In the past, you've had to download a
huge PDF reader from another software company, go through a lengthy installation process and wait
for an annoying splash window to disappear just to open a PDF document.
Changes include:
- Undo and Redo. Allows users to easily correct mistakes by cancelling their previous actions and
quickly adding back in changes made with the Undo option, this makes it convenient for users to
revoke their performances and enables better editing requirements.
- Expand Current Bookmark. Click the Expand Current Bookmark icon to expand nested bookmarks and
highlight the bookmark of the current page.
- Grayscale Printing. Reader 3.2 supports to print in grayscale, using many shades of gray to
represent subtle variations in color and light.
- Speed up printing. Foxit Reader has optimized the printing feature, improving the speed of
printing dramatically.
- Logical Page Number Support. Display the physical and logical page number on the status bar at
the bottom of the working area, enabling you to go right to the desired page fast and
accurately.
- Hundreds bugs fixed
Morrison gets back on track a bit with this issue, as he sets up the "Bruce Wayne Through The
Ages" mini-series that will follow up this arc, and shows us Damien's hidden agenda in the
process. I'm of two minds about this. I'm almost sure the mini-series will be able to be read
without reading this arc, but I can't say, and it's not as if Morrison hasn't done this before
(the Superman story that wasn't a part of Final Crisis, for instance, but is fairly
important to the main story, plus JLA: Classified #1-3, which explains why the Sheeda
don't attract the attention of the Justice League and why they don't go after them). They do
proclaim on the cover that "The Return of Bruce Wayne Begins Here!", but it's a bit annoying that
DC does this (or Morrison does this). Oh well. What's done is done.
The actual issue is fine, although I'm always amused when characters in comics from the "present"
go back in time and leave clues for the people in the "present" to find and no one has ever
stumbled across them before. Dick grew up in Wayne Manor. He never noticed some of these things,
even the hidden passageway? Hell, Bruce himself didn't notice? And I love how the line of
succession from Wayne to Wayne is completely unbroken, one male giving way to another male in
rigid generational progression, with no icky girls or sickly invalids to mar the lineage, and the
one mysterious black sheep who will turn out to be misunderstood, surely (as it was probably
Bruce to begin with). Oh well - suspension of disbelief and all that, but it made me chuckle.
The best parts of the issue didn't have to do with time-traveling Bruce, anyway. Morrison gets
back to the relationship between Dick and Damien which has been the strength of the comic, and it
works very well as we realize what Damien is up to. The return of Oberon Sexton is welcome, and
Morrison draws on some of the better aspects of his run on Batman. It makes the issue a
neat little story, and I'm looking forward to the rest of it. Of course, Morrison's first issue
with Stewart was good, too, and faltered in the final two. So we'll see.
Andy Clarke bugs me. The art is fine, but it reminds of someone else's. Whose? Help me out,
comics aficiandos!
I've written about what makes Criminal so interesting before, but I'm going to do it
again. Brubaker does such a nice job setting up the plots that when they get set in motion, it
simply feels like real people working their way through real problems. Yes, not many people have
to deal with the problems that Tracy Lawless and the people of his world have to deal with, but
because of the way Brubaker has set things up, we understand that the way Tracy tries to get out
of the predicament he's in is really his only option. There's no deus ex machina, there's just
people trying their best to stay alive. If the appearance of a character or the resolution of a
conflict seems a bit too easy, it's not because it doesn't make sense. The way Tracy wraps up his
"assignment" leaves plenty of scars, but he has still thought it out, and Brubaker has allowed us
to see his thought process. There's nothing gimmicky about Criminal, and that's part of
its greatness. It might seem like utterly brutal storytelling, and there's that, certainly, but
it's also a very nice series about people who make bad choices and pay for them. We might not
make their bad choices (we might, but not necessarily), but Brubaker does a nice job of making us
understand why they make them. Yes, things play out somewhat as we expect, but that's
not the point. Brubaker, unlike many of his contemporaries, isn't concerned about the "gotcha"
moment. He's much more concerned with showing how every step of the story is horribly inevitable.
That's the kind of storytelling I enjoy. Your mileage may, of course, vary.
Criminal is once again going on hiatus, and it's a shame. I enjoy Incognito,
which is returning in a bit, but it's in a slightly different vein than Criminal, and it
doesn't work quite as well (it's still good, of course, because Brubillips are seriously talented
- and should I try to add Staples into that name to make one giant German-esque conglomeration of
a word?). But I'm hoping that our creators can rake in some actual dough in their next projects
(Avengers for Brubaker, a Stephen King thing for Phillips) and get back to this groovy
comic. That would be keen.
One panel of awesome:
Take that, fuckers!
Ex Machina #48 ("Pro-Life Part
Four") by Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Tony Harris (artist), JD Mettler (colorist), and
Jared K. Fletcher (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC,
DC/Wildstorm.
Well, two more issues to go, so it's kind of pointless to dig into this, isn't it? I'll have
something more substantial to say when the final issue drops, but for now, Vaughan is just
hurtling toward issue #50. Suzanne is evil, Mitch finds out the horrible thing that happened last
issue and doesn't take it well, and things are going to shit, generally. It's quite gripping, and
except for the panel in which Mitch walks quickly across the room (is that his apartment, because
it looks like a banquet hall of some sort), the art is typically groovy. I have one question,
though: Suzanne broadcasts her commands over the radio, and New York goes nuts. All those people
were listening to the radio? Were enough people listening to that particular radio station to
make it such a problem? It seems strange that it's such a catastrophe. I mean, it's not like she
interrupted the M*A*S*H finale or anything. But that's okay. It was just a bit odd.
More later. I'm looking forward to the final couple of issues.
One panel of awesome:
Man, she's bad-ass!
Ghost Projekt #1 (of 5) ("Cold
Warriors") by Joe Harris (writer), Steve Rolston (artist), Dean Trippe (colorist), and Douglas E. Sherwood
(letterer). $3.99, 24 pgs, FC, Oni Press.
I don't know how many people know about this book, but dang, it's a good first issue. I wouldn't
blame anyone for waiting for the trade, but that's not how I roll, so I'm very glad I got this.
Rolston is a very good artist, of course, and I don't think I've ever seen his work in color
before, so Trippe's work is very strong as well, adding a nice dimension to the pencil art. (Last
week I mentioned I sat at the same table as Ming Doyle at last year's Eisners. Tim Callahan
commented that he was there as well, and so was Trippe. It was an all-star table! I'm sure I
brought the cool quotient of the group down significantly, but nobody wanted to mention it.
Because they're swell.) Rolston does a nice job blending his cartoonish qualities with a grounded
realism, which makes his depiction of Russia in the winter nice but not too bleak and makes his
work with the cat (oh, the cat's important, you betcha!) a bit more easy to accept. His character
work is very good, too - Will and Kip look like normal, everyday schlubs who are about to get
caught up in something really bad, while Anya is a total bad-ass. It's a nice, creepy comic that,
thanks to Rolston, isn't too overwhelmingly dark. Trippe, meanwhile, uses sickening greens in the
first part of the book when he doesn't really have to (it's just nighttime, so it could be
anything darker), but given the subject matter, it's a good choice.
Harris tells a story of a research station in Siberia that hides a secret. Two Russians go there
to steal something, and they get far more than they bargained for. And there's some old Soviet
dudes in Moscow hiding something. And the U. S. Department of Defense sends Will and Kip to
figure out what's going on, and they get stonewalled by Anya, the bad-ass cop. She even smokes
bad-assily! And there's the cat. And possibly a ghost. Spooky!
This is a really good first issue of what seems like a very nifty series. If you've never seen
Rolston's art, it would mean you've never read, among other things, Queen and Country,
so shame on you, but here's a good chance in full-color glory. And who doesn't love stories about
creepy Soviet-era research stations where weird a-doings were transpiring and now might be
haunted? Commies, that's who. Don't be a Commie!
One panel of awesome:
Look how cute she is as she tells them to fuck off!
Secret Six #19 ("Cats in the Cradle
Part One of Four: Misconceived") by Gail
Simone (writer), Jim Calafiore (artist),
Jason Wright (colorist), and Travis Lanham (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC.
Fuck Wonder Woman.
Seriously. Fuck Birds of Prey, for that matter. Back in the day, late in Simone's first
run on BoP, I read a few issues. They did nothing for me. I got a few of the trades from
the start of her run. Nothing. Then she took over Wonder Woman, and I read a few issues.
Still nothing. And now she's leaving Wonder Woman, and many people are sad. That's cool,
but I'm not. She's relaunching Birds of Prey, and many people are happy. That's cool,
but I'm not. Simone is a good writer, but it seems like she's at her best when she's writing
really, really nasty characters. Even Welcome to Tranquility, her Wildstorm series that
she's bringing back this summer, featured some nasty characters and, shall we say, morally
challenged people. She just doesn't seem inspired by purity, and she might say she loves writing
about Diana, but something about it never clicked. Of course, all those people who are sad by her
leaving Wonder Woman should, you know, go buy Secret Six. Because with the
exception of a few missteps, this is a fantastic series, and it seems like the only way you could
pry Simone away from these characters is by cancelling the series and then freeze-drying Simone
in some sort of storage chamber so she doesn't rip your head off. But I could be wrong.
Let's take this issue, which is as good a place as ever to jump on, now that the "Blackest Night"
pseudo-crossover is over. It's a new storyline! The group tries to rescue a man from Brother
Blood's cult, find out he's dead, and then get betrayed by the man who hired them (this group
seriously needs to vet their clients better; have they made any money since being together?).
It's a nice little story with a killer ending that sets up the rest of the arc. Seriously, that
last page - on the one hand, it doesn't make too much sense, for reasons I can't divulge, but on
the other hand, it just punches you right in the gut. Simone does this quite often on this book -
reveals something on the last page that is just so fucked-up and nasty that you just have to love
it (remember Junior?). But while the story is fairly standard until the final page, the interplay
between the characters is so crackling it's a joy to read. Consider Ragdoll's soliloquy on the
first page, which cracks me up. DC really should label this a "Mature Readers" comic (it
certainly deserves it) because then Simone could actually have Ragdoll say "fuck," which would
make the joke on the first page even funnier. But then she nails the Brother Blood cultists
wonderfully ("And you'll undergo blessed tonsure, of course!") and the dysfunction of the group
when they disobey Bane. We get a particularly nasty scene with Cheshire and some really, really
stupid men. We get Alice's weird attraction to Ragdoll. And we get the creepy scene at the end,
which is creepy not only for the killer ending but for the few pages preceding it, when the
client starts talking and we know things are about to go pear-shaped. Simone makes it all work.
And consider her character work, especially with the women: Alice is a goofy teenager who happens
to have all sorts of weird powers, but her attraction to Ragdoll is completely believable,
especially when you consider how weird teenagers are (and before you jump down my throat, I don't
mean that pejoratively, just that teens have a lot going on in their bodies and brains that make
them a bit weird). Cheshire is bad-ass, toying with the men sent to ... well, I won't spoil what
they're there for, but it's also nice that Simone makes her tough but not quite tough enough.
It's a nice touch.
I've never met Ms. Simone, even though she's stopped by the blog a few times. I'm sure she's sad
about not writing Wonder Woman anymore, as she's probably the highest profile female
writer in comics and Diana is the highest profile female character in comics. I don't know what
precipitated her leaving the book, nor do I particularly care. As sad as she might be, she seems
to have so much goddamned fun writing this series that I hope this is the one DC can't get her to
leave. I hope the sales justify keeping it going (I haven't heard anything about it being in
trouble, so there's that). I even think Bill Reed should just get the hell over his loathing of
Jim Calafiore and buy the damned book. Because when the client walks out in a tuxedo shirt, tie,
and coat and khaki shorts, you know you're in really skeevy territory. And who doesn't love that?
Commies, that's who. Commies who hate ice cream. Those are the worst kind of Commies!
Ah, fuck it. It's over. Buy the trade, won't you? If only for Abigail's explanation of why
S.W.O.R.D. actually exists.
Oh, and Gillen knows the correct spelling of "vermilion." Or someone at Marvel does. That's quite
gratifying. And damn. I just want to write about each and every awesome thing that happens in
this issue, but I won't because it won't make any difference. Trust me. The trade will rock.
Would I lie? And if you're at the convention in Seattle this weekend, stop by and say hello to
Gillen. He's swell.
One panel of awesome:
You know, I could have thrown a dart at any panel in this comic and used it ... that's how
awesome the issue is!
The Unwritten is starting to remind me of Lucifer, and that's not necessarily a
good thing. I know Lucifer gets praised to the skies, but I've read about five of the
trades (I think, without looking, that's how many I own), and it just never took off for me.
There would be some really cool things, and you could see that Carey was going somewhere with it,
but then it would get sidetracked into mediocrity for a bit, and then it would be good again.
It's not that it wasn't consistently great (very few series are), it's that when it did falter,
it faltered pretty badly. I haven't thought any of the issues of The Unwritten have been
really bad yet, but the quality goes up and down, sometime in the same issue, and Carey still
doesn't seem to have a really good handle on the characters yet. That said, issue #11 was quite
good, finishing up a nifty little two-parter, but I still find myself wondering how long Carey is
going to meander. Again, I'm sure he has a plan and a destination in mind, but like
Lucifer, if he takes too long getting there it might get annoying. Ah, I'm babbling. I
just wonder if he's focused so much on Tom's grand quest that he occasionally forgets that we
have to read every page to get there.
Anyway, this is actually an issue that brings some new things to the fore, including some of
Tom's abilities. Lizzie also tells us something interesting about Jud Süss the
novel and the movie, which seems fairly important. Gross' art and Broxton's finishes are very
keen, especially when Tom confronts the novel/movie directly (it makes sense in the book, trust
me). I'm sticking around, because unlike Greek Street (which Chad Nevett claims is
getting better), which was fairly incomprehensible from the beginning, at least Carey is keeping
most of this weirdness in check so dumb people like me don't get lost. I just wish he'd try to
make the characters more interesting and not worry about the grand narrative for an issue or two.
We'll see.
One panel of awesome:
Oh, bureaucracy - what would we do without you?
Zorro: Matanzas #2 (of 4)
("Terrible Incident in a Place of Skulls") by Don
McGregor (writer), Mike Mayhew (artist), Sam
Parsons (colorist), John Costanza (letterer), Kel-O-Graphics (digital inker). $3.99, 24 pgs, FC,
Dynamite Entertainment.
McGregor continues with his dense prose, making this a book that takes a while to read, if that's
what you like from your comics. I don't care either way as long as it's good, and this is a
decent adventure so far - it doesn't set the world on fire, but that's okay. McGregor does a nice
job giving us thumbnail sketches of the characters and of slowly, inevitably, leading us toward
the conclusion, but when he wants to show action, he does a fairly good job of letting Mayhew
show it, and Zorro's fight against the grizzly bear (yes, the cover actually shows something that
happens in the book) is a good example - McGregor doesn't go silent, but he at least trusts his
artist to show us what's happening. I'm a bit confused by Machete's plan, though - he causes a
bull to run wild, but then tries to save one of the bull's victims (McGregor explains why he
saves that particular victim, but still). So what is his plan? I hope it all comes together! And
why, if Zorro is so close by, did no one notice his battle against the bear?
This is a pretty rollicking adventure with some purple prose, which I don't mind in small doses.
And I always enjoy sudden violence, and Mayhew does a nice job with that. So we'll see where
McGregor is going with it!
One panel of awesome:
Once I saw this, was there really any other that would have sufficed?
In family-related news, my older daughter Mia got her cast off on Wednesday, so life is back to
normal, somewhat. She's very happy about it, naturally, and her legs are much looser than they've
been recently. Her muscle tone will probably still be high, so we're trying to keep her limber,
but at least she can sleep on her side and sit in a regular chair and we can carry her
non-awkwardly again. Yay! I was pretty happy that the doctor said she could get them off. It was
no fun carrying her around with both her legs in casts.
Moving on, let's peruse The Ten Most Recent Songs Played On My iPod (Which Is Always On Shuffle):
1. "Could We Start Again Please?" - Yvonne Elliman, Michael Jason, Marc
Pressel (1970) "I think you've made your point now"
2. "Revolution Calling" - Queensryche (1988) "I
used to trust the media to tell us the truth"
3. "Waiting To Happen" - Marillion (1991) "We
took ourselves apart, we talked about our faces"
4. "This Is Your Life" - En Vogue (1992)
"And when I spoke up to my friends they made fun of my dreams"
5. "I Believe" - Blessid Union Of Souls
(1995) "Violence is spread worldwide and there are families in the street"
6. "Night Songs" - Cinderella (1986)
"Sleepin' all day but never get a rest"
7. "Warm Wet Circles" - Marillion (1987) "She faithfully traces his name with quick-bitten
fingernails"
8. "Lay All Your Love On Me" - ABBA (1980) "A little
small talk, a smile, and baby, I was stuck"
9. "Hotwax" - Beck (1996) "Silver foxes looking for
romance in the chain smoke Kansas flashdance ass pants"
10. "Now" - Prince (1995) "Don't worry 'bout my name it's too long to remember, I could tell
you now but we'd be here 'til next September"
Ah, totally random lyrics. Who can identify you?
"Slice you open like a Taun Taun
Faster than the Autobahn
Or a motorbike in Tron
Do the deed and then I'm gone"
Last but not least, I bought a book last week called How the States Got Their
Shapes by Mark Stein. It's flippin' awesome. I love books that fill my head with arcane
knowledge that pushes out useful stuff, like my anniversary or my childrens' birthdays or my
ability to operate a motor vehicle. So if you live in the United States and you're curious as to
how your state got its shape, ask me and I will tell you. Sorry, non-Yankees, I can't tell you
why Queensland has the borders it does or why Saskatchewan looks like that or why the Jura canton
is shaped that way or why Lincolnshire isn't bigger or smaller. Sorry! That's why the U. S.
rules, man!!!!
Color filter (CF) and touch panel makers Sintek Photronic and Cando have posted only on-month
single-digit percentage drops in February revenues despite fewer working days, as demand for touch
panels was strong.
We told you about Sony’s new concept cameras that were
announced during PMA, and now that things have calmed down a bit, we’re starting to see
some details. Specifically, what’s going on with the menu system, and what exactly is going
to make these cameras so interesting.
It appears that Sony is taking menuing way beyond the basic face detection and background
templates. Instead, how about being able to adjust the depth of field from the LCD? How about
using a touch screen to adjust all this stuff, and using it to be able to make adjustments to the
white balance, or color hues? Sound interesting? Of course, you’ll have the typical picture
modes and such, but it’s looking like the menuing system will definitely be where
it’s at. And keep in mind, this an EVILclass
camera, so you can expect quite a bit more of it then you would from your basic point and
shoot.
It looks like dual Fermi won’t be coming anytime soon. A few partners have said that at this
time they are not aware that there will be a dual Fermi card and if Nvidia decides to make one, it
won't be close to March 27th's single GF100 launch.
I just finished reading Designing Social Interfaces. The book is written
by the creators of the Yahoo!
Pattern Library. I had no knowledge of any such pattern library previous to reading this
book, but I've really been exploring the idea of creating user experiences on the web that will
bring in users and keep them happy (and not confused). I think a lot of this interest has to do
with Canonical's current
focus on design and usability.
The book is an O'Reilly book, but once it's opened, it certainly doesn't feel like an
O'Reilly book. The pages are slicker than normal O'Reilly books (and I own many of them). They're
also in full color. This is great for a user experience design book, since it's often hard to
look at screenshots of web sites when they're in black and white.
I soon realized that I was fascinated with the book itself. When it comes to web design, there
are a few staples (Don't Make Me Think comes
to mind), the books don't seem to be specific enough. They usually just show good examples, but
they don't show the why of the good examples. Designing User Interfaces starts
with the why, which is something I can really appreciate.
As a developer, I also have a tendency to think in "design patterns." By presenting the
interfaces as "patterns," it was easy for me to start thinking up my own variations of those
design patterns to work with my existing experiences and products. This is probably what sealed
the fate of this book. It made me excited to re-design and re-think interfaces I've implemented
(including Launchpad).
I would highly recommend this book for anyone doing front end work, whether it's just
implementing existing designs or creating your own designs. I've noticed that I now critique web
interfaces with an eye I didn't have before I read this book.
If you’re a gamer, you might have heard about yesterday’s news about the
PlayStation Move, Sony’s
answer to the Wii Remote and Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal motion
controller. In a demonstration yesterday, the company showed off the device, which utilizes
remote-like controllers and the PlayStation Eye camera to capture your movements and turn them
into actions on the screen.
We’ve seen plenty of screenshots and heard a lot about the controller’s capabilities,
but we wanted to find out for ourselves whether it really could make the PlayStation more
competitive with its counterparts. That’s why I decided to take the system for a test drive
here at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California.
Did it live up to expectations? Could it challenge Nintendo and Microsoft in gaming? I’ve
got some thoughts on the matter:
PlayStation Move: Sony Played It Safe
First, a little bit about the PlayStation Move: it is a two-part control system. First are the
handheld controllers, which act essentially as Wiimotes. The main controller comes with a lighted
color ball on the top though — this is an essential component for the second part of the
Move: the PlayStation Eye camera, which tracks your movements on screen. Combined, you get a
controller system.
When I held the remote-like device in my hands and actually got to play with it, I immediately
became aware of two things: its accuracy and its augmented reality features. It feels just a
little more precise than a Wiimote with the MotionPlus controller. Because it uses the camera
rather than the senor bar that the Wii utilizes, it can more accurately catch your motions. It
also translates them onto the screen with your face on the TV.
I was impressed with the augmented reality aspect of the PlayStation Move more, though. The
lighted ball on my controller turned first into a paintbrush, and then a fly swatter. It
didn’t have the lag that a lot of other systems deal with, which made the experience
enjoyable.
Is it that much better than the Wii, though? To be honest, I think the answer to that
question depends on how developers use the PlayStation Eye camera to enhance their games. If they
focus on the controllers, then it’s just a fancy Wiimote. If it focuses on bringing you
into the game via the camera, then there are some real possibilities.
In the end though, Microsoft’s Project Natal is still going to garner the attention and the
hype, as it is a bolder step into motion control. Sony essentially played it safe with the Move,
while Microsoft’s implementing an all-or-nothing strategy with Natal.
LWN.net: "Color management is sometimes unfairly characterized as a topic of
interest only to print shops and video editors, but as Cruz explained at the top of his talk,
anyone who shares digital content wants it to look correct, and everyone who uses more than one
device knows how tricky that can be."
The two of us see the world as a stream of color, and in 2009 we finally had a chance to draw the
river in our heads. We began with a collection of photographs of the Boston Common taken from
Flickr. Using an algorithm developed for the WIRED
Anniversary visualization, our software calculated the relative proportions of different
colors seen in photos taken in each month of the year, and plotted them on a wheel. The image
[above] is an early sketch from the piece. Summer is at the top, with time proceeding clockwise.
The finished infographic, complete with seasonal labels and callouts of representative images,
appeared in the Metric section of Boston magazine in March of 2009. You can view a
low-res version of it here.
People have been asking us for years when we’d be getting shirts and other cool stuff out
the door so they can represent their love for our awesome community. The time has finally come to
unveil the new store and we’re
excited to have both the original Gamers With Jobs
t-shirt along with the first winner from our design contest back in ... wow, that’s a
long time ago.
One of our absolute favorites was one of many designs submitted by community member Fredrik
Skarstedt. He had a bunch of awesome ideas but his Friend Me Up
graphic design was particularly inspired. We’re very pleased to offer a regular t-shirt in
multiple colors and babydoll versions for the ladies!
This is only the beginning. Over the next few months we plan to release new stuff based on what
you guys want and some of our other winning designs. Big thanks to Cleveland Printwear for making our
awesome swag!
*note* We have folks outside the US and Canada covered too, check out the international order
form on the site.
Hmmm, shortly after getting news that the JooJoo tablet will come in a
new color as well as an
updated user interface, we have news of this tablet going through the rigors of the FCC.
Apparently, underneath the hood will reveal an Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor and an NVIDIA Ion
chipset to keep it going, confirming the authenticity of its flawless video playback in the past.
As for the presence of a SIM card slot, that will most likely point towards 3G being an option
sometime in the future. While the JooJoo will ship with a Linux user interface, additional
pictures from the FCC do point towards Windows 7, so we would reserve our comments on that since
the crystal ball looks rather cloudy at the moment. All will be revealed come March 25th, we
guess, when the JooJoo launches.
The iPhone still suffers from a relatively short battery life till today, and carrying around a
portable power pack is always a good idea if you happen to need to keep in touch with the world
most of the time. Novothink could have a game changing solution with its Solar Surge iPhone case
that relies on the power of the sun to juice up your handset's battery whenever it has access to
solar power, while providing protection against drops and knocks thanks to its soft touch,
non-slip finish case. Available in several colors such as black, green, blue and white, the Solar
Surge offers up to 4 more hours of battery life. It will retail for $79.95, although an iPod
touch version is $10 cheaper.
Verizon’s not going to be too happy about this one. From everyone we’ve spoken to,
they really wanted to keep details surrounding the Android-powered HTC Incredible
underwraps for a while longer. That’s understandable, given that the Incredible blows their
current flagship Android device, the Motorola Droid, to smithereens on just about every count.
Alas, all it takes is one device to slip into the wrong hands — and fortunately for us, it
has! A bunch of new shots of the HTC Incredible (with brand new, Verizon-brand-friendly colors)
have just leaked out, and a gaggle of spec details came with it.
Canonical is
burying Ubuntu's traditional brown theme and is adopting a new visual style for version
10.04, which is scheduled for release in April. The new theme was revealed last week as part of
Canonical's broader effort to overhaul Ubuntu's branding and visual identity.
The new theme includes a richer color palette and a number of stylistic enhancements. The change
that has generated the most controversy is the placement of the window management buttons in the
left-hand side of the titlebar. In response to some of the concerns that have been raised by
users, Canonical designer Ivanka Majic has written a blog entry that describes the reasons behind the change.
Majic is also seeking additional feedback from the Ubuntu community.
The designers looked closely at the placement and configuration of the window management buttons
on other platforms and considered a number of factors, such as the use cases for maximization,
the potential advantages of moving the window management buttons into closer proximity with the
menu elements, and the challenges of diverging from the configuration that is currently familiar
to users.
When I first started testing the theme, I didn't really have an opinion because I generally don't
use the titlebar for window management. I have keyboard shortcuts configured for all the standard
window management operations. To move the window, I typically use alt+click dragging, because it
lets me click anywhere inside of the window. That's more efficient than having to aim for the
titlebar, which is a much smaller target. For similar reasons, I configured Compiz to let me
close a window by using alt+right-click anywhere inside the window's boundaries. (When I use
other operating systems that don't have alt+click dragging, I'm always amazed by how profoundly
the absence of that feature detrimentally impacts my productivity.)
Although I rarely ever touch the titlebar, the new layout consistently confuses me on the rare
occasions when I attempt to do so. The resulting disorientation has started to bother me and I'm
beginning to sympathize a bit with the critics. It's possible, however, that users who rely more
heavily on the titlebar for window management will adapt more quickly.
Our readers have already broadly discussed their preferred titlebar button positioning in the
threads of our previous articles about the new theme. Unfortunately, I think that the hyper-focus
on the minutiae of widget placement has detracted from the opportunity to take a look at the
bigger picture.
I've become really curious about what strategies other users have devised to manage windows. Are
there ways that window manager can be modified to accommodate more productive interaction? Do you
use features like minimize and maximize? If you favor alternate window management paradigms like
tiling, what do you view as its principal advantages? Do conventional window management concepts
translate well to emerging form factors like touchscreen devices and netbooks?
Android Forums is alight today with fresh HTC Incredible chatter -- a phone every Android
fan on Verizon is desperately waiting for -- and we've managed to glean a few more pictures and
possible specs out of the mess. It looks like we can expect a half gig of RAM with about 320MB
available (roughly the same as what you find on the Nexus One) and an 8 megapixel cam, but interestingly,
the phone's Snapdragon core is apparently
underclocked to 768MHz, almost certainly a battery-saving measure on HTC's part; fortunately, the
Sense-powered Android 2.1 firmware is still said to be "blazing
fast." It measures 117.5 x 58.5 x 11.9mm -- just a hair narrower, shorter, and thicker than its
Nexus One doppelganger, small enough of a difference so that we think it'll be virtually
indistinguishable in person. As shots go, we're seeing now that HTC has moved from the
brightly-colored glossy shell to a soft-touch black one while keeping the strange contours; we
think there's at least a chance that this is final ID, too, since the Verizon logo is silkscreened
at the bottom. Inside, the entire thing (including the battery itself) is a shockingly loud shade
of red, mirroring an odd design trend first seen on the HD mini. We definitely dig it. If the stats over on the
forum hold up, the Incredible's on track for a launch in April or May, so it's still a few weeks
off -- in the meanwhile, we encourage you to check out more of the new shots after the break.
Habréis visto en alguna ocasión que hay usuarios de Twitter que tienen como imagen
de fondo los avatares de sus contactos, formando un gigantesco mosaico que ocupa toda la
pantalla. Este efecto puede lograrse usando webs como Twilk.
Este mashup es muy sencillo de utilizar, tan sólo hemos de loguearnos con nuestra cuenta
de Twitter, para que la aplicación comience a buscar las fotografías de los
usuarios con quienes más interactuamos, lo cual no suele durar más de diez
segundos. Una vez tenemos las imágenes, podremos elegir cómo mostrarlas: en color,
blanco y negro, ocupando todo el fondo, ocupando sólo dos columnas, mostrar sólo
los seguidores, sólo los seguidos o ambos.
Aunque si buscamos algo más profesional,Twilk ofrece también una
funcionalidad de pago, que nos costará cinco dólares al mes. A cambio
nuestro fondo se actualizará automáticamente todos los días, podremos
incluir o excluir los usuarios que queramos y no se mostrará el logotipo de la
aplicación.
Independientemente de lo poco práctico que pueda resultar tener un fondo así,
sobretodo en cuentas corporativas o profesionales, reconozco que no deja de ser vistoso y que le
da un toque original y desenfadado que puede dar bastante juego en cuentas
personales. Además que es gratuito y si no nos gusta el fondo siempre podemos
volver a cambiarlo por el que teníamos.
It's not November '09 as originally promised, but Novothink has now announced that its
Solar Surge charging cases for the iPhone and iPod touch are finally available. Those will run
$79.95 for the iPhone 3G/3GS version and $69.95 for the iPod touch version (second gen only, it
seems), which are each available only in black or white at the moment (additional colors are
"coming soon), and should add between four and eight hours of talk time, or up to 20 hours of
additional audio playback. That's, of course, when the charger is fully charged, but Novothink says
you can still expect to get between 30 and 60 minutes of talk time after just 30 minutes of
exposure to direct sunlight.
A website that sorts everyday the most relevant information to you.
Vote for the news and Matoumba will learn your tastes and the information that you like the most.
It is all FREE!
Find here the history of the stories you found interesting.
Show this to people who share the same interests as you,
and if they use Matoumba, their own votes will fine recommandations to you.
Did you by any chance get in on the
early QUE proReader pre-order? Well, we've got news for you that might be good or bad depending
upon your perspective. A pre-orderer just forwarded us an email received from Richard Archuleta,
CEO of Plastic Logic, detailing a shipment delay from 
Batman and Robin #10 ("Batman vs.
Robin Part 1: The Haunting of Wayne Manor") by 
Criminal: The Sinners #5 by
Ex Machina #48 ("Pro-Life Part
Four") by Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Tony Harris (artist), JD Mettler (colorist), and
Ghost Projekt #1 (of 5) ("Cold
Warriors") by 
Secret Six #19 ("Cats in the Cradle
Part One of Four: Misconceived") by 
S.W.O.R.D. #5 by 
The Unwritten #11 ("Jud Süss: The
Canker") by 
Zorro: Matanzas #2 (of 4)
("Terrible Incident in a Place of Skulls") by 
If you’re a gamer, you might have heard about yesterday’s news about the
Recommandations
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
