Over 91 members of pixel art community Way of the Pixel worked in concert to create this hallucinatory piece. Each artist staked their claim on a tile from the hex grid, using a 16-color limit and outlines from adjacent grids to guide their own contributions -- because of how the project was structured, the participants didn't even see each other's completed work until the entire field was published.

As a result, you'll see a nest of birds next to a mechanical hand with a chainsaw, a plate of spaghetti turning into a head of hair belonging to a topless girl, and other odd juxtapositions. You can see the full piece below, but you should really head to the forum to see a much bigger version. I've also included a poster version that one artist printed out.

[Via Minusbaby]

Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, Road Tested

Continue reading Road Tested: AT&T Navigator for iPhone

TUAWRoad Tested: AT&T Navigator for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, Road Tested

Continue reading Road Tested: AT&T Navigator for iPhone

TUAWRoad Tested: AT&T Navigator for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

(1) DocShare - Document sharing community that enables everyone to easily find and share documents online. It’s pretty much like YouTube for documents, you can search the documents by entering the title or browse through the categories. You can also go for the most popular, most viewed and the most discussed ones. Read more: DocShare: Find And Share Documents Easily

(2) IconFinder - Great resource for finding icons online. It lets you search over 90,000 web icons by keywords or browse them by icon sets, tags and filter results by icon size and  background color. Download any icon with one click in PNG or ICO format.  Read more: IconFinder: Great Resource For Finding Icons

(3) Mookal - Online calculator which lets you quickly calculate your monthly mortgage or refinance payments. The calculator has a clean design, user friendly interface and results are presented in easy-to-understand format along with detailed graphs and tables. Read more: Mookal: Best Refinance & Mortgage Calculator So Far

(4) NutritionToolbox - Comprehensive food nutritional information database where you can look up information (e.g. calories, vitamins, minerals) on more than 40,000 foods including brand name grocery items and fast food products. Read more: NutritionToolbox: Food Nutritional Information Database

(5) TwitLogo - Free logo generator that lets you create custom Twitter-like logos for use on your website or online profiles. Simply type in the text and click make to preview your logo. You can also customize logo size, logo text and background color. Read more: TwitLogo: Twitter Logo Generator

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Nos llega la noticia, todavía por confirmar, de que algunos usuarios del nuevo modelo de iPhone, están experimentando problemas relacionados con decoloraciones. Al parecer estos problemas son debidos a un sobrecalentamiento anormal del dispositivo. Al calentarse demasiado, el material de la cubierta trasera adquiere tonos rosas en algunos lugares concretos de la carcasa.

Este problema se está dando sólo en unidades de color blanco, y podría estar relacionado con baterías defectuosas que causan este calor anómalo.

Apple apunta en un antiguo documento de soporte, que las unidades que experimenten exceso de calor, mostrarían un mensaje de advertencia de mal funcionamiento, dejando de funcionar normalmente y posibilitando únicamente llamadas de emergencia. Por el momento, desde Cupertino no se han emitido comentarios al respecto de estos problemas que han aparecido en el nuevo modelo. Esperemos que sea sólo en algunas unidades. La verdad es que yo he notado algo más de calor en mi nuevo iPhone de 32GB y además es blanco. No me gustaría nada que se volviera como el de la imagen …

Vía: Macrumors

La autoría de este artículo pertenece a SomosMac

Supuestos problemas de decoloración y sobrecalentamiento en unidades del iPhone 3G S

Fancy tie-tying, Wi-Fi password cracking, Google Voice, and Firefox 3.5 round out this week's most popular posts.

• Dress Up Your Ties with the "Merovingian Knot"
  The realm of dress tie knots is dominated by a handful of traditional tie knots. Check out this rather unique tie knot and be the first on your block to sport it.
• How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network's WEP Password with BackTrack
  You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy?
• Google Voice Is Cool, But Do You Need It?
  You've read about the features, you saw the invites going out, but you might be wondering what, exactly, Google Voice could do for you. Here's our guide for the curious and uninvited on whether your phones need some Google juice.
• Firefox 3.5 Officially Available for Download
  Windows/Mac/Linux: The final version of the Firefox is starting to show up on Mozilla's web site, and some readers are reporting update notices. Here are a few links and how-tos you should check out before downloading that browser.
• Top 10 Firefox 3.5 Features
  Firefox 3.5 is a pretty substantial update to the popular open-source browser, and it's just around the corner. See what features, fixes, and clever new tools are worth getting excited about in the next big release.
• Top 10 Productivity Basics Explained
  There's a core set of habits and techniques that filter and color a lot of what we write about at Lifehacker, but we rarely step back to explain them for newcomers.
• Five Best Free System Restore Tools
  Backing up data is a great way to minimize losses after a computing catastrophe. But what about restoring your actual system right away? Here are the five most popular options for our readers.
• Soaking is Key for Perfect Homemade French Fries
  You don't need to install a deep fat fryer in your kitchen or apprentice at a burger stand to get homemade French fries worthy of great praise. The key is soaking your sliced potatoes and using the right oil.
• Best of the Best: Hive Five Winners, March through June 2009
  The year is flying by, and so are our readers' picks for software, hardware, and other tools. Come on in to see the winners of our Hive Five polls for the second quarter of 2009.
• 3G Speeds Tested & Compared, City by City
  As wireless users know all too well, not all 3G networks are created equal. PC World recently put Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T to a multi-city test to determine which best delivers speed and reliability.
• Is The Desktop PC Dead?
  Desktop sales fell by 23 percent last year across the computer industry. In the U.S., 80 percent of sales went to notebooks. Gizmodo declares the desktop dead, but we're wondering if you see a future for non-mobile systems.

Why yes, I’ve finally gotten my hands on something current, and I’m gonna review it! At last, a post people will actually read! Doug Zawisza, CBR reviewer, gives this debut issue five stars, but pretty much everyone else on the internet has savaged it terribly. Which side will I fall on? And can I make it through the review without the apparently requisite “gay for justice” joke? Oops.

Cry “justice!” and let slip the dogs of war!

justice (jus?tice)
Noun.
1.         the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause.
2.         rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason: to complain with justice.
3.         the moral principle determining just conduct.
…
5.         the administering of deserved punishment or reward.
6.         the maintenance or administration of what is just by law, as by judicial or other proceedings: a court of justice.
…
Idioms
10.       bring to justice, to cause to come before a court for trial or to receive punishment for one’s misdeeds: The murderer was brought to justice.

The above are selections from Dictionary.com’s definition of the word “justice.” James Robinson and Mauro Cascioli’s Justice League: Cry for Justice, however, does not believe in the apparently narrow views of the American lexicon. The superheroes in this comic cry for a different sort of justice altogether, and I can’t say it’s one I particularly agree with or understand. What the four major characters here (Green Arrow doesn’t count; he’s just along for the ride) are seeking is something called vengeance, instead. I’ll spare you the dictionary entry for that one, you all know what it means. Perhaps the eventual theme of this mini-series will involve the heroes realizing they’ve missed the point of “justice,” and do something to correct that, but for now, this drive for so-called justice is just a peg on which to hang an empty garment bag.

Said garment bag looks really damn pretty from the outside, of course. Mauro Cascioli gorgeously renders the pages in what I imagine are digital paints– the luscious coloring gives the work here its power. You’ve never seen a more beautiful portrait of Killer Moth or of a crying gorilla. Really, you haven’t. Cascioli does his damndest to make a bunch of heroes standing around and glaring at one another interesting. His art is certainly the best thing about this comic.

On to the glaring. Hal “It’s my party and I’ll cry for justice if I want to” Jordan is pissy that some of his friends have been killed and wants to strike back at the villains responsible– and is it me, or is it silly that they refer to their enemies as “villains”? I mean, I guess they would, but it seems wrong they use the same terminology as the fans who read their comics. And so Hal and the Justice League have  a staring contest for a while until Hal declares he’s going to be “proactive,” a stance that will probably last– oh, what time is it now? “You want a League,” he says; “I want justice.” Green Arrow decides to tag along with him because of their hard-travelin’ heroes past (”Remember back in the day… when I lost my millions and became liberal…” Yes, he actually says that), because that’s just what pals who share the same color do, apparently.

Meanwhile, Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi, the Atoms, chase down Killer Moth to find out who killed one of Ray’s old friends, and so Ray, with a grimace and a “Welcome to pain,” tortures the crap out of poor Killer Moth to discover the truth. “Yeah… justice!” he says, shrinking his way out of the panel and into revenge. The most unfortunate part about this scene, however, are the captions. Me, I’m certainly not a fan of the first-person narrative caption, but these are the absolute worst I’ve ever seen, a ludicrous parody of the dueling captions in something like Superman/Batman, to the point where it appears as if Ray and Ryan can read each other’s internal monologues. “I am so not the Atom anymore.” “So says Ryan Choi. He is so the new Atom.” “So says Ray Palmer.” It’s caption after caption, word balloon after word balloon of guy love for two pages, as they tell each other how amazing they are over and over again. That is, until Palmer goes all grim-and-gritty. Here’s a guy whose power it is to shrink and hit people in the face (I was really confused until I remembered his costume only shows up when he is tiny) becoming a dark badass– or as Robinson describes it in the backmatter, “the ultimate survivor.” No thanks.

The next scene was the most confusing to me, as I’ve never encountered this blue Starman before, and wasn’t sure what was going on. The internet tells me he’s mad that his boyfriend is dead, and blows up a car because he is mad. And then he literally cries out, in his alien tongue, for justice! Okay then.

Now we move onto the bit that really ground my gears, where we are introduced to Emo Congorilla. Yes, Congo Bill is sad because all his ape friends are dead, even the babies, and his human body is (probably) dead, and he cries tears– of justice! Oh, and then Freedom Beast shows up just to bite it, because hey, there’s only so many superheroes in Africa that you can kill off, right? It’s page after page of overwrought captions and dialogue. “I am so sorry I wasn’t here to protect.” “–tried to be the hero you taught me to be.” “Something in the air.  Faint but– ‘A smell!’ Beat. ‘A trail!’ Beat.” It’s at this point that I gave up entirely, but thankfully, that was the last scene. Half the cast has yet to show up, and there’s only the barest hint of forward momentum.

Chris Sims calls the book “not very good,” but I’d word that a bit more strongly, myself. It’s more “actively bad.” The writing comes across as parodic when it’s instead trying to be deathly serious, but there’s only so many crying gorilla-men a guy can take. My favorite bit in the issue was the two-page Congorilla origin back-up, but that one was by Len Wein and Ardian Syaf. In a measly two pages, it evokes all the kooky courage and adventure of the Congo Bill concept, but it appears we won’t get to see any of that in James Robinson’s story. No, we will instead see– justice! Or rather, vengeance. A better title for this comic would really be “Vengeance League!” That’d probably sell even more copies.

A good comic? Cry me a river. Not recommended.

• At July 3, 2009, Debaser wrote:

  Robinson is just so much better than this, I don't know what he could've been thinking.

• At July 3, 2009, Michael P. wrote:

  Well, I'm at least glad to see that Robinson is apparently ignoring that stupid Remender arc on All-New Atom and ...

• At July 3, 2009, Greg Burgas wrote:

  I flipped through it but didn't read it, but I kind of wish I had, because it seems so, as ...

• At July 3, 2009, T. wrote:

  I saw the previous previews of the book and the scripting was cringeworthy, even for a Didio DC comic, where ...

• At July 3, 2009, Ian A. wrote:

  "He's a hero. I'm Ray Palmer. Welcome to pain."

  Ha ha ha!

  God, that is hilarious.

  And awful.

  Hilariously awful.

• At July 3, 2009, T. wrote:

  Strangely enough, this review made me want to read the book. It sounds bad enough to intrigue me.

• At July 3, 2009, The Dude wrote:

  I haven't read the book but I assume that the blue Starman you're mentioning is Mikaal Tomas. He was a ...

• At July 3, 2009, Bwhig wrote:

  Didn't Iron Man make the same exact speech saying, "why are we avenging when we should be attacking," in the ...

• At July 3, 2009, red Ricky wrote:

  Dammit!!! I ordered this book in advance 'cause of the pretty pictures and Captain Marvel Jr.; and now you ...

• At July 3, 2009, BMBG wrote:

  RE: Bwhig - Yup, exactly that. I'm guessing it wasn't DC's plan to do their version of Force Works? Because ...

In this weeks roundup, we have even more cool resources, there is a little bit of design inspiration, some great CSS lifesavers, an essential Twitter Guide Book and more…and best of all the Worlds Biggest Alarm Clock!

If your thinking of getting a new business card to impress everyone, here is a little inspiration for you. This selection, from Abduzeedo, showcases the type of business cards that stand out from the crowd, they are certainly different and very creative.

10 Super Creative Business Cards

In this post you will find a thorough collection of all kinds of resources that will aid designers and developers working with Joomla-powered websites. This collection is intended to simplify your tasks and save you time when working with Joomla. This post covers essential resources related to Joomla— Themes, Extensions, Tutorials, Forums, Cheat Sheets and Useful Documents.

The Ultimate Joomla Toolbox: Themes, Extensions and Resources

This video shows one of the entries into the edge.ca’s “Worlds Biggest” contest, The Worlds Biggest Alarm Clock. This is awesome.
It was built by mounting a large air cylinder to the head of his bed and a valve controlled by a computer which is programmed to wake you up in the morning.

Worlds Biggest Alarm Clock

This post, from Smashing Magazine, 35 CSS-Lifesavers For Efficient Web Design will significantly improve your workflow and reduce your time and efforts for CSS-coding. Whether you’re writing, compiling, refining or experimenting with CSS code , these tools can help you get the job done faster and better than ever before. A must bookmark.

35 CSS-Lifesavers For Efficient Web Design

The Twitter Guide Book is the most comprehensive guide to Twitter you could ever find, it covers the basics as well as an indepth look at Twitter and business, sharing via Twitter and managing your Twitter stream. Is your Twitter getting out of control? This is the guide for you.

Twitter Guide Book – How To, Tips and Instructions

A selection of the best designed minamlist web designs, a great selection. Don’t you just love minamilism.

56 Light & Clean Website Designs Using A Minimalist Color Scheme

Definetly not what you are thinking by the posts title, this is actually a showcase of the best designed ceilings. Some are remarkable, others seemingly impossible, have a look for yourselves.

Ceiling Porn

Judging by the above images, Microsoft ignored their own browser when it came to design. As you can see the new “Bing” search is hovering over the main navigation. Mom’s around the world are freaking out because they can’t click on their Hotmail.

Even MSN.com isn’t IE6 compliant!

No one does weird toys like Japan does weird toys... from presidential action figures to toilet training tigers, this post has the strangest and most bizarre Japanese toys ever.

14 Bizarre Japanese Toys

What do murder, pedophilia, suicide and a baby tiger have in common? They have all been used to sell stuff in these amazingly disturbing vintage ads!
These are real, untouched advertisements from the good old days. It doesn’t matter if it’s lovely ladies or adorable clowns, somehow these old-time ad wizards found ways to traumatize us while pedaling everyday products.

The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads Of All Time

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

by Vera H-C Chan

Ready to celebrate the Fourth, old-school style?

First, declare war on Britain (ok, you can Tweet it if you prefer). Get some people to sign on, set a bonfire on the lawn, burn some King George III effigies, and stock up on rum, applejack, and salted meat.

If it's a bit too late to get the applejack on short notice, a fireworks compromise will do. The recession has forced cities and sponsors to cut back on the pyrotechnics this year, but sellers actually believe sales will boom thanks to backyard celebrations.

If that's the case, here is what you need to know...and some things you don't, but it's interesting anyway...and stay safe:

• Check your area for rules. Some places crackdown on some types of sizzers, if not all. The American Pyrotechnics Association site has a good roundup of laws by state (but in PDF documents).
• Leave pets, from Fido to Black Beauty, indoors (or stalls) so they don't freak out during the ruckus, advises LiveScience. Tying them up may not work: They could go into a frenzy and choke themselves. Some critters may have to be sedated.
• Your kids asking why fireworks go kablooey? Tell them to read this article that runs down the ingredients. The Orange County Register explains the why behind all the colors.
• Ecofriendly fireworks exist, but they're pricy and hard to get.
• Yahoo! Food lists the best sites for a picnic show.

 

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La NASA acaba de hacer públicas las primeras imágenes recibidas de la sonda Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter después de que esta activara sus cámaras el pasado día 30:

Superficie de la Luna por la LRO - NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University

Esta imagen se corresponde con un área de 1,4 kilómetros de lado y a resolución completa permite distinguir objetos de tres metros de ancho. El norte lunar está en la parte de abajo, por cierto.

Las imágenes publicadas fueron tomadas en las cercanías del Mar de las Nubes y son sólo una primera prueba del funcionamiento de la cámara «tele» de la LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera), que será capaz de proporcionar imágenes con una resolución de un metro cuando la sonda alcance su órbita definitiva, con lo que se van a poder ver incluso los equipos dejados allí por las misiones del porgrama Apolo al final de cada una de estas*.

La LROC contiene además otra cámara gran angular con una resolución máxima de 100 metros capaz de tomar imágenes en color y en el ultravioleta cuyo funcionamiento ha sido también comprobado.

Hay más datos de las imágenes en LRO's First Moon Images y una explicación más detallada en NASA's LRO Spacecraft Sends First Lunar Images to Earth.

La LROC es el tercer instrumento en ser activado de la sonda después del Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector, que buscará regiones ricas en hidrógeno que pueden esconder depósitos de hielo de agua, y del Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation, que está diseñado para medir la radiación en el entorno de la Luna. Ambos fueron activados el pasado 19 de junio, el mismo día del lanzamiento, y funcionan correctamente.

Está planeado que para la semana que viene se activen y calibren el Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, diseñado pare crear mapas topográficos en 3-D de la Luna, el Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, que hará mapas de temperatura de su superficie, y el Miniature Radio Frequency, or Mini-RF, un transmisor de radar y radio que buscará hielo bajo la superficie y que además permitirá crear imágenes detalladas de cráteres que están permanentemente a oscuras.

El último instrumento que será activado es el Lyman Alpha Mapping Project, que utilizará la luz ultravioleta de las estrellas para obtener imágenes de zonas que están siempre a la sombra en los cráteres más profundos de los polos lunares de nuevo en busca de hielo de agua. Será el último en ser activado para dar el mayor tiempo posible a que cualquier contaminante residual que pueda quedar en su interior del proceso de fabricación o del lanzamiento sea evacuado.

Hay descripciones más detalladas de todos estos instrumentos y sus objetivos en LRO Instruments.

*Sabemos que esto, de todos modos, no convencerá a los que niegan que el hombre haya llegado a la Luna, pues simplemente dirán que las imágenes han sido manipuladas (una vez más).

• Lanzado el Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter tras varios aplazamientos.

# Enlace Permanente

Arrived at the hotel/summit. Going to head to the venue with a couple of folks soon.

And a small screencast for the day. Testing out the new blur-cache meant for notify-osd:


(click to play back, ogg/theora, ~1.5 MBytes)

It’s easy on CPU. So light actually, that I was able to record this very screencast with recordmydesktop on a Dell Mini 9. This is finally also using the subtle text drop-shadow the design folks asked for. Color, font, size and all are just randomly picked by me, as this is a test-program to exercise the small interal APIs I created for implementing the blur-cache.

Monetizing traffic is always the hardest part of marketing. A while ago I decided to see if I can increase my traffic from paid traffic. I didn’t know what to do or do it, I just wanted to do it. So how can you leverage paid traffic and get free traffic at the same time?

Or how can I pay per click and leverage that paid traffic to free traffic and still get it to convert. As you know I like to do a lot of twitter marketing and I think I understand it enough that I can utilize that specific traffic. So I decided to start a case study with paid and twitter traffic, I was curios if I can leverage paid to free traffic.

First I pick a very basic offer and created a very basic landing page. You will see it don’t worry. The offer was a simple email submit and the landing page was just the exact copy with 1 big difference. LP below.

Also, after several testing I added 3 more critical things to the LP to make it more legit. So you can see I added a tweet form on there, which basically tweets a message to twitter under that username. I think that specific form is pretty powerful in that the user needs to enter their credentials to continue. Though this form will stop others from entering their info, you just have to immediately create a trust.

How do I create trust? Pretty simple. I am promoting this via PPV and I have it simply just popup over some related sites. I also added that twitter bird in the background making it feel like the site is creating a contest or is being sponsored in some way.

Another big aspect is the “Step 1 of 2“. This puts the end user in a state where they know this is a 2 step form in order to get the offer. So it automatically puts the user in a mind state – “Ok I have to do 2 things to get this free thing”. In the end the user decides if they have time to do 2 simple steps to get their free item.

Another aspect is the big form button or CTA (call to action) at the bottom of the tweet form. It basically grabs the attention of the user because it is big AND has a red trim around it. I found that red color is an attractant and it sticks out the most in the landing page. So they see the red big form button and read the text. So the form button is an attractant.

Even the form itself is pretty big. This way it is the main thing their eyes see first. I wanted to the form or CTA to be the most visible part. If the end user decides to think on what to do, they see the twitter bird, the steps 1 of 2, and red border form. They can and should sense that it is cool to continue.

The results were pretty amazing, I wish I can pull the search results from twitter. This way you can see how many people tweeted via the form. But not sure why they do not show you old search results. But in any case it did fairly well. I was pretty surprise how I got it to work pretty fast.

The most important parts were the addition of:

• Adding Steps 1 of 2 – again helping the user think faster on what they will be doing
• BIG CTA with Eye Catching Colors – helps with catching the users attention
• Adding Related image – in this case the twitter bird

I think these aspects definitely helped. I test it without these changes (as I first started) and I saw a bigger response when I added and tweaked the landing page to look and feel like this. Again it is all about testing to see what works and what doesn’t.

Pablo Picasso, considered to be one of the finest artists of all time, said: “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers”. However, forty years after such statement, computers and the Internet are tools being used by Guatemalan painters and are hosting the galleries of the future.

Many of these artists are living and painting abroad. They use their blogs as a space to show others their work and stay in touch with their community.

Sebastián Sarti is Guatemalan, but was born in Costa Rica, where his Guatemalan father was exiled and married his Puerto Rican mother. He grew up in Nicaragua, lived for a while in Guatemala, and now he is dedicated to his paintings in Aix et à Marseille. He is sharing his works on his personal blog El Desorden de la Cabeza [es] (The Mess Inside My Head).

Le voleur d´animaux by Sebastian Sarti.

Based in Brooklyn, NYC, Juan Carlos from Historiando [es] has many talents to share with his readers. A painter and activist, he uses his works for exhibitions in galleries but also for demonstrations. He created a John Lennon poster using recycled tickets from the metro, to protest against the high fares of public transpot in New York. In this link, you can see some of his exhibitions.

Artwork by Juan Carlos

Elvira Méndez is a talented painter, based in Antigua, Guatemala and shares her work with the world. Her blog Pintura [es] (Paint) shows her collections of paintings, expressing herself with different shapes, colors, and textures.

Collage by Elvira Méndez

Alejandro Marré is a poet, a performer, but also a creative painter as his Arte Marré blog shows. Pop culture elements are remixed and retouched to have results, such as this:

Walking around by Alejandro Marré

Erick González is in Montmartre, the place any painter in the world dreams about. He is creating interesting pieces, expressing in images through recycled materials that contrasts the most complex topics in Guatemala, from violence against women to the increasing number of bodyguards and firearms. His blog [es] hosts critiques and pictures of his paintings.

Here is a sample:

I am a Product by Erick González

There are few galleries or public spaces for young artists in Guatemala to showcase their work. There are also little resources for invitations to exhibitions and the art critics rarely highlight little-known artists. For that reason, blogs are providing the opportunity to young artists to display their artwork, express themselves and share and interact with those who visit their sites to see their pieces of art.

All images used with permission or under a Creative Commons license.

['@ Play' is a monthly column by John Harris which discusses the history, present and future of the Roguelike dungeon exploring genre.]

We've discussed the information-heavy balance of the game Nethack before. How, once the player learns enough about the nature of the game world, all of the difficulty turns out to be front-loaded, before the player has had the chance to build up experience levels and equipment.

Recently, a couple of variants have arisen in order to remedy this perceived problem. Two years ago was the release of Derek Ray's Sporkhack, and only this past month saw the release of another, UnNethack, created by Patric Mueller.

Nethack's mysterious Dev Team is presumably aware of the problem, and though it is known that they're still around, updating bugs and answering email, and thus we assume are still working on the game, it has been a very long time since the last version. It has been over five years since the release of Nethack 3.4.3, the latest version of the game.

A rising current of opinion on rec.games.roguelike.nethack is that the Dev Team has abandoned the game. Even if they haven't, a few of the more irksome characteristics have survived for multiple versions, long enough that it begins to look like the Dev Team is perfectly happy leaving them in.

Both are games that, to the many characters who die in the earliest regions of the dungeon, seem almost unchanged from the original game. While not any unfriendlier to a new player than vanilla Nethack, most of the changes in these games are aimed at the experienced hacker. Unlike uber-variant Slash'EM, neither seems to be interested in radical reinvention of the game.

The idea of a expert-foiling balance patch has actually been around for some time. One of the most popular variants of 3.1.3 was Stephen White's Nethack+, which also took it upon itself to correct some balance issues. Unicorn horns in that version, for instance, degrade with use.

So, what are the things that they balance? Quite a lot, really. Following are just two of examples. This list contains spoilers, of course, but the effect of these changes is to make the game harder for players who are already spoiled. Still, you should probably move on if you care about such things. We'll probably pick this thread up again later, after UnNethack has had some more development time.

Balance fix #1: Loosening up the "ascension kit."

This is particularly a focus of Sporkhack. In Nethack, nearly all players who aren't actively avoiding them for some reason strive to build up a certain set of equipment which make success all but certain. Nearly all ascensions not only contain some form of dragon scale mail, due to its light weight, non-hindrance to spellcasting, unequaled protection and special protection based on color, but in practice it's only three colors that are even used: gray, silver, and, coming up distant third, black. One way this is done is through the addition of a fractional resistance system. Permanent intrinsics from eating resistant monsters don't immediately go to 100% upon success, but must be reinforced through several such meals. This makes equipment-based sources, such as from the off-colors of dragon scale mail, more useful.

Related to this is the place of magic resistance in the game. After poison resistance (and in some ways surpassing it), magic resistance is the most essential intrinsic in vanilla Nethack 3.1-3.4, nullifying a wide range of dangers through the acquisition of one characteristic. Vanilla Nethack balances this by making equipment the only way to gain it, and few items grant it: basically, to get magic resistance, the player must wear a cloak of magic resistance, a suit of gray dragon scale mail, or hold one of a few quest artifacts, which must either be wished for or the matching class must be played.

Sporkhack's solution is to make magic resistance both less needed and less useful. Magic resistance is essential because of the high-level monster spells of Touch of Death and Destroy Armor, both most-often cast by opponents who are able to teleport after the player and are thus difficult to escape without fighting them, and thus taking a few spells. They may even decide to use one immediately after a teleport, giving the player no opportunity to avoid a potentially deadly attack. Magic resistance protects against both states, and so it is of great value in a game of vanilla Nethack.

No, more than that: because the player's whole game can be ended, or grievously harmed, by a single unavoidable moment, magic resistance is an essential characteristic. If you don't have it by the time teleporting liches start showing up (usually the Castle), then you are subjecting your character's life to the whims of the dice, and as we covered before, high-level roguelike play is about eliminating such risks wherever possible.

Sporthack makes Touch of Death do high physical damage and max HP drain instead of killing the player outright (think of it as an "aging" attack....). Magic resistance helps reduce this penalty but doesn't eliminate it. It also makes it so that the Destroy Armor isn't outright blocked by magic resistance.

Balance fix #2: Make the game's levels more unpredictable.

This is a focus of UnNethack primarily, which merges in more versions of many special levels. It gets its levels from other variants and patches. Both it and Sporkhack also fold in Pasi Kallinen's "flipped levels" patch, which sometimes mirrors a special level on its X or Y axis. Sporkhack also contains new code that allows more doors to be randomly placed, in order to keep long-time players on their toes.

The level additions are made possible by the fact that most of the game's important locations are not random in layout, but come from a level file, a utility file created from a source definition during the compilation process. This setup was developed in order to allow more coding-friendly hackers to modify their game dungeons, but it also allowed the Dev Team, eventually, to make multiple versions of the most important special levels, which are randomly selected for inclusion each game. This makes it relatively easy to add new levels to the game, so many variants feature them.

Both Spork and Un add in some level variants, but more in order to liven things up by presenting more options for those levels that are chosen from pre-made templates. One of the biggest sources of new levels is Pasi Kallinen, who has written a range of patches that include new versions of levels such as Sokoban, Medusa, Castle, and other levels. Some of these versions post new challenges; word is one of the new versions of the Medusa level must be travelled carefully to avoid catching sight of its star monster before engaging in combat with her.

Unnethack also brings in the "Heck2 patch," a radically reorganized scheme for what most players consider to be the most boring area of the game, Gehennom. It also has variants for the demon lord lairs, and additional lairs for previously-neglected lords. It also includes a Very Special Guest Star subbing in as Amulet guard for the High Priest of Moloch....

Basic Nethack has four primary level generation systems. Dungeon levels are those found throughout the main dugeon, Cave levels are found in the Gnomish Mines, Mazes are generated in the deep dungeon and Gehennom, and the Rogue level has a unique generation scheme. After some plays, these schemes, while suitably chaotic for new players, can become fairly familiar to an experienced hacker.

UnNethack livens the early dungeon up a bit by adding in the "town" generation scheme from Nethack Brass. Sporkhack tries to mix up Gehennom a bit by randomly changing its maze walls to other types, such as lava, a rude surprise for players used to leaning on direction keys to hurry through. Both games also do away with one of the most frustrating aspects of Nethack's ascension run, the "mysterious force" that sometimes random teleports players downward while carrying the Amulet.

I’ve received multiple requests for simpler CSS tutorials that teach the tricky fundamentals. This will serve as the first entry in a series that will receive new additions sporadically each month. Today, we’ll be reviewing the overflow: hidden, and clearfix tricks to force a parent div to contains its children.

Have you ever noticed that when you float all of the children elements within a div, the parent takes up zero space? For example, in your code editor, adding the following within the body tag.

Now, let’s add a bit of CSS to simulate a typical website.

Above, we’re simply setting background colors and floating the sidebar and main divs to the left and right, respectively. Note the “padding-bottom: 2em;”. This should allow us to see the red background at the very bottom, right? View the page in your browser, and you’ll see:

Where did the red background go? Why isn’t it displaying?

When you float all of the children, the parent essentially takes up no space. To better illustrate this fact, let’s set an arbitrary height of 50px to the container, and then reduce the opacity of the children divs so that we can see the red background beneath.

Refresh your browser, and you’ll see:

How odd. We’ve specified a height of 50px for our container div, yet the main and sidebar divs blatantly overflow its boundaries, like spoiled bratty divs.

Return to your stylesheet, and apply one style:

After another refresh, we see:

Well that partially helps. Now, we don’t have to worry about the pubescent children disobeying their parent. Having said that, this really doesn’t help our situation.

“Try to avoid specifying heights as much as possible. There’s usually a smarter method.

The solution is to rip out the height property from our container. Remove the following property.

One last refresh, and our problem seems to be fixed.

The method demonstrated above will work in most cases. However, let’s introduce another variable. What if we want to position an image on the border of our container, so that it overlaps. You’ve seen this effect many times. For the sake of the example, we’ll just use an image of a circle with a transparent background. On a real site, this might represent a “Buy Now” or “Sign Up” button — something cheesy like that.

Using CSS, let’s position the image in the top right portion of our “website”, overlapping the edges. This is what we want:

First, we reference the image within our HTML.

Next, return to your stylesheet, and add the following styles.

One might think that this will place the image just over the right edge of the container div. However, he’d be wrong.

Because we have not set a positioning context, the window will be used instead.

Obviously, this is not what we want. To apply a positioning context to our container div, simply add “position: relative;” to #container. Once we’ve done so, the image will no longer use the window as a reference.

But now, we have a new problem! Because we set overflow:hidden to our container div, we’ve somewhat shot ourselves in the foot. How do we break boundaries and take names if overflow is set to hidden? Should we simply accept that this particular website won’t be taking names today? Absolutely not. In these cases, it’s worth using a different method.

With this method, we’ll use CSS to add content after our container div. This created content will then clear our div, thus forcing it to contain its children. Now obviously we don’t want to see this content, so we need to be sure to hide it from the viewer.

Return to your stylesheet, remove “overflow: hidden;” from your container div, and add the following:

This might appear complicated, but I assure you that it’s quite simple.

• _height: Triggers “haslayout” in Internet Explorer, by using the underscore trick to target IE6 directly.
• content: After the container div, append a period.
• visibility: We don’t want to see the period, so hide it from the page. (Equal to setting opacity: 0;)
• display: Forces the period to display as a block-level, rather than inline.
• clear: The important property. This clears the main and sidebar divs. This is the same as adding an unsemantic <div style=”clear: both;”> to our page.
• height: Don’t take up any space.
• font-size: Just a precaution for Firefox. This browser sometimes adds a bit of space after our parent element. Setting the font-size to zero fixes this.

Though the overflow:hidden trick is preferable, it’s not always ideal. You need to use the best solution for the task at hand. The important thing is to learn each method, so that you have the tools to solve the puzzle.

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At the bottom of this post is a coupon code to give you a $50 credit at MyAds - this is not an affiliate promotion, just a take it or leave it offer from MyAds.

Over the last week or so I’ve had the opportunity to see inside the MyAds from MySpace.

MyAds have been an advertiser here on ProBlogger for a month or two now (consider that a disclaimer) so I wanted to see for myself how it worked. What I found was a very easy to use and pretty affordable way to advertise a product, service or even your blog.

In short - MyAds is a pay per click banner advertising system where you can advertise on MySpace and get your message in front of potentially millions upon millions of MySpace users.

You can use it with an advertising budget of as little as $5 a day and have a pretty good looking ad set up to run within just a few minutes using their ad building tool (or you can upload your own using an uploader).

Worth noting before we go any further is that to run a campaign you need a US address and credit card. As someone without either of these I could only go as far as designing an ad and testing out the targeting features. I did however talk to a number of MyAds advertisers to get their feedback (see below).

Setting up an ad is easy. Even me as a design challenged guy got one set up in a few minutes. I put a mock ad together for my 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook. Here’s a screenshot of the page where you set up the ads (click to enlarge):

As you’ll see there are three ad size options and it’s as simple as typing in your ad copy, adding an image, choosing a background color and adding in a destination URL.

You can then preview your and move on to working out who you want to see it as well as setting a budget.

On the following screenshot you’ll see the section to choose your target audience:

As you make your choices about who you want to see the ad the grey area the bottom of the screen changes. It shows you how many users on MySpace will potentially see your ad as well as giving you a suggested bid price for how much the ad might cost per click to run.

The targeting options look pretty good - not only can you target by demographics (gender, age, education, relationships, parental status and location within the US) but you can also choose categories of interests and occupations of the type of person you want to reach with your ad. I tried a number of options and got the target number of people to reach quite focused and the suggested cost per click quite a bit lower than what you see in the above screenshot.

This enables you to increase the chances of conversion with your ad quite considerably.

All in all from where I stand MyAds seems like something that I’d like to use if I were running an ad campaign for a product, service or even to launch a new blog. I’ve previously used similar ad systems on other social networks with some success and the easy of use of MyAds plus what looks like great targeting make it an attractive option.

How Does it Perform? Testimony from a Heavy User of MyAds

As I was unable to go much further in the process (as a non US resident) I approached a number of people to get their feedback on the ads. One of those I talked with was Joe Frevola from Globalizer who uses MyAds quite extensively. I asked Joe a number of questions to get his insight on the why and how of MyAds:

How have you used MyAds and How has it performed?

Globalizer uses Myspace MyAds to buy media for our GlobalizerNetwork advertisers. We have had tremendous success with several campaigns on MySpace and have been impressed with its powerful targeting tools, which we have utilized to target the demographics and interests of our audience.

In comparison with Facebook, it’s hard to pick a clear cut winner and both should be a part of your media buy in most cases. Each has advantages and disadvantages and the best choice of the two will vary based on the type of campaign you are running.

While MySpace’s targeting tool is more organized and allows you to select keywords sorted by categories and sub categories, Facebook’s keyword search tool allows you to access a more robust database of target interest. MySpace does have useful demographic targeting that you can’t get with Facebook, such as the ability to specifically target mothers or recently married individuals.

Both MySpace and Facebook have solid targeting tools that should allow you to push positive ROI. While the Facebook ad platform is global, you can only target US users on MySpace currently, however word is MySpace is adding new countries later in the year. I would highly recommend the use of both ad networks to just about any advertiser.

Do you have any tips for using MyAds to share with ProBlogger readers?

There are some tricks to getting the most out of MySpace MyAds. Globalizer runs a lot of lead generation campaigns that drive a very high response, but don’t pay high bounties per conversion and therefore don’t allow us to pay very high CPC’s.

Often, when you start a campaign with a very low CPC, the ads delivers very little or no volume at all. We find that in order to kick start this sort of campaign, we overpay on CPC in the beginning and fully expect to take a short term loss as MySpace’s optimization system values the quality of our offers.

In the end, the system just wants to back into the highest eCPM, so the fact that our ads are driving very high click through rates more than compensates for the lower CPC. Once the campaign starts getting significant delivery, we are able to adjust our rate down to a profitable number and continue to experience a great a volume of traffic.

Also, when you first start running a new campaign on MySpace, definitely go with your gut and select targets that you feel will have the best chance of success with your offer. However, don’t neglect to test various demographics that you might not think would typically perform with your ads. You will often be surprised at the demos that respond to your offers.

If you’d like to test MyAds for yourself (IF you’re in the US) they’ve given me a coupon code for ProBlogger readers to try it out and get $50 credit to use in doing so. You need to be new to MyAds to redeem it (ie if you’ve already used MyAds it’s not redeemable).

To use it - just design an ad and at the end of the process use the coupon code of Pro50. Of course this is only for those who are residents of the US and have US address and credit card details.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

MyAds: Promote Your Blog, Product or Service on MySpace

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You read about some users complaining that their white iPhones 3GS models have over heated and have turned pink in color. Well Apple has provided a common sense plan to avoid having your iPhone overheat to begin with. Some of what Apple states are general rules, like not leaving the phone in a closed car during a hot day. They also state there there is a built in screen warning users their device needs to cool before use:

Apple warning screen:

Here are some of the warnings that Apple provides:

Operate iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between 0º and 35º C (32º to 95º F). Low- or high-temperature conditions might temporarily shorten battery life or cause the device to temporarily stop working properly.

Store iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between -20º and 45º C (-4º to 113º F). Don’t leave the device in your car, because temperatures in parked cars can exceed this range.

If the interior temperature of the device exceeds normal operating temperatures, you may experience the following as it attempts to regulate its temperature:

• The device stops charging
• Display dims
• Weak cellular signal
• Temperature warning screen appears with the message “iPhone needs to cool down before you can use it”

For additional information go to the Apple site linked below.

Comments welcome.

Apple source

I Worked on this tutorial with a good friend of mine Negreu Andreas. This text will be created using a series of shapes with different transparency and color effects. Let’s get to it!