Kindle

It's hard to justify the price of an eBook reader but Amazon has recently introduced the Kindle.
Given there was a push of eBook readers a few years ago and they failed for several reasons (price being one of them) it will be interesting to see what happens with this. My first impression - way overpriced.

Microsoft Expression Suite Listings

Did you ever want to know all the 'Expression' related downloads that are available from Microsoft's download site? If yes try this search.

DVD: Equilibrium

Watched the DVD, "Equilibrium". It's kind of similiar to the Matrix but no where near as good. And the ending :-(.

Chris Pirillo - Blog Comments

Just noticed one can query their comments over on Chris Pirillo's Blog.

Halo 3: Release Date

For all those who didn't know today's, "Halo 3" day!

Wacom: Tablets - Special Editions

Wacom has just come out with the "Intuos3 Special Edition" for their Intuos3 line of tablets.

From the site, "Here at Wacom, we're excited to be celebrating our 25th anniversary. It wouldn't be possible without the support of our many customers over the years, and we want to say thank you in a special way. So, for a limited time, we're launching a very exciting product at a very special price".

Price $489 (vs. $449)

MsgPlus! Add-in: Downloader

Spent a little bit of time in the Messenger Plus! Live API and wrapped the background downloader functions in a simple UI. See details here. Messenger Plus! Live is, "an add-on for Windows Live Messenger which adds lots of features and extras that make your instant messenger easier, more useful or just tons more entertaining".

The Future of Image Resizing

One of the truly great things about having a career in life long learning is seeing innovative things like this new image resizing technique. Hopefully we will see this in a future version of Photoshop [CS4?].

DVD: Reality Bites

Though I've seen the movie before I re-watched the DVD, "Reality Bites". Basically a 20's coming of age movie. Lot's of [now] famous people.

3D: Bryce 5.5 - Free

Daz 3D has released a FREE version of Bryce 5.5. For those that have been around a bit this was a cool tool for creating natural landscapes, etc.

Book: Adobe AIR

"Mike Chambers and the Adobe AIR crew have generously released the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide under a creative commons license.

The pocket guide covers:

* Introduction to AIR
* Getting Started with AIR development
* Working with JavaScript and HTML within AIR
* AIR Mini Cookbook
* Command line tools
* Aliases
" --- http://ajaxian.com/...

WallPaper: Forza 2 - Week 03

Here's a wallpaper for the game Forza 2:

Week 03:
http://shrinkster.com/qba

Web 2.0 - Definition?

I know Web 2.0 means different things to different people and therefore to give a precise definition is difficult but this 'quiz' is a perfect example of how some people just don't get it. What does 'trackback', cost of MySpace, definition of RSS, the founder of Wikipedia, etc. have to do with Web 2.0? Perhaps it is Jim Rapoza who is, "pretending" to know.

WallPaper: Forza 2 - Week 02

Here's a wallpaper for the game Forza 2:

Week 02:
http://shrinkster.com/q3n

SQL Server 2008: Geo Data Types

Here's a post regarding the upcoming version of SQL 2008 that states it will support a new data type: Geo Data.

Safari for Windows - Beta

The world of Internet development just got a little bit more complicated:

Apple's introduced Safari for Windows.

WallPaper: Forza 2 - Week 01

Inspired again here's a wallpaper for the game Forza 2:

Week 01:
http://shrinkster.com/pue

WallPaper: Mass Effect

Since I couldn't find a large selection of wallpaper for Mass Effect I decided to create some:

http://shrinkster.com/pr7
http://shrinkster.com/pr8
http://shrinkster.com/pr9
http://shrinkster.com/psi

Opinions, Comments, Suggestions?

DVD: Stomp the Yard

Watched the DVD, "Stomp the Yard" with Conan, Mr. Sweade, Sans Nom et Fred. Certainly expected a little more from this movie. Once again no story :-(

Learning in Isolation?

I recently came to discover that of all the technology that is coming out [ED: I believe 2007 is the year of 3D!] none of it is independent of previous technology. That is to say many Comp. Sci. people want to learn the latest technology [e.g. Apollo, Flash, Silverlight, etc.] but these technologies simply build upon previous technology. We live in a world where tools build upon other tools. And this has it's advantages and disadvantages. The advantage: If you've used and/or know the foundation of the new technology then you have a step-up learning the new stuff. Disadvantage: To dive into something new becomes more and more a huge undertaking. But how exciting it is more then ever to discover the 'new'.

Ajax Libraries

If you are looking to use Ajax here's a useful list of available Ajax libraries.

DVD: Apocalypto

Watched the DVD, "Apocalypto" by Mel Gibson. Though the movie itself is minimal in story [and there's certainly a lot of running] the more interesting point was the camera movements. Very interesting.

DVD: Pan's Labyrinth

Watched the DVD, "Pan's Labyrinth" w/Boris and Zoran. It's been a little while since I 've seen these guys but the more important thing with the movie. Tough the production value was there for the first time in my life I would say I could do a better job in editting the film. Every scene there seemed to be something missing. Maybe it was cut too early or too late. Really disappointing. The film wasn't terrible but certainly disappointing given it's potential.

Firefox 2.0 - Optimization Tips

Here's a list of some good FireFox v2.0+ tips.

Biking: First for the season

Today we had some great weather and after a long winter the bike came out for the first time this year. It was good. Mr. W phoned and we took some paths that we've done before. Things are different from last year since most of the vegetation hasn't started. It makes riding easier but the ground is still hard so not everything is perfect. Great exercise.

Movie, "Spiderman 3"

Saw the movie, "Spiderman 3". For the 3rd movie in this series it's incredible that there is no story :-( On the positive side it's been a while since I went to the cinema, only recently seeing 300.

Book: The Software Conspiracy

Looks like an interesting book, "The Software Conspiracy" and it's FREE!

Book: Dreaming In Code

Just finished the book, "Dreaming In Code" - by: Scott Rosenberg. If you are well read in 'pop' culture computer history then a lot of the side stories will be familiar. For those that are not it's a brief look at software development specifically focusing on the Chandler open source project. The book also has a website.

XBox 360 Elite

Want a quick understanding of what's new in the XBox 360 Elite, here's a <5 min. video describing the new features.

DVD: Tideland

Watched the DVD, "Tideland" by Terry Gilliam. Interesting and strange.

WallPaper: Adobe CS3

I thought I'd try my hand at a wallpaper for Adobe's new CS3.

Software: Messiah

I was looking at some 3D graphics sites and one of the guys posted that he uses:

Messiah

"Messiah is our line of powerful animation & rendering products specifically designed to handle the most demanding character animation & rendering needs." - www.projectmessiah.com

One downside - hardware protected :-(

SCC Switch Provider

Moved my, "SCC Switch Provider" application over to the CodePlex. There was 922 downloads from the previous hosting site.

Find it here.

Game: Tribes

Just found out that this is now public domain. I was always a fan.

Tribes - Download the full version for FREE.

Book: Children of Hurin

Came out yesterday and there was a nice piece on the radio about the preparing of this book, Children of Hurin Originally written by the, "Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien.

"There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings, and the story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: lands where Treebeard once walked, but which were drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of the World.

In that remote time Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress of Angband, the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Turin and his sister Nienor unfolded within the shadow of the fear of Angband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secret cities of the Elves..." - Official Tolkien Website

Currently #2 on Amazon's sales list!

Dispatch

One of the missing features of Visual Studio 2005 is the ability to take a project and deploy it to a ftp-site. I had created some scripts in the past to do this and they worked pretty well but they required several other pieces of software to be installed and they were very fragile. Now along comes Dispatch. Currently in beta this is a plug-in for Visual Studio that simplifies the whole process. With almost point and click ease of use one can now deploy their VS solution. One feature I wish they had is the ability to support a dev-staging-release setup that many web-sites have but hopefully this will be in the final version. Please check it out.

Drobo: Easy to use mirroring

Drobo, the world's first storage robot!.

Wow - I've never seen an article that is SO WRONG!

I know the Internet has some questionable information, but this article is just completely 100% wrong. Right from the start the history of Photoshop is completely wrong! How can such crap be published? Why do people make up this sh$%!

Some excellent DVDs recently

Here are some excellent 'story' based DVDs:

1) Lady In the Water
2) The Illusionist
3) The Prestige

WPF Books

Having looked at Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (aka: WPF) recently here's 3 books [in order of preference] I can suggest looking at. Please note the 3rd book by O'Reilly has examples that seem to be outdated and therefore I don't recommend it:


See also the Amazon List Mania.

Future of [Movie] Posters

There's so much new technology these days it's amazing. Here's just another example: 3D Posters.

Shake: Price Decrease but with a catch...

Apple has dropped the price of Shake their compositing software from: $2999(US) to $499(US)! And it's now, with v4.1 a Universal version. But what's the catch, "Apple is stopping development on this particular product while it develops its next-generation compositing program. From what I can deduce, Shake finally got to a point where it was time for a ground-up rewrite. In addition, the program’s interface is decidedly non-Mac-like; it shares nothing at all with other pro apps such as Final Cut Pro." - Franklin McMahon. Edit Review: Apple Shake 4.1.

The pace of technological change in computers has slowed down tremendously. Don’t think so?

"The pace of technological change in computers has slowed down tremendously. Don’t think so? Stop and think about it. As I write this sentence in early 2006, there are people, lots of people, still running Windows NT 4.0 domain controllers because they still haven’t gone to Active Directory. Windows NT 4.0 was released in 1996, ten years ago as I write this in 2006. Heck, you may know someone still using Windows 95! That would be like someone running Windows 3.1 in the year 2000, or, to choose amore ancient example, MS-DOS 3.3 in 1992—examples that would have been practically impossible to find in those days. While I personally wouldn’t want to have to live in 95-land, I can understand why people do—it still gets the job done. They can surf the Web, get email, play a lot of games. That would, again, not be a possibility in the past: someone using Windows 3.1 in the year 2000 would find that virtually not a single application on the shelf would run on 3.1. But computing is tending to plateau these days, as hardware vendors are hitting limits in at least two ways. First, Intel has said that it’s not possible to create a Pentium chip faster than 3.8 GHz and, second, hard drive vendors claim that they’ve nearly hit the wall on data density." - Mark Minasi ("Mastering Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Upgrade Edition for SP1 and R2")

Messages in Water

Here's another interesting use of something we use everyday. Messages on water:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2LUz2WVcek

Multi-Touch

Another video demonstrating the future of multi-touch screens/software.

3D Facial Extrapolation

Want to morph someone's expression - have a look at this video. It's currently a research project from Prof. Dr. Volker Blanz. VERY COOL!!!

State of the Computer Book Market, Q406

For those interested in the state of computer books, O'Reilly has published some interesting data.

Viagra & Aids

I've always thought society doesn't concentrate on the important problems. Take for example Aids. How long has this been with us now? And during this time what have we solved? Well turns out one of the things 'we' went about solving is erectile-dysfunction. Now, not having any personal experience with this I can indeed imagine how this might be a problem. Solution: Viagra! But now let's look at what we, as a society have done. We discovered a solution for a 'minor' problem but in making such a solution we not only ignored a real problem [Aids] but we have now made it worse. Clearly more people are going to have sex and extrapolating from this we can imagine more people will get Aids. So here we are, we have a really terrible disease, do [basically] nothing about it, in the mean time we take some other [trivial problem BY comparison] and solve that. Not only wasting resourses but also causing even more issues for the first problem. And now an American Aids group is suing Phizer over this. I can't imagine them winning but there is still a point to be made here. The real solution? Concentrate on the real problems of the day.

Yahoo Messenger.next

Here's a really cool preview of integration -> Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista.

For more info check here.

Vista and SideBar Gadgets

Looking to create Vista Sidebar gadgets, start here.

Acrobat Reader v8.0 on Windows Vista

If you are trying to install Acrobat Reader v8.0+ on Windows Vista and you come across and 'out od disk space' or 'temp drive' problem - this will fix the problem.