Earth Hour – Tomorrow
I wanted to remind everyone that tomorrow is Earth Hour in a lot of cities and places around the world. This is a World Wild Life initiative and it is to make a statement about climate change.
“Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.”
For more details visit the Earth Hour website.
You Suck at Photoshop – More hilarious YouTube videos
I posted the original five “You Suck at Photoshop” YouTube videos because I really wanted to spread the word, these videos are fantastically hilarious. Anyway, the guy known as Donnie Hoyle is up to it again with three new videos.
I really can’t get enough of these, if you haven’t heard of them yet, check out my original post on “You Suck at Photoshop“. You can also keep an eye out for more on the MyDamnChannel YouTube page.
Neato site of the month – The Steampunk Workshop
I’m going to start posting a neato geeky site every now and then and the site I’m posting now definitely fits the bill. It’s The Steampunk Workshop. The sites description is…
“Wherein the craftsman demonstrates the construction of artefacts from an age of steam and brass.”
The site contains a lot of modern gadgets that are redesigned in a steam and steel era design. When the site was brought to my attention it was a link to a keyboard mod. It contains photos and a step by step guide of a computer keyboard that is meticulously transformed into an old fashioned type writer.
The site is full of videos and step by step walkthroughs of how the steampunk gadgets were created. A quick search on the term steampunk brings up an interesting Wikipedia entry on the origins of the term. It usually refers to modern technology appearing at an earlier time when the world was run on steam power. It also goes on to say that steampunk is often associated with cyberpunk, but with an obvious time period difference.
This site is definitely surf time well spent, as is the wiki entry and who knows, it might inspire you to create something yourself, I know it got me thinking.
Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA X1
Today I did my usual series of iPhone searches in Canada, and like usual, found no information on a Canadian release date. I have never owned a cell phone before, and even though I am a gadget nut, I’ve never really found them all that compelling. Lately though the tides have been turning and more and more I find myself wanting one, but I want a really cool one with lots of features on it. Up until today the iPhone has had my complete attention.
While Googling today I came across the Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA X1 phone. It was announced in early February, but I missed out on this news. This phone looks great and is probably a serious contender for the iPhone, but like all great things I want it’s not out yet, and who knows when it will be available in Canada. At least now I have two phones to wait for, and if this phone is all it’s cracked up to be, the deciding factor might be whichever one is available in Canada first.
The XPERIA X1 has a touch screen, but it’s also got a physical key pad which slides out from under the phone. I’ve used the iTouch many times, and I’m not totally sold on the touch screen key pad. Another thing I find is that the iTouch looks so gunky after you play around with it. With finger print smears all over, it looks a lot less compelling, especially in the Apple Store, I feel like I should wear a pair of gloves before I touch it. That’s one thing I really love about my DS Lite, I think a stylus is such a great idea, the screen always stays nice and clean and the precision can’t be matched in my opinion by a finger touch screen. That said, scratches can be an issue. I know that touch screens are the future now and the stylus is probably dead in the water for now.
So basically I’m waiting for an iPhone, or an XPERIA X1 so far, both phones look really slick. The XPERIA isn’t even out yet, but at least it is going to be released in Canada. You can read more about the details on Kris Abel’s blog. You can find more information on Gizmodo’s site, and the official XPERIA X1 site.
Watch the Skies – New Tor Science fiction site and Free e-books!
Tor is opening up a new website soon. Tor is a book publisher with a lot of great Science Fiction titles. Right now you can sign up for their newsletter which will have free e-book downloads.
“Once you register, you’ll receive our newsletter and a link to download a digital book. And you’ll receive a link to another new book every week.”
This cool program will end once their new site launches, but you get to keep the free e-books. Sounds like a good deal to me, and I’ve never read a book in e-format before.
You Suck at Photoshop
I don’t normally post YouTube videos, but I just couldn’t resist with these ones. They consist of five hilarious tutorials and I recommend watching them in order. If you are a Photoshop user you will definitely get a kick out of these, and probably even if you are not. The guy is also quite good with Photoshop, so you might actually learn something too. I think this is YouTube creativity at its best.
Huminized and Enso
I read a post on Slashdot a few days ago about Mozilla hiring several developers from Humanized to work at the Mozilla Labs on Firefox. The original article is available on Ars Technica. The Humanized developers are known for their expertise in usability and innovative user interface design.
Anyway, after surfing around on their site I found this interesting app called Enso. If you use a Mac it is similar to Quicksilver. Right now Enso is Windows only, but it says on their site that they are planning a Mac and Linux version in the future. Basically Enso is a launcher app. You can launch things very quickly just by pressing the caps lock key and typing the commands. You can type “open program name” to open an application. You can type “Google search query” and bang you are on Google with your query. It will even do inline math on the fly, so if I type out 5*72 and highlight it, then type calc and select calculate (four-function) it will solve the equation right in the app you are using whether it be a word processor or an online form.
The best way to understand this app is to watch the Enso demo and actually try it out for yourself. So far I’m using it at work and it does take some getting use too, but I think it could really speed up a lot of people’s productivity. The site has lots of other cool projects on it too, so check it out if it interests you.
Top 10 geek sites of 2007
Here is my personal top 10 geek sites of 2007. Behold…
- Wikipedia — wikipedia.org
I find myself spending way too much time on this site. I would go so far to say that next to Google this could possibly be one of the most important sites on the web today. - Gametrailers www.gametrailers.com
This site has basically single-handedly become my number one gaming site. HD game video’s daily. Nothing says you’re a geek like “WOAH Gametrailers has the new Grand Theft Auto trailer up, I think I wet myself”. - A List Apart — www.alistapart.com
With a tag line like “For people who make websites”, you know they have to be hard core purists. - Slashdot — www.slashdot.org
This list would be incomplete without Slashdot. Need to get bent out of shape about something, you can do it here. - del.icio.us — del.icio.us
The best online bookmarking / sharing site. It’s ugly, but it works great. - Gizmodo — www.gizmodo.com
Fairly new on my list of frequently visited sites, but there is just so much cool “Stuff” on this site. - Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer — www.sfwriter.com
Probably the best Canadian Science fiction writer at the moment. I’ve read almost every book he’s ever written and his site has a load of interesting reading. He also actively posts to his blog. Not a great looking sight, but content is king right? - Bokardo Social Web Design — bokardo.com
Lots of insights into usability and social web design. Always an interesting read. - Google Earth — earth.google.com & maps.google.com
About once every three to six months I end up downloading an upgrade for this incredible free software and it just keeps getting better. This is Google Earth, and it’s time well wasted. When you can’t be running Google Earth, there is always the slimed down Google Maps. - Neatorama — www.neatorama.com
Another fairly new one on my list of frequently visited sites, this site is just loaded with the kind of things you forward to friends. Every day it has more neat stuff.
Team Fortress 2 Statistics
Valve, the makers of Team Fortress 2 have released some really interesting statistics, probably of great interest to the more hard core players. Everything from which class gets the most kills to which class lives the longest. There are even coloured death maps showing where players die most frequently, fascinating. If I didn’t spend all my time playing Call of Duty 4 I’m sure this info would be of use to me. Especially knowing where the most dangerous areas on each map are.
