Nehemia, if you remember from the “Lord Cheney” figure post, has made some pretty interesting art using beer bottle caps and managing to make miniature images of Buddha on them; Buddhist art, done light. You can check out more of Nehemia’s work and progress at The Neon Inquisitor forums (click here)
After messing around with XML for a few hours and fiddling around with the skew feature in CSS 3, I ended up making an, almost complete, xml document of my entire game backlog that I’ll update every now and then after finishing a game or two.
The idea is to get a list that is written in XML that is linked to an XML Stylesheet (XSLT) that is linked to a Cascading Style Sheet written up with some fancy CSS 2.1 and 3 effects and then passed through a web browser (any browser will do that anyone happens to use to access the XML file as all modern browser can parse xml, css, process xslt files and output the XML in HTML form) to then be seen in the manner as shown in the image above.
A work in progress as the CSS rules will be worked on a bit more, the XSLT file will need more fine tuning, and last, but not least, have the XML document itself finished and ready to go.
What is interesting for is the file-on-file access and cross technology of static code that can be taken from a single desktop application program (the web browser) to have everything come together.
It should get more interesting if I should start basing tags, attributes, and expected values found within the XML document itself on a document type definition (DTD) so that way there’s a more formal manner of defining the tags, attributes, and potential values so as to form, not just a solid XML file, but also a very small XML-based markup language for this game backlog list XML document.
Update on 3/26/2012 I’ve completed the list in the base xml file so any future changes will likely to pertain to the CSS or XSLT file. And as always you’ll find on the right hand the link to the list to check out any updates that I’ve done and where I’m at with my backlog.
There are many peripherals that exist out in the market for computing that many gamers go for are mouses, monitors, graphics cards, mouse pads, headphones with speakers, and anything that can assure as much audio/visual accuracy for their gaming experience as much as possible, but there is one peripheral that is so crucial and fundamental that most overlook: it’s the keyboard. Before I start my review I’d like to give a quick crash course in the difference between a mechanical keyboard and what keyboards most people have come to be used to using in recent years (rubber dome). If you remember back in the old days of computers when you had these loud heavy keyboards that would be part of the computer set ups. Originally of IBM engineering design, these computer keyboards were composed of electronic switches that would make use of gold plated contacts – so as to assure proper electronic signaling of the particular key switched pressed. This made sure that you had every key stroke register with the computer. At the same time it was design to make sure that there was little finger fatigue, and by extension, hand fatigue with long periods of use. So functionality and ergonomics were in mind. The only set back was that that keyboards were loud with the individual key “clicks” and “clacks” that it would give in use.
For those of you that are wanting to take five and watch some calming scenery from across Japan’s various areas without having some anime reference flashing in front of your face at 54 beats per minute, then check out Japan Scene’s channel on Youtube (link). You’ll definitely appreciate the picturesque quality of the images and delivery of the subject matters through video.
It’s been two years and some odd months since I put together my gaming rig: the SSM1 (Sonokamome System Model 1) and I’ve decided that it would be fun to think about the specs for the next rig, SSM2. Now, given that the economy is really bad in most parts of the world, and that due to calamities in the weather that have affected the production of some hardware components in key manufacturing plants in the world, I can’t really enact in being active with purchasing hardware. Plus, I’ve already spent enough on the current rig for hardware and software (the former lately being hardware).
In the last two years since putting together SSM1, I’ve upgraded the video graphics card: first started the build off with a Nvidia GTX 260, followed by a year later with an upgrade to a GTX 460, and then a year later with the current GTX 570. Each card as relatively set me back a bit during the time that they were purchased, I’ve learned that for upgrading something important like a video graphics card, it’s best to go back to budgeting and planning ahead…sort of.
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Assuming you have finally figured out what you want out of your custom computer and you want to figure out a system to keep track of the cost as you go around shopping, I’d like to move on to the topic of budgeting.
Usually this is where most people window shop, make a list, and then sum up the grand total (subtotal + applicable taxes + shipping and handling + misc costs for purchase). But this usually ends up being a waste of time, or rather, the time that could have been allocated to carefully check the parts and price is now shifted to the time now used to “restart” the window shopping, listing, and re summing the grand total again. In other words: if you simply have a list of parts that you would like to buy without the researching the prices and taking a second look at comparable products of similar or same performance, purchase costs, cost of purchase from particular retailer, then costs could go quickly up past the initial estimated budget cost as you purchase your parts as you go along.
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So after checking all the games that I bought during the Valve’s Steam Winter Sale along with the games that I have accumulated from Humble Indie Bundle sales, I’ve realized that I’ve got more than enough gaming content to last me for two to three and half years worth of accumulated time. And that’s a conservative estimate to the amount of time it would take to get through every single one of these title’s entire content. So…just for kicks here’s the list of the games I’ll have to get through (somehow) within this year. The order is in the matter of whatever I think is supposed to be finished first.
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It’s been awhile since I’ve given updates to what I’m up to So I figured that I should go ahead and give note of what I’ve been up to in these last few weeks.
F.E.A.R 2 Failthrough: Failure Returns
As of late I’ve decided to start making lists of software which should show up later on in a wiki that I’ll put in on txug.org. Now…I do this with much passiveness because I don’t think that really anyone will appreciate it but I’ll do it anyway just for kicks…I mean you never know when it will come in handy to know how to use MediaWiki so it does not hurt to learning the MediaWiki syntax (although having a really good mastery in CSS, PHP, and Jquery would be lovely at this point for me too).
I’ll try to make something that will include proper “how-to” guides in using XMPP and using various XMPP supporting clients and give a mention of some key features that should be universally found in most XMPP supporting clients. That and maybe a few videos that will explain how to use it.
But it’s not just XMPP stuff that will be on the wiki but also a list, again, of software that is recommended and tested by myself or others. And why make such a list when there are already tons of sites that give software recommendations? Well I figure a Wiki format of presentation is more effective (given the notoriety of MediaWiki and it’s various uses in many important projects such as Wikipedia). And because having another “definitive” software list won’t hurt- in a wiki format, fixing dead links or removing entries is much easier than in a blog post or in some page within fancy over-the-top CMS framework.
And that’s about it really. So I leave you now with a piece by Ryuichi Sakamoto (you probably saw that by now didn’t you?)
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There are many people out there that probably can’t afford a copy of Photoshop or, even less so, Lightroom. For those of you that are in need of an image manipulator and would like to have some of the basic functionalities for editing and manipulating any raster graphic that you may be making or editing, I recommend GIMP. GNU Image Manipulation Program (or GIMP) is a free and open source software that allows for the user to do all that you would usually do in Photoshop. Although GIMP does not have all the sophisticated features of Photoshop, but it does have a large user base and is quite popular among people that use it to work with image manipulation among those that use UNIX or Linux based operating systems. There is a need to be a bit creative with the tools given in order to get some of the effects that otherwise would be readily available as far as color manipulation. But this, again, does not make GIMP useless or sub-par; far from it.
GIMP is perfect for the average user that only calls upon using image editors like GIMP or Photoshop when editing photos of particular occasions such as weddings or holiday gatherings at home. This is also perfect software for the starting amateur photographer that is wanting to learn on how color edit their photos from their digital camera -such as what I did for the pictures for Glimpse Phlog a few years ago (click here).
you can also GIMP to do some raw drawings using a tablet and pen (like a tablet from Wacom for example) and make graphics that you can later on manipulate using layers and folders to organize the image composition you are making in GIMP and save it in various file formats such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, etc. You can also import images of various types to then edit and manipulate from within GIMP as well.
Again, highly recommended software for those of you that are starting out and need of a raster graphics editor that’s free, easy, and good. It works with Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Mac OS X
So go ahead and give GIMP a try (click here)
There are two schools of thought about the internet that concern themselves on the internet being a conceptual place. One particular belief is that the internet can be considered a conceptual “place” and another school that favors the thinking of the internet as simply for what it’s made up of: just a series of interconnected computers and clusters of computers in various real-world geographical locations. It was an ongoing small debate among professionals that work with computer networks and fiction writers, marketers, and anything that is promoting anything related to the internet, for the idea that the internet, is a “cyberspace”, or a ” great information superhighway”, or just simply “The Internet” as a , being a pseudo space of ever expanding and morphing real-estate for the mind.
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