ASD's "Metamorphosis" was one of those demos that made us all "think" for a while. Very deep and meaningful, and also very fresh from the design point of view. "More of this please" is definitely something that I was thinking while watching that demo over and over again. Well, I guess somebody heard that, because now we can enjoy some more of that... or perhaps I should say "even better than that". =)
Yesterday I woke up pretty early in the morning to check out ASD's new demo "Midnight Run", which happens a sequel to "Metamorphosis". It's very interesting that the demo didn't only bring me back the "Metamorphosis" feeling, but I also experienced a bit of "Lifeforce" feeling too. The visuals of this demo are extremely beautiful, and the music is simply ingenious. As expected there's a ton of depth of meaning, enough to again keep us all thinking for the days to come.
You can download the demo and read the related comments here.
Awwwwwwwwwwwww Wall-e melted meeeee! =) Well, yesterday I finally stole the time to go and watch the Wall-e movie which I had been waiting for...for... forever pretty much! And it was so worth the wait! =) This was probably one of the cutest animated movies that I have EVER seen in my life. Both the main characters, Wall-e and Evaa [Eve], were simply adorable, and the general plot was pretty neat too. I'm not going to say more since I want to avoid spoilers. I can only say this: don't miss this movie! =)
Now I'm going to wait and see if I can get my hands on the toy robot that I've been reading about on Gizmodo. ;)
For the past few weeks I was constantly bumping into articles here and there, talking about the new last.fm beta and all it's cool and new features, and of course that it would be available to the website subscribers. Well, I've been using last.fm for the past 2 years and can call myself a pretty serious user, although somehow I never found it necessary to subscribe, and I never have. So I guess you can imagine my sheer surprise when yesterday morning I received an invitation to the beta, regardless of my status. No clue how this happens, but I'm glad I got the chance to have a look inside, cause there really are some very cool changes. =) So let me see, where to start...
That's my new profile, and yes I do have a tendency of sneaking into my friends channels and listening to what they're listening to. As you can see I was stalking amvee.=) Click for larger images.
I guess I better start with the part that is the most important to me, the user profiles. When I first logged into the beta, it took my eyes a couple of seconds to get used to the lack of some of the previous version's eye candy. There's a very plain red strip on the top of the page which I'm not the biggest fan of, but perhaps that's the only part that I'm not a fan of. The first thing that _really_ took my attention and put a smile on my lips, was the answer to my prayers, a perfectly working playlist player on the right column. YAY. YAAAAY. And guess what, my Loved Tracks are now actually good for something as they're playable through the playlist player. This means that I can get much better a view of what my friends really consider loved music and not just frequently played music, and vice versa. [Yes, I can actually see everybody's profile on the beta...] The charts are still there, only with more options to play around with. And now there's something called "Library" that contains information about your listening habits, every artist you ever listened to and the track counts. The Library is customizable, you can have it show whatever you'd like, and it looks great too.
The artist pages also look neat and pretty much the same as user pages. Generally the information is a lot better organized, and it's much easier to use features like tagging or making a recommendation. Both user and artist profiles have an "activity feed" lower in the page which again, is a pretty neat fature.
Not all the features are working as of yet. As you can see in the screenies, Videos, Charts and Events are yet to be added. But from what I've seen on my 1st day, I can say that last.fm did manage to make an even bigger fan of me than I already was. Way to go guys, and thanks for inviting me. =)
Well well well, I was notified this morning by Optimus [thank you!] that the actual entries for the IDC 2008 are finally released and ready to be voted for. And I have to say, oh boy, aren't they awesome! I mean I started with the Cocoon demo and the music caught me right away, and of course the graphics were nothing short of marvellous. Then the Firlight & TBL demo with those cute little buttons [dude, I want some of those! =)] and the scary dissolving faces gave me round eyes. Next was the MFX demo and it's cool style, I specially liked the beginning of this one. Then came the Inque demo with again fantastic music, and all the orange juice. I mean they even have ASD labeled orange juice. ;) Last but certainly not least was the beautiful beautiful Still demo. The music is just otherworldly, and the visuals, oh, the visuals... no words, I'm speechless. As I mentioned before, Still always has a way of making me happy. =)
So, big Kudos to all the competing teams, and now it's time for you all to go and see the demos for yourselves. You can either watch the demos on the IDC website, or download the real-times here. Enjoy. And, well, wish me luck too as I have a competition of my own to face, tomorrow. =)
I've been using RSS Bandit as my feed reader for a few years now and I'm a big fan of it. I even posted an article about there here [in 2005], and I like it now as much as I did back then, or even more. The cool thing is, apparently these folk never stopped working on the project and making improvements to the software, and now as a result, there's RSS Bandit Phoenix. This is a new version of RSS Bandit who's alpha installer is now available for download through the RSS Bandit Website. Phoenix has all the old Bandit goodies, as well as a whole bunch of kool and new features that make it even more of a joy to use. So whether you're already a Bandit user or you've never heard of it before, and if you're as much of a feed freak as I am, do check Phoenix out. =)
Captured by the Phoenix Mars Lander a few days ago. Love it. [Click for full size.]
On other news, today I watched the panel discussion on the future of the web [Tetherless World Research Constellation]. Very informative, but no comments for now, as I'm still compiling a good part of it in my head.
As you may have already noticed through my twine feed, the IDC 2008 final competing teams have been selected, and the application demos are now available to watch through the IDC website. Similar to previous years: 5 teams, 5 fantastic demos, and 1 heck of a dilemma when it comes to voting, which you can do as of the end of June. =) The competing teams this year are Cocoon, Fairlight & TBL, MFX, Inque and Still. As for how I feel about the demos, well, I really can't tell yet. I've watched each demo 3 times so far but I still have quite a few more rounds to go. But so far, I can say this, Still always has a way of making me glad I watched the demo [hence the pic!], and to top that, they brought in the duckie again! =D I have to add that the demos are not available for downloading as of yet, but I will let you know as soon as they are. So for now, go watch some demos and enjoy!
P.S.: Does the "fat guy" in Cocoon's demo remind any of you of "Baron Vladimir Harkonnen" of Frank Herbert's "Dune"? Cause that's who he reminds me of somehow! =)
UPDATE: Well, I think Optimus' comment just confirmed my suspicion. The application demos are almost all parts of previously released demos, except for some reason [I could be very well wrong about this] the Fairlight & TBL demo seems newish! So lets just wait and see if there will be other demos popping up.
A lot has happened and I've been way too busy to post, and lets confess, the small little bits of time that I usually find here and there to do some blogging and similar stuff, have recently been all eaten up by Twine. =P [Yes, blame it aaallllll on Twine! =D] Oh by the way, apparently I have a new set of Twine invitations. If anybody wants to be invited, let me know. [if you "really" want it though!]
So last Sunday we watched the entire broadcasting of Phoenix's landing on Mars via the NASA JPL website. I have to admit, it was incredibly exciting. In those last 7 minutes my heart just about exploded out of my chest, and when it finally landed and sent through the "ok" signal, I had tears in my eyes. Since then I've been constantly on the watch for new pictures and data received from the lander. A large number of pictures taken by the lander can be found here. Do check it out! =)
This video isn't thaaaat new, but I came across it today while looking for videos relevant to this article that has to do with Phoenix lander's mission to land on Mars. It's a simulation that was created last year, but I hadn't seen it before and I fell in love with it instantly. Good music for the purpose too by the way. And if you don't understand Spanish don't worry, just wait for the actual video to start.
This video amazed and impressed the heavens out of me. In a way it's sort of like a wild demo. The animation has been created out of paintings on public walls. Do check it out. =)
Earlier I had posted a few lines in regards to ASIMO's conduction of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performing "Impossible Dream". Today I received an email from a good friend of mine notifying me that the video for the performance has just been released and it's currently available on blip.tv. So, here it is, and it's profoundly cute. =D Enjoy!
When it comes to music, I'd say Mike Oldfield is certainly a God. I've felt the same ever since the first time I heard his music [I was an infant then... my parents were listening to Mike Oldfield]. Mike Oldfield's music has been with me my entire life, and I would even say that in some ways, it has saved my life. The song Shabda is from his latest album called "Music of the Sphere". Don't mind the video as it's not official... just listen to the music.
Terra autem erat inanis Super faciem abyssi Lux æterna dona nobis Terra autem erat in cæli
Terra autem erat inanis Super faciem abyssi Lux æterna dona nobis Terra autem erat in cæli
[Sorry for not translating... my Latin is enough to understand this, but certainly not enough to attempt a legid translation...]
I guess if you know me or if you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that for the past few years I've been a huge fan of Opera, and it's pretty much the only browser I've been using. I did always have Firefox installed for the sake of seeing how my various web pages look in it, and every time there was a new version of Firefox, I did give it a try. But so far Opera had always been better. Why? Because of a lot of cool features that it has. The smallest little things that make my life easier. I like the way Opera handles downloads, I like the Opera speed dial feature, I like the fact that it's toolbars are customizable since I have a habit of making my toolbars as thin as possible [using as little rows as possible], I like the fact that it had lower memory usage than Firefox, and I like it's speed of loading pages. And these are just to mention a very few. So I guess it's now clear what I mean, when I say "I just switched my default browser to Firefox"! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Firefox finally sold me! About a week ago I installed the new Firefox 3 Beta. It was just supposed to satisfy my curiosity, but that wasn't exactly what happened. For starters I opened up a bunch of tabs and had a look at my mem usage. Low. Lower than Opera!! Then I loaded a few pages and darn it, this thing's fast! It's now faster than Opera! And unlike Opera it doesn't simply re-display the entire already loaded info from the cash [which in case of Opera, usually means you have to refresh the page a few times in order to see the changes that you just made to your web page]. Then I had a look at the add-ons ... ah well. Speed Dial, only better: tabbed and completely customizable. The toolbars are also fully [and I mean FULLY] customizable, and quite neat, clean and thin. There's also this other add-on that can handle your downlaods and alike in a neat, auto-hidable sidebar. And again, this is only to name a few. It's also the case that Firefox passed the Acid 2 test with no problem, and had a pretty good score in the impossible Acid 3 test as well. And then of course there's the issues that Opera has with handling things like xml pages. If your xml doesn't have a defined style [for example if you're looking at somebody's pure xml APML or something similar], Opera will end up showing you nothing. But Firefox can show you the pure xml with no problem. And I could go on about this for a few more hours, but lets just say that Firefox seems to have finally done it. I'm now very much looking forward to the alpha. Lets see how that one will look like. =)
Well apparently his majesty the royal cuteness Honda's ASIMO robot is planning on mesmerizing the audience by conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performing "Impossible Dream". This is going to be the opening for cellist Yo-Yo Ma's performance. Read the whole story here. Cool ha? =) I have been tracking the improvements and basically the process of "growing up" of this little creature from the start, as he's pretty much the "Dream Come True" of Robotics enthusiasts such as myself. And I even had him as the topic for the papers for a couple of my engineering design related courses. Now I wonder if the videos for this performance are going to show up on YouTube, cause I have to say, I so badly want to see this! =D
It was sometime near the end of 2005 when I first heard about the OpenID idea and concept, and I became and instant fan of it. For someone like me who uses an insane amount of websites and online services, the idea of not having to create a username and password for each one, and not having to fill in the profile each time, was such a pleasant notion. Not long after that I started testing various OpenID providers, including myOpenID, ClaimID and Verisign. So I registered my OpenID, but I didn't use it that much because of a number of reasons. The idea of having an OpenID is very cool, but even today, [about 3 years later], not that many website are OpenID enabled just yet. I mean, for this to really work, it's necessary that some of the major websites start supporting it, and so far they haven't. What's funny is that everybody is now offering to serve your OpenID, but they're not accepting it if you try to login to their service using an OpenID provided by someone else. If you have a blogger profile, your URL is now your OpenID. But you can't login to blogger using an OpenID from Verisign! Obviously everybody likes to advertise for themselves by providing the URL that the user is going to use everywhere, but they don't like to go through the pain of supporting OpenID login. [I have to mention here, for anybody who might not know this, that your OpenID is a unique URL to some info page about you]. The other problem is that, if you already have an account in a website that now supports OpenID, there usually is no way of tying your already existing user info to your new OpenID. Although, I also have to mention that recently I saw a website doing that: aboutus.org. I really have to send a "way to go" to those guys, although mine didn't work so far but at least they're trying. So, it's possible, it just takes some work. On the plus side, there actually are a good number of websites that have started supporting OpenID [one of my favorites would be legaltorrents.com]. And day by day, more websites add OpenID login pages. That's good news. So recently, I felt there are more places on the web that I can use my OpenID, which is cool. But then, there was another problem. I didn't like the fact that my ID, contains the provider's URL. I also didn't like it that it pointed to a profile page on the provider's website. I mean if it's supposed to be MY ultimate ID, it has to be MY URL, and pointing to my biggest online profile, which is my website. So I did some digging, and I found the solution to that too. I found an open source PHP application, called phpMyID, which works as your own personal provider. So you can have your own OpenID server, and then with a few steps you can use your own domain name as your OpenID. I set that up a couple of weeks ago, and so far I've had no problem using www.Aasemoon.com as my OpenID. I had a few people asking me how this whole thing works, so I've wrote a few paragraphs about OpenID in general, and setting up your own OpenID server and delegation, which you can view on the Programming & Web-Development page on my website. So now, I only hope that at some point major online services will start supporting OpenID. Life will get a lot easier that way. =)
Hey all, how was your long weekend? With the current Toronto weather, mine could have ended up quite boring. But of course it didn't, as I was saved by the miracle of ASD! =D The Breakpoint demoparty was held during the weekend, and there were quite a few awesome demos competing in various categories, including ASD's new demo by the name Metamorphosis. This demo is one of the most different, artistic and refreshing demos that I have seen up to this day. I'm not going to say more about it here, because you just have to see it. And by the way it seems that the Rogers problem with pouet.net has been resolved somehow, so you're not going to have any problems accessing the page hopefully. Make sure you also check out other demos released in Breakpoint 08. Some of my favorites: - Masagin by Farbrausch[This one is incredibly cute! =) ] - Challenger Deep by Traction & Brainstorm[Extremely Beautiful] - theBeauty by Einklang.net[Colourful demo] - Linear by SQNY[Darn kool style] - Concentrate by Adapt[Some very cool effects] - Diego on e - Unfortunately I have no clue who made this[Very very colourful and pretty demo] - 60 Seconds for Mr. Light by Anadune[Underrated unfortunately.. I found it absolutely adorable] - Wild Demo: Craft by lft[Oh Jeez... this one is awesome in ways I can't possibly explain!]
On a bit of a different topic, NVISION anyone? A couple of weeks ago I sent a whole load of information out about NVISION, for people who have left an email address with me to be kept in the loop with any demoscene related events. But so far no one has got back to me. Is there anybody who's going? In case you're wondering what this is about, check here. NVISION is a newly born demoparty which will be held in the San Jose, from 25th to 27th of August, and from what my understanding is, it's going to be pretty darn cool. And yes it's true, unfortunately I can't go because at that point in time my plane will be going to the opposite direction. But you can be sure that I would go if I were to be around. So if you're going, let me know. And if you're not sure yet, well, just GO! =) Don't miss this!
Update: ALSO ALSO... Jeez how could I forget to write this? The scene.org awards ceremony was also held during the Breakpoint, and you can find a complete list of winners here. Congratulations to ASD for winning the award for the best demo, as well as a couple of more categories. Make sure you check the winner for Breakthrough Performance too, it's very cute. Sumotori Dreams by Archee.
Has any of you folk, reading is blog, heard about Twine yet? I guess I could start with giving you some background as to what this is about. You know how I have this habit of digging around the web for..well.. for everything? Including useful tools to add to my website for organizing this and that, and the latest big bangs of the web world? Well last night I was looking at my own blogger profile and the ton of interest links that don't exactly do much.. and then I thought to myself, that maybe just like my little link organizer, I should fix a little something of my own that would give me the ability to organize my interests in a somehow more useful way, instead of just having a repeated bunch of words in every profile that I have on every website, including my own. But then... organize the interests to do exactly what with it? For example on my blogger profile, if you click on each listed interest, you get a list of other people with that interest. That's kinda cool, but not so much since a good many people using blogger never really create a profile. And half of what you do get is actually pretty outdated anyways. Not much of a good way of figuring out exactly who may be able to help me out with my Pliant problems [the programming language that I like and somehow nobody else does]. And I have to add this, the "interest search" feature in most of the networking websites isn't exactly much better either. So, I figured I needed some ideas, and the googling started. My first query was "organize your interests online", and the first result that popped up was this article on techcrunch.com talking about something called "Twine". Following the link to the Twine website and having a look around, I figured that this, is probably the 10000 times more advanced version of what I was looking for. The ultimate way of organizing what you're into, and finding out that you're not quite the only person with that certain weird interest that you think nobody else in the entire universe has. So, marvelous all of that, lets give it a try! But hey, not so fast apparently. Just when I wanted to sign up, I saw that tiny little banner saying that this a beta and invite only. Meh. Now my interest is boiling and I can't get inside this thing. Ah well, I thought I should probably ask my friends! I got into every other invitation only beta by asking friends! But no luck, nobody has even heard of this. Ok then, lets ask google again. Maybe I can find something. And yes, I should probably post an article about it, maybe someone gets back to me. So I was halfway writing this post when I found this weblog: Minding the Planet. The latest post on that blog says that if I write an article about Twine, and send the author of that blog the link to it, and if it passes all tests, I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiight get an invitation. Of course it's a pretty big "might" since from what I read, there's a good 30,000 people waiting out there for an invitation. But well, I already wrote this, I may as well send it in and see what happens, right? =)
Nowadays, it seems that there are more weblogs on the net than anything else. Weblogs of all sorts, for all topics and purposes, with all the various looks and designs that they have. Or.. do they? Well, not really! Honestly it seems most weblogs these days are somehow the same, design-wise, that is. Blog templates are pretty repetitious, and well maybe I'm a bit of a visual person, but I would like it better if the text and the looks have something to do with each other... if the blog is supposedly the reflection of the persons mind, isn't it a good idea if the blog template is too? At least to some extent? Anyhow, I've had a lot of people telling me that my weblog looks somewhat "unusual" or "different than what's out there". Well, if you think my blog is different, wait till you see the new template of Genox.ch! Just check it out... now this is what I call difference. =) Is any of you guys reading this blog into comic books? Well, I am! I can't say that I'm reading them all the time, but every once in a while I just like to drown myself in some good comics. That being said, lately I came across a 3 volume comic set of a certain genre that I don't read just thaaaat often. But hey, I found these ones pretty interesting! The comics are called "Lazarus", and they're about a guy who is on the run after a horrible experience... it's a bit of a painful and horror-like story, created by Diego Cortes and Juan E. Ferreyra. So if you're into comic books, check this one out. On yet another completely different note, I just put together an FLV demo video collection in my gallery [viewable on the web]. The collection, which is not that large yet, is mainly for "demonstration" purposes. The idea was basically handed to me by some of the folk attending the demoshows, saying that it would be nice to have an easy/quick way of showing what you mean by "demos" when you're talking to somebody about them. Specially if it's such that you don't have to search YouTube for some good demos, when you don't know many names! So there ye go! =) And yes, I am planning on expanding the collection, and do drop me a line if you have some videos to add to this.
Having used my beloved eReader for close to 5 months now, I think it's time I wrote a bit about it to share with you how I find it so far. And yes, those are indeed little hearts you see in the article title. That m
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
