Theo Jenson Wire Walker

Yeah, this is what happens when I don't have a girlfriend, a job, or a class to go to. I do weird things...



I made it from baling wire, because I was testing how baling works as a structural prototyping material. It's remarkably strong, so I tested the idea of using it as a structural prototyping material by making this Theo Jenson style walker thing. I may post another video on how to actually make one.


Make Magazine's blog was kind enough to link to it. 


~bg

The email test

Well, isn't this interesting. Anyone can update their blogger account from email? Hmmm.

Testing Windows Live Writer

This is interesting (to me): I have installed a program from Microsoft called Windows Live Writer, and I can use it to update this blog from within the program instead of the wysiwyg editor of Blogspot. I haven’t updated the blog and won’t, so don’t come back. You aren’t welcome here.

Oh your still here? Well, then here is a video of my cat:

Cut The Knot

Here is a neat math site. With allot of java applets as demonstrations. Seriously go and check it out!
... Your not going to check it out are you... Well you should, I promise you'll find some interesting pages. Like the number tricks and games. Trust me its neat.


Navigate to Cut-The-Knot.org by activating this link.

Pandora

Shoutcast is so passè, Pandora is a flash based music service that works like so: You enter a song or artist which Pandora plays then it finds a song or artist that is similar and plays that, you can rate the song thumbs up or thumbs down and Pandora builds a list on what it thinks you might like I am betting the more you rate the better it can predict what you'll like. Any who this is a great way to find new music. You can try Pandora for twenty minutes then it asks you to register for free. There is an ad-based free service which is awesome or you can pay about thirty-six bucks for one year of banner free music, one downside is you cannot request a specific song because of licensing. Either way its still pretty cool.

You may navigate to Pandora by clicking this text.

Zune Theme

There is a new theme from Microsoft for the Windows XP. The theme is in the style of Zune, that new Mp3 player that Microsoft put out. It is a pretty crummy Mp3 player with all it's DRM'ness, but the theme is still pretty cool. It makes your XP look allot like Vista's aero theme (not the glass one.) Free of course but you must have XP sp2 or higher for the installer. For other versions of XP like mine, x64, you'll have to get the files out of some one's themes folder in a x32 bit version of XP and it will still work.

Here is the page on the Zune site.
Download it directly from Microsoft here.(link working as of 12/06)

PowerShell

Microsoft released what is called Windows Powershell. It is a full featured command line shell for Windows XP, and I'm sure they will have for Vista. You can write scripts with it and all sorts of cool things. Oh and its free too!

Get the Windows Powershell here.

Learn programming with Java

Here is a good site to learn programming. Or to just learn java.
Go here for the tutorials.

Firefox add-ons.

Now that Firefox 2.0 is out, I am listing my favorite add-ons.

1. Googlepedia - displays Wikipedia results on the left of the page when you search Google.
   
2. Adblock - Blocks images/flash from known ad servers.
3. Chatzilla - which is an easy to use IRC client.

Just click on the links to go to their respective websites.

Incase your a jerk, all images on this blog are copyrighted to their respective owners.

WinDirStat

I was hipped to this program by Lifehacker blog. WinDirStat is a program that analysis your hard drive(s) and shows it as a bunch of blocks, bigger files are bigger blocks allowing you to see whats taking up so much space. I know allot of people would be tempted to go on a delete-athon but try to resist as you could delete important files. But never the less an awesome program which is based on Stefan Hundhammer's KDE program KDirStat , and Re-programmed for Windows by BerdhardSeifert.

Get it here.

Blender

Blender is an open source modeling software.
Get it here and tutorials here.

AutoGK

AutoGK or auto gordian knot is a program that makes compressing your videos to XviD or DivX easier than ever. I have found it really dificult for me to figure out what all the compression settings do and how they will affect the out come. But not now! You select a target size or quality and press start you can even easily que up a list of jobs to do unattended.

Find AutoGK here.

Also here is an excellent guide ripping your dvd's and converting them with AutoGK.

VNC

Lifehacker a while ago now did a editorial on how to setup whats called a Single Click VNC. Which means some one, like anyone who is having trouble with their computer in windows and you have them click on this file and now you can connect to their computer remotely. Its a VNC client/server setup but instead of having the server on the host machine the server is on your machine which just means that they, (the person having the troubles) doesn't have to port forward their router or anything. They don't even have to install the program its just a single file that you can email. Although I noticed that gmail wouldn't let me send it even zipped because it was an exe file. Don't be intimidated just go through the tutorial and you'll end up with a really great tool to help solve computer problems with out having to be near the actual computer.

Here is the life hacker tutorial.

And here is the actual VNC website.

This is Windows only and I am sure there are better VNC server/clients out there but I still think this is pretty cool.

Streaming Prime Time

May favorite show right now is Lost, lucky for me ABC has their prime time shows available to watch for free. It's ad supported wide screen flash streaming goodness. Streaming using flash like YouTube is just so much easier than say downloading on iTunes. I really dislike iTunes, the interface is irritating to me and the video quality from TV episodes is not worth 2$; especially when you don't have a video iPod. But I digress, quite a few TV stations are offering streaming content online for free, how ever they haven't figured out that people don't want to watch "extra content" that didn't air, we want to see the actual TV episodes. ABC, MTV and VH1 are the only ones I have found to actually do the full episodes, keep in mind each episode is only up for a limited amount of time, maybe so you'll buy the DVD's.

ABC prime time shows are available here.

MTV and VH1 both have some good shows available to watch after they have aired. Like Surreal Life, Flavor of Love and the Wild boyz... God I hate fitting into my age demographic.

Ubuntu

//UPDATE: I would like to amend this sudo review by saying that I still recommend Ubuntu, HOWEVER I have had allot of frustration with the latest release so I would also recommend either using the stable LTS release or maybe trying SUSE or maybe MEPIS.
I would like to officially recommend my new favorite Linux distro, Ubuntu. I have been for a long time now a Linux noob. And as a noob I can say that Ubuntu is the first I have used with out getting too frustrated and thought I could definitely use as a WinXP replacement. First off installing Ubuntu us painless with its graphical installer that most popular desktop linux's have. One thing that has always been a selling point for Linux is speed even on older machines, however my last favorite was Fedora core but for some reason it always seemed to be too big and kinda slow when compared to other Linux and even a fresh WinXP install. Ubuntu gets a gold star in the speed department from me. Another selling point is its package install/update system. One thing that is really easy partly because of Ubuntu becoming so popular is that allot of software that you would like to install is already in the package manager. All you have to do is check a box next to the software you want and it will get loaded. It's easy to be able to get non supported and non open source software too that will allow you to play mp3s, DVDs and that sort of thing. Pretty much everything that you might be wondering how to do has already been done and documented step by step in Ubuntu's forums. Go ahead, download and see for yourself.

You can get Ubuntu in x86 and x64 here.

It comes standard with Gnome but there are two other Ubuntu projects that come with KDE and XFCE as the default GUI if you prefer. Also there is an educational version here.

Visual studio.

Microsoft has free versions of it's Visual studio line of programming programs. Great if you want to start programming. Here are the diferent versions:

Visual Basic
C#
C++
Java

Click above links for respective sites.

Jayisgames.com

This blog is really neat. Go there today!

Jayisgames.com

Spyware time!

If you are getting bombarded by popups for no reason, chances are these sites will help when all else fails.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/VundoFix.shtml - Fixes vundo's

http://www.merijn.org/downloads.html - Resource for CWS's

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Panda-Quick-Remover-Download-20687.html -might help

http://siri.geekstogo.com/SmitfraudFix.php -this one is for atmclk.exe dcomcfg.exe's

Share Keyboard and Mouse with Multiple Computers.

Synergy allows you to share both a mouse and keyboard with as many computers that you want on your network. Regardless of your operating system. You can slide your mouse off the screen and seamlessly on to the other computer. Is available in Windows, Linux and Mac versions.

Here's the Sourceforge website.

Wolfenstien enemy territory

Enemy Territory was the multyplayer part of return to castle wolfenstien by ID based on the Quake 3 engine and is very fun and best of all FREE even with today's top of the line graphics its till really fun, looks good and will run on a lot of machines.

Download it here.

µTorrent

I have been using Azureus for my torrents for a while and I have had no problems. How ever µTorrent has replaced Azureus for me not only for all of it's features but its tiny, and my favorite thing in the whole world that I wish programmers would do more is you don't need to load it. µTorrent comes as just an exe which can be run in what ever folder you want. No invading Window's system folders.

Find µTorrent, here.

Deep Burner

I've formatted my hdd a few times in my computers life and some where along the way I lost my Roxio CD's. I am usually stuck with trying to burn with WinXP's built in burner through explorer. It is very limited and never seems to work right. Also if you like to open, make and burn ISO images like Linux distros you need a separate program. Deepburner can do it and for free no less. I've used it on a few occasions and had no problems. On Deepburner's website they have a Pro version which isn't free and adds more features so just make sure which version your downloading.

Deepburner's download page, here.

Track Mania

From the makers of Track Mania comes, Track Mania Nations a wicked-in-your-face-kick-in-the-pans-movie-review-cliche-ride-like-you've-never-seen-before, action... Well if you liked Track Mania you'll probably like this. The same basic thing except with formula cars and its free. Yea so if you've ever wanted to drive a formula car through loops upside down on floating highways in a giant stadium then download today!

VLC player

This goes along with the last post. Video Lan Client player, or VLC, is an open source player which comes with it's own opensource codecs and can play almost anything. I used it mostley for videos but I know it plays music files also. There are ports to diferent linux distros aswell.

Get VLC here.

ffdshow

It can be frustrating when videos on your computer wont play. That's because of the many different "codecs" used to make the videos. They have to do with the compression and quality but you probably don't care very much as long as the videos play. Here is a codec thing called "ffdshow" that can decode and encode diferent formats. This has DivX or Xvid in it.

Get ffdshow here.