The Final Cylon Will Be Revealed Now! Or so they say anyway. Interesting read for sure:
As mentioned before Greek religion has their twelve Gods of Olympus that coincide with the mythology of the Romans, Egyptians, and Norse people. Then there is also the “Chariots of the Gods“ written by Erich von D�niken which talks about there being twelve planets which are governed by twelve gods. Last but not least there are twelve Cylon models of which 11 we know about and one that is not known to at all.
Paul Thurrott pointed out that there were New Ultimate Extras Released. Wow. A new sound theme and three new dreamscene wallpapers. Well worth the extra $100 cost of Vista and the almost two month wait since the last ultimates release (language packs) and the one previous to that (the first dreamscenes in march 2007). Oh, did I sound sarcastic there? Not really, honest. Glad I didn't pay full price for Ultimate though, that's for sure.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog spreads this juicy bit for me and all my Canuck friends:It's official: iPhones in Canada via Rogers. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it "for real". Of course, 25mb for $97/month will kill it for me and many others I'm sure. Canada's lack of decent data plans is going to hinder iPhones up here until someone gets us out of this data backwater (Darren's words).
Another slashfilm post..... No New Dark Knight Trailer Until… Sunday?! Bootleg Now Online! Similar but not the same as the one from the previous side-by-side post.... love the bit at the end about the car.
Kinda creepy.... check out /Film's Batman vs The Dark Knight Trailer, a side by side comparison of the new Dark Knight trailer and the original Tim Burton's Batman trailers.
Well, according to this article, Steve has not only seen evidence of DNF, but has seen the game itself.
To be honest, I thought the game's supposed existence was a vast conspiracy. More than a couple of times over the last decade I have gotten vague invitations to come see the game "someday," with it never happening. I figured this was probably the same invitation other developers in the area had gotten, and were claiming that vague invitation as having actually seen the game.
I'll still believe it when I see it, especially the part where it stands out from the crowd. I'm not convinced that DNF will be relevant anymore. Though at this point it's almost ready for the retro period...
DIY Photography, one of my daily reads, has a list of Six and Two Halves Must-Read Free Digital Photography eBooks.
Update: Fixed title.... six, not sex...
Pointed out from a coworker: Photoshop tutorial: Tonal range and the Curves tool. This is a free tutorial from Chromasia.com, which has a bunch of other for-pay tutorials. If they are up to the quality of this one.... that's good stuff. Note that this particular one could easily be translated to other programs with curves and layers.
Nice post at content consumer entitled The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment. Simple premise... using the new Ubuntu, assign a set of tasks to your girlfriend (computer related you perverts!) and see how she does. Click the link for the results.
So not only is this Spiderman Tattoo amazing from an artwork perspective, but from a dedication perspective. This guy is apparently way into spidey, and has no worries about what this will look like in another 40 years or so....
Nice, AVG, the best (I've found) free anti-virus program out there has announced that AVG Antivirus 8.0 is now available in a free edition.
New Hancock Movie Trailer from American Idol. This one makes the movie look not only hilarious but also an I-want-to-see!
Nice simple chat wall Merb tutorial, giving you a full demo from start to finish using Merb, a Ruby on Rails type web framework.
A Few Questions to Enlightenment's Rasterman
Enlightenment 0.17, the big, long awaited new release of the Enlightenment project, has been in the making for a long time now - since December 2000, to be precise. E17, as it became known, is a complete rewrite of Enlightenment, complete with a set of base libraries (the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) turning it into a full-fledged desktop environment, complete with its own set of base libraries for building applications.
Ars reports that Epiphany (the gnome web browser), using the GTK WebKit port passed the Acid3 on Linux.
Check out this LeaveMeAloneBox Video. This is a box with a switch on it that when turned on it does nothing but turn the switch off. For some reason I find this hilarious. Hit the main page for more info and pics, specs, etc.
Finally Ubuntu 8.04 has been released. This is the LTS (Long Term Support) release which means that Ubuntu will continue to support the package for... uhm.... a long term. Check out the What's new in 8.04 for a full list along with lots of pretty screenshots.
Very cool video of a hacked up POV cam (viewing from a head mounted tracking camera)..... check it out.
There's even a DIY site for the project.
Save Baby Gorilla has the video (for now anyway) of Artie Lange Quitting the Howard Stern Show. Thankfully for us Stern fans, Artie was back on Monday.
Wow... check out this S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky DX10 Tech Trailer over on shacknews... that's some impressive effects! I think the dynamic volumetric smoke was my favorite, I can imagine using that to cover a battlefield with soft trails carved out as soldiers rush across.....
Maybe DX10 won't be a total flop after all?
Buddy pointed me to the uTorrent 1.8 beta thread. Looks like lots of goodies including an encryption protocol to get around that pesky ISP filtering of P2P packets.
Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press (Pt. 1of6) passed on from Darren. Very cool, the awesome Stephen Fry works to create his own Gutenberg printing press.
Via OSNews: Linux 2.6.25 Released. Sadly not a huge amount of "exciting" features, but I suppose with a mature system that's to be expected.
Gentoo users out there, the new baselayout package is coming soon, converting from a lot of bash scripts into baselayout-2 which uses OpenRC. These changes are fairly major, so you'll want to check out the Baselayout and OpenRC Migration Guide to make sure your system isn't rendered unbootable!
If you're not interested in baselayout-2, check out these bootchart values and get a bit more excited. Note that these stats don't mean all that much if you hardly ever reboot your machine :)
The cute and linux-based Chumby (still would love one to play with) is designed to be open and hackable. There's a wired article about how Programmers and DIY Types are Embracing the Soft, Hackable Chumby.
I'm just waiting for someone to put a self-controlled chumby into that unmanned car land race thing.
The Official Google Blog says they have A whole new world to explore. Google Earth 4.3 was released last night with a bunch of new features, including better 3D buildings, a sunrise mode, integrated street view, and various other goodies.
The 3D buildings are not all as good as Microsoft's Virtual Earth, which, while I'm no MS fan, I have to say their 3D cities are much more complete than Google Earth. GE 4.3 closes this gap somewhat. Of the two cities I quickly explored Seattle had only a few photo-realistic buildings, and lots of grey boxes, but San Francisco was f-n gorgeous. I'm sure there are other areas. See the link for downloads and more details.
An Engineer's Guide to Cats. Hilarious. Especially if you're a cat owner.
Very exciting is a feature from Lifehacker on how to Turn Your iPod Touch into an iPhone and allow you to make VoIP phone calls from your iPod touch or iPhone using a freeware application called SIP-VoIP.
Very exciting stuff!
Sure to insult someone..... hit the Gallery of Motivational Posters at FreeThoughtPedia.
Via slashdot is the softpedia First Look: The GIMP 2.5.0 - Introduces cool new features and redesigned interface!
Unfortunately some of the article is a bit thin.... IE: the new GEGL interface I'm sure is awesome, but what is GEGL again? Ah, some sort of generic graphical library.... Some new tool improvements are cool, but I don't see a "redesigned interface", or at least not radically so. The Gimp layout and "odd" window interface (which is pretty easy to get used to truth be told) still looks like it's there.
Anyway, it's great to see development continuing, much as I have turned into a Photoshop-guy, the GIMP definitely has it's place and is definitely needed to be out there!
I don't like just blatently re-posting stuff from websites I'm sure you read anyway.... However the title cutest kitten in the world over at Cute Overload seems to be fully accurate.
After a few weeks with a "Beta has expired" message, and no new beta to download, looks like MS has gotten their act together and released Beta 3 of the RDP Mac Client.
Now the question is, is this a new beta with actual changes, or just the same software with the expiry date removed? Being that the only information about the beta is here there's no actual information about any changes. Oh, and the 'feedback' link to read the forums about it doesn't work. *sigh*
If you're looking for an alternative (if you hadn't found one already), the de-facto seems to be CoRD, which I've played with a bit.
Over the weekend I found the site for Designing Interfaces, the O'Reilly book which has a bunch of free content / chapter summaries / useful info. Interesting read for app and web devs alike.
Star Wars: Clone Wars Trailer Shows All-Out Jedi Mayhem.... via io9. Hopefully this one won't be taken down too soon.
Oh I'm sure it's old but found a video of what to do if you find Naked Pictures of Your Buddy's Girlfriend via digg. SFW and very funny.
Sent by Mike at work with the title of not amused :)
Google has a Movie Showtimes Search system? Who knew!? (not me obviously). Works for Canadian postal codes too!
Found a nice review of Linux image browsers. Not sure I agree with the gqview assessment, but that's just cause I have been using that image viewer forever so I'm used to it.
When Cute Overload says gem of cuteness they aren't kidding!
Just a note in case anyone was unhappy that you upgraded to beta5 of Firefox 3 and found that ads were back.... hit up the latest dev build of adblock plus (direct link to here) work dandy.
Pointed to this Dangerous Path video this morning. My first thought was "a harness? pussies!" and then after watching the rest of the video... yea, good call. What crackhead thought that that path was a good idea?!?
Shacknews has a Spore Behind the Scenes Video. Short but sweet.
Via digg is 9 mind tricks to get what you want .... little subtle things to incline other people to do or act how you want, nothing nasty, just a few subtle little tricks to get a bit of an edge up.
Here's a video of a rare asiatic lion cub recently born at a japanese zoo. Due to the rarity (300 in existance :( ) they have been raising the cub by hand. Very cute big kittycat!
More Monstery Goodness in New Hellboy II Trailer. Via Darren.
So cool, Baltar is My Homeboy shirts. Someone, for my birthday? Please!
Computer-Darkroom has a nice and fairly comprehensive look at the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Public Beta. Lots of yummy screenshots!
Firefox 3 Beta 5 is up... 750 changes from the previous version, though none are immediately obvious to me in 2 minutes use. Should have checked if the ad-block plugin was updated for it before installing though.... ugh.... is this how "normal" people see the web??
Update: Hit this link to fix this all up nicely (in theory) :)
VMWare just announced their Workstation 6.5 Beta Program. The short news:
Remember a while back a senator in the states quoted, or joined, or had something to do with the flat earth society, which caused a bit of a hubbubb. I read through the main page (don't remember what it is) and was amazed at the wackyness of it all.
Anyway, the latest nutso theory is the Time Cube. It has something to do with a four sided day, or 4 days, one day of a good god and one day of an evil one, or something like that....
Time Cube's ineffable Truth. 'Cubeless Word' is not Truth. Word justifies all human evil. Time Cube is a test for Truth. Circle measure is slop bucket. God belief 50% god disbelief. Truth is 100%, belief is 50%. Time Cube is Truth creation.
WTF?
As with all wacky websites, it's unreadable, a mix of fonts, large font size, lots of colors and italics and is pages and pages long. Don't these people know anything about public relations and how to attract people to actually read their sites? The site that is denounced on the main time cube site is even worse, with a far more vomit inducing color scheme.
Combine the Red Army Choir (the Solviet official army choir), the Leningrad Cowboys, a Finnish rock band, and you get Sweet Home Alabama. Actually sounds pretty damn good, though as they said on Reddit, my WTF meter is going off the scale!
Adobe Labs - Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Beta. Can't say more, must.... download.... now....!!!
Some highlights are:
* Localized corrections -- Enhance specific areas of an image for unsurpassed nondestructive flexibility and control reminiscent of the traditional darkroom dodge and burn experience.
* Improved organizational tools -- Find the images you need quickly and easily.
* Multiple monitor support -- Add an additional monitor to efficiently manage photographic workflow and presentation.
* Flexible print package functionality -- Create custom layouts containing multiple sizes of a photograph on a single page.
* 64-bit support -- Lightroom 2.0 now takes advantage of the latest hardware architectures with improved memory handling and performance.
Full release notes here (pdf). Can't wait to play with this!
Not only has Capria, the Battlestar Galactica prequel series been approved, but io9 has new details.
Tutorial found via Fozbaca on How to create HDR Photos in Photomatix.... very simple, with a nice simple explanation of some of the tone mapping settings.... I like simple.
