r3dux.org

• Rules of Thumb is a site all about user-contributed rules to use as a guide for things, covering everything from winning at Blackjack (Assume that any unseen card is an 8.) to knowing if you’re being followed (Make a right turn, and then make another right turn. If they’re still back there after the third right turn, you’ve got a problem.) to… well, you get the idea!




• Because E = Mc² (i.e. mass is energy), a spinning object must have more mass than a non-spinning object. And it does… Only we were wrong about how much more mass it has. By a factor of 100 million trillion…. This also has the side-effect of breaking the General Theory of Relativity. Whoops!
• Cryptome recently got taken off the net (but is now back) for publishing the Microsoft Global Criminal Compliance Handbook, or in other words, what Microsoft will reveal to the police about you, if they’re as much as asked. Read the handbook here, or more about the entire leak ==> smackdown here.
• A list of the 100 best free & online documentaries. I’ve got to own up and say I’ve only ever seen a couple of these, but some of them look really interesting so I’m definitely gonna try and watch some more when I’ve got the time.
• How to spell commonly misspelled words. Currently, due to the nature of the classes I’m teaching, I end up having to type committee (double everything), necessary (one c, two s‘s), and receive (reverse the i before e) a lot. IMHO it’s essential reading.
• Some good reasons to stop linking to Wikipedia as much. I grudgingly (because it’s more work for me) agree with his reasoning on the matter. Oh wells, ignorance was bliss… (discovered whilst reading this – credit where it’s due).
• Ever want to clean up large swathes of ASCII text so that it’s nicely formatted automagically? cleantext.org to the rescue…
• What the hell’s the deal with the economy? Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay aims to put you straight without putting you to sleep. Definitely on my wishlist.

Little Big Planet was the first game I got on the PS3 (thanks to the darling wife) and it’s one of the best out there – some of the music in the soundtrack is just super-catchy, and I woke up singing this to myself today so thought I’d post it up so others can get hooked, too – I never knew that Spanish could be such a beautiful sounding language…

Si hiciera una lista de mis errores,	If I did a list of my errors,
De los menores hasta los peores,	From the minor to the worst ones,
Que expusiera todas las heridas,	That would expose all the wounds,
Los fracasos, desamores y las mentiras,	The failures, the indifference and the lies,
Ofreceré el aroma del ámbar,	I will offer the scent of amber,
Ofreceré el cedro y mis lagrimas,,	I will offer the cedar and my tears,
Con la paciencia del mar esperaré	I will wait with the patience of the sea,
Toda una vida a que sane la confianza.	All my life so that the trust will be recovered.
Si volviera a comenzar,	If I began again,
No tendría tiempo de reparar.	I wouldn’t have time to make amends.
Si hiciera un viaje a mis adentros,	If I made a journey in my insides,
Y sobreviviera a los lamentos,	And (if) I survived the regrets,
Pediría fuerzas para decir cuanto lo siento,	I would ask for the strength to say when I’m sorry,
Si volviera en un viaje a mis adentros.	If I returned to a journey in my insides.
Si volviera a comenzar,	If I began again,
No tendría tiempo de reparar,	I wouldn’t have time to make amends,
El agua derramada está,	The water is spilt,
La sed que siento no saciará.	The thirst I am feeling won’t be satisfied.
Cuantas cosas más puedo guardar?,	How many more things can I guard (keep)?,
Cuantas cosas puedo atesorar?,	How many things can I hoard?,
Dulce tentación de dejarlo todo.	Sweet temptation to abandon everything.
Cuanto espacio más quiero ocupar?,	How much time do I want to occupy?,
Cuantas cosas me puedo llevar?,	How many things can I carry?,
Dulce tentación….	Sweet temptation…
De dejarlo todo.	To abandon everything.
Dulce tentación….	Sweet temptation…
Regalarlo todo	To give everything away.
Si volviera a comenzar,	If I began again,
No tendría tiempo de reparar,	I wouldn’t have time to make amends.
El agua derramada está,	The water is spilt,
La sed que siento no saciará,	The thirst I am feeling won’t be satisfied,
El agua derramada está,	The water is spilt,
La sed que siento no saciará.	The thirst i am feeling won’t be satisfied.

Sing it with me…. Kwan-tess Coss-as Meh Pwair-doh Jehh-vah…. (what I hear when they sing “Cuantas cosas me puedo llevar” [5:17]) Hehehehe…

Many Thanks: Media Molecule for doing such a good job on the game, Cafe Tacuba for the lovely song, Marifen for his/her lyrics translation and sparrow79 for putting together the video!

As I’m teaching the programming section of Certificate III in Media, CUFDIG302A – Author Interactive Sequences, I’m going to post up my slides as I go along so anyone who wants them can learn ActionScript 3.0 – but as well as just the coding side of things, it’s useful to get an overview of what Flash is, what it isn’t, and what a couple of the most commonly used tools do. So here’s a Flash CS4 & Drawing primer…

There’s a download link to the slides along with some legal gubbins regarding their use after the jump, so if you’re new to Flash and want a quick introduction, you’ll find the knowledge to start from absolute basics, learn the difference between raster and vector artwork, working with layers and drawing and grouping objects right here. This is just a quick primer, and is meant to tie in with the ActionScript slide series, where pretty soon we’ll be drawing things and then instantiating and manipulating them through our ActionScript code.

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You’re never going to be able to forget this. Sorry!

Props (or hate, depending on how you feel) to Lawrence Yang for this astute, yet ultimately annoying observation!

One of the classes I’m teaching this year is (PDF link) CUFMEM07A – Apply Principles of Visual Design, and although a lot of it isn’t going to be of much use to people who don’t dig on design principles and elements, some well-explained Photoshop articles mightn’t hurt anyone who stumbles across the site, so I’ll make with the posting…

In this exercise, we’re starting from the beginning and creating selections from one image to combine with another, and we look at some feathering of selections to get rid of hard edges between contrasting visual elements. What you end up creating is shown below:

Very simple, very quick – useful if your Photoshop skills are a bit rusty, or if you’re just starting out.

You can find the document (in MS Word 2K3 format, so viewable in Open Office and MS Office 2K3 & 2K7) which steps through the process, with lovely, lovely screengrabs and the like here.

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If you don’t have a copy of Photoshop CS4, you can get a free 30 day trial from the Adobe website, or, you can do the same things in a free open-source program called the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). The GIMP can do most of the same things Photoshop can do, but the user interface is rather different, to get around this, there are versions of the GIMP which have been modified so that their user interface more closely matches that of Photoshop, and these are GIMPhoto and GIMPShop.