Category Archives: Random

Ffffound Alternatives

ffffound

There is so much great stuff on Ffffound that you can easily spend all day there browsing images. Ffffound is a fantastically well designed image bookmarking site by tha ltd, the brain child of famed Japanese Flash master Yugop. Ffffound has wisely chosen to keep membership by invite only in order to keep up the quality of the submissions. Which is great unless you don’t have an invite.

Vi.sualize.us is a good alternative for the rest of us, despite have one of the worst URLs ever (try remembering it). It’s a nice and responsive web app that makes image bookmarking a one-click operation (especially via their Firefox plug-in). Until now I’ve bookmarked web images by dragging them to my desktop, but that’s so 2004. In my quest to push all my personal data into the cloud, I’m now uploading all my image bookmarks.

Another source of cool images is the new tumblr image blogs that are popping up recently such as this isn’t happiness and arts and crafts. These image blogs mainly showcase found web imagery of the cool and/or retro variety. Subscribing to the feeds ensures great quality images interspersed among your daily news stories.

Best Flash Upgrade Prompt Ever?

upgrade!

Noticed this upgrade prompt when viewing the TODAY, CREATE. blog through Google Reader. I don’t think it could be any more to-the-point 😉

Server Migration Woes

  • Posted On: January 8th, 2009
  • Posted In: Random

server fail

My apologies for the site downtime over the last few days. It’s been a very frustrating experience.

The trouble began when I decided to move this site from its current host (web.com) to a MediaTemple (dv) account I use to host some of my other sites. The idea was to improve site performance. Once the static files, blog and forum were copied over and the DNS was flipped, the MT server crashed. The server continued to crash over the next few days.

Despite repeated tech support calls, no one has been able to tell me why the server is crashing or how I can fix it, so I’ve been forced to revert back to my original host for the time being. Unfortunately some forum posts have been lost in the database shuffle. If your post has disappeared, please re-post it. Again I apologize for the inconvenience.

Augmented Reality Video for Bogdan Raczynski

This is an oldie but goodie. Ben Dawkins‘ 2004 video for ‘RPMDAP’ by Bogdan Raczynski downloads break-dancing pixel guys into a typical crappy UK student flat. Also succeeds in making batch files sound cool. How long before someone does something like this in papervision?

Did Money Just Become Meaningless?

  • Posted On: November 27th, 2008
  • Posted In: Random

bailout-pie

Does this even make sense? Source. See also here.

Starbucks versus Nespresso Taste Test

  • Posted On: September 24th, 2008
  • Posted In: Random

I recently got a Nespresso C100T capsule based espresso machine. I decided to compare the shots it makes with a shot from Starbucks. Here’s the results of my very non-scientific taste test:

Shots

  Nespresso Starbucks
Flavour Intense flavour, smooth. Very bitter, almost burnt.
Crema Good None
Price $0.52 $1.55

As you can see Nespresso makes a great espresso, including a nice crema. The beauty of Nespresso over traditional espresso machines is that there is almost zero maintenance. So if you like espresso based drinks this is a must buy.

Nespresso is popular in Europe, but it seems to be fairly unknown in the US. I was introduced to Nespresso by my brother who lives in Belgium and swears by it. When I found a Nespresso machine in an Italian home I was staying in, I figured if it’s good enough for the Italians it’s good enough for me.

The big disadvantage for this system is that you can only buy your capsules from Nespresso (unless you do what this guy does). Fortunately you can order online and the capsules are shipped to you in a couple of days.

[ Note this post is not sponsored by Nespresso, but if they want to send me some free capsules I won’t complain 😉 ]