Free Summer School
by | posted in: The Infinite Library | 1

As the kids get out of school for the Summer, why not “audit” a couple of culture classes for free?

No, seriously!
I know when I got out of school, I thought I’d never want to go back and learn anything new again.  But, times change and so do we.  I’ve done a whole lot of professional training, picking up some good certifications along the way, but there are times I wish I had paid more attention to the cultural courses I took in school.  You know, the mandatory classes on things like literature and philosophy.
Well, just in time for some very grown-up “summer school”, here are two links gathering together more than 150 free courses for you to brush up your Humanities!
First, there’s 100 Free Philosophy Courses and that’s followed by 55 Free Literature Courses, both gathered together by OpenCulture.com.  In fact, they have almost 1000 free courses in assorted subjects that you can download or watch from the web for your continuing education.   You may not get a degree from this course material, but you’ll at least be more enlightened!

So, try and do something productive this Summer, if not this weekend, and check out these free on-line courses!  It’ll give you something to talk about at those boring BBQs and picnics this Summer!

Create Ebooks from Webpages
by | posted in: The Infinite Library | 1

Okay, this isn’t exactly a new idea, but it’s still worth sharing.

I got this from Lifehacker back in 2012, but I’ve been behind in my link sharing, so I’m just getting to it now.
The idea is simple.  Reading on-line is rarely the best, most comfortable, most convenient way to keep up with all the things we want to read, especially all the “long form” articles that really get in-depth on topics we care about.  That’s where Readlists comes into play.

This site lets you gather links and articles together into a “readlist”.  What’s a Readlist? According to the Readlist website, it’s “a group of web pages—articles, recipes, course materials, anything—bundled into an e-book you can send to your Kindle, iPad, or iPhone. ”  Don’t worry, though, if you use the Barnes and Noble Nook or some Android device, though, because you can just download the epub file and manually upload it to your ereader for your convenience.  So, yeah, you can finally get all those blog posts from that one friend you’ve been meaning to read gathered together into one, convenient, easy-to-read ebook to peruse at your convenience.  (You can also grab the latest news or anything else that strikes your fancy.)

The best part is, you can do this for free and even anonymously, if you’d like.
So, if you all will excuse me, I have some reading to do!
Have a great weekend!

Two Free Security Plugins
by | posted in: Red Herrings | 0

This week I’ve got two very serious freebies for you.

Security, as some of you may know, is near and dear to my heart.
In my day job, I’m a system administrator and constantly worried about security.  It’s a huge issue.  Lately, you all may have been hearing news stories about the “Heartbleed SSL vulnerability” which, in theory, could endanger your personal login information, as well as other account credentials or other things you’d want to keep private.  It’s not entirely clear how bad that particular vulnerability actually is, but it’s pretty universally recognized as “not good”.  So, what to do?  Well, if you use Firefox, like I do, you can install the Heartbleed extension, which automagically checks every site you go to and lets you know if the site may be vulnerable to the Heartbleed SSL security hole.  Just follow the link, click on “Add to Firefox”, then restart your browser.  After that it will display a little green or redicon letting you know if the site you’re on is okay or not.  Or, as the author puts it, “GREEN is GOOD, RED is BAD”

The second plugin comes in two flavors, one for Firefox and one for Google Chrome.  More importantly though it’s from the EFF.  This little beauty is called Privacy Badger and it’s meant as a preventative step in keeping you safe and private.  In the EFF’s words, Privacy Badger “… is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web.  If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser.  To the advertiser, it’s like you suddenly disappeared. ”

And, remember, these are both free, for your safety and protection!
So, go and download these and make the system administrator in your life happy by giving them one less thing to worry about when you’re on-line!

How It’s Made – 500mm lens
by | posted in: Photography, Red Herrings, The Tools | 1

My wife calls the Discovery Science channel the “Lion King channel”, because when she needs me to be calm and entertained, this is what she puts this on, like a mother puts her toddler in front of the Lion King.

Sadly, she’s pretty much right.
How It’s Made is one of my favorite shows.  Whatever channel it’s on instantly becomes the “Lion King channel” for me.  Even boring stuff is fascinating when it’s being made by big, high-speed machinery.
So, today, while I’m running around all crazy doing things, amuse yourselves by watching a video of how a Canon 500mm lens is made.  It’s fascinating and only about 14 minutes long, so not much time to slack off on a Friday.

I’ll be back next week with something else photography related, but I have no idea what yet.
Until then, enjoy the video and have a great weekend!

LEGO In Space
by | posted in: Red Herrings | 1

These are two of my favorite things, but together in a unique way.

I don’t imagine that it’s any secret that I love science-fiction at this point.  I mean, if you’re anything like a regular or semi-regular reader of this blog, then you know that science-fiction is kind of my “thing”.  But, what may not be quite as apparent is how much I love LEGO.  When I was a kid, back in the dark ages, I could spend hours building things with LEGO.  Keep in mind, that was back before all the kits that kids have today existed.  Back then, we just had buckets of bricks and we had to create our own stuff, from scratch, using nothing more than our imagination.  It wasn’t easy, but it was loads of fun.

Well, this week, I have two links for you that take those two things, science-fiction and LEGO, and combine them into the most amazing things you’ve ever seen.
First, there’s a collection of Garry King’s Battlestar Galactica ships, in LEGO, on IO9.com.  These things take thousands of brick, countless man-hours, and more imagination and engineering skill than I’ve ever even dreamed of having myself.  They are amazing!  But, before you click that link, promise that you’ll come back so you can check out the next link!
My second link is to not just a gallery of amazing LEGO spaceships, but a video showing how one was made.  Specifically, it’s a time lapse video of Adrian Drake assembling a seven-foot Serenity model out of LEGO!  It’s absolutely amazing!  I cannot imagine how he visualized all that and somehow assembled all the sub-components and then got it all together into one, huge, incredible model spaceship!  Well worth the ten minutes or so to watch!

Besides, like I almost always tell you, if you’re reading this blog on a Friday, you have plenty of time to go ahead and click those links and waste some time looking at the glory of science-fiction LEGO.  So go do it!
And, y’all have a great weekend!

A Grim Game
by | posted in: Red Herrings | 1

I’ve had a rather grim and brutal week at work, so I’m going to share a rather grim and brutal, but oddly engaging game with you all today.

The game, called Drowning In Problems, is just a little too true to life to be “fun” exactly.  But, it is oddly compelling.  And, it only takes about ten or fifteen minutes to play a round, so it’s not too, too depressing.  It is, however, simple, text-based and created by Minecraft creator Markus Persson.  He created it for something called the Ludlum Dare, which, according to their website is “… a regular accelerated game development Event.  Participants develop games from scratch in a weekend, based on a theme suggested by community.”  The event was founded by Geoff Howland in April of 2002 and has since run more than 22 regular Events, resulting in the creation of thousands of games.

Drowning In Problems starts with a simple sentence; “There is nothing.”  Click on the hyperlink text “Solve.” next to that and the game progresses to “You are not.”  When you “solve” that problem, you are rewarded with “Hope”.  And, with each problem to be solved, you gain something else, like a “Body” or “Life”.  Eventually, some problems cost things to “Solve” and, over the course of the game, you live a life, growing up and older, gaining and losing.
I won’t spoil the ending, but it is an interesting game to play.

Hey, it’s Friday, so why not go play the game?  What can you possibly lose but a couple of minutes of your day?

Two For One Friday
by | posted in: On Creativity, Photography, The Tools | 1

I feel like I’ve cheated my readers lately, so I’m offering two links that are kind of related.

Well, they’re related in the sense that both links are about making beautiful things.
And, I’m sharing two links this week because, well, I realize how distracted I’ve been by so many things outside my control and the way I deal with that is by trying to be of service to others.  It brings me back to center and helps me get a better perspective on life.  So, in that vein, I decided to share two links this week.  One to a free design course and one of use to Lightroom users.

First, the design course.
Well, to be more accurate, it’s a series of design lessons or projects.  Of course, since we’re all on-line now, these are primarily geared toward on-line design and they’re all software-based in some way.  The site is Hack Design.  What  you do is go sign up with your email address, and then just sit back as they send you regular lessons on design.  Or, as they put it, “… a digestible and iterative lesson plan so you can apply this [design] knowledge to your own projects.”  Or, if you’re in a hurry or have a particular problem, you can go to the full list of their lessons and just pick and choose the one’s you want.
They have a list of tools they suggest, and that are used in the lessons, but don’t worry too much if you don’t have all the tools they list.  For one thing, not every lesson needs every tool, and for another, there are plenty of quite serviceable substitutes that you are probably familiar with that will work just fine.

The other link I’m sharing is inspired by two things; my chosen photography software and having received my tax refund on Wednesday so I can update it, thanks to TurboTax.
Yes, of course, I’m talking about Lightroom.  And, yes, I’m excited to have finally updated to the latest version, even if I’m not taking so many photos these days.  Maybe having 230 free Lightroom “presets” to “improve my photos will inspire me to get out there shooting more.  (For those of you not familiar, “presets” are groups of settings that will apply a certain look to a photo in Lightroom, like a 40’s black and white exposure setting, or a 70’s “point-and-shoot” consumer film camera, for instance.)

Hopefully, one of those links will inspire you get creative this weekend!

 

 

Open Source Movies
by | posted in: The Tools | 1

Free, open source tools are the future of software.

I’m not the only one who thinks so, either!
One of the coolest tools out there that’s both free and open source is Blender.  Blender is a full-featured 3D program that lets you do everything from sculpt the models to rigging and animating them, complete with shading and realistic physics, for everything from static images to movies.  It even has camera and motion tracking as well as compositing to let you integrate special effects into regular footage, not to mention a real-time 3D game engine.  All open source and all free.  But, it’s Friday and you didn’t come here to be educated, especially considering that you probably have the day off.

So, what’s cool about all that is the Blender Open Movie initiative.  Basically, the Blender Foundation encourages people to use Blender to make “open source movies”, where the completed footage and the Blender-based tools to make the movie are freely available.  There have been several, but the last two, Sintel and Tears of Steel, are by far the most impressive to me.  And, they’re both available to watch on YouTube!
They’re less than 30 minutes of combined run-time, but they’re both pretty cool and totally worth checking out on your day off.  Sintel is about a young girl and a dragon in a fantasy world and is completely animated.  Tears of Steel is about love in the far future when robots threaten the Earth and is part animation and part live-action, but pretty seamlessly integrated.
You can find Sintel here: Sintel on YouTube.  And you can find Tears of Steel here: Tears of Steel on YouTube.

Hey, if you’re reading this on Good Friday, then you have the time to check it out!

Super Planet Crash
by | posted in: Red Herrings | 1

Another game this week.

This one takes a bit more time than the last one.  500 years, actually.
Okay, not five-hundred actual years, but five-hundred game years.  The game is called Super Planet Crash, but the goal is to not crash planets.  The idea is simple, design a solar system that will last at least 500 laps around the Sun.  You add in planets of various sizes and densities and let them go.  The more planets and more complicated your solar system, the more points you get for each trip around the Sun.
Of course, things happen and sometimes, your solar system just implodes.  Or you send a planet spinning off into deep space.  Either one of those events ends your game.

Go check it out.  It’s not complicated to start playing, and it’s free, so you don’t really have anything to lose but time.
Enjoy your weekend!

2048
by | posted in: Red Herrings | 1

No, not the year the world will end. I’m not that kind of crackpot.

No, in this case, I’m referring to the incredibly simple, but addictive game; 2048.
The premise is simple; just double the value of tiles until you reach 2048.  The tiles start out with either a two or a four on them and you just slide the tiles until they collide with another tile of the same value, then they add themselves together, doubling their value.  So two tiles marked two double to a single tile marked four.  Two tiles marked four double into a single tile marked eight.  And so on until you get up to the total amount or run out of spaces to file with tiles or tiles that can be combined into larger denomination tiles.
That’s it.  So simple, but so addictive to play.  It’s amazing!
It’s also new, having literally been coded just last month by Gabriele Cirulli, a 19-year-old Italian developer.  Even he’s stunned by the popularity of this little game.

Oh, I should note that it’s free.  You can play on the web at 2048, or download the free app on iPhone or Google Play.  They’re all free, but there is advertising.
Play at your own risk!
(Seriously, if you get fired for playing this today, it’s totally not my fault!)
Enjoy your weekend!

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