For those PC gamers amongst you

Duke Nuken Forever - the Trailer

ajax im - the ajax-based instant messenger

An awesome ajax application. This would allow an intranet for large companies to instantly message each other with quick questions on projects, and also keep a close connection with the IT department.

It may also be interesting for users to chat to each other on regular forums, or news sites. I may have to give this a play at some point!

ajax im - the ajax-based instant messenger

www.iamfake.com - Personal portfolio of Jens Hjalmarsson

In my opinion, this is one of the nicest portfoliosites I have seen in some time. It sadly, puts my site to shame visually. Not only does it look very nice, but it is also a very accessible site. Fully CSS, lists are lists, headers are headers, and links dont say 'list'. All of these sound obvious, but are so often overlooked in todays sites.

One of the main things that impresses me about this site though, is how it doesn't look cluttered, yet the depth of information on this one page is great.

My only real criticism at a glance is the large letters, I can see what they stand for (Portfolio, Blog), but surely it should say this is the title as well, else it can just look like a random icon, copied from the new Adobe icon pallette.

www.iamfake.com - Personal portfolio of Jens Hjalmarsson

Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Personas for Firefox

Whilst I am not the biggest fan of desktop modding (it often looks a mess with each winter done by a different design team). But the firefox new extension 'Personas' does look nice, and the imagery is surprisingly beautiful. Whilst thought needs to go into text over the images (not very accessible), but then again, the styles aren't compulsory, so there is no need for this.

Take a look, have a play, and remember, with the new firefox, your style can follow you anywhere!

Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Personas for Firefox

Introducing Weave

An interesting idea from Mozilla, allowing the storing of settings, history, favourites etc. in a central location, so any computer you use (that is attched to the web... well, why would you be using firefox if it wasn't, really?) can appear similar, and share information.

This may at first sound to be, unecessary, and only really useful for themes and similar. But when we take into consideration the onset of the iPhone and googles ZOMBIE os for phones, we start to see that we could be researching something at home (using favourites) then continue on the train, ready for a meeting later in the day. There are also ideas on allowing extensions to do similar, so this could be a very promising future of shared firefox, or yet another facebook disaster (hundreds of groups and rubbish everyone gets annoyed with).

Fingers crossed for the former.

Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Introducing Weave

A few links for you this weekend

Ames Has A Stargate | NASA Watch

US police warning for the public

WIRED: David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music

Here is a short chat between David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music. It's an interesting piece which presents how Radiohead aren't trying to change the industry, merely showing other bands that there are other ways to get their music heard. It may not be for everyone, but it can work if there is a strong fan base for your music.

Some Dr Who sci-fi

Okay, it's all about the videos today, here are another 2, the first is for the Dr Who xmas special. I saw this trailer in the cinema on Wednesday, and on the big screen, it was awesome, I wish they were showing it on the big screen for real.



Next is a silly trailer bbc2 did, just a teaser that was mentioned to me by my dad, it starts in January, and oh, am I looking forward to it! I just hope they have sorted out some of the weaker elements to the series, both plot and character-wise. You all know what I mean, so I wont go into it now.



Oh go on then, why not a little treat for you all. The Dr Who special that was made for Children in Need (you know, it's almost as good as Comic Relief)

Sorry for feed overload!

There have been a couple of issues with my rss feed in the last couple of days, this is due to my merging to feeds using google reader, then forgetting I was doing this, so putting the feed from my site into this feed, so creating a sort of neverending loop of feeds. So have fixed this now, so hopefully this will not happen again (at least for a while).

I use feedburner primarily, and my blogs are in blogger. If anyone knows of a better way to merge multiple feeds into one feed, then please do let me know.

Sorry again

Dan

The awesome world of Guillermo Del Toro

For those of you that haven't seen the fantastic world of Guillermo del Toro before, you really have been missing out. Several of his native language films such as pans labyrinth, Devils Bckbone, and Cronos, are arguably some of the best and most chilling films created in my lifetime, which to be honest, says a lot when I remember watching the ring trilogy back to back at uni. 7 of us, in a small room till 3 in the morning, all too scared to go back to our rooms till we had watched some south park to take our minds of it.

Anyway, back to del Toro, he has recently been involved in two projects that I have been keeping an eye on. The first he has been a producer on, but you can still tell that he has put his name to it, his choice of stories allows interpretations from both horror lovers, and psycho analysts, as to whether the film is happening as portrayed, or whether it is a fantasy world created by the characters. So enjoy 'The Orphanage', I can't wait for it to come out soon.



The second film, is a sequel to his kindf hit from a few years back, Hellboy. I personal enjoy the graphic novels, and works of Mike Mignola such as the bizar 'amazing screw-on head' and BPRD. But the combination of Mike and Guillermo, along with del Toro's frequent companion Ron Perlman as Hellboy, it's like a dream come true. And this sequel doesn't appear as though it will let me down. If anything it appears Guillermo del Toro has had more control over some of the visuals than before, the eye body is reminiscent of that from Pans Labyrinth. Please watch, and enjoy, 'Hellboy 2: The Golden Army'

The Golden Compass (2007)

It's strange, you put all the ingredients of this film into a pot (removing the child actors of course), and it seems absolutely perfect. A popular british novel, a largely british cast, Sam Elliott doing what he does best. So why did it get really poor takings at the box office?

The truth is, there is nothing truly bad about this film, but nothing awe inspiring either. Also, I never read the book, but my lady did, and she was commenting on all the added bits and removed bits for some time after the film. My main comment comes from the child actors, the girl got better through the film, but at the beginning on the rooftops, oh dear, I was almost in tears (and not in a good way).

My other comment is my WTF moment during the film, i'll try not to spoil too much, but there is a fight scene, and being a family film you expect the loser to go down, and the viewer to not see the decisive blow. Instead you see a jaw fly across the scene, followed by a neck snap. It's a little bit savage tbh.

Anyway, if it wasn't for the awesome cgi animals (hair in particular), and the high brow actors/voices this would not make such headlines. It's disappointing, but not wholely aweful. Enjoy it, but don't expect a life expanding experience.

The Golden Compass (2007)

Trailer Park: Dark Knight, My Name is Bruce

The other trailer is for all you Bruce Campbell fans out there, and anyone that fancies a real stupid film. Enjoy.

Machine Girl trailer

Just watch, and laugh (for those that can handly very fake blood, and poor effects only). I heard the film 'Grindhouse' was bad, this, I feel, is how it should have been.

Machine Girl trailer

Oscilloscope Star Wars

You cant say that this isn't cool, it should be made as standard, like the games you get with your OS, have a little 'Star Wars' buttons to play.

YouTube - Oscilloscope Star Wars

More film Marketing - Cloverfield

As many of you that know me will know, I have been madly followly the rather addictive marketing campaign for 'The Dark Knight'. For those that don't know much, take a look at http://www.whysoserious.com/ and at the most recent images to the sides.

But I have also been vaguely following cloverfields campaign with apprehensive curiosity, and it has recently gotten even more bizarre. As some of you may know, cloverfield is the upcoming film by JJAbrams, little is known about it other than it's a monster flick, there is a trailer to view which is up at you tube, but then it gets weird and complicated. As some may know, the more recent series of heroes has had a big hit in ratings. Another fact is that since Abrams series Alias he has used a drinks brand called 'slusho' within the series, well recently slusho has been in heroes, and is a large slusho marketing campaign supposedly for Cloverfield, wtf it's about, I havent a clue, but its weirdness facinates me, i'm thinking soylent green but it seems unlikely in that monsters are involved somewhere, it may just be a red herring. Take a look at the below picture from heroes [more here], and also at cloverfield clues.

Island Map of the Brain

An awesome little picture, I have it as one of my many webshots wallpapers, it makes me feel educated everytime I look at it. The general idea is that certain areas of the brain are dedicated to different aspects of who we are (as many of you may already know). But what is super cool about this is that in illustrator has gone over the general outline and created an island, using fitting names for the various places.

So Please, if you will allow, I shall wait for you all on 'Plateau Potential'

UNIT SEVEN | practical aesthetics: ""

Home | Email Standards Project

Blog about it, be the town crier, write into the newspaper, talk to your pet dog, but tell someone so we can spread the idea of the Email Standards Project.

This is a very important project, hopefully one day we will be able to rely on emails looking the same across different readers, and stop hacking, allowing us to focus on accessibility, and improving the emails, rather than constantly playing catchup.

!!WARNING!! JS BGTY Fajita wraps are aweful

Okay, lets get one thing straight, taste-wise they are fine, but sadly this is wasted by the fact that the damned things dont come out of the pack in one piece due to sticking together, and then, when you are so lucky, and start to fold your wrap they crack on the sides and you have to eat your wrap with a knife and fork.

Okay, I can handle this happening on the odd occassion, you pick your self up and move on with your life aswell as you can. But a whole packet is not funny. I spoke to a friend aswell who had had similar issues.

What is the point in them if you cant wrap 'em. I am in tears as I write this, but I shall survive, but to save all you the same problems, I thought I shoud warn you now!

The UK Carbon Footprint Project

A great way to calculate your carbon footprint using igoogle, it adds a new tab to your igoogle pages, so dont worry about loosing your previous setups. It shows you your footprint, information on carbon projects, and also gives you the option to put your footprint onto a map, so as the information can be viewed by all as to regions of particular concern.

Whilst simple, and not ground breaking, I think this is a great little app. especially as it allows everyone to be a part of it, and get personalised information rather than wasting trees by posting crap in my door. Take a look at The UK Carbon Footprint Project

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

I know this is a bit of a late review (considering I went to watch it on wednesday), but I was out watching Bill Baileys new stand-up tour in Wembley Arena, and it was awesome, but enough of that, this a film review.

This week we went to see The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and were relatively impressed, my lady Shiv (who had never seen a Wes Anderson film before) was pleasantly surprised, she was a little confused at the start with the seemingly irrelevant short film, but as the plot progressed we both became more and more attached to the characters, as you often do with these films.

Whilst this wasn't one of Andersons best, it was still a lot better than some of the films I watched recently (eg the irratic Elizabeth: the goldan age, and the unemotional Bricklane). It was nice to care about the characters. Some see the film as failing in the respect that it was meant to undermine the idea of spiritual enlightenment. But personally, I see it doing this to a certain degree, it shows how their spiritual moment merely gave them the opportunity and forced them to confront their past, and become closer, whilst at the same time you never feel that it has cured all issues, merely allowed them to understand each other better.

I would give this filme a respectable 7.5/10 loosing marks in the fact that I much preferred life aquatic, and on the odd occassion it got a little slow. But overall a great film, and one I wouldn't say no to watching again!

HUGE atari controller - by Jason Torchinsky

Awesome piece of digital art, a man sized atari controller, that works. Just imagine the fun you could have, throwing yourself at the controller, 'Go up you stupid f****ng yellow pac man, GO UP DAMNIT!' Casualty would have an influx in shoulder injuries I would think.

But none theless, this looks cool, and to have the creator of Atari posing next to it, it must be a photo for the family photo album!

:: J A S O N :: T O R C H I N S K Y ::

JustBlogIt with a simple right-click.

JustBlogIt with a simple right-click.

This is a great little bloggin tool, allows me to quickly blog any cool links I find, I may actually get into this blogging business now!

New blog - using blogger

I have decided to create a blog using blogger now, as updating my home made flavour was proving to be inconvenient and time consuming. Also the firefox extensions available for blogger seem to be plentiful. Hopefully now you can all keep up to date with my goings on!