The Musings Of Jeff Chandler
Jay K of Flying-people.com has released a free 20 icon set which contains an array of beautiful gradients. The badges look great for use of promotional material or to slap onto a site lacking in color. I’ve seen quite a few icon packs but I have yet to see a pack which contains gradients like these. Give these badges a try if your looking for something colorful to add to your site.
WpCandy has released an awesome PDF which contains helpful information related to developing themes for WordPress. The cheat sheet includes the following:
The resource has been translated into Spanish and Romanian in case English is not your native language. At any rate, click here to view the PDF within your browser. Alternatively, you can right-click and save the file to your desktop.
Considering Matt Mullenweg and company are considering a WP-Theme Marketplace where unique theme designers can be paid for their designs, it might be a good time to pump up that WP theme knowledge.
Smashing Magazine has put together an interesting article that describes what RSS is and why it’s a good idea to have an RSS icon on your site. It’s interesting to note that not long ago, RSS icons were merely graphics with XML on them, which was wrong. XML is the markup language, not the syndication itself. SM also goes into detail regarding the different RSS icons that exist and the different ways to tell your visitors that you have an RSS subscription feed without always having to use the STANDARD icon. You can check out the article here.
By the way, I thought it was hilarious to see a page that contains the world’s LARGEST RSS icon on the planet. I am REALLY tempted to place it on this page to see what sort of reactions I get!
This article makes me think that perhaps my RSS button is not clearly defined enough. What do you think?
This tip comes from Lifehacker which I thought was pretty cool. Not the easiest hack to try but it’s not that difficult either. To turn on auto-hiding, you have to edit userChrome.css. Before you attempt this hack, use MozBackup to create a backup of your FireFox profile just in case things go amiss.
To make it even easier to perform this trick, I recommend installing the ChromEdit Plus extension. This extension makes browsing around and editing the userChrome.css file a breeze.
Once you have the extension installed, click on TOOLS-ChromEditPlus-ChromEdit. This will open up the editor. Make sure the userChrome.css tab is selected then copy and paste the following code into the text area.
/* Pop-up bookmarks toolbar */ #PersonalToolbar {display: none;} #navigator-toolbox:hover > #PersonalToolbar {display: -moz-box;}
Click SAVE and then RESTART. Your FireFox bookmarks should be hidden. To see them, move your mouse cursor over the address bar. This hack may be annoying for anyone moving their cursor consistently around that area of their browser. However, this is a good hack for those that want a little more screen real estate within FireFox.
Which one correctly identifies our role in the universe? First let’s see the basis behind each principle.
The Copernican principle states that there is nothing special about our place in the universe. So far, every astronomical discovery seems to vindicate this point of view. Not only did Copernicus banish Earth from the center of the universe, Hubble displaced the entire Milky Way galaxy from the center of the universe, giving us instead an expanding universe of billions of galaxies. The recent discovery of dark matter and dark energy underscores the fact that the higher chemical elements that make up our bodies comprise only of 0.03 percent of the total matter/energy content of the universe. With the inflation theory, we must contemplate the fact that the visible universe is like a grain of sand embedded in a much larger, flat universe, and that this universe itself may be constantly sprouting new universes.
But at the other end we have the Anthropic Principle, which makes us realize that a miraculous set of “accidents” makes consciousness possible in this three-dimensional universe of ours. There is a ridiculously narrow band of parameters that makes intelligent life a reality, and we happen to thrive in this band. The stability of the proton, the size of the stars, the existence of higher elements, and so on, all seem to be finely tuned to allow for complex forms of life and consciousness. One can debate whether this fortuitous circumstance is one of design or accident, but no one can dispute the intricate tuning necessary to make us possible.
We often fail to appreciate how precious life and consciousness really are. We forget something as simple as liquid water is one of the most precious substances in the universe, that only Earth (and perhaps Europa, a moon of Jupiter) has liquid water in any quantity in the solar system, perhaps even in this sector of the galaxy. It is also likely that the human brain is the most complex object nature has created in the solar system, perhaps out to the nearest star. When we view the vivid pictures of the lifeless terrain of Mars or Venus, we are struck by the fact that those surfaces are totally barren of cities and lights or even complex organic chemicals of life. Countless worlds exist in deep space devoid of life, much less of intelligence. It should make us appreciate how delicate life is, and what a miracle it is that it flourishes on Earth.
The Copernican Principle and the Anthropic Principle are in some sense opposite perspectives which bracket the extremes of our existence and help us to understand our true role in the universe. While the Copernican principle forces us to confront the sheer enormity of the universe, and perhaps the multiverse, the anthropic principle forces us to realize how rare life and consciousness really are.
This explanation of these two principles was written by world renown physicist Michio Kaku on pages 347-349 in his latest book Parallel Worlds. Parallel Worlds explores our cosmos, black holes, time machines, multidimensional space and, the possibility that parallel universes may lie alongside our own. A very interesting and intriguing book to say the least.
However I must warn you that this book places a heavy emphasis on physics terms so if your not into physics this book may not be for you. I also recommend his other books as well HyperSpace and Visions as these two are well written, easy reading books that really make you open your eyes and mind to the enormous possibilities of our existence and what may lie ahead.
After reading about each principle and giving it some thought, please leave a comment that describes which one you believe in more.
A YouTube music video giving users a brief introduction into web 2.0. The video starts off showing bits and pieces of internet history which have led us to our current usage of the net. I thought the song that went along with the video was so-so but it sounds like one of those songs that would grow on you if you listened to it a few times.
According to my log files, quite a few of you are doing Google searches for graphics, buttons and badges. So, it’s only natural of me to include some content for those of you who are looking for it. Here is something I’ve come across recently called Open Web Graphics. A resource of freely available user-submitted graphics that cover web banners, web icons and web backgrounds.
The web icons are generally in PNG format but you can sometimes find them in .gif. Some of the icons also come in various colors and are searchable by TAGS or CATEGORY. Here are a few of the more popular icons that I see blogs using all the time.
The Web Banners and Web Backgrounds section only contains 1 page of graphics which means theirs not a whole lot of selection. OpenWebGraphics has announced that they have reached BETA status back on October 1st but as far as I can tell, the site is open for registration. Once of the coolest things about this site is the ability to upload PSD files. This might be one heck of a resource area for photoshop newbies, who want to learn how the graphics were put together. Do the right thing and don’t redistribute these open PSD files.
A couple of days ago, I came across an excellent article on Gizmodo which highlighted a group of people that built a 21 foot long model of an X-Wing. The model was built out of Baltic Wood, and contained solid aluminum for some parts of the aircraft. The model was also outfitted with four class M rockets which would provide the red flare type of glow that is seen on the X-Wing’s engines during the movie Star Wars.
Alas, here is the video of this model trying to fly and as you can see, the force was not with them.
X-Wing Model Launch Fails – Watch more free videos
Introducing the un-official G Ring. This is a prototype of a vanity ring designed by Markus Kison. The ring displays how many hits you get when you search for the name of the wearer.
Here is some information related to the project:
While in earlier times richness and importance were equal to the amount of money or jewels someone possessed, in a post information society it’s the attention you get from the worlds people, that counts. Being in people’s mind means being important, whether they think about you in a positive way our not doesn’t matter. And what people have in their mind is what they read in the media. In the future this will mean, what they read/see on the net. Every content creator that copies and pastes your name will rise the value of your virtual mirrored importance. And there is a hard mechanical algorithm on the net, that extremely objectively measures your appearance, it’s called Google and has already passed the “line of no return” (Bruce Sterling). In most job interviews the personnel manager will already use this machine to check your importance and have a look at the first answers this mirror tells about you. Your mirror identity strikes back on your chances in the real world.
Using specialized software, the name of the wearer is typed into the ring and the number of hits or in this case ‘attention carots‘ is displayed. The ring comes with it’s own docking station where it communicates with Google and updates the hit count overnight.
Vanity Ring Demo Video
I certainly can’t see my girlfriend wearing one of these however, I can see a number of A-List bloggers wearing one of these rings around their pinky, taking a page out of Dr. Evils book, ONE BILLLLLLION HITS.
It’s still hip to use web 2.0 styled badges. If you have ever wanted your own badge but didn’t think you had the photoshop skills, your in luck. Web20Badges is a web 2.0 styled badge generator with an assortment of templates to choose from. Users can type in the text they want to appear on the badge, select a font from a drop-down list and configure the font size as well as the color. You can even determine the angle in which the text is displayed although, the text never seems to look right with an angle applied. Once you are finished, you can right-click and save the badge to your desktop and then claim it as your own. If you want the ultimate ability to create your own badge without the generator, WEB20Badges does provide the PSD files for most if not all of the badge templates.
Check out some of these examples.
