novoAlias

There has always been something epic about black and white, it makes even the cheesiest home film look artistic.Personally I prefer colour but when it is managed well, favorites of mine are the colours in 300, the matrix, heroes, max payne and top gear. Dark rich colours are just so much cooler than the stuff you normally see.With photography I think rich B&W is always going to be awesome, at the moment my colour photography has a cross processed or desaturated feel to it because I can't stand normal colours. Something that will change eventually I think!

Yes. User generated content is the main basis of web 2.0. It's a major change really. Digg, tweeter, facebook and youtube are all web 2.0 websites. As for design, web 2.0 is usually very clean and simple with a focus on information being clear and with a purpose, think googles frontpage.

And incidentally here is an example of a full screen website that I would consider to be worthwhile: http://www.cassettenine.com/ You might notice a couple of things about it, 1. It's completely flash/xml based, 2. The actual information is in a trendy small box with the nav bar at the top 3. The music only has three tracks which is really annoying 4. It's got many small touches that are only possible with fullscreen So really I think you should ask yourself WHY you are using full screen and putting the extra effort into coding if a centered box would be just as effective and a bazillion times easier to code. Don't worry, I went through exactly this problem while making my website. If you want to see what I did and why heres my process http://novoaliasuni.blogspot.de/search/label/Website

Im using FF3, with a resolution of 1680X1050 (X2, dual screens =D) I had a play with your current gallery style in photoshop... I think this would work well if you made the image go full screen if you clicked on the window. I think auto resizing is an alright idea but unless you have stupid amounts of information/visual language to fill up the screen it is a bit of a waste... Anyway this is the result of me having your site open and seeing if i could make it look visually appealing while keeping the same elements/functionality. Very quick, just the very basics.. Anyway here you go.

Wow, that sounds like us! I think youth culture these days is largely based around the classic 'sex drugs and [music]' and it always has been... There is something wrong to me about walking into a bar, using the bathroom, having a dance and not buying a drink to say thankyou for the good times. I have not (yet) had a hangover worth speaking of so I think that helps alot when your planning your night. After reading this thread though I do wonder if I should give it a bit of a break, since on my desk at this moment there is beer, cc&dry, woodstocks and malibu! I think in the end though drugs are always about altering your personal reality to your liking, some people are just like that. The problems only arise when you become dependant on your drug of choice and can't see yourself as being capable of having a good time without it.

Hey this is semi replying to your comment on my thread haha! I used flash/iframes/lightboxes on my old website to (i think) great effect, I like lightboxes because they can display any image in its original size without opening a new window. That frees you up to use any thumbnail style you like... I think your scroller box setup is good but the way the window resizes doesnt seem clean, especially since I have to scroll to see the whole image afterwards. It might work better if your window contained the main text description and then was replaced with the image when you clicked on a thumbnail. Also make the window a fixed size, and put the scroller thing at the bottom to balance out the layout. If you have no idea what im blathering on about say so and i'll do a photoshop sketchup to make myself clear I think it would look good! Also If your thumbnail slider was flash based it would be much smoother and almost as quick to load...

From the sounds of it Joomla is a piece of piss, which is interesting considering a job description I found goes thusly "You will have proven ability to plan, deploy and support Joomla based networks." with 1-2 years experience. By the sounds of it half a brain and 10 minutes experience should be enough?...<br>

Cheers guys!Pasten: The last one was actually pretty awesome feature and uptime-wise, except for the not existing anymore part... Zendfree.com. This time I plan to take out a .com domain though so I can swap hosts if it happens again!Echo: I see you fixed the spelling Thanks for the welcome :PSonesay: Yeah for sure! I'm pretty good at Flash/AS3 so I look forward to helping out... Are you any good at back end systems by any chance? I've been meaning to learn MySQL etc. for-freaking-ever!

I think you might have a very good point there!As they say, alcohol was involved.... Therefore it was not my fault!

Maya, Blender and Max are the best all rounders I think, just see what works for you (and your budget)!

Most of the new technologies are available as open source... Also the projector/IR touch screen combination is actually pretty capable as long as the light conditions do not change drastically. It can easily fit inside a surface scale coffee table and better yet, it can be expanded to whatever size you like.... Here are some instructions and a video on making a touch surface that resembles a drafting desk... http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Here is a project underway using IR/projector/mirror and personally I think it looks better than the surface... http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ As for the gadget stuff, phones should be a piece of cake, there is already software to interact with your phone via bluetooth. Cameras would be harder, unless they too had bluetooth. Something we found is that paper with writing can be just about read if placed face down on the table, so logically a high resolution webcam should be able to 'read' and correlate with a cards details stored in the computer. And really, would you rather trust ubuntu or a logistically challenged windows computer with your credit card details? I know which i'd pick... Alot of the cutting edge stuff is really being done by the masses these days and not by the imaginatively challenged multi billion dollar companies. If you don't believe me check these out: Want a VR environment that reacts to where your head is? (so you can look 'behind' things onscreen) It's $30 and here http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Want to integrate real life with virtual reality? Try this http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ But thats just my take, the way I see it by the time the surface finally comes out home built variations running on home brew software will be streets ahead and gaining speed.

I've used 3DS Max since version 4 so i'm used to it now, I use VRay rendering and it looks amazing. My friends that have just started 3D at uni think that Maya is better so I think it is a case of what works for you really. I tried blender once and it just didnt make sense, I plan to try it again soon since it is free and people are making some very impressive stuff with it these days... Incidentally what do you want to use 3D for? Since zbrush is amazing for organic high detail models, and solidworks is the industry standard for building anything up to luxury yachts...

I love e-ink I'm trying to get an e-ink license plate for uhh... research purposes. What I don't understand about the microsoft surface is the 10,000 price tag. At my university me and a couple of other students built a functioning multitouch surface using about $80 worth of materials. It wasn't that amazing to look at but it worked well and the technology was very simple. Adding an internal projector is not that much of a leap, and from there you can simply include a mid-high range computer with linux based GUI and voila! An honest to goodness james bond-esque touch table. These are actually roughly our plans for this coming year, unless someone distracts us with a high speed camera or something just as cool. What kind of price would you consider worthwhile? Because thinking about it from off the shelf parts (not free/cheap second hand parts which would be just as good).... Box, LED's, mirrors and other shite.. $100-200 High Quality IR Webcam $100 High Quality Projector $1000+ Mid-high end computer $500+ Software $ Free.ish Total ~$2000 US And the best part? You can have it now! I honestly dont know where microsoft is coming from...

I have recently played with both javascript (well, processing) and have quite alot of experience in flash and I would say, that Flash is the better one for web based applications. In my website I effectively used flash as a GUI with html and javascript to control the content. Flash has the ability to produce really impressive visual effects with very little effort, although some of the more recent effects are quite processor heavy. Flash is very visually orientated, which I like. And because it uses vector graphics the resulting files are tiny. I have never had a problem with adobe flash or photoshop unless I open 20+ files at once, I actually have more problems with songbird and firefox going top heavy but that is possibly just because of the way I use them. One thing flash does not do satisfactorily is display pure HTML (or RSS feeds), this is the reason I ended up using a flash GUI with an Iframe to achieve a lightweight and good looking interface. My take is flash is a very powerful, general, tool that can do everything from pure animation (my friend used it for web animation as part of his course) to some quite advanced programming that does almost everything that java can do. There really is nothing that is in direct competition.

If I'm honest, I'm not a romantic type by nature. I either like someone or I don't and the process of falling into orbit with another human being of opposite gender is something I am still getting the hang of. However, quite a few of my closest friends have been living the ups and downs for many years and I have noticed something that doesn't quite seem right.There are as many different kinds of relationships as there are people to have them. No two people will ever treat each other quite the same way, and relationships evolve from moment to moment, let alone day by day! So why is it then that we have 'first base', 'dating', 'lovers' and all the other terms we use to put the people around us into neat little mental boxes. Have you ever felt embarassed when someone says you are dating so and so and you want to say 'it's not like that...' but you know there is no point? It's all wrapped up in cultural norms aswell, so you slept with Julie at the party on friday night? Well you'd better call her and find out if it meant something or wether that last tequila sunrise was all there was and ever will be between you...Then it gets complicated, I'm going to tell you a story which may only be slightly related to the above.I have a friend, lets call him X. He recently got out of a relationship where he was effectively chained into orbit using a combination of love and vicious mind games. I decided to show him the night life he hasn't seen in the last couple of years, and in the process meet some people that weren't so likely to go crazy over a single txt from an unknown number. Now there are a few girls he's liked for _years_, and while I consider myself a good wingman, I find places just that much boring when you know no-one and the guy you are with is trying to play find the sausage with clothes on. I've put up with this since I'm pretty good at hanging out with more or less anyone, but hey a brother gets bored after a while. Also X seems to have a habit in mixed company interaction of subtly undermining people. I'm probably just going to give him a codeword that means 'change tack' because I don't think he realises what he is doing. Anyway my question is what happens if we are at a party and -two- of these girls happen to be there? They are not really long term friends of mine but I get on with them well and they are pretty cool. If X makes a decision I figure I can just relax and be myself, what would you do? I'm actually tempted to say forget it, but I think a better thing to do would be to set some ground rules so there are no arguments.

I recently bought a faulty n95 cheap and while the problem isn't that major I would like to how difficult it is to obtain and replace the motherboard? I had a look for stuck buttons and it seems the n95 is designed with ease of maintinence in mind, has anyone else replaced a major part of their phone? and how difficult was the process?Cheers, J.

My sister got a laptop recently and her computer fell into disuse. So we decided to turn it into an entertainment PC.The previous install was a buggy version of windows XP, i'm not sure how it happened but it was refusing to read everything down to usb thumb drives from the OS. As a result I ended up putting Ubuntu on a USB stick and installing it by booting from it in BIOS. One problem I spent a long time fixing is the NVIDIA drivers refused to display 1280X1024 on the 42" Display... I ended up learning all about admin rights and xconfig just to fix that problem. After that I installed the basics along with compiz fusion and I have to say... It's a polished OS.The visual elements are better looking, more featured and less buggy than anything in XP or Vista, and when I have had a crash it's been fixable by force closing and re-opening the software in question. Ubuntu isn't as lightning fast as I expected, but then the kit is about 4 years old now and I have just about every feature switched on.I liked the old windows XP with litestep as it was bloody fast and very stable (litestep replaced the juggernaut explorer and takes almost no space in ram, while looking good at the same time) but it didn't want to install on my SATA drives as a result. I do alot of work with photoshop, adobe flash and others so I can't use Ubuntu (Not going to run WINE thanks) even though I really want to. I did however get my mitts on windows 7, so as soon as I have a drive big enough to backup and reformat, I'm going to try out the next generation goodness, If that doesn't work out I guess it's going to be whatever it takes to have a XP/Ubuntu install.As for vista? Never liked it, it tries too hard and still doesn't get anywhere. It hangs at odd times and force closing processes doesn't actually work... Resulting in crashes that resemble a mammoth after someone shoots it with an LSD dart, long, drawn out and painful/hilarious to watch.

Hey all,I humbly come to your doors after the wonderful people over at zendfree forgot to pay their bills and their (/my) website totally disappeared. Unluckily for me this website is on all my cv's and business cards and so I'm a little bit pee'd off... You guys wouldn't do that would you? :PSo, a little about me.I'm 20, I live in Auckland, I'm going to AUT for my degree, I love my motorbike and my mini, and I spend many of my nights partying at whatever bar, rave or club is making the most noise.I also have a strong interest in photography, graphic design, travel and quite alot of other stuff that I would spend more time doing if my remaining funds weren't being poured into alcohol research. I like the range of topics your forum covers so thats pretty much why I'm here! Asides from the aforementioned flakey webhost of course.That's me I guess, cheers and I'll see you round.J.