This little thing that I present today is an origami brooch I “invented” a few days ago. I started from a hexagonal piece of paper, with the intention of folding a tessellation (that is, when you fold the paper so that it creates a seamless repetition of shapes). While working on it I decided to Read the rest of this article »

When I checked the tagcloud for this site a few moments ago, I found something really strange… I took a screen capture, which was a good idea: when I reloaded the screen, everything was like always again… you may see the image for yourself; the only interpretation I can make is that, somehow, the computer displayed some tags from my own mind!… or heart

Last Updated 26.09.07

I would like to bring to your attention two features that I have recently added to this site:

Update 13.02.06 I changed the settings so that new sites get listed right after they´re registered.
Update 26.09.07 I decided to delete the Toplinks Section since it was receiving an enormous amount of spam, which actually menaced to kill the site´s bandwith. However, I´ll keep on writing articles on featured sites, as I wrote above.

I am glad to announce that from tomorrow on this site will feature translations of articles written by author Carlos Bellido. Here is a little about him:

Carlos holds a MS in Computer Science by the University of Zaragoza. He´s currently engaged in investigation projects at the University of Santiago de Compostela, and writes articles related to Computer Game Development in his own blog, The long Tomorrow (in spanish). Most of these articles are of a technical nature; however, from time to time he also writes on his reflections about gaming and games. We will periodically feature translations of these articles.

Look forward to Carlos´ articles, starting with “Girls and video games”.

First of all, I would like to wish you all the best in these days and the following year 2006.

I am also pleased to announce that from tomorrow on this site will feature articles written by author Ángel Nogueira. Here is a little about him:

Ángel is an enterpreneur who works in his own consulting company, edan xestión. He has written many short stories and articles for magazines and the radio, and is a talented songwriter too.

Look forward to Angel´s articles, starting with “Christmas: a lovely bad dream”.

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSkZlOyYGs

My song “Arguments 04″ seems to have received enough good reviews as to be chosen to be yesterday´s “Track of the Day” at Garageband. Thanks!

Last Updated 10.02.06

…and I do what I can

Two days ago I decided to make a small change in the site. I wanted to change the “print” and “send” options for two neat little icons, like the ones shown in simplebits. Actually I was about to buy the Stockholm Mini set, but in the end I decided to make them myself (cough).

Then, while testing the new icons, I discovered that they only worked properly when accessed from the front page, so I went back to the site where I got the plugins, GaMerZ, and exposed my problem in the forum. The developer, Lester Chan, answered very soon and not only helped me find a solution, but also showed me an issue with the permalinks I wasn´t aware of. Thank you very much, Lester!

In between reply and reply, I decided to go over another thing that had been around my mind for quite a long time: the background. The “shadow border” has become very popular and is perhaps overused, but I think that it is still a valid solution and so I spent some time this evening creating one (there´s an example here).

A quickly easy explanation on how to do it: (on how I did it)
1.Create a new image, 2000 pixels wide, and say 100 high. Make it a grey background.
2.Create a new layer, draw a filled rectangle 100 pixels high and give it the width of the body of the blog. Center it.
3.Give the rectangle a shadow.
4.In my case, I also added a gradient in a new layer (from transparent to black in the sides).
5.Merge the layers and cut a thin stripe (mine is 4 h x 2000 w).
Save it, and you´re done.

By the time I got the new background I also had a solution for the “print and send” options, and several other minor aesthetic changes. But then, I realized that the place where the icons where, right over the articles, was misleading…

…and so, little by little I continued changing things up to the point where they are now. I tried to keep the same “feel” the site had, but at the same time I retouched almost everything, from the position of the title image to the fonts (you can see how the original black-letterhead theme looks like here). I´m kinda happy with the new look, and at least everything´s working fine, plus I´m starting to understand how CSS works.

Well, I hope that you like the new look either if this is the first time you come or if you have been here before.

By the way, this is the original article which inspired the title; don´t hesitate to read it, it´s really interesting.

Update 31.01.06 I have added an Archives section: now it is possible to browse through the contents in a variety of ways which I hope will effectively improve the site´s usability.

Update 10.02.06 I added a TopLinks section to the site. Since we write articles on various topics, I thought it would be useful to give the option to add content via links to the readers´sites.

While your parents live, don´t go far from them. If you must depart, tell them the country where you are going.

(It seems obvious that Confucius´mother didn´t knit).

ps. I found the quote by chance this morning, which is indeed curious given the article I had just written!

If your mother loves knitting, don´t tell her you´re going to visit Canada in january.

I did.

I found out that sanyo has released a new brand of batteries whose name and design (in my opinion) closely resemble my own name and logo. I don´t know whether this is a coincidence or not, but anyway I guess that all I can do is… well, at least I can show the facts:

This is my homepage:

www.envelooponline.com

This is the eneloop batteries´ press release:

http://www.sanyo.co.jp/koho/hypertext4-eng/0511/1101-2e.html

And this is another logo of mine that I was already using in my projects:

http://www.envelooponline.com/images/logo_c.jpg

Last Updated 18.09.06

A few days ago I had a talk with a friend of mine about the convenience of changing his site into a blog format. It seems that he liked the idea, and since I told him about the benefits of using plugins to add functionality and customize the blog, he later wrote me an email asking me if I could save him some time by telling him which plugins I use. So here is the list (I´m using Wordpress v1.5): Read the rest of this article »

Last Updated 23.02.06

Black-Letterhead is the name of the theme that I´m using as the layout for this site. It took me quite some time to figure out how to add the image for the header, and when searching for information I couldn´t find an “easy” answer; that´s why I decided to show here the code that I changed in case it may be of help to others. (disclaimer: I´m anything but an expert in this field, so I don´t know if it will work for you -but it has worked for me). Read the rest of this article »

Pulsars

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~pulsar/Education/Sounds/sounds.html

A pulsar is a highly magnetised neutron star, with a radius of 10-15 km, having somewhat greater mass than the Sun which has a radius of approximately 1 million km. Radiation is beamed out along the magnetic poles and pulses of radiation are received as the beam crosses the Earth, in the same manner as the beam from a lighthouse causes flashes.

Listen to the sound of a Pulsar

Planets

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia07966.html

Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras are similar to Earth’s northern and southern lights. This is an audio file of radio emissions from Saturn.

Listen to the eerie Sounds of Saturn’s Radio Emissions

Poms

http://www.envelooponline.com/main.htm

POM is the short for Petit Objet Musical, that is, a Little Musical Object (…)They are offered as landscapes or “living sculptures”(…)I record typically two to three minutes as to get a detailed image of all the nuances in the sound, but these are only windows into conceptually infinite pieces.

Listen to Pom n.17 (which I also call “Forbidden Planet”, after the soundtrack of the classic movie).

Source: musicthing

Last Updated 28.02.06

I have been interested in tag clouds since I first knew of them, as they are a very effective way to highlight relevant elements among a cluster. As you may see in the cloud I added to the Archives section, there´s a number of words which correspond to topics I have written about. At a glance, you should be able to know which ones are more relevant, the more frequent ones the bigger and brighter, and clicking on any of the words will get to the list of related articles. Read the rest of this article »

http://www.glest.org/

This version improves particle blending. You can see what the improved particle effects look like here.