I am proud to announce that from tomorrow on this site will feature interviews by Jorge Sergio. Here´s a little about him:

A passionate synthesist and music connoisseur, Jorge is a reference in the field of “independent new musics” -quite broad term!-, and he regularly writes articles on new releases and interviews musicians from every corner of the world. Jorge is currently managing the site Articmist.

Look forward to Jorge´s articles, starting with his interview to canadian artist Heather Dale.

“If only windows had a multiple desktop system, how happy would I be!”, I have thought to myself quite a few times… I wish I could have a tidy desktop, free of the zillion files that clutter almost all the available space, but if I moved those files I would surely lose track of them.

So, is there any app out there that could allow one to keep several different desktops within the same computer? As far as I know, the answer is “yes and no”, but at least the “Yes” side of the story could be enough for many users: Read the rest of this article »

http://www.deepskyfrontier.com/

(…)9 quadrillion pixels wide by 9 quadrillion pixels tall.

A metaphor within a metaphor, this site makes one rethink the concept of vastness. In other words, we can tinker with the otherwise utterly unattainable immensities of the cosmos in our desktops, just because the designer (very intelligent designer, yep), has put them in a context that we can easily grasp. Try to scroll the page with the arrow keys: it will take you more lives than you can count to reach the end. Now grab the scroll bar with the mouse and get to the end in seconds, fast as if you crossed a wormhole (a mousehole, perhaps?). Incredible, isn´t it? All in all this is a marvelous site to visit: stand on its center and watch through the eons, and beyond!

ps. by the way, whatever you do, don´t hit the print page button

Related Article: Small… but playful

http://www.planetperplex.com/en/index.html

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabridge Uinervtisy, it deosn´t mttear in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltter be in the rghit pclae

A firned of mnie tlod me abuot Plnaet Perplex, and I beleive it is a vrey itnersetnig stie and you wlil like it a lot. It cnotians a good seletcoin of amisung gmaes, mind tirkcs and inrcdebile iamegs that sruely will keep you entrteianed for aegs. Ejnoy! (geez, that was hard to write)

Related Article: The number of the Rose

http://www.zincpanic.com/

Japanese toy design is one of the last bastions of optimism in our increasingly luddite world-view. (…) we endeavor to be the most complete, thorough and accurate resource regarding anything related to Japanese toys

If you like japanese robots, you MUST visit Zinc Panic. This site features a huge collection of articles on japanese robot characters and toys of every kind you could think about. You say Mazinger? they have it. Evangelion? sure! Gundam? of course! You´ll probably have to fight the cool-looking, pixel-artsy, kinda-esotheric interface, but getting lost in the site is actually part of the experience, as the designers explain in the… er, helpful help section:

there is no end point, no goal to reach, within Zinc Panic.

All said and done: After quite some time exploring the site at my leisure, I recognize the great double effort made to build up a comprehensive database and a website with personality. I assure you, browsing through Zinc Panic will be a unique and rewarding experience. Dorka Dorka Radar Radar!!

ps. Through Zinc Panic I got to Fewture. Mazinger, Aphrodite and Garada will never be the same…

http://www.envelooponline.com/board/

I wrote about it a few days ago, and finally the nan board is fully functional and styled like the rest of the site; I´ll make some changes to the general layout so that it is easily accesible from the magazine. As of now, the board is pretty empty, with just some basic categories to start with; I count on you people to start filling it with fresh ideas. Welcome!

http://www.gamedevmap.com/index.php

Publishers, development studios with a staff of five or more, studios with previously published games, and studios under contract with a publisher are listed.

Gamedevmap is a growing database of video game companies. For the sake of general curiosity, you can spot at a glance the most prominent areas for video game developing -this is a little tricky though, since the spots don´t give visual information on the number of companies on each one of them-. However, I believe that this link will be most valuable for those interested in entering the business, since it saves countless headaches searching for the companies´ locations and sites. Beware that not every company is covered: the webmasters rely on the readers´ help to complete the list, so this could be your opportunity to add a spot!

http://sites.gizoogle.com/

Ok, try the link. It´s the gizoogle translation of this site, which I promise will give you some good laughs. The last “Confucius of tha day“, for instance, translates to:

Meng-chi-che had bootylicious physical strength n admirable courage, but tizzle cannot be compared ta tha sublime strength of truth, which Tseng-tse possessed like a motha f*cka.

http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/

icons for your new website or web application, at the best price there is (free!)

Finding free quality icons for your site can be not only tedious but many times frustrating. I spent quite a lot of time searching for “mail” and “print” icons for the articles, and after some time I ended up making them myself, with functional but modest results. Fortunately, I came across Mark James´site some days ago and it really made my day! Mark currently offers three different sets of icons in .gif and .png formats, all of them are free to use and you can modify them to your liking (there´s one more about to be released). Mark only asks for a link back in case you decide to use them, which seems more than fair to me since his icons are professional, varied and really cute. In the end I am using the “print” and “mail” ones, plus the little green flags and the “user” icon on the “readers online” counter. Thanks Mark!

ps. Alternatively, you may like to try this, this or this icon collection.

http://www.dprp.net/proghistory/index.php

The albums featured will either be milestones in the history of progressive rock, other influential albums, or just good examples from the catalogue of a certain band. Each article is designed to offer an insight into the background of the band, the musicians, the writing and events surrounding the recordings. Not so much a review but more of an in-depth feature assessing the impact made by these particular recordings.

“Counting out Time” is a site, part of the dprp (Dutch Progressive Rock Page), which offers a collection of articles on selected Progressive Rock music albums from the sixties to the nineties. Some of the articles focus on analyzing the music (my friend Ángel will probably Read the rest of this article »

http://www.artbytucho.blogspot.com/

A few days ago my good friend Tucho Fernández opened his new blog, “Art by Tucho”, where he is regularly posting samples of his drawings and 3D models. Tucho and I worked together in the Glest project and he is now also working for the video games company Traganarion Studios. As for his art, the quality of his paintings is elloquent enough. I would add that he´s especially talented for drawing things of an organic nature, especially fantasy creatures and dinosaurs, but in my opinion that´s only because that´s his preference. I have been trying to make him draw robots and spaceships since I first met him, though, and the Battle Machine is the best example that he is equally skillful at drawing almost anything.

http://www.lego.com/eng/factory/

With the free Digital Designer software you can build absolutely anything with virtual LEGO bricks right on your computer. Then you can buy the real bricks to build your creation and you can share it with thousand of other LEGO fans.

One of the problems I used to face every time I wanted to make my own lego models was that I never had enough bricks of the kind I was needing. It must be one of those “murphy´s laws” that the brick you just need is the one you lack!

Until now, there was a partial solution to this issue: the L-cad program allowed you to design your model in the computer so that you could afterwards order the pieces you wanted. This walkaround was (is) very useful, but if there were an easier option to custom design-custom order models which was backed by lego, that would be amazing, and if it were user friendly… whoa!

Well, so a big WHOA! to lego, since they have done exactly that. Besides giving the users an easy way to design models on the computer, they have made it just as easy to order those models as custom sets. Again, WHOA!!

Last Updated 01.07.06

If you have ever been to this site before, you most likely have seen the “cool lil´pic” to the left, in the sidebar. As the sentence said, the pictures there were… little, so clicking on them had no effect. Well, from now on not only can you click on the picture, but I encourage you to do so! Every week I´ll be adding a new flash game playable within the site, which can either be accesed from www.envelooponline.com/nan/games, or directly (and more conveniently, I believe) from said space in the sidebar.

This said, I thought on keeping the lil´ pictures along with the games´ pictures in the sidebar, but I thought I risked cluttering the area too much. Anyway, if you would like to see the little pics too, just let me now. I hope that you enjoy this new feature, brought you by nan! MwaHahahahaha!! (another step in the making of a media empire, Pinky!!)

Update 01.07.06 As part of the site´s latest (still ongoing) updates, I removed entirely the “little image” from the sidebar, since now games can be accessed from the main navigation menu. More important, I changed the way the games´pages are made (now they´re part of /nan and I can create them within wordpress), so it is much easier for me to add new games.

For a few months after I started this site, I kept the original partial feed. However, I didn´t like the way the articles were displayed (especially the links in the beginning), so last month I decided to change to “titles only” mode while at the same time I made use of the feedburner plugin so that all the feeds were centralized and I could effectively control their look. Finally, this month I will test the “full feed” option, so you will get the full articles in your aggregator -or by email, in case you subscribe via feedblitz (scroll down a bit and you will see the subscription form in the left, just over my face ). After some time (one or two months for instance) I will decide whether or not to keep the full RSS or go back to partial or “titles only” mode. Quick update: After Tete´s comment, I have made available the three versions (Full, Summaries, and Headlines), so that you can choose which one you like. They are located at the top of the sidebar, just beside “home”. Default is Full, and email subscribers will receive the full articles too.

Since the purpose of RSS is to make the reader´s life easier, I would like, if possible, to know your opinion about this issue. Are the titles enough? Would you like to receive part of the articles and then decide whether to go for the full article? Or do you prefer to have all the content at hand? I´m not much biased towards one option or another (well, I would turn off “full feed” in case someone blatantly stole the content, or if the bandwith usage increased so much that I couldn´t afford it, which I don´t think will happen), so I count on you to tell me what you want.

ps. I´m assuming everyone knows what a feed is, when actually I didn´t know much about them not so long ago. As always, wikipedia comes to the rescue.

ps2. Two views on the matter from Scobleizer and Pirillo. The latter is almost one year old, but still makes a nice counterpoint.

I am pleased to announce that from tomorrow on this site will feature articles written by authoress Ana Martínez Pedrosa. Here is a little about her:

Ana holds a degree in Journalism from the University of Santiago de Compostela. She has written articles for many journals and publications, and is currently working for the spanish ABC newspaper.

Look forward to Ana´s articles, starting with “The Garden of Eden”.