Check out the top ten best 8-bit games as rated by the Game Trailer Countdown. A couple of my favorite 8-bit games, Tetris and Excitebike, didn’t make the cut, but the GT list does have some classics.
Genius: 2012
Cultural phenomenon Malcolm Gladwell gave a talk at the New Yorker Conference 2012: Stories From the Near Future. His talk Genius: 2012 illustrates the importance of stubbornness and collaboration in problem-solving.
Interview with David Sedaris
David Sedaris, author of “Me talk pretty one day”, a book about learning to speak French, shares some tid-bits about life in France in an interview with Franceguide, the official website of France Tourism.
Inexpensive Memory Cards
Thomas Hawk points out where to get an 8GB Extreme III memory Card for just $89US.
How to Talk to the Press
Over the last year I’ve done a ton of interviews about my website and about backmasking. The more interviews I do, the more comfortable I get at doing them.
At first it surprised me how much the skill level of the interviewer makes on the flow of the interview. I’ve been interviewed by reporters ranging in skill from The Wall Street Journal to an individual doing a high school project. I’ve seen the difference in how a piece for a live radio show differs from a pre-recorded and heavily edited podcast. I’ve also seen how practise giving interviews makes such a big difference in how you come across in the final version.
Today I came across some great advice from Matt Haughey on how to talk to the press. Priceless advice for both the interviewer and interviewee. Read up, you never know when it will be your turn! And don’t forget to read the comments, you’ll find some real gems there.
Hax0red
As sad as this is to admit, it appears there is a folder or 5 on my site that have been sending out some kind of pharmaceutical spam. I guess this is just a lesson that when working with plugins that I’m not too sure about, I need to be extra careful.
The files in question have also written special permissions to themselves making it difficult to just erase them. I’ve contacted my hosting provider and hopefully I will have things sorted out soon.
Some of the names of the noxious files in question include:
- bucaon.php
- bucion.php
- caon.php
- chca.php
- chcion.php
- chva.php
- chva2.php
- hoon.php
- leon.php
- orfi.php
- puph.php
- adon.php
- bual.php
- bualon.php
- buph.php
- orphon.php
- orsoon.php
- orxa.php
- soon.php
- ulon.php
- weon.php
- buamon.php
- bufi.php
- buhy.php
- chfi.php
- chhy.php
- chso.php
- orci.php
- orhy.php
- puxa.php
- tron.php
- buhyon.php
- buleon.php
- butr.php
- chal.php
- chle.php
- orcaon.php
- orcion.php
- orva.php
- orvi.php
- pron.php
The interesting thing I found when searching for information about my situation, there appears to be a lot of other sites that also have these malicious php files on their servers and I assume they have no idea about it either—including, and this surprised me the most, many Universities’ sites.
If anyone has any more light they can shed on this, please let me know.
Update: At my request, my hosting provider has blown away the affected directories.
Death Star Cookie
Todd Franklin of Neato Coolville has posted the recipe to make your very own Death Star cookie from his 30 year old copy of Darth Vader’s Activity Book.
Mmmmm, death-licious.
Conan at LucasFilm
When I took a stroll around the presidio while in San Francisco last January, I stumbled upon the LucasFilm compound—the place where they make so many of the world’s great special effects.
Today I came across a humorous Conan O’brien clip in which Conan visits the studio, checks out some of the movie memorabilia and he even gets suited up in mo-cap gear. His tour was a lot more extensive than mine.
It was interesting to see him interacting in some of the places I had photos, like these ones of Darth Vader andBoba Fett. I also got one outside with a similar background of the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts.
The YouTube video was pulled.
Karleb Homes Ltd Website
I just finished putting together a site for a small construction company in Drayton Valley, Alberta, Karleb Homes Ltd.
Using cascading style sheets (CSS) I was able to keep the “content” of the site separate from the design. I also used Douglas Bowman’s sliding door technique for the navigation tabs which allows greater accessibility for larger fonts and screen readers than say just using regular, old-fashioned rollover images.
The footer is actually a repeat of the top menu, placed at the bottom of the screen because that’s really where the user needs it most—ie. at the end of the page ready for when he or she is done reading. For the spacing of the fonts, I relied on Richard Rutter and Mark Boulton’s SxSW talk, Typography for the Web.
I took the photos inside Karleb Homes’ newest project. I used my sister’s brand new Canon 5D as well as two of her Alien Bees lighting kits. The yard in the photo used for the header hasn’t been landscaped yet, but will be replaced when the landscaping matches the quality of the house.
I’m very pleased with the outcome of the site and I look forward to the making the next one—I love creating nice, friendly, and accessible websites and I’m currently looking for more opportunities, so if you are in need, let me know.
Flash Photography Tip
I just rediscovered a great photography tip. It involves setting the flash to fire at either the beginning or end of a long exposure.
But only when I read this article was I reminded that the rear flash on a long exposure can be a great way to expose those fun low light party situations.
For Nikon DSLR users, like myself:
“Press and hold the flash pop-up button, then rotate the thumbwheel. Try having the camera in the “M”, “A” “S” and “P” modes to see the different flash sync options in different modes.”
Instructions for other cameras are given in their comments.
This is something I learned some time ago but somehow neglected to put into actual use. Now that I’ve been reminded of it, it will change the way I use my on-camera flash; it will tide me over until I get that off-camera flash that I’ve been dreaming about.