Dragon*Con is the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the US.

Dragon*Con 2008 will be held Labor Day weekend (August 29 - September 1, 2008 ) in Atlanta, GA.

Have a look at how much we are doing for Dragon*Con this year! It is just massive!

• Skeptics 101 - The Kick-Off celebration for the first year of Skeptrack at Dragon*Con! Learn about what Skeptics are, and the issues and main topics they specialize in.
  Panelists: James Randi, Dr. Michael Shermer, DJ Grothe, Phil Plait, Ben Radford, Jeff Wagg and Richard Saunders.

• Issues in Education - A discussion for those who are science and logically based can help promote real science and critical thinking in education. This discussion is to honor fellow skeptic Jeff Medkeff.
  Panelists: Michael Shermer, Dr Karen Stollznow, Phil Plait, Lori Lipman Brown and Kylie Sturgess

• The TANK - LIVE! - Richard Saunders, Kylie Sturgess and Dr Karen Stollznow do their skeptical internet video show live for Dragon*Con. Come join the gang for some fun and knowledge.
  Hosts: Richard Saunders, Dr Karen Stollznow and Kylie Sturgess

• Skeptics outside of the USA - A discussion with and about the state of Skeptics outside of the United States. What is going on around the world, and what we should be aware of in our global back yard.
  Panelists: Richard Saunders, Kylie Sturgess and Dr Karen Stollznow.

• Supernatural How-To - Richard Saunders and friends will show you some of the tricks and cool ways to perform the tricks of the paranormal. Questions and Answers will also be tolerated.
  Panelists/Lecturer: Richard Saunders.

AND - there is also the Dragon-Podcasting Tracks which will feature both Richard Saunders and Karen Stollznow!

• Video Podcasting 101 - Come and learn how to create a video podcast from the ground up. We'll cover equipment basics, software, compression and editing tools and get you headed down the road to YouTube stardom.
  Panelists: Tee Morris, Richard Saunders, Soccergirl, Rev. Chumley and Rhett Aultma

• Podcasting UN - Podcasters from around the world join together to talk about the effect of podcasting in the global community.
  Panelists: Tee Morris, Richard Saunders, Philippa Ballantine, Kinsey Swartz and Kurt Armbruster.

• PodSci Panel - Popular science podcasters from The Tank, The Brain Science Podcast, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe and Astronomy Cast answer your questions, and share their thoughts on the explosion of popular science podcasts and their impact on the media.
  Panelists: Dr. Pamela L. Gay, Richard Saunders, Dr Karen Stollznow, D.J. Grothe, Ginger Campbell MD and Dr. Steven Novella.

As you can see, we are SERIOUSLY representing our fantastic team and looking forward to meeting as many viewers, listeners and fans as we can - both those now and those we'll have in the future.
Best of all, we have some fantastic news on the way and want to share it with you in person - so if you can make it, come along to the shows!

Warren

Link to Auction

Here she is finally painted and posted online. Nothing else much happened today. I have classes tomorrow so this blog post will be short and sweet. Forgive the darker colors. The scanner was having problems picking up all the bright colors and it faded the image out a bit. The original is much more bright. It contains a lot of oranges, peach, pink, and purple shades.

The words of Queens song by the same name have been playing in my head for a while now. I did want to break away from the way I was painting earlier. I didnt get to where I thought I wanted to be. Where I am now is more free (sometimes, like today) than before and I'll be happy here for a while.

The title of this piece is "A woman's work is never done".  I'm at my sisters for a months holiday. She has recently had a baby boy. She also has a toddler who also wants quality time with Mummy. I see her on her feet all day and it seems to be almost all night. Everyday. It's feeding, pumping, changing diapers, playing with the two year old, working and the list goes on. And she has help! This one is for all the women who look after their children, homes and also work. Hats off to them!

12" X 16" on a canvas panel.  Based on a Photo ref by Anil Advani.  Used with permission.

Thinking and trying not to get caught up in trying to get all the details.  Trying to be free and painterly and even if I'm not there yet it's been fun.

I know I've given the men in the background oversized heads but didnt feel like correcting it. Marked as wip as it doesnt feel done yet. I'm going to sleep on it and look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow.  Do you see anything that needs changing?

Here's a sepia version put up because it looked nice. Maybe I'll do one in brown tones :D

The relevance to journalism? Getting nice looking shots in dark situations with less red-eye and better tonal quality. Oh, and it makes you look like you know what your doing.

You may be thinking 'Why should I bother with diffusing my flash?'. Well.. The normal light emitted from a standard pop-up flash is so unflattering it's like firing a headlight at someones face.

This is because the light source comes from a very small surface area, and doesn't spread out into a nice soft light. The bigger the light source, the better. So using a flash diffuser, you pass the flash through an object which will soften the light and remove that glare.

Obviously these are just experimental ideas gathered from the web, and professional products would make for better shots, but at a much higher cost.

Idea 1: The milk bottle diffuser.

This one is very simple. Just cut out the tubular handle section of a milk bottle, cut it length ways and you have a handy little diffuser which will cling over your flash. Simple, cheap, compact.

Idea 2: The film canister.

A milky white film canister can be easily modified with a pocket knife to sit over your pop-up flash to diffuse the light. Cheap (probably free) and easy, this little beauty fits into the tiniest camera bag.

Idea 3: The cigarette box trick.

Crafted from an old cigarette box, the gold or silver foil inside the box is removed and turned inside out, sitting inside the box and lid. It sits over the flash and can aim your light at various angles. The idea of this one is to bounce the light off a low white ceiling and onto the target, but different angles can produce interesting results.

The silver foil gives a nice reproduction of the flash light - cool white. The gold foil tends to give a much more warm yellowy light to the shot.

Idea 4: The mini panel diffuser.

I constructed this one from 5 layers of opaque overhead projector film which I cut from two sheets at a cost of about $3 from an art shop. 

There's blue tack at the corners between each layer to space them out a bit. A bit of insulation tape around the edges and it's done.

There are two ways to wield this puppy, hand held in front of your flash (about an inch or so away), or mounted onto your camera using whatever means you can fashion.

My camera, a Panasonic FZ8, has a lens extension and a sun visor which allowed reasonably easy and damage free mounting. It sits on there held between the sun visor and the camera body with a large hair-tie around the lens, Macgyver style (although his mullet was never tamed by a hair-tie).

This is my personal favourite and works quite well.

Try them out and see for yourself.

Picked up a few 12" X 16" panels from the Art Shop at the League to work on over the next few days. This is how far I got on the first one. Not planning on doing much more to it. I know I should be working on the model but I just didnt feel like it. Not today.

Tried to crop the painting to see if it improves upon the existing composition. It needs further work though.

Stuck to my limited palette knocking off even burnt umber for this painting. Had a big problem getting the darks. I was tempted to use the black gesso that a classmate offered me :D  I'm proud that I survived the temptation.

Areas that I need to work on are Perspective and drawing straight lines with paint.

Time for a brief update on the Hungarian-refugees-read-Eagle story I mentioned the other day. I've been in and out and rather busy the past week (including going to the rather spiffing Endorse It In Dorset festival with the wonderful ladyfriend at the weekend), so I have been a little remiss in following all this up.

First off, thanks again to Steve Holland at Bear Alley for blogging it, and to John Freeman at DownTheTubes for sounding out Eagle enthusiasts.

On the downside, after wading through the much vaunted BBC Archive system, I drew no clues - the BFI's Screenonline website surrendered far more information and proved much more user-friendly - so I used a standard 'contact the BBC' form to try and glean some information about the film footage used in the programme. Unfortunately all this yielded was a breezily polite yet thoroughly empty declination:

Dear Chris

Thanks for your e-mail regarding 'The Rock N' Roll Years'.

I understand that you're interested in a particular piece of film from the 1957 series.

As the BBC is committed to ensuring that we derive the best possible value for all Licence Fee payers, we can no longer justify researching some of the unique, individual enquiries we were previously able to handle. We regret that your request falls into this category and are sorry that we are unable to supply the information you requested on this occasion. We hope that you will understand the reasons why.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.

Regards

Sarah
BBC Information

Whilst I have no personal grievance with Sarah from BBC Information, this did somewhat tickle my complaining bone, so I am currently considering various approaches in order to prolong this avenue of investigation, drawing heavily from the school of persistent irritation. This will likely entail requests for details on the criteria employed to discern whether an enquiry should be assisted; a contextual hint that this might relate to a copyright issue; the suggestion that this refusal will lead to a range of official complaint procedures which themselves would take up more resources than simply looking at a file card or microfiche to find out where film for this episode came from; and an insistence that the factual error in the response means that I wish to resubmit the query. Frankly I'm embarrassed at myself, but the ends justify the means.

On a far more positive note, I've noticed that a Hungarian comics blog, Panel, has now covered the story. My Magyar is a little rusty, but through the power of InterTran I believe it's a straightforward pick-up of the original.

I suspect help in resolving this little mystery will ultimately come from either comics fans or from those tapped into Hungarian folk memory - emigrés from that time, their relatives or even historians - so I am especially grateful for this mention.

Köszönöm!

I'm putting together a panel on technology in the classroom for an infamous conference called South by Southwest. My presentation's called "Blackboards or Backchannels: The Techno-Induced Classroom of Tomorrow." This thing's BIG. And I'm trying to make it bigger.

I'd love to show the audience the potential and capability of students connected. The Internet is a grandiose machine. So I'm extending a hand to fellow students and friends to get the word out.

If you're willing to help, go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1123, take five seconds to create an account, and vote on my panel idea. If you want to be more awesome, vote and then leave a comment, to get people talking.

This would be an awesome way to show that students, together, can break the system, be it a simple voting interface or the conventional, old-school methodology of education.

Visit the original Facebook note here and throw it around between your own group of friends.

Also, check out these other nibblets of amazing:

Christina Xu's Behind the ROFLs: Next-Gen Conference Organizing While Broke

Tim Hwang's The State of the Internet Memescape: 2008-10 and Obsolete?: A World After E-mail

Para instalarlo debemos de agregar a los repositorios una nueva entrada, asi que abrimos terminal y editamos la sources.list:

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Pegamos esto al final del archivo:

#ULTAMATIX
deb http://repoubuntusoftware.info harty all

Guardamos y salimos del repositorio, ahora en la terminal actualizamos:

$ sudo apt-get update

E instalamos el Applet:

$ sudo apt-get install wpicket-applet

Una vez instalado, vamos a quitar la entrada añadida, ya que es un repositorio de terceros, editamos el sources.list:

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Y Comentamos la línea del repositorio, antes era así:

#ULTAMATIX
deb http://repoubuntusoftware.info harty all

Ahora debe estar así:

#ULTAMATIX
#deb http://repoubuntusoftware.info harty all

O simplemente eliminas las 2 líneas.. Ahora ya puedes añadir el Applet a tu panel de Gnome!

Via | UbuntuLife

Cheryl, who replaced Sharon Osbourne on the hit show, found herself judging Popstars: The Rivals contestant Nikk Mager, who auditioned at the same time as Cheryl.

He missed out on winning the show, whereas Cheryl was launched into the big time.

A show insider told The Daily Star: "A few years ago Nikk and Cheryl were equals. Now everything has changed.

"Nikk's future now lies in Cheryl's hands. But she hadn't banked on having to pass judgement on an old friend. And he never expected to be auditioning in front of her."

Nikk went on to form boyband Phixx, and had mild success before splitting up.

Cheryl became a household name with Girls Aloud and is now set to become even bigger on The X Factor.

The new series starts next Saturday on ITV1.

Si eres novato en esto de la informática, sistemas como éste nunca están de más. Pero si más o menos te defiendes, en la mayoría de ocasiones, estos mecanismos se convierten en todo un engorro.

Pues bien, si te has pasado al Windows Vista, seguro que ya has sufrido los ataques psicológicos del Control de cuentas de usuario. Mensajes como: “Un programa necesita su permiso para continuar” o “Un programa no identificado desea tener acceso a este equipo“ son los más típicos.

Para ahorrarte este tipo de mensajes, sólo existe una opción: desactivar el Control de cuentas de usuario. Si todavía no lo has desactivado y tienes intención de hacerlo, en este breve tutorial te enseñamos cómo.

Accede a Inicio/Panel de control y haz doble clic en el icono del Control de cuentas de usuario.

Selecciona la opción “Activar o desactivar el Control de cuentas de usuario.

Y desactiva la casilla de “Usar el Control de cuentas de usuario (UAC) para incrementar la seguridad en el equipo”.

Una vez desactivada la opción tienes que reiniciar el sistema para aplicar los cambios. Y listo. Simplemente con este cambio te olvidarás de las ventanas de confirmación del Control de cuentas de usuario de Windows Vista.

]]> http://coastalcaps.wordpress.com/?p=3 Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:12:13 +0000 Matthew http://coastalcaps.wordpress.com/?p=3 I have noticed that many people are having trouble finding post caps that are of a great quality or a design that matches what the CUSTOMER wants.  I have created this blog to inform of general questions that may concern post caps, solar post caps, or L.E.D. low voltage post caps: *for example*

- What is the best method for concealing and holding wood post caps down?

- Information on solar post caps?

- How to install L.E.D. low voltage post caps?

Each of these post caps mentioned are offered on my website (www.coastalcaps.com), but I am also here to answer questions. PLEASE WRITE and feel free to ask about post caps!

La ruleta de la fortuna a veces nos pone a prueba... Que no se me enfaden las féminas por este post ;)

• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1500 - "Beyond Mashup: Weaving the Global Data Tapestry"
• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1038 - "How the Internet is Transforming Governance"
• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1449 - "Petabyte as Platform - Building "Everything about Something" Sites"
• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1649 - "Powers of Often: Powers of Ten in Time"

By my cursory count, there are about three times as many proposals this year as last that center on using the web for large-scale data exploration, data mashups, visualization, etc. Even if you are not attending, though, your vote will help get more people learning about the current state and future possibilities of massive data exploration on the web.

Descriptions of those talks:

Beyond Mashup: Weaving the Global Data Tapestry
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1500
Data mashups of not a few but a few thousand sources become possible as community efforts, enabled by new tools and Creative Commons licensing, unify the world's exploding store of free, open data. Come find out what's awesome, what's hard, and what's possible when you discover there's really only one dataset. (P Kromer, infochimps.org)

How the Internet is Transforming Governance
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1038
The Internet is starting to revolutionize everything about politics and governance. Panelists will discuss new initiatives that harness the power of the Web to engage citizens in online activism, collaborative governance and oversight in ways that are radically shifting political power structures and fostering more transparency and accountability by elected officials. (Gabriela Schneider, Sunlight Foundation)

Petabyte as Platform - Building "Everything about Something" Sites
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1449
Find a topic some audience cares deeply about: their neighborhood, our government, every motorcycle ever made; and let visitors see, explore and understand it, and you make the world a better place. We'll discuss how participating in the open, global data commons beneficially transform our culture and economy. (Kurt Bollacker, Freebase.com)

Powers of Often: Powers of Ten in Time
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1649
In 1977, Charles & Ray Eames made a fascinating short film, Powers of Ten, showing the relative scales in the universe: from picnic, to city, to solar system, to galaxy, and so on, back to cells, molecules, and atomic nuclei. In the same spirit, Powers of Often will explore relative scales in time using real data and hard estimates: patterns of daily life, demographics, census data, generations, long term trends, forecasts, historical cycles, high-frequency finance, and solar cycles. (Shawn O'Connor, Timepedia.org)

Among all talks with "data" in the description, these also look interesting:

• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/817
• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1160
• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1537
• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/926
• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/854
• http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1275

If you see any other worthwhile topics please reply.

Thanks!
flip

Goiter Love is a three panel series from a 400 panel exerimental sequential art installation. Each panel is 5x5" and the entire peice will be roughly 10x10'  Completed Panels will be ink on bristol mounted on wood panel or wood frame.  I haven't decided yet.

Juga Tersedia:

• Papan Absen, Rp. 48.000,-
• Papan Ukuran Tinggi, Rp. 38.000,-