UNDERWATER HELICOPTER

Pav Am

2011-10-04T22:47:00.000+03:00

A Brand New Blog!

2011-08-02T18:39:00.000+03:00

Alright, guys, first of all, I wish to apologize for not updating this very blog at all in these past months and betraying my followers but unfortunately, I've ran into some personal problems right after this site was last updated, after which I completely forgot about it.

Now that I have absolutely no idea with what kind of further content to supply these pages, I have decided to make an entirely new blog. It's dedicated to all sorts of useful information I have found all over the internet. I will be updating it every single day with one picture, containing a statistic, infographic, a guide, tutorial, or anything else that could be considered useful in some way.

So, why don't you head over to http://usefuldaily.blogspot.com/ and check it out!

Damn You, Weather!!!

2011-04-13T22:47:00.000+03:00

That's 0 degrees C and it feels like -5 C.

Ok, I am majorly pissed right now. Everybody knows the weather has always been a bitch to us all the time but this… this is completely ridiculous. Let me tell you why.

Today, the 13th of April, started out cloudy, rather cold and windy. Around mid-day temperatures started rising to a point where it could have been considered warm. But as the day came to an end, it started to get very cold very fast. Normally I wouldn't care, because the weather has been like that pretty much the whole week but tonight I look through my window and guess what! IT’S FUCKING SNOWING!

And it’s not just a bunch of tiny snowflakes falling out of the sky. Oh no- everything is getting bombarded by huge chunks of white like there’s no tomorrow. It’s the middle of April and I live in a humid continental climatic region where shit like that has never happened during my lifetime and below zero temperatures during this time of the year definitely aren’t normal.

But today's snow was just the icing of the cake. I’m mad because the weather has been absolute shit for the last 5 months with the exception of a few sunny days and I’ve been eagerly waiting all this time to get off my lazy ass and finally do something productive outdoors. But I guess it’s just going to be more video games, internet and food for me from now on, since I don’t see the weather getting any better anytime soon.

It’s times like this I wish global warming actually existed and HAARP was actually a global weather control device.

Anyways, I’m done complaining. Here’s some rhythmic yodeling to make you feel better:

Light Painting

2011-04-10T18:18:00.000+03:00

Hi there! How are you all doing? I'm posting some light paining photos I made a while ago I decided you should take a look at. Of course, they're nothing too serious, since they're not exactly light paintings- just some random shakings of my light source. It's sort of a little experimenting I've done with exposure time, a dark room and a flashlight. Enjoy!

Mysterious Marine Sounds

2011-03-31T01:21:00.002+03:00

Today I woke up with three strange desires- to brush my teeth, to buy a Nintendo 3DS and to write the thing I’m going to write about now. And while I didn’t do the first two, I’m definitely going to tell you about what I found out about not long ago that I think is very intriguing- the strange, unidentified underwater sounds in the Pacific Ocean. The thing isn’t exactly news, to be honest but I was surprised I’m hearing about it for the first time ever.

All of the sounds (6 in total) were first heard somewhere around the 90’s, but what’s strange is that 4 of them were discovered in the same year- 1997. All of them are recorded by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). Also, have in mind that all of the recordings you’ll be hearing aren’t in real time but are 10x their original speed.

Bloop

Probably the most notorious of them all is the Bloop. With an estimated location somewhere near 50 degrees S; 100 degrees W and unknown origin, the sound was repeatedly recorded during summer, 1997 and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km! That’s louder than any animal known to man. Experts at the NOAA don’t believe it’s man-made and and is very unlikely to be a living creature. Probably Lovecraft fans can give us more detail on that.

Upsweep

Upsweep is roughly located at 54 S, 140 W and was first heard in 1991. The sound is loud enough to be recorded throughout the Pacific. It appears to be seasonal, generally reaching peaks in spring and fall. The overall source level has been declining since 1991 but the sounds can still be detected. While it’s said that it is highly unlikely for the source to be man-made or of biological origins, experts suggest that underwater volcanic activity may have caused Upsweep.

Slowdown

This one has got to be the creepiest of them all. I still remember when I first heard it. A million bricks have been shat that night. When it was first recorded in May 19, 1997 somewhere near 15 W, 115 S the sound was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on three sensors, at a range of nearly 2000 km. It was not heard of ever before or since. When the guys at NOAA first discovered it, they thought it was some kind of machinery that was making it so they consulted the US Navy to see if it was some kind of fancy military equipment being put to the test. However, the answer was a definite “No”, as they weren’t even aware of such a sound. After some research, a hypothesis has been suggested, claiming that Slowdown had been caused by a massive friction phenomenon, possibly involving glacier movements.

The three other unidentified sounds you can listen to are Julia, Whistle and Train. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find sufficient information on those, as they seem to be the least known about of all six.

Now, ironically, I‘m not a big mystery nut. I know people who can talk on for hours about UFOs, conspiracies, lights in the sky, ghosts, vampires and all other crap like that, but I’m not like that. Yet, for some reason those sounds have definitely grabbed my attention.

Feel free to let me know what you think about it in the comments.

Powdered Physics Simulator

2011-03-28T23:11:00.000+03:00

A fun java-based application, which simulates particle physics with different properties and the relations between them. There's no real goal to the game (if you can call it that) except to just pick from and experiment with the 33 different materials and additional features to either construct something that actually works or just get completely chaotic results (pictured above). The whole thing is extremely fun and and a perfect time killer for when you have nothing better to do. I remember wasting hours on the Powder Game when I first discovered it, even tho it didn't have as many stuff as it does now.

Go check it out HERE!

Duke Nukem Forever Delayed

2011-03-24T20:26:00.000+02:00

The question is: Are we surprised? Sure we've all gotten used to it and I mean, a month delay really is nothing compared to all those years of waiting but if Gearbox is going to become the next 3D Realms things are going to get scary. This game is like a freakin' curse! It could be a joke, tho. That is, if that joke hadn't stopped being funny about 12 years ago.

Chiptune

2011-03-21T22:56:00.000+02:00

To some it may sound ridiculous, others may find it's highly pitched tones, 8-bit samples and often fast tempo unfitting for their tastes. Those people don't know shit, because chiptune music is the most epic musical form ever conceived by man kind, the pinnacle of the science and understanding of the audible sounds. Don't believe me? Listen to this.

Or this.

Chiptune music is also often referred to as 8-bit videogame or Keygen music, because those are the two forms this genre has been made most popular trough. The latter is making it extremely hard to track down the creator of the tune (or any other information about it whatsoever), because keygen tracks are named only by the name of the software/game they're made for and the group that cracked it/made the keygen.

If you're interested, check out the Keygen Jukebox. It's got exactly 1480 tracks in it's collection right now and they're constantly making new entries. Have in mind tho, that there are minor exceptions where some of the music isn't exclusively chiptune. But those are only a few songs, so you have nothing to worry about.

Joy

2011-03-16T00:33:00.000+02:00

Wow, I actually made it to 200 followers! Thanks to all of my readers for supporting me and helping me get to where I am now.

One a side note, I wrote this very post with Live Writer, a free application for writing (as the name implies) blogs, that comes with the Windows Live package, along with other stuff. I just wanted to try it out, because I’ve had it for a long time, since I reinstalled my Windows last year. The program itself is OK, I guess. From what I’ve seen so far. It’s a basic word processor with tools for creating and editing blog entries. It doesn’t seen to offer a lot more than blogger’s editor, aside from the picture formatting tools, but at least now I can write and graphically preview posts even when my Internet connection is down.

And to test out the formatting features of Writer, I mentioned, above are two photos with different frame styles. I hope this works!

Incendia Tutorial

2011-03-14T01:18:00.000+02:00

So, finally I have gotten some time on my hands and I am able to write a relatively longer blog post this time. Again, I apologize to my readers for not updating so frequently as I used to last month.

OK, so, in this one I'll be showing to those interested in fractals how to quickly make and render one with Incendia. It this tutorial I'll pretty much be covering the basics and the mandatory steps without going into much detail into the extra features of the program. Tho, later on on, if I have the time and I've decided there's enough interest on the subject, I'll make another tutorial about them too.

So the first thing you should do is, obviously download and install the newest version of Incendia (the one I'm using) and start it up.

Upon doing so you should see the window pictured above. This is where you'll pick what kind of fractal you'll be rendering. What you'll want to do here is pick a fractal formula from the "Fractal Type" list (1) and then click "New Fractal" (2) which will randomize the shape. Repeat steps (1) and (2) until you get something you like.

By clicking on the display (3) and dragging the cursor you'll be able to rotate (left mouse button) or pan (right mouse button) the fractal. Zooming in and out is done by either the slider below of the scroll button on your mouse.

Next, go to the "Editors" tab (1) and click on "Edit" (2) and the on the "New" button (3). You'll see a whole bunch of stuff appear. Do not worry, as we'll use only the most important of them this time. Select the "Points" option (4) to see your fractal from the way you have set it to be. DO NOT TRY TO PAN OR ROTATE FROM HERE, as clicking and dragging do a completely different job here (which, again, won't be covered in this tutorial.).

Afterwards, explore and pick a baseshape from the list (5). This is the model that's going to be iterated, following your fractal's formula. By changing the value of the "Depth" slider (6) you choose how many times that shape will repeat itself. If you don't have a very powerful computer and/or enough time for rendering, I suggest keeping it below 10. When you're done it is very important to set the "Panels" option back to "Vector".

Now, go to the "Render" tab and click on the "Preview" button below the display (sorry, no number here). You will see a preview of your fractal, hence the name, with the applied default textures. Both the ambient lighting and diffuse reflection (1) have the same set of materials so feel free to play around with them until you find the perfect match for your 3D fractal.

After you're done head over to the "Camera" tab. Not much to do here, except change the light direction (1) and and the resolution and anti-aliasing of the final image you're going to export. As, you can see, I personally prefer to work with the highest possible and I suggest you do that too, because it doesn't affect the render time significantly. Now you can finally hit "Render" and watch the magic happen, as a fractal is being born.

After some time, it you've decided it's good enough, go back to the "Render" tab and export the result as an image file by either picking "Save Bitmap" or "Save PNG" (I personally prefer bitmap). Congratulations!!! You have just made your first fractal! Here is mine:

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it and goodnight!

null

2011-03-12T14:07:00.000+02:00

Video Pick #3

2011-03-09T23:34:00.001+02:00

Have you ever seen or heard something so wonderful and astonishing, that you couldn't help but think to yourself: "Man, the person behind this thing must be a genius!"? Don't answer, because this is exactly the case with Brad Neely- a comic artist, who has made some of the best works in cartoon history. At first glance, his drawings might look somewhat crude and even ugly, but once you see the ways of his work, you realize how lucky we all are to be blessed with his creations. Just take a look at this shit right here:

I bet your life is changed forever now. What are you waiting for? Go and watch all his other stuff, now!

Wallpaper #2

2011-03-06T23:00:00.000+02:00

Decided to make another wallpaper from a photo I took some days ago for you widescreen users out there. It's the same resolution as the previous one- 1920x1200. Enjoy!

The Most Disliked Video in All of Youtube

2011-03-04T01:05:00.000+02:00

Congratulations to all the haters out there for reaching and going beyond the one million dislikes milestone, thus officially making Justin Bieber's "Baby" video the most despised thing in all of Youtube. Now, as everyone know this person is going to go down in history as the most hated thing in this generation (and possibly the entire history of mankind, right next to Herr Hitler himself), they can all die happily, knowing they did something significant during ther existence.

I find the whole JB hating fad both surprising and hilarious. Personally, I don't really hate him. Sure, he's an annoying little jerk with a horrible haircut, female voice and no actual talent or skills, who will never go through puberty, but he's so insignificant to me, I just can't bother experiencing any kind of emotion towards him (let alone hatred). Why? Because there were, are and will always be thousands of little douche bags just like him that nobody cares about for some reason that I've found best to ignore than waste time ranting on how much they suck.

Better Than Facebook Games

2011-03-01T00:16:00.000+02:00

So, I've recently discovered this site called Lumosity. It's perfect for when you feel like killing time, because what it basically is is a collection of small brain training flash games. Some of them can be very addicting once you get the hang of it.

The coolest thing about Luminosity is that it keeps a personalized track of your progress and plots a stats graph for every time you play and divides the score in 5 categories: speed, memory, attention and problem solving. Your score is calculated in BPI (Brain Performance Index) Lumosity points, which are displayed on your account page for everybody too see and envy of your mental capacities.

You can enroll in various courses, which require you to do certain exercises daily for a given period of time or just play whichever games you like and try to beat your best score.

So, if you're interested just make an account and try a course. Oh yeah, it's got a friends list feature too and if you want to, you can add me.

A Wallpaper

2011-02-26T00:53:00.001+02:00

I know it's nothing special but I wanted to try making at least one of the stuff I edit in Photoshop in a proper resolution, suitable for a desktop wallpaper.

At 1920 x 1200 pixels, it's something widescreen owners may enjoy, unlike me, ironically. I'm still using a shitty old low-res square monitor, which flickers horribly when gray (a very common color in website backgrounds, including this blog) is dominating the screen and is incapable of displaying colors properly. So yeah, I'm in desperate need of buying a new one very soon.

Tired

2011-02-22T22:57:00.000+02:00

I've been so busy with a few exams and a bunch of other work in the last couple of days, I can barely think properly, let alone write and compose an entire decent blog post. So, sorry if I can't update on a regular basis, even tho I'll try.

Well, I guess I'll try to make this post a little less pointless than it already is with some more ridiculous rip-offs of famous products and brands.

Folding @ Home

2011-02-20T00:57:00.001+02:00

First of all, I am sorry that I've rather inactive in blogging for a while, but, as I said a few posts ago, I am quite busy lately and I don't really even have the time to turn on my computer.

Today I shall write a post mostly about the marvels of modern science and technology, or more importantly- distributed computing (abbreviated DC) and it's probably most successful and famous project- Folding@Home (F@H for short). Since it's start in 2001 F@H now uses the spare CPU cycles of thousands of idling home computers to simulate the folding process of proteins in the human body and try to discover the causes for illnesses such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and many types of Cancers. What this means is you can contribute to the development of modern medical science by simply running a program on your PC.

What is protein folding, you ask? Well, proteins are one of the types of organic matter that build up everything in our bodies. Once they are synthesized by the ribosomes in our cells, proteins fold themselves incredibly quickly before they can carry out their designated functions. If all is done properly, everyone is happy.

Sometimes, tho, errors can occur during this process and those can cause the diseases mentioned above. To find out what exactly makes those errors happen, scientists needed to know more about the folding process in detail. Because folding is an incredibly complex thing, not even a modern supercomputer can't cope with simulating it in an efficient matter of time. So a bunch of people got together in the Stanford University and made a piece software called Folding @ Home and made it available for download to the entire world.

Now, more that ten years later, almost 400 000 CPUs (as you can see by the graph on the right) are actively folding proteins for the further progress of medical science. That's hundreds of times faster than if the project was granted exclusive access to the most powerful supercomputer!

To wider the range of the project and make it even more efficient, F@H has had a client released for every OS out there, including the Sony PS3. Besides those, there are also GPU clients (pictured above) for users with more powerful graphic cards. As you can see, the coolest thing about it is that you can view the folding process in real time.

Here's how it basically works- you download the proper client, enter your nickname, the program downloads a protein from their servers. Then your computer starts working on the unit, which can take from 2 to 10 hours. If it's done before the deadline, the finished unit is then sent back to Stanford and the data is compared to 2 more copies of the same protein calculated by different computers (in case of errors due to a faulty CPU). If everything is OK you get points for the work well done and your rank amongst everyone else who folds goes up.

Interested? You can download the proper client for your OS from here. Or, if you own a high-end graphics card (Nvidia with CUDA supportm for example), download the GPU client from here. If you own a Sony PS3, you need to have the most up-to-date firmware version and then download the optional Life with PlayStation software, which automatically starts to fold every time you run it.

Video Pick #2

2011-02-15T22:25:00.000+02:00

This is one of those things you discover, most of the times by accident, that change your life forever. It is so amazing that I just felt the urge to share it with as many people as I could. You've probably seen trippy, psychedelic animations on Youtube before, but nothing else can be compared to "Love & Theft" by Film Bilder- a German animation studio that has been around for 20 years now. The video itself has been nominated and has won tons of awards at many festivals throughout the years.

Photoshop Is Game To You?

2011-02-13T18:36:00.000+02:00

Yes, it is. It's like Sim City, only without the natural disasters. In this particular blog post I show you photographs, which have gone trough slightly more severe digital manipulation, unlike some of my older posts where it is rather lacking. As you can see (those of you, who are familiar with the program itself), adjustment layers and I are good friends. Other than that filters and some of the tools come useful in the process.

Crysis 2 LEAKED!!!

2011-02-12T14:01:00.000+02:00

News has come that yesterday, 11.2.2011, the beta version of the highly anticipated game, Crysis 2 has been leaked by an unknown source and is now being hosted on all major torrent sites. Only the PC version, which was supposed to officially come out on the 22nd of March, this year, is known to have been leaked.

I seriously have no idea how EA Games are going to react to this but they sure won't be happy. Law suits and crucial game game changes with delayed release dates aren't out of the question in this case. We'll just wait and see how things turn out.

Personally, I'll just be patient for Crysis 2 to officially come out so I can play the finished, bug-free product.

Ripoff Masterpieces

2011-02-12T03:07:00.001+02:00

We all know very well by now that everything is bound to be ripped off, whether it's material or work of fiction, popular or unknown. From toys to electronics, famous brands to iconic figures and names. Literally everything. Here are some images of products, in the final frontiers of ridiculousness.

"I'm the operator with my pocket calculator."

"Once own, nothing can instead."-
quote of the century!

This is what the new WoW expansion might look like.

Anniversary Time!

2011-02-10T20:00:00.001+02:00

Holy Jesus! I can't believe I actually got one hundred follows! Honestly, I didn't think I could reach even 10, but instead I got ten times more than that! That news certainly made mt day. I'd like to thank every single one of you who has followed me and encouraged me to post more. Next stop- 500.

However, I have buried myself in quite some work recently, which means that frequent blog updates are not guaranteed. I've posted daily so far, but unfortunately, I'm afraid I won't be able to allow myself such a luxury in the upcoming week or two. But worry not, for I am going back to the previous tempo after I've finished with all the work.

So anyways, have a nice remaining week and here's another picture of a cat.

Life in Macro

2011-02-09T21:55:00.000+02:00

I just decided to dump some of my macro photos.

If anyone of you can help me identify the bugs and the type of moss in the second picture, that would be great.

The New Generation

2011-02-08T18:54:00.000+02:00

Whether you like it or not, the next generation of video game consoles is coming. This fact became clear with the announcement of the 3DS- Nintendo's new entry to it's portfolio of portable gaming devices. Then, it wasn't long for Sony, after much leaks and speculations, to reveal their own next-gen handheld- the Next Generation Portable (or NGP for short). Keeping in mind that it has not been a lot of time since the two devices' announcements, only general technical info and a list of launch titles (amongst which there are some quite interesting stuff) have been officially released.

The NGP

Visually, the Sony NGP's design doesn't differ much from the original one's. However there's a number of changes and most importantly- tasty, tasty new stuff. The first thing you have probably noticed are the not one but, count them, two analog sticks on the front- yes, all the prayers of the players have finally been answered! But it doesn't stop here. The console's much bigger than the old PSP's 5 inch 960x544 OLED screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio is going to be multi-touch sensitive, opening a vast number of control possibilities. Another thing is, as you can see, that there are no buttons beneath the screen but instead, the volume buttons are now on top, the PS button is on the left-hand side of the devise and the start and select ones are on the right, respectively. An interesting control feature are the two capacitive multi-touch pads on the back of the NGP. I have no idea how they're going to be used or even utilized in the games themselves but if done properly, I'm sure it'll be awesome. The handheld will also be fully motion sensitive with a three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer and a three-axis electronic compass.

The processing power of the NGP is simply mind-blowing for a portable device. There are even rumors going around the net that it's Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and Quad-core PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU are going to be capable of producing PS3-like visuals! Talk about sheer computing might! Other hardware includes options for WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G mobile network connectivity, a GPS and one camera on each side with resolutions not yet known.

The list of games announced so far looks very exciting. Uncharted, LBP, Resistance, Wipeout, Metal Gear Solid and Call of Duty are just a few of the titles, going to be playable on Sony's newest console. An interesting thing is that no UMDs or anything disc-based will be used but instead, they're going for cartridges, which is great news for two very important reasons: faster load times and longer battery life. The release date and price tag is unknown but I tell you, all that hardware WON'T be cheap.

The 3DS
Just like Sony, Nintendo have decided not to alter the visual design of the NDS when making the 3DS.
The special thing about it is that it's going be able to display 3D images on it's top screen, hence the name, without the need of wearing any glasses. On the right-hand side there is a slider for adjusting the visual depth of the screen or completely turning the 3D feature off. This handheld gets a +1 analog stick too, a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis gyroscope for motion controls.

The top screen is a 3.5 inch with an effective resolution of 400x280 while the lower one is a 3 inch 320x240 and is touch sensitive but whether it's multi-touch or not is not certain yet. One frontal and two rear cameras (for 3D photos and videos) will be placed on the unit. The DMP PICA 200 GPU is said to be capable of graphics, even better than the Sony PSP.

Streen Fighter 3D, Kid Icarus, Dead or Alive: Dimensions and 3D reworks of old Nintendo classics such as Legend of Zelda:OOC and Super Mario Land are some of the promising titles announced.
The Nintendo 3DS is scheduled to be released in the US on the 27th of March at $250.

Conclusion:
Personally, I am very excited for both handhelds and I think that they have a lot to offer to us in the upcoming years. If I had the money I'd definitely get both but since I don't I'll just wait and see how things develop (and for the prices to drop in the meantime) and then get one of them, tho I'm kinda leaning towards the NGP for now. There are just slightly more games I find worthwhile for it than the 3DS and I've spent countless hours on my PSP, while barely touching my NDS, which eventually got sold.

Another thing that makes me uncertain about Nintendo's console is the 3D screen itself. I've seen glassless 3D before and it's main disadvantage is it's very limited viewing angle, where you have to stare from one specific spot, otherwise it gets blurry and simply unwatchable.

Despite my own views, the 3DS is probably going to dominate the market again for three main reasons: the lower price tag, it's general appeal to the casual community and the pre-generated popularity from it's predecessor. But yet again, I might be wrong.

So which one do YOU think looks more promising? Which would you buy and why? Please feel free to share your thoughts!

The Sky

2011-02-06T14:49:00.002+02:00

In case you don't get to see it too often, here are some photographs of the goddamn sky. Enjoy!

This one counts, right?

The last two suck, I know.

Of Games and Great Anticipation

2011-02-05T17:00:00.192+02:00

Last year has left us with some really awesome worthwhile games such as Red Dead: Redemption, Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Rising 2 and Super Meat Boy. However, the list was relatively small in quantity in comparison with previous years. Looking at the list of this year's upcoming games, 2011 is looking quite promising, to say the least, but as it is with games (and pretty much else for that matter), any given title can turn out to be a huge disappointment in the moment it is released.
So, with no further ado, here's my list of my top 5 anticipated games of the year.

1. Portal 2

The first game was love at first sight for me. I just simply loved every single aspect of it, especially the dark humor. That is, before it got brutally murdered by being overused by everyone and their grandmothers on the Internet to the point where mentioning the word "cake" in the wrong time, at the wrong place might get you punched in the face.

So enough about that, Portal 2 was announced around April last year with the most mindfuckingly awesome ARG ever. According to most recent info, it is going to be released on April 18, this year for the PC, Mac, Xbox 360 AND PS3, which is also getting a promised Steam support.
Unlike it's predecessor, Portal 2 is going to be a full-length game with tons of more gameplay features such as the propultion and repultion gels, the excursion funnel and a thermal discouragement beam (a.k.a.- LASERS!). The game is also going to have a multiplayer co-op mode, requiring players to team up with each other in order to conquer various obstacles in specially designed chambers.

Portal 2 is going to take place many years after the events in the first Portal when the Aperture Science facility is slowly decaying and lush vegetation can be seen all over the place. GlaDOS has now awaken from her long sleep only to meet her new human friend, about who there is not much info yet and all we know is that she is NOT going to be Chell from the first game.
Besides longer gameplay and a whole new bunch of stuff, there will be new characters and according to Valve, the test chambers are going to be a lot more challenging.
And are we in for another epic ending with proper musical accompaniment? Only time will tell.

2. Duke Nukem Forever

Hail to the king, baby! After 14 long years of empty promises, fake trailers and screenshots and god knows how many dollars of budget money wasted on hookers and cocaine, we can finally safely state that this long awaited sequel is going to be released this very year. May 3, to be precise, for PC, Xbox and PS3. What makes me so sure that this time it's legit? Because it's not in the hands of the lazy-ass liars of 3D Realms anymore. Gearbox software is in charge of development now and they've had Borderlands, which was an awesome game.

Anyways, let's face it- we all know that it is almost certain that this is going to be a mediocre grayscale FPS, no other than the crap that is released dozens of times every single year. But deep down in our hearts we have that little flame of hope that this decade and a half of waiting might actually be completely worth it. Again, only time can tell.

3. Mass Effect 3
I am not a big fan of RPGs and little are those which don't bore me but Mass Effect 2's excellent storytelling, sci-fi done right and action elements made it one of my favourite games of all time. In this final installment of the trilogy capt. Shepard's epic adventure will finally come to an end. That is, if Bioware doesn't decide to milk the franchise by spewing a million expansions and spin-offs but that is not our concern for now.

Not a lot of info is revealed about the game for now, besides that it is going to be released sometime during Q4 of 2011 and that it's going to be on all 3 major platforms.

4. Crysis 2

This time not a PC exclusive but a multiplat, Crysis 2 will be the first game ever to feature the new CryEngline 3. Because of that a lot is expected from the game itself in therms of graphics and physics engine capabilities.

Crysis 2 will take place in deserted New York City in the year 2023. Aliens have somehow made their way from the island to the rest of the world. You play as Nomad- the protagonist from the first game, with an improved nanosuit in your quest to kill all the bad guys. By now only one new suit ability is revealed- a special tactical vision mode to display detailed info about your surroundings. But this is just a mere fraction of the new features and weapons that are expected to be included upon the final release of the game.

Crysis 2's release date was announced to be on the 22 of this very March.

5. The Last Guardian
Although this is Team ICO's third game, the previous two being Ico and Shadow of the Colossus (both for the PS2), have been, simply put, masterpieces and I loved every single minute of them. The atmosphere, the thing I most cherish in a game, was amazingly done in way that made you feel you were literally in another world.

The Last Guardian (a PS3 exclusive) is going to have a similar to it's predecessors environment (will probably in the same fictional universe) tells a story of a young boy, finding and unleashing a huge best, eventually becoming friends with him. According to videos the gameplay will center around controlling the strange creature, tho not directly but trough the boy's actions in order to solve different puzzles throughout the game.

So far, little information has been revealed but I'm having high hopes about it. The Last Guardian is to be released, like ME3, some time in the fourth quarter of this year.

More 3D Fractals

2011-02-04T18:31:00.002+02:00

Again, I'm uploading fractals. Unfortunately, because of techical reasons, I won't be able to show everything I meant to share. It seems the server decided to hate one of the pictures and simply gives me a "server rejected" message. I'll try to investigate the cause but if any of you knows anything about why an image would not be allowed to be uploaded, feel free to share the info.

Usually, after I'm done with rendering and exporting, I edit the image in Photoshop, adjusting various settings and playing around with the sliders and variables. The software's different types of adjustment layers makes it much easier to experiment on multiple levels, without the fear of having to start all over again of a serious mistake is made.

As you can see with these two, a hue/saturation and a color balance layers can make a huge difference.

The top one didn't turn out to be as good, because it needed to be blurred in order to make the unrendered parts less visible, since it was exported at an earlier rendering stage.

More sharpness, warmer and more vibrant colors and the fact that it's completely rendered, made this second edit of the fractal much more eye-pleasing than the first one.

This last one is pretty lame but I'm uploading it anyways.

All of the above were made using Incendia 1.3. If you're interested, you can check out it's official site here.

HDR Photos

2011-02-04T01:12:00.003+02:00

As I mentioned in my very first post, I am a photography enthusiast. Amateur, of course. I like to experiment and try out new shit.

HDR, for example, is something I wanted to try out the first time I found out about it. The problem is, many of my first tries resulted in complete and total failure. That is because My DSLR camera doesn't have a bracketing feature (the ability to make multiple shots, each with different aperture/shutter speed values) and a proper HDR merge in Photoshop requires no camera movement whatsoever. So I needed either a tripod or a steady flat surface to place the camera on and extra caution when messing with the settings to alter the exposure.

This one is far from perfect but I'd call it my first successful one. Camera was simply placed on the desk with it's lens lifted up by a stack of books to get a proper angle. Took me only 4 shots to merge.

For this time I used a steady tripod and was made with, I think, 7 shots. Considering it's a night photograph, the most exposed picture had a time value of more than 30 second, as I tried too keep the ISO low.

Both photos were taken with the Canon EOS 550D and the single lens which comes with the camera- a 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 EFS with AF and an image stabilizer.

Why the Hell Didn't This Get Viral?

2011-02-03T12:09:00.001+02:00

This video was uploaded 2 years ago and it only has a little above 5000 views, yet someone uploads a video of a man falling off a bike and it instantly gets a million views. Why's that you ask? Because the losers, who define what's viral content (famous vbloggers), are too busy trying to be funny and jump-cutting, while commenting on something that we've seen a hundred times before.

So, enough bitching- here's the video.

It's a grown man, who obviously has never heard of the sport called hockey and is mad, because he can't watch his favorite cartoons. Notice how he completely forgets about the problem the second the cartoon is on.

Some Fractals

2011-02-02T23:16:00.003+02:00

Well, I guess it's time for my first actual post, that is about something.
I am a fan of fractals and fractal art and I find the whole science behind it completely stunning!

If you don't know what fractals are you can always check good old Wikipedia. If even after the article you still have no idea what they are, they're basically a geometric shape that's iterated (repeated) lots and lots of times while following a certain set of rules (or rather a mathematical formula). Sorry, but that's the simplest (and not very precise) explanation I could come up with.
The amazing thing about fractals is that they're LITERALLY infinite. Every time you zoom a portion of a fractal you keep revealing more and more details and the only thing, which limits you to do that zooming for all eternity are the technical limits of the machine, rendering the fractal.

The ones I'm about to show you below are actually 3D fractals. They're slightly different than conventional 2D ones (besides the fact that they're three-dimensional) and are "modeled" using different techniques but can look just as awesome, nonetheless.

Sometimes I like to play around with fractal software and experiment with different formulas and settings. If I like the result I render it and save it on my HDD. Here are some of my stuff:

The ones below are not completely rendered, because they're too complex and require waay too much time to fully complete and my machine isn't exactly a supercomputer, you know.

^This one for example, took more than 16 hours to get to THIS state. As you can see by the ground and some of the "towers" this is far from being completely rendered but I saved it anyways.

The software I used to make these 3D fractals is Incendia 1.3 (only the second one was made with the newest version-1.4) and it's a small, freeware program you can download from here.

Numerus Unus

2011-02-02T21:27:00.001+02:00

So, I've just created this blog and this is officially my first blog post ever.
I am completely new to this whole blogging thing but I will try to update this page as frequent as possible with all sorts of information and images. Maybe I'll even do some tutorials or even some reviews, who knows.
I realize blogging is not something to be taken for granted, as it is an activity, requiring lots of responsibility and effort.

I am interested in computers, photography and most sciences, so I'll try to keep the content of my blog within these subjects.

With no further ado, here's a picture of a cat.