We went to a Halloween party in Detroit last night! This is Mike and I all dressed up to go out. We also saw a concert at the State Theater the night before - Crossfade opened for Buckcherry! We were front row, baby... I got beer splashed all over my hair by a guy in a Jesus costume but we rocked on and didn't suffer much hearing loss. Oh yeah, and "happy birthday" to the guy who was standing by us who was surrounded by beautiful womens. Ya'll made being crammed into a tight space a little more enjoyable.

On a side note, if you have never seen Rivera's Detroit Industry up close, you are truly missing out. It must be seen in person to be fully appreciated because it truly is overwhelming. Rivera even considered it the most successful work of his career! Yeah, baby! Just one more reason Detroit rocks!

Here's a little something I'm working on... I think it should be ready to go by the end of this week. I just have a little more content I want to put up but you all get a geek-sneak-peak!

Introducing Librarian Chick, a wiki that organizes a large collection of links to free educational resources and reference sites for those with big brains and small pocketbooks. It's for students, educators and anyone else who's hip to learning.

So far there are over 200 resources linked, but by the end of the week, I hope to have over 250 and like FOSSwiki, it will just keep growing. There are free lessons, lectures, ebooks, and audiobooks you can download from prestigious schools and libraries, test preparation sites, reference sites, calculators, information about college loans and more.

If you like it, please feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed so you can keep updated on new content. Also, it would be totally cool if you could help spread the word by adding it to your Simpy, fUrl, del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, SU, or whatever it is you use.


Update: Just added a nifty little search tool thanks to Google. Search for FREE books online! Get results from literally dozens of the biggest and most complete libraries that host free resources! This will be a huge help to anyone looking for books by title or by a specific author... much easier than scanning each individual book site listed on Librarian Chick.

I had loads of fun with this site that lets you create faces using a number of presets that you can customize by altering their placement, size, opacity, etc. You can even see some of the faces others have created and saved. Check it out...Ultimate Flash Face

If the industry doesn't trust you, why should you trust them?

"Two men look out through the same bars : One sees the mud, and one sees the stars." - Frederick Langbridge, A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts

If you’ve placed second in a writing contest, will you jump for joy and push for better results the next time or will you be discouraged and find an excuse not to join again?

In life, you are always filled with choices. You may opt to have a pessimist’s view and live a self - defeated life or you may decide to take the optimist’s route and take a challenging and fulfilling life.

So why nurture an optimist’s point of view? And why now?   more »

Michael Barnsley, a researcher and entrepreneur in fractal compression, has written the successor to Fractals Everywhere. The first edition of the book SuperFractals was published last month. The following is a quote from the editorial review on Amazon

"Superfractals is the long-awaited successor to Fractals Everywhere, in which the power and beauty of Iterated Function Systems were introduced and applied to producing startling and original images that reflect complex structures found for example in nature. This provoked the question of whether there is a deeper connection between topology, geometry, IFS and codes on the one hand and biology, DNA and protein development on the other. Now, 20 years later, Barnsley brings the story up to date by explaining how IFS have developed in order to address this issue. New ideas such as fractal tops and superIFS are introduced, and the classical deterministic approach is combined with probabilistic ideas to produce new mathematics and algorithms that open a whole theory that could have applications in computer graphics, bioinformatics, economics, signal processing and beyond. For the first time these ideas are explained in book form, and illustrated with breathtaking pictures."

Check it out, this is one book I look forward to reading!

This video is taking the blogosphere by storm. I'm jumping on the bandwagon, though I discovered this video back when it only had a couple hundred views. Want to start a movement?



Free-hug man speaks out

Amazing how one person's great idea has touched so many people's lives. Next time someone asks me how one person can make an impact on the world around them, I will tell them that making an impact is inevitable. What kind of impact is made depends on each of us as individuals. Videos like this help me to believe there is hope for humanity yet. Spread the love.

The American Civil Liberties Union is mad as hell. President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law and the ACLU called the new law one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history.

"With his signature, President Bush enacts a law that is both unconstitutional and un-American. This president will be remembered as the one who undercut the hallmark of habeas in the name of the war on terror. Nothing separates America more from our enemies than our commitment to fairness and the rule of law, but the bill signed today is an historic break because it turns Guantánamo Bay and other U.S. facilities into legal no-man's-lands.

"The president can now - with the approval of Congress - indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions. Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act." - Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director

Who watches the watchers? What liberties are you willing to give up in order for government officials, who authorized or ordered illegal acts of torture and abuse over the past 9 years, to save face?

ACLU Letter to the Senate Strongly Urging Opposition to S. 3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006

BTW, you can buy that cool mug from City Dweller here.

I was invited by Cris Orfescu to participate in this contest and thought it was an interesting idea. From the site: "NanoArt is a new art form where micro/nanosculptures created by artists/scientists through chemical/physical processes and/or natural micro/nanostructures are visualized with powerful research tools like Scanning Electron Microscopes. The monochromatic electron microscope images are processed further to create a piece of art that can be showcased for a large audience to educate the public with creative images that are appealing and acceptable." www.nanoart21.org

The contest is open to all artists. A high resolution image will be provided and the artist will have to alter it in any artistic way they choose. Artists can also create their own image as long as it visualizes micro or nano structures.

The first 10 winners will be exhibited on nanoart21.org site for one full year. These works will be for sale on nanoart21.org site. The artists are welcome to sell their works on other venues. However, if the sale is generated through nanoart21.org, the artist will receive 65% and nanoart21.org will retain 35% of the sale price. Additionally, Nanoart21.org will print and ship the artwork to customers.

More on Nanotechnology:

Nanotech on YouTube
Wikipedia
Nanotechnology Now

I've decided to temporarily open the Special Content folder to all visitors.

This folder contains animated images, some popular works, a print, and some previews of a couple dragons in the works. Many of the files are large and may take some time to download so please be patient, especially with the animated gifs. They are worth taking a look at.

I hope you'll enjoy this content that was previously only accessible to subscribers. I'd prefer to keep it available to all so long as hotlinking and theft do not become an issue again.

Introducing FOSSwiki, a list of over 250 Freeware and Open Source Software programs. Every program listed is spyware, adware, trojan and virus free. These programs were all hand picked for their excellence, some received high ratings when I reviewed them for Tucows and others were recommended to me.

I've been working on this project for a while now because I needed a place to keep track of all the software I recommend to my friends and family. Finally, the list has filled out enough that I think others will be able to benefit from this resource. I hope to keep it updated regularly as I often come across some really cool freebies. You can subscribe to the RSS feed to find out when new software has been added to the list.

Enjoy!

Weeee! I always loved this game! Thanks Google!

Heh, Weird Al, you'll always have a special place in my heart. Live forever. Please.

Don Casteel won a First Prize award of $5,000 from the Sun Grid Cool Apps Developer Contest for his 3D Fractal Rendering project. The application assists in the creation, rendering, and animation of IFS fractals in full 3D as volumetric density fields.

It was insipred by Apophysis and ElectricSheep, written in 100% pure Java - J3D, developed in NetBeans with the ComputeServer module and rendered on the SunGrid computeServer. You'll want to check out the animated render to get an idea of what the program can do... amazing! Congrats on winning the 5K, Don!