The photo that I refered to in a previous post has now been proved as a fake, as I had implied. The artist responsible owned up and showed exactly how he photoshoped the creation. I am sure he is currently feeling pretty smug about all the hype he created.
You can watch the video here in QuickTime format.
27.Feb.06 
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hy•poc•ri•sy
(noun)
the practice of claiming to have moral
standards or beliefs to which one’s
own behaviour does not conform;
When discussing the current political situations at home or abroad, I have been rather outspoken recently in our social circles. Subjects such as Global Warming, our dependence on fossil fuels and the continuing Middle East debacle are always conversed with much enthusiasm on my part because I strongly believe we are currently walking blindly into some of the darkest times in the last fifty years.
The recent cartoon argument between the Western Media and Muslim culture has just highlighted the growing problem that the so called ‘free world’ is having to face. Although it was obviously a bad idea to publish such material, the original argument of what was really wrong with publishing the material was completely lost and both sides used it to bolster their political arguments against the other. What was most worrying is that no-one seemed to notice the transition from a simple question of good taste to all out cultural war. (more…)
26.Feb.06 Uncategorized Comments (3)
It is hard to believe this story. On February 14th 2006, the US Patent Office granted Neil Balthaser from San Fransicosco the patent for “Methods, systems, and processes for the design and creation of rich-media applications via the internet”.
What this means is that any rich internet application created in the United States that use AJAX, Javascript, Flash or Flex is subject to a licence fee that must be paid to Balthaser Online Incorporated. This has worried a great number of businesses across America and luckily the patent is now being challenged in court as it is obvious that Mr. Neil Balthaser did not design and develop the concepts for RIA’s. (more…)
25.Feb.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
There have been some major rumours circulating around the Apple rumour sites for those that haven’t got their fingers firmly on the pulse. Here is a brief overview of what’s being talked about. (more…)
24.Feb.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
Tauquil.com has posted a series of quicktime movies mixing together and audio track of Bill Gates demonstrating Windows Vista at the CES show recently, with a video track of Apple’s Tiger OS X.
It shows very clearly how much Microsoft have once again ripped off Apple’s OS X. Luckily, Apple are keeping very quiet about Leopard (OS X 10.5) so there will still be a few exclusive features us Mac users can enjoy.
Take a look here!
22.Feb.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
I would like to extend my congratulations to Lord David Puttnam for the awarding of his honorary fellowship into BAFTA. David Puttnam was a british film producer until eight years ago when he decided to leave the film industry. His decision was fuelled by his belief that the movie industry would not be able to produce the kind of films that educate, inform and emote whilst still maintaining an entertaining narrative.
During his career as a producer, spanning over 30 years, David Puttnam has helped develop and deliver a resounding portfolio of films; Memphis Belle; The Mission; Bugsy Malone; The Killing Fields; Local Hero; and Chariots Of Fire to name but a few. He is widely praised as the man who helped revive British cinema opening the doors for production companies such as FilmFour and Working Title.
Since leaving the film industry, David Puttnam has helped set up SkillSet, a training and advice service for anyone with aspirations of working in the film industry - albeit mainly behind the camera. He was also the Chairman of the National Film & Television School in Beaconsfield for a number of years before becoming the Chairman of UNICEF UK in 2002.
During the acceptence speech he gave on Sunday 19th January, 2006, at the BAFTA ceremony in London, he praised the calibre of the films nominated for awards this year - giving a huge nod to George Clooney and associates for his film, Good Night and Good Luck. The BAFTA voters overlooked George Clooney’s offering in many of the categories, unfairly in many peoples opinion, including David’s obviously.
So what has this got to do with me and why do I feel I can congratulate Lord Puttnam so publically. Well, quite simply because I admire his work for the industry and his previous films, but most of all because I met David Puttnam eight years ago just as he was retiring from the industry. He was presenting myself and three friends with two awards from the Young Engineers for Britain committee in 1998. At that time I didn’t know I wanted to be a film maker, but hearing David talk to me about his experience in the industry was so inspirational that I re-evaluated my goals at the time and decided to study visual effects.
21.Feb.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
Adobe are about to release Adobe Flex 2.0 to the world. Flex, which Macromedia have been developing since version 1.0, is a new tool for developing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that run using the Adobe Flash Platform.
At the same time, Adobe will release the Adobe Flash Player 8.5 with support for ActionScript 3.0. ActionScript 3.0 finally brings ActionScript into the fully fledged world of Object-Orientated Programming.
I have been developing a number of small private test projects in Flex for the past four months and will be fully ready to adopt Flex 2.0 when it is released. I look forward to demonstrating the first of my Flex applications upon its arrival.
For more information about Adobe Flex, and to download a BETA trial version of the builder, go here.
20.Feb.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
Well, I was scared! No, I was petrified - but I have just moved the development of PDnH from Dreamweaver and Nedit, which have served me very well, into Eclipse the open source Java-based IDE (Integrated Development Environment). (more…)
19.Feb.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
There is a piece of malware that is currently propagating itself using the Apple iChat client. This software will present itself as an attached file sent from a contact in iChat. There is also a chance that some malicious person could send you the file as an e-mail attachment or you could download the file from a filesharing network.
The file will appear as “latestpics.gz”. The file will then present itself as on your desktop as :
Only if you uncompress this file will the malware begin its work. To find out what it does and which files it effects, go here.
Although there has been a lot of debate about the classification of this malicious file, this is not a virus because it requires the user to act before it can begin its script. However, it does highlight the fact that on any operating system, security is always at risk. Here are my tips for Mac OS X users to reduce the risk of attack.
For everyday use, create a new user in System Preferences > Accounts ensuring you don’t tick the “Allow user to administer computer” box. This will create a standard user that will not be allowed super privilages that in the wrong hands could do serious damage.
If you follow those simple rules, your Mac environment should remain as safe as we Mac users have become accustomed to.
17.Feb.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
Well, as you will probably be aware of by now, PDnH 0.1.x has been a success. Polaris Digital successfully launched using PDnH 0.1.2 and since then I have silently been releasing revisions on a weekly basis (currently at 0.1.8). So as you’ll probably have figured out, 0.2 is just around the corner and this is when PDnH will go public, with help from our friends at Source Forge.
PDnH 0.2 will bring a few new additional features that have already been mentioned, including Podcasting (inc. video) support, RSS feeds and more. Most of which have already been tested on polaris-digital.com already. The biggest change in 0.2 is that fact that PDnH is now completely object orientated, which should make it easier for all you budding developers out there to get your teeth into. For example, each rendered page is now an object; as is each feed, podcast and email.
To celebrate the advances of PDnH, I will be launch a newly revised version of the main Polaris Digital site. Although I have loved the current one, and it has only had a very short lifespan, unfortunately the new leaner, meaner and most importantly, cleaner, PDnH means the database has to be re-gigged a little and whilst I am doing that, I thought I’d probably have a bash at cleaning up the CSS2 as well.
Result? Well you’ll just have to come back and see shortly! 
Oh and I’ll be launching another web site along side Polaris Digital using PDnH 0.2 as well, more to follow…
16.Feb.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
