Category: Cool Stuff

Handy software tool from Secunia

In beta test right now, the Personal Software Inspector from security vendor Secunia inspects your installed software and tells you if it is up-to-date, insecure, or at the end of its life.

Test the Secunia PSI (BETA) Technology Preview, an upcoming addition to the Secunia Software Inspector series, based on the proven Secunia File Signatures Technology.

The Secunia PSI detects installed software and categorises your software as either Insecure, End-of-Life, or Up-To-Date. Effectively enabling you to focus your attention on software installations where more secure versions are available from the vendors.

Needless to say, we are very excited about this new free service for the Secunia security community. We appreciate all feedback, thoughts, and ideas that you wish to share with us.

On the security side, Secunia is a good company, so I expect this tool will be good, too. As already noted, its currently in beta, but the final release will still be free for personal use. For more details on the tool, hit the above shortcut or look at the more detailed software information page.

[tags]Secunia, Personal Software Inspector, PSI, Security tools, Software checker[/tags]

Fan as hair dryer

The Modern Mechanix blog shows us that way back in 1924, the June issue of Popular Mechanics ran this article on using a fan attachment to make a hair dryer as an alternative to electric fans for keeping your lovely locks dry and full of life (to borrow the modern parlance).

MM-xlg_fan_hair_drier_crop.jpg

Drying the hair with an electric drier is a quick and convenient method, but not every one cares to buy one for such occasional use. Where some other electrical appliances such as a fan is at hand, an attachment can easily be made for it, that will serve the purpose.

The attachment consists essentially of a cone-shaped piece of sheet metal such as brass, to which a rubber tube with a nozzle is attached, as shown. The cone is made by cutting a circular piece about one-third larger in diameter than the fan guard, making a radial cut from the center to the edge, putting the edges thus formed over each other and riveting them together. Three catches made of brass are riveted to the cone so that it can be securely fastened to the guard. The tip of the cone is cut open and flared out so that a brass sleeve, about 1-3/4 in. diameter, can be soldered to it. A 6-ft. length of rubber tubing of the same size is attached to this sleeve, and a 4-in. length of brass tubing, with the end rounded as shown, is pushed into the end of the hose to serve as a nozzle. In one case a 1-3/4 in. motorcycle inner tube was used for the hose, but it may be still handier to use the rubber tubing usually provided with a fully equipped vacuum cleaner. The drier should be placed on or near the top of a radiator so that it delivers hot air.

Any rumors you hear that suggest I know from experience that attaching this to the rear of the fan instead of the front creates insufficient suction for true enjoyment are pure fluffery. I assure you I never commented on how poorly this worked when I experimented with the idea.

[tags]Modern Mechanix, Last century hacks, Fan as hair dryer, Popular Mechanics[/tags]

House of the future, from 1954

Honestly, I’m a little surprised we don’t see more of the ideas from this house that was designed and built over 60 years ago. Designed with as much innovative use of technology as the builder could manage, the house had windows which would shut automagically in case of sustained strong winds or rain, lights that would turn on and off when people entered rooms, and an automagic doorbell that went off when someone stepped on the porch.

MM-fireplace-of-future.jpg

Guests never trip over the wires to a floor lamp in Fletcher’s living room. MM-lamp-of-the-future.jpgThe floor lamps in this “House of the 21st Century” have no electric cords. Their fluorescent tubes, in fact, could be burned out and still operate perfectly when placed over certain spots on the living-room floor.

. . .

To operate his cordless floor lamps, Fletcher [the primary designer and builder] buried induction coils at various points in his living-room floor. Contained in the base of each floor lamp is a secondary coil. The current flowing between the coilsprovides enough wattage to fluoresce the gases in the fluorescent tube at the top.

The walk-a-light switching system throughout the house operates on the capacity principle. The presence of a persons body changes the capacity of a plate connected to a vacuum-tube circuit. A relay then switches on the lights. The same capacity effect operates the doorbell when a person walks onto the porch. It is used outside the house to operate lights on a burglar-alarm system.


This is one of the coolest things to my humble little brain that I’ve seen on the Modern Mechanix web site since I started reading it last year. I can see how some of the technologies would need updated to modern needs. I’m likewise sure that people might not always want all the automated conveniences that this house provides, but that should be adjustable at some control center or via software on a home computer. I’d love to get some of the features from over 50 years ago into my home. Maybe not the vacuum-tube stuff, but that could easily be modernized.

[tags]Modern Mechanix, Home of the future from 1950s, Automated home conveniences, Automagic[/tags]

Digital art software for really reasonable price

I lack any actual artistic talent. Though my recent fixation on Blender or GIMP is merely a representation of wishes for skills I lack, I still really dig art software like Art Rage 2. The features this program offers are pretty cool to my unskilled eye. They have a user gallery area to their forum so you can see what others are doing with the tool.

This is the homepage for ArtRage, the easy to use, stylish painting package that lets you get painting from the moment you open it up. You can paint with oils, sketch with pencils, sprinkle glitter, and more. You can paint with gold leaf, silver foil, and other metallic colors. You can even load in your photos as Tracing Images to help you recreate them as paintings.

For the professional user, ArtRage also offers multiple Layers for painting, and layered PSD document import and export so you can easily use it alongside your existing tools.

ar2featuretools.jpg

That image is something I snagged from the features page. It shows the brush options you have for different painting styles. If you get an urge to try out the program, it’s freely downloadable limited feature trial version and the full version only costs $20. In addition, they have a really slick tutorial to help you get going on the basics of Art Rage 2 use.

The safest place to sit on a plane

You’ve heard the comments that it doesn’t matter which seat you sit in on a plane in case of a crash, right? Well, conventional wisdom is apparently based on the assumption that if the plane crashes, it will get all explodified and you will, therefore, be all deadified. But rather than accept conventional wisdom, some smarties (people, not the candies) at Popular Mechanics looked at the hard data and figured where the safest seat in a plane is if there is a crash.

In the wake of nearly 200 passenger deaths in a Brazilian airliner accident, we take an exclusive look at 36 years’ worth of NTSB reports and seating charts. The best way to live through a disaster in the sky? Move to the back of the Airbus.

Well crap. The authors may be smarties, but they suck at telling jokes and stories – they give away the ending in the first paragraph. I guess that can’t be helped now. Let’s go on and see why that is.

The funny thing about all those expert opinions [that there is no safe seat in a crash]: They’re not really based on hard data about actual airline accidents. A look at real-world crash stats, however, suggests that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival. Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front.

That’s the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents has been languishing for decades in National Transportation Safety Board files, waiting to be analyzed by anyone curious enough to look and willing to do the statistical drudgework.

Real numbers. Real analysis. Real work. They explain the survivor numbers and how they arrived at the conclusion. Good news for us cheapskates that always end up in the back because we bought the $27 ticket 39 weeks ago over Carls-Cheapest-Tickets-Ya-Weasel.com when we heard we were going to travel.

[tags]The safest seat on the plane, Air travel, Safety, Popular Mechanics[/tags]

Named laws of software development

The Global Nerdy blog (no, I’d never heard of it before either) has a compilation of named laws of software development. These are comments from relatively well-known (to the geek community, at least) folks that got tied to their names because they’ve held true for so long. Here are a few as a sample.

Brooks’ Law – Fred Brooks – Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Clarke’s Third Law – Arthur C. Clarke – Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. [ed note: One of my favorite attributed quotes ever, BTW]

The Law of False Alerts – George Spafford – As the rate of erroneous alerts increases, operator reliance, or belief, in subsequent warnings decreases. [ed note: Yes, that’s pretty much a “Boy who cried wolf” law, but I know from experience that it is sooooo true]

Sixty-sixty Rule – Robert Glass – Sixty percent of software’s dollar is spent on maintenance, and sixty percent of that maintenance is enhancement.

The list is long, but very, very interesting. There were a few that I hadn’t heard before, but most of them I knew at least somewhat. (via boingboing)

[tags]Laws of software development, Named laws, Global Nerdy[/tags]

A smattering of gaming goodies I’m checking out

I’ve been reading some of my new books and working on learning Blender lately, so I’ve gotten behind on posting again. In order to get something out for today, how about this brief list of a few open source gaming goodies I’m looking at:

  • Dungeon Craft: Pretty much an open source tribute to/remake of the Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures (FRUA) set from almost 15 years back.
  • Trackballs: It’s Marble Madness remade. Nuff said.
  • SDL Basic: Basic designed to ease game development via Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) support. I want to create, not just consume.
  • Dark Oberon: 3D Real-Time Strategy. This one caught my eye because the in-game models are based on hand-made real-world plasticine.
  • Mokoi: Gaming development platform. Includes a portable engine to play games developed with the included Alchera editor. Easier to understand if you just visit the site and read about it there. Still in alpha, but looks interesting.

    Imagine being able to create a game that is able to be play on almost any platform, be it a Computer, Console or Handheld. This is what Mokoi Gaming aims to do.

  • The Flexible Isometric Fallout-like Engine: An isometric engine designed to assist in creating 2D role-playing games (RPGs).

    For the ones that have never heard about FIFE: this project is an open source engine that aims to be a platform for the creation of 2D RPGs. We do also provide support for the assets of the original Fallout games. So FIFE will be a good choice for the creation of Fallout-like & even non-Fallout-like games under all major platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac) with the emphasis on easy modding.

And there are so many more games in various states of creation and decay. If you want to look in on the open-source gaming world as a player, programmer, or content creator, go see what SourceForge holds in their gaming trove.

[tags]Open Source, Gaming, OSS, Games[/tags]

Virtual KVM – multiple system control via network and software

If you have multiple computers you need to have running and available but don’t have space for monitors, keyboards, and mouse-type-thingies (it’s an industry term, I think), you should check out Synergy.

synergy: [noun] a mutually advantageous conjunction of distinct elements

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screen savers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all. Learn more about how it works.

Synergy is open source and released under the GNU Public License (GPL).

I tried this tool long ago and it worked well enough that I know it works as claimed. However, I was just testing it, as I didn’t need the functionality, so I can’t really speak on how well it works for regular use. (via LifeHacker)

Blender render settings tutorial

As so often happens, I find something of interest to me and share it with all three of my readers, even though I know it will be of interest to zero of them. Such is the life of a self-centered geek with an online voice.

Since I’ve been trying to learn new stuff (that’s an industry standard term – it means stuff) on the computer lately, I’ve worked a bit with the open-source 3D modeling tool Blender in my spare time the past few weeks. My artistic skills are roughly equal to my social skills, which means I’m pretty sucky at creating artistic content. Still, I’m having fun learning, even if it is something I’ll never use beyond fun-time play. While tooling around online finding more Blender guides and tutorials, I found this old but still relevant guide to render settings for generating final Blender scenes.

Blender’s built-in rendering options offer many different possibilities for size, effects, and quality. Different settings may drastically affect rendering times. The goal for this analysis is to discover the most efficient methods for achieving the desired image quality with the minimum rendering time. When rendering for animations it is extremely important to achieve the best results is the shortest time possible, since one second of animation represents 30 rendered images.

The author goes on to cover half a dozen different renders and show the visual output as well as the necessary run times to generate a frame. Now the tutorial is from 2004, which means current hardware improvements and probable software improvements have made these times far higher than what they would be if the tests were run on modern hardware. But the relative time is the important point, and the difference between the simplest render setting that gives good results to one of the best render settings that consumes loads of time for improved results is clear. If you have thought about playing around with modeling, I highly recommend Blender, the Blender noob to pro tutorials, the Essential Blender book, the Blender model repository, and any guides you can find (like the one I’ve highlighted here) that can help with render settings and content creation.

[tags]Blender, Tutorial, Tutorials, Render settings, 3D modeling, Open source[/tags]

National ice cream day

I almost missed this one. Today is national ice cream day.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. He recognized ice cream as a fun and nutritious food that is enjoyed by a full 90% of the nation’s population. In the proclamation, President Reagan called for all people of the United States to observe these events with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.”

And my wife tells me Reagan didn’t do anything good as President (for the record, I already disagreed with her before finding out about national ice cream day). (via Consumerist)

[tags]National ice cream day, Ice cream[/tags]