Need a Beautiful Wallpaper? Vladstudio.

Vladstudio holds a collection of wallpapers and other things done by the Russian digital artist Vlad Gerismov. If you have a few minutes to go browse through his wallpapers you should, he has some of the best I have ever seen. About 2 years ago I signed up with his lifetime plan, and I still do not regret doing so. He has over 600 wallpapers as of this writing, which means almost anyone should be able to find something they like. In addition he has over 250 'Wallpaper Clocks' which is a wallpaper with an embedded clock, and they are quite cool. Beyond the wallpapers you can also do a online puzzle of many of his wallpapers, send e-cards that he has made, get his theme for your Wordpress blog, or shop for shirts featuring his art, and much more. Anyway, go check it out!

Some of my favorite wallpapers from his collection:

How-To: Write to Windows Drive/Partition in OS X

If you have installed a copy of windows on your mac there has probably been a time, or many times, that you wished to transfer files to your windows partition from directly inside OS X. Well today I came across a very simple way to do just that. The best part is that it is completely free, and only takes about 5 minutes(or less) to set up. Lets get started shall we!

1. Go get MacFUSE and install it
2. Go get NTFS-3G and install it
3. Reboot your system for the installations to take affect

Thats it! If you are having trouble finding the download link for NTFS-3G, here it is.
Here is the result in actions. First you will see I copy the file 'axxo' from OS X to my windows partition(It is called Untitled, but you will just have to believe me that it really is my windows partition).

Second I am using quicklook on the windows partition of the 'axxo' file that I just transferred.

Enjoy!

Beginning Web Development

Starting today(and continuing for a very long time), I am going to try to dive into the tools I need to create web pages. My goal is to become familiar with html, css, javascript, php, mysql, and anything else I find along the way that I need to know by the end of the year. I have a feeling that I will be visiting w3schools quite often during this time. If anyone else knows of any other good websites or tutorials to get started, feel free to let me know.
That is all I have for today, if you are bored go read about Googles Chrome OS, which I am sure will be talked about in the next diggnation, or possibly the one after that. Also go check out these amazing photos!

gdgt

So I found a new site tonight that Kevin Rose twittered out. It is gdgt and it lets you do pretty much anything you can imagine with gadgets. To get started you should go watch this video outlining the site. My username is hankolerd, so be sure to add me to your friends list if you join. I might right another quick bit about it once I finish checking it out, but for now I am going to go check it out some more!

Firefox 3.5 New Feature List

So with the release of Firefox 3.5 today I thought I would outline some of the new features, and what they mean to me. If you would like to review all new and improved features, visit the features page.

Super Speed: Basically all this means, is that Firefox 3.5 is approximately twice as fast at loading JavaScript than Firefox 3.0 thanks to the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. This is definitely something to be excited about, but if I wanted the best performance, I would be looking at Chrome or Safari. So I give them thumbs up for keeping up pace, and not falling asleep at the wheel like Internet Explorer.

Private Browsing: New to Firefox 3.5 is the ability to enter private browsing mode that will not save any information of your browsing session. Perfect for looking for gifts for your loved one when you share the same computer. I see where this could be useful, but for me, it is a feature that will never be used. Moving on!

Forget This Site: Very much like the last, but forgets all traces to a particular site, and not just the one history item. Again, I never worry about my history, but if I did I see how deleting all traces to a specific site would nice.

Tab Organization: This adds the ability to drag a tab out of window to make it its own window, and I would assume drag tabs between windows. This is a feature that I have used time to time in Safari, so it is cool to see it become 'standard' across the major web browsers.

Downloadable Fonts: This allows web designers to use the exact font that they want on their page. I assume this works by reading the font information from the host instead of the client. Seems like a cool feature and I am excited to see some of the cool fonts that will be used.

Location-Aware Browsing: Now websites can get your location directly though firefox if you allow. I think this is a really cool feature, and it will be exciting to see all the different things people use this for. Maybe when you log into google chat it will automatically assign your status message to where you are at, or have online games that place you in the world where you actually are. But more realistically, I am just excited when I go to google maps to find directions and not having to enter in my address. Thumbs Up!

Open Video and Audio: This feature alone is the one reason to support Firefox. They are pushing to upturn proprietary codecs like flash and silverlight with open source audio and video formats, allowing you to view videos and listen to audio on the web without having any codecs installed on your computer. Meaning you will no longer have to deal with updating your codecs every few months to the latest versions.

So I don’t know if all these features will be enough to get me to stop using Safari or Chrome, but if enough people start utilizing what Firefox will allow them to do with their webpages, I will have little option but to use Firefox as my browser. That or stay in the dark ages as the internet continues to evolve.