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I was looking over my Lorenz Attractor images and wondered how the spiral would look close-up. So, I created another version looking down on the spiral with the tendrils coming up from the it. To make it stand out from the others, I changed the sphere colors to blue and added some filtered transparency to them. It makes them look a bit like beads of glass.

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I've been a lurker on deviantART for awhile now and decided to take the plunge and upload some of my ray traced images there. Since I tend to use the same alias at all my sites, you can now catch SafePit on deviantART. Normally I use Flickr for images, but since I tend to head over to deviantART for interesting wallpaper, I thought it worth the effort to join. I even uploaded a new version of my Snowman.

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It seemed to take me forever lately, but finally made it to 30K. I blame my Halo 3 addiction to the lack of improvement in my gamer score. It seems silly tracking this stuff, but it is fun tracking each of these 5K milestones. It is also interesting looking back over the last few years and see what I've been playing and what gamer picture I was using. I'm obviously using NXE's avatars now. Will be interesting to see if I bother updating it. Next up, 35,000.  I wonder how long that will take?
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A few years back, I started to convert some of my old ZX81 programs so they could be use in various ZX81 emulators. That project was mostly my way of trying to preserve some printouts from my now faded programs. I was curious if I there was a way to emulate those programs in a web site. Surprisingly, the answer is yes! Simon Holdsworth created JtyOne emulator based on Mike Wynne's EightyOne emulator. I had updated one of my old programs back in 1998 so I thought it fitting, 10 years later, to make it run on the web. Since Simon graciously allows people to utilize it on their web site, you can run PHOTON98 yourself. It is a simple graphic program, so nothing to do but click the link.

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Okay, let's see how old you really are.  Anyone remember these trading cards from '78 back when the "original" Battlestar Galactica aired. I was cleaning out the attic and found this in a bag with some of my other childhood memories. I don't even remember keeping this card, but it sure is interesting to look back and remember a different time. Hard to believe this was issued thirty years ago. I swear, it was yesterday. Wasn't it?



The card depicted is number 33 of 36 in the series.  The back says: "Apollo and Starbuck, an unbeatable team, are planning the attack against Vulpa's forces on Mt. Hekla."  Uh, yeah.  I sure don't remember that episode. [ View Article ]

I've blogged about Photosynth before; however, that was when it was still a preview technology. Photosynth is now out for the general public to use. It is still pretty cool technology. It has some things I'm not a big fan of -- like the plug-in won't work in Safari even though it it installs just fine. Also, if you want to use the creator, you have to log in and have an account. The technology isn't for off-line use. That said, it is still pretty cool. After a few attempts, I was able to get a group of photos with 100% synth. Enjoy Concorde Grapes, but only if you have IE7 or Firefox 2/3 on Windows.

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So, I broke down and bought a new laptop last weekend.  No, I didn't buy an Apple.  I just couldn't see myself shelling out twice as much money for half the computing power.  I purchased one on sale with similar specs, if not the same OS and "coolness" factor.  I was able to transfer most of my settings making it much easier to get up and running.  It did take me a bit to get the "crapware" uninstalled.  However, it did provide me the opportunity to try out some new software.

I've been using HTML-Kit for a number years now as an alternative to the Homesite editor I use at work.  Although functional, HTML-Kit has a few quirks, notably the odd interface.  Although powerful, I've never been happy with it.  So, I started a search to find a replacement.  My search, as usually, took me far and wide.  Mostly to commercial editors and a few dubious free ones.  Most looked like they'd come out in the 90's.  The nice ones, like Microsoft's Expressions Web, were a bit pricy.  The upgrade was $99, the same price I could go purchase Homesite for.  In the end, I came upon Komodo Edit from my favorite Perl distributor:  ActiveState.  At first, it didn't look all that appealing.  However, once digging in, I liked what I saw.  It was enough to download and give it a try.

For those looking for WYSIWYG editors, Komodo Edit isn't for you.  If, however, you prefer to edit HTML and code directly, Komodo is pretty full featured.  More interestingly, it utilizes some of Mozzila's technology to provide plugin support.  It is a nice touch and i quickly found myself pulling down some new plugins to provide the tree views for remote and local files like I was used to with Homesite and HTML-Kit.  Komodo's interface is clean and functional.  There is integration with common scripting interpreters, like Perl and Ruby, and will validate the code if they are installed.  Overall, I'm pretty pleased so far.  The only thing I don't like is that the spell checker isn't integrated.  You have to actually run it to spell check the document and it often tags the code itself.  HTML-Kit would check it live, much like Word or Safari.  Homesite was a manual start, but at least it showed the errors on the page.  Komodo's isn't quite that helpful.  If you don't have issues spelling your own name, like I seem to have, then it is a minor issue.  In all, I'm pleased so far.  If you find it isn't enough, check out the not so free bigger brother, Komodo IDE.

Now, I just need POV-Ray to release their latest version.  And why the heck does GIMP have to look like I'm running Linux!  Can't these wonderful open source projects use native bindings?  (Sigh) [ View Article ]

This is probably one of the sillier experiments I've done. I've put together a dynamic userbar that displays the current Pay Per View (PPV) offerings on DISH Network:

My daughter was interested in renting a movie and I thought I'd check out what was on PPV. After browsing a bit, I wondered how hard it would be to pull the information and create a userbar for it. Thinking it an interesting challenge and an easy way to check out the latest movies, I dug into the HTML. Surprisingly, it wasn't too difficult to parse the out the images and titles. I originally thought about adding a little side bar to the site, but pulling the descriptions proved a bit harder. Instead, I decided to give the code my usual userbar treatment. In all, an interesting project. If you want to use it, the link is:

http://3v.reids4fun.com/dishppv.cgi

Ping back if you find it useful! [ View Article ]

Having never owned a Mac, mostly due to cost, the new MacBooks look pretty nice.  All aluminum body, new graphics, new glass multi-touch trackpad, it all adds up to some nice looking notebook computers.  Personally, I like the self loading DVD drives.  The DVD trays on most Windows notebooks are an accident waiting to happen.  Looks like Apple has updated their site with the new computers, but the Store is still down.  One thing I noticed, the $999 entry level "white plastic" MacBook isn't being touted on their site.  All the cool features in the rest of the MacBooks won't be in that one, but it does provide an entry point for those that don't have $1299 to shell out.  It does seem odd that the cheapest MacBook is still about $400 more then a comparable Windows notebook.  That said, you are buying quality and what looks look like a nice OS. [ View Article ]

I got around to upgrading IE8 to the latest beta 2 today.  Mostly, I wanted to see if they had fixed the float issues.  Well, they had -- at least the float that was also broke on Microsoft's own site now worked.  However, my site still had a problem.  Well, I tracked it down to a very odd behavior with  .  Unlike most browers, IE8 breaks lines oddly with   and messes up CSS width.  Unlike other browers, when this happens, IE8 drops the float to the bottom instead of letting it just break the width.  Considering that this is the only browser with this behavior, it will be interesting to see if it makes it into the final version.

I did come up with a solution, and probably a more correct one.  I removed the   in my Tag Cloud and added a margin-left to the anchor tag CSS styling.  This spreads out the tags like before and works in IE8.  Woo Hoo! [ View Article ]

• My Hobbies on GeoCities (slreid69)
• My GameSpot Profile (SafePit)
• My XBOX Gamer Card (SafePit)
• My Flickr Photos (SafePit)
• My Music on ACIDplanet (SafePit)

• Backwater Retriever Club
• RADIX Construction, Inc.
• 360voice Dynamic Userbars

January  2009

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