My Old House

Yo yo, its raining elephants and hippos here, worst than cats and dogs :D so its a bit humid and uncomfortable, so instead of planting stuff I decided to stay indoors and search around on the net to see what's new


Then I found Google Sketchup 8 while going through youtube videos, the trailer looked so good I had to give it a try and WOW,

I can make Hi-Teck professional looking plans like the ones you see in the movies where some professional computer geek takes out his laptop and map out the building plans in which his team is to infiltrate.

Here's some screen shots of my house construction plan :

(Click on pic for bigger preview)

Front View (with Fog)


Front View (Shaded with Texture + X-Ray)


Front View (Monochrome + X-Ray)


Front View (In Pure White)

Back View

Bird's Eye View

Front View (Cross- Section)

Well there you go, this plan was made without measuring, I just estimated and try to make it as close to the real thing as I can. If you want to make a house plan, or any plan for that matter, go get Google Sketchup 8; its free, very easy to use, and only 40 Mb to download.

Have a good week everyone !

PhotoShop Pics - G9

Here are some new pictures I've messed about but haven't had the time to post up, I'm in the middle of washing the dishes atm but can't get myself to finish and rather update my blog :D

(Click on any image to enlarge)

Here one me and my cousin finished off yesterday,

very cool looking don't you think?!! :D

These I made for my mobile wallpaper,
so I thought I might share them for whoever.

The picture is of Leon.S.Kennedy from the Resident Evil game, like in the first pic. I usually put the blue picture as the wallpaper and the orange one as the screen saver so only the background color changes when switching between pictures, kinda cool I recon.

There's one more pic that i haven't finished so that's gonna have to wait, till next time y'all :D

*finally finished the pile of dishes lol

Mozilla Firefox

Have you ever stumbled on to a site in the hope to find free downloads for your favorite mp3, pictures or avi movie/anime only to be disappointed and then clicking back and later finding out that you have been contaminated with a spyware or two? This is why having an antivirus or adware-preventional program is important in the protection of your computer, but with the amount of program available out there which ones do I choose? And why do they cost so much?

There has to be a cheaper, simpler way to surf the net without worry right? Well, fortunately there is. I've been using the net for years, and had many unpleasant experiences surfing here and there with the suspicion that the sites might contain an annoying virus, spywares, adwares, worms, trojans and website Hijacks only to get them anyways since i don't have any programs to guard against them. So what is the solution? The cheap one that is? Use a different browser.

The Mozilla Firefox is basically an internet browser similar to the standard Microsoft or Netscape Explorer containing features like the back, forward, refresh, stop, home, favorites, etc. However unlike the popular Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox offers a safe web surf and guard against harmful websites that are often developed to exploits the weakness in the internet explorer.

So how does it work? Basically since Firefox is a whole new browser/program, it does not contain the same weaknesses/vulnerabilities as the older browsers like Microsoft, and so offer safer surfing. However, do not confuse higher security with total security. What I mean is even though it’s a lot safer with the Mozilla Firefox there is still potential risk in visiting suspicious sites that usually offer free mp3, game patches, cracks, etc.

Click on the following pictures to enlarge

Back to the bright side, since switching from the Microsoft to Firefox browser I have not caught a single spy-ware of any sort. Other great features that comes with Firefox is it’s’ ability to block many annoying popup usually for advertising purpose. Another benefit that I enjoy is its’ tab features, where you can run multiple sites in one browser window using a tabs for each site instead of opening a window each time. The Firefox is user friendly and also free for download; click here to go to the download page Mozilla Firefox.

iGoogle

Now just before i begin with the topic of this post, i just want to say 'yes' i have slowed down on posting new post here, only because i have ran out of pictures to upload, and not to mention that i have exams this week for my Tafe course. Even though Tafe is easy for me and i spend more time playing than studying i do still have to sleep early and take better care of my health, however i still do have time to update my blog as i have been doing for the past week. For example i have changed the pictures to now show before-and-afters with an orange arrow to indicate the change. I've posted some comments and added some feeds from my favorite blogs.

One day while browsing with my favorite home search engine - google, i decided to just click around and see what those little links at the top right of the page was for, they have been there all those times but i just thought they were for help or advertisements. Then i discover the igoogle homepage customisation page, Here you can costomise your google homepage to have themes, tabs, windows that can show anything from the time to your personal horoscope. You can even add specific feeds from your favorite blogs like i did. By the way you need to sign in with a google account to do so. Otherwise just by clicking on the igoogle link you won't be able to add any new google-windows, or change the themes.

Click on the following thumbnails pictures to enlarge

I think the Themes are the best part, google has created some great themes with nice colour and animational background. That's not all, the themes changes by itself according the time of day and locational weather. How cool is that! So if your at home on a dark raining night then your themes will include night and rain in them. the only downfall is that there is only 6 themes to choose from, and aparently i notice one of the themes i.e. city scape doesn't change according to weather and time of day, i'm not sure why.

For those people who do not know what an RSS is - which is most people i think. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, so what does that mean you might ask, well here's the definition from Wikipedia :

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed," "web feed," or "channel," contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.

RSS content can be read using software called a "feed reader" or an "aggregator." The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.

Basically igoogle is a considered a feed reader, or some might like to call it newsreader. So if you want you can add feeds from any site that has the RSS link.
The Mozilla Firefox browser can identify sites/blogs that has RSS enabled, if so you will be able to see an orange icon like this:

(Also taken from Wikipedia)

This icon will be rather small and can be view at the status bottom left hand side of the browser in the status bar. If you see this then it means that there exist a RSS link somewhere. So when you find the link for subscribe somewhere, just right click on it and select Copy Link Location (or Copy Shortcut in Internet Explorer) then go back to the igoogle site to the add in your RSS link.

for example at the end of my home blog page there is the RSS link called Posts (Atom). The image below show an example of how to copy the RSS link.

Well, that was abit of a lecture, hope this helps and if your still confused and want to know more, then go and borrow the "Blogging for Dummies" book from a library near you.