Blog Archive for 10/2006

 

There are still some people that don't know about this fantastic free tool that will convert any printable document to PDF. The program, PrimoPDF, works as a printer driver and uses the data sent to the printer to create a PDF. This means the PDF generation is application-independent.

Download PrimoPDF for free here.

I can't believe I've missed this and I don't know how long ago it was annouced but Ricky Gervais and company are releasing three more special podcasts entitled Parts I, II and III of the Podfather. The shows will be available on the following dates from The Guardian website: 31 October, 23 November, 25 December. Theses details were announced on Ricky's offical website. He doesn't give much away save for the fact they will be availble for free from The Guardian's site.

If you don't have access to a Mac but want to know what your web page looks like on the Apple Safari browser look no further than this fantastic free online tool, BrowsrCamp.

Simply specify a webpage URL and page width and Browsr Camp will generate an image that shows you how your page would render in Safari. It's as simple as that.

Browsr Camp also offer a paid service entitled Mac OS X Livetest that "gives you the possibility to test your websites by taking full control of a Mac OS X system. You only need to have a VNC client and a fast connection".

Learn more about the Mac OS X Livetest here.

Well, it's been a long time coming but my portfolio site is finally launched.

The Leeds Web / Multimedia Design Studio is called Texelate (the name is based on the computer graphics term, texel) and features details of the services I offer and a selection of my recent work. I decided that it was too confusing to incorporate the commissions work on the Dr Quincy site so I've taken most of the Dr Quincy commissions text and consolidated it into this new site. I'll be changing the Dr Quincy commissions section soon and will set up some redirects to Texelate.

Version 2 of Dr Quincy will be solely my personal site and resource site - I'll change the layout to reflect this.

Enjoy.

Sunday 29 October sees a one-off return of the classic BBC sitcom, The Royle Family. The sitcom, which features working-class Manchester family the Royles, was well-known for its method acting and realism rather the standard sitcom format.

The episode, entitled Queen of Sheba, is an hour long, starts at 9.00PM and sees Jim Royle toying with the idea of purchasing a Plasma HDTV.

I decided it was a good idea to create a portfolio site that is seperate from the main Dr Quincy site. The portfolio (should be live by tomorrow night) was fun to make and I learnt a few things along the way. On reflection there are a few tips I thought I could share with anyone in the same boat.

You can read the article, Online Portfolio Tips, here.

The article suggests six ways in which you can make your online portfolio better.

Have you ever exported a Flash movie only to find the text doesn't appear in Opera (although it works fine in Firefox and IE). Although I'm not sure what the cause is I do know of a fix: export your Flash movie to an earlier version of Flash.

Go to File > Publish Settings and choose an earlier version from the Version dropdown.

Can sounds in Flash loop forever?

No.

It's as simple as that; you just have to enter the highest loop quantity the Loop input box from the Sound panel will take, which is 65535.

It may not satisfy the purists out there but it's unlikely anyone will sit through 65535 loops of your music!

Here's a quick tip if you're doing some music loops in Flash and you find that there is a slight delay before the sound clip restarts. The problem is this for some reason MP3s don't loop very well in Flash whereas WAVs do. You may not want to use a WAV file due to the file size but the good news is you can have your cake and eat it.

Import a WAV version of the sound loop into your library and right-click it and choose Properties and change the compression to MP3. Then alter the Bitrate and Quality settings according to your quality / compression ratio preferences. Your sound will now loop properly - for some reason MP3 don't work unless you let Flash encode it.

There was a fantastic Radio 4 series called Fear on Four that ran in the late 80s / early 90s; despite the fact all the shows were spooky thrillers they all had completely different settings ranging from the Napoleonic War to futuristic sci-fi. Although I didn't listen to the show when it was originally aired I became a fan when they were rerun on BBC7 on Sundays. I was so impressed with it I contacted the BBC to ask if there were any plans to release the show on CD - they replied saying no.

Yesterday I found a site that has all 48 episodes available for free download; such radio recordings are considered Old Time Radio (or OTR), which means they are considered so old that they are no longer protected by copyright. The quality of the recordings are generally very good and the webmasters have kindly supplied the episode titles and original air dates.

Download the shows here.

Thanks to the webmasters at Vic and Sade for making these available!

Update: you can now get them here - the old link doesn't work. Fear on Four

Update 2: Okay, so they're still under copyright. I contacted the BBC and they have no plans to release them. The link above has nothing to do with me - use it at your own risk!

As an aspiring novelist I've read a lot of books regarding novel-writing and memoirs on the craft of writing. It struck me the other day that bloggers could learn a lot from novelists despite being greatly different types of writing (in general). I've composed a list of five questions that a blogger should ask his or her self prior to publishing a blog entry. These points are all based on the advice many successful writers have recommended to me as a novel writer (through thier books).

1. Have you chosen the right title? There are no laws in place to stop two novelists giving their novel the same title - it's a bad idea to do so though. If I named my novel Crime and Punishment, for example, I could never hope it would be known as the Crime and Punishment as it would be competing with Dostoyevsky's masterpiece. Similarly, although two bloggers can have posts with identical titles it is not a good idea.

2. Would I have written this blog even if I knew no one else would read it? Any good writer will tell you they write not for the money or the admiration (in fact many good writers get neither) but they write because they have a desire to do so, a thirst that cannot be quenched. As a blogger, do you blog because you want to make a six-figure annual sum through Google AdSense? Or do you blog simply because you have to? Ironically, it's the bloggers who never intended to make the money who earn a good living from it.

3. Can the blog entry be summed up in a single sentence? In his book Writing a Novel and getting Published by Nigel Watts, Nigel says that the thesis (or main theme) of a novel should be "what the author is saying about the thread summed up in a single sentence". In other words, if you can't describe a work of writing in one sentence the message you are putting across may be too garbled or perplexing to the reader. If a novel can be summed up in once sentence then is it not reasonable to expect you can do the same for your blogs?

4. Can I make the blog any simpler / shorter? A painful part of writing is when the novelist's agent asks them to cut large chunks out of their novel (it's not uncommon for a writer to remove a third of his / her book at their agent's request). The agent (usually) knows best, however, because if a piece of writing can be expressed in less words it can have more of an impact. Can you make your blog entry any shorter without altering the message?

5. Have I written sufficent drafts of my blog entry? A novelist will usually write a minimum of two to three drafts before passing it onto their agent. In the first draft the writer will write loosly and without creative limits; the second draft will rework the first draft into a more level and consistant piece of work; the third draft will polish it so it is suitable to pass on to the agent. Try this approach on your blogs for a more professional finish.

If you've downloaded the Combustion 4 Trial from Autodesk you may be struggling to learn the application properly. The user guide that comes with the download acts more as a reference and the tutorials on the Autodesk site are short videos. So, there are no structured step-by-step tutorials that come with accompanying footage are there?

Actually, there are.

Autodesk have relased a book entitled Combustion 4 Fundamentals Courseware that contains exactly what you're looking for to learn the application: a structured step-by-step tutorials that come with accompanying footage. I purchased the book recently and it is in my opinion an essential purchase for the new Combustion user (probably not so useful for advanced users). It covers every facet of Combustion and includes 42 tutorials spread over ten sections.

Get the book from Amazon - for around £20 it's a small price to pay.

It was like giving up a ten year long addiction - I finally set my default browser to Firefox. Since the first time I ran it I've never doubted Firefox was superior to Internet Explorer. It's just that since 1996 when I first got the Internet I started using IE out of lack of choice. It's shameful for any web developer to use IE but I just couldn't get out of the IE habit. Today, however, I finally did it!

If you're still using IE get Firefox now!

If you haven't noticed already the PageRank readings in the Google toolbar are updating. Who cares? I know from the updates that are happening to the Dr Quincy site that it really doesn't make a blind bit of difference. Here's why:

Despite all the backlinking I've done over the past few months my home page is staying at PR3 (the most important page of the site according to Google) yet other pages that have next-to-no backlinks (like my terms and privacy pages) are showing PR4. Furthermore, a couple of pages that have NO backlinks are now showing a PR5!

If you want to know why PageRank means NOTHING read my article, When is the Next PageRank Update?

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