Terragen 2.0 really is a wonderful toy. I’ve been using it for the Young Wizards international edition ebook covers, as well as other things.
It’s also great for wallpaper. I was playing with terrains and water the other day, and this came up. If you like it, feel free to download it — it’s hosted over at Box.net. The dimensions are 1920×1200.
Well, why not? And this thing looks desperately cool.
“Everyone’s dreamt of flying free as a bird. Nano is for the fun of flying – no passengers, no cargo – just you, Nano and the endless blue. If you’ve ever had a pilot’s licence you’ll fly Nano right out of the box. The rest of you will need to learn the simple rules of the air. Minimum red tape – maximum thrills.”
Wow! Just let me loose on the Starnberger See with one of these.
…Well, I think it’s pretty, anyway. And I like the way it rolls up and makes a stand for the iPad. Whenever the day rolls ’round that I have cash to spare for an iPad, I’d definitely be getting this for it. (Hmm… they could even engrave the Apple without a Bite on it…)
Gee, I thought everybody had seen this by now. … Of this indispensable piece of kit for the more tech-oriented wizard, the Errantry Concordance says:
“An instance or implementation of the Wizard’s Manual installed in a suitably adapted iPod. Such devices, when running in Manual mode, routinely display the Apple Without a Bite. WizPods may be assumed to be part of the same digital wizardry initiative that Tom Swale alludes to in HW.
“In everyday use WizPods mimic the look-and-feel of the unmodified devices and support all their usual functions. However, since each WizPod also contains an inbuilt “stand-alone” temporospatial claudication, the devices are able to unfold to many times their apparent external size to display data, and are especially useful for working with spell diagrams which are better rendered in 3D format. Data storage is also managed through the claudication via intuitive on-demand streaming swap-in / swap-out to a closed-continuum “hotvoid” space, theoretically implying near-infinite storage for a WizPod’s total contents. Onboard storage is handled by an Alterf Technology-sourced SentientManagement quark-trap lattice solid rated at 120 yottabytes (though theoretically capable of much more if you ask it nicely).
“Wizardly implementations of the iPod began appearing simultaneously with the debut of the so-called 4G models. There is speculation as to why rollout was delayed this long, but the consensus seems to be that the Powers that Be were waiting for the hardware to become sufficiently widespread that it no longer provoked much comment. Since then a regular progression of new WizPods have appeared in tandem with their less wizardly cousins, but none with quite the ballyhoo of the new 6G WizPod, or WizPod Touch, which appears above / to the left. This model introduced the new touch interface as well as numerous new software features…”
More data at the full Concordance entry, naturally.
This gent does some very nice polygonal (and other) art. Some of it’s distinctly Star Wars themed.
I kind of prefer the designs that cover most of what they’re put on. To my eye, the iPhone ones look the best (cf. the “Dark Lord” iPhone case here). The “trooper” one here is nice too.
I wish more makers would start bringing out stuff like this for the HTC phones. But I guess it’s easier to target the iPhone audience, since there are fewer models…
As described by Tim the Enchanter. …But with more yarn. (Courtesy of AntiCraft)
(Non-technically inclined people, look away now. Or skip down to the bottom of this where it gets less technical.)
I have a lot more screenplay stuff to do today, but I had to take an hour or so off from that after having a quick look at the “Out of Ambit” log files on arising, and noticing that someone had been trying repeatedly to access pages on my site that didn’t exist. The URLs they were trying to reach had all the telltale signs of attempted SQL injection attacks, which I hate as they mess up my tidy logs. So I spent a relatively pleasurable short time watching the Doctor Who episode “The Girl in the Fireplace” on UK Gold while getting things fixed. (There was a certain enjoyable resonance to watching the Doctor blowing up robots while I dealt with other people’s bots to their detriment.)
I am not going to reproduce the actual string in question, but info about it and a detailed analysis of the string and the attack are here. If you’re a webmastery-type person, or you run a blog or website and are technically capable of dealing with problems of this kind, you should have a look at your logs and see if you’ve been having this sort of attack. Then decide how you want to deal with it — redirects, blocking via your .htaccess file, whatever. (IP blocking is of no use because the attacks are coming from all over the place.)
Since I didn’t feel like spending all day futzing around with writing redirects, I downloaded a copy of the Redirection plugin for WordPress, activated it, and created a custom redirect to deal with this problem. Works fine. The naughty people (or the poor bot-infested machines that have been dragooned into this) who come to OOA and attempt to inject this string are now being sent to a place of appropriate punishment.
That’s all the techie bit for today.
The only other thing of interest that’s happened is that (after finding myself thinking how long I’ve liked the Doctor, and liked him a whole lot) I got vaguely curious about the whereabouts of an article I wrote for a Balticon program book many years ago: a discussion of the uses of imagination (among other things). It was called “Meetings on the Stair”. I dug it out, updated and cleaned it up a little, and posted it so I can find it later if I want it for something: it’s here, if anybody’s interested. I suppose I’ll also stick it up as a pre-dated blog posting, so it won’t screw up the present blog entry sequence.
Now then… back to that script.
Yes, you too can use that wonderful built-in motion sensor to pour virtual beer.
….Ooooooookay.
Meanwhile, I truly feel there might be better things to run on an iPhone or iPod Touch. 
[tags]Swiss, Army, Knife [/tags]
[tags]transformers, transformers movie, transformers film[/tags]
A gentleman with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford has created a street-legal Beetle with a jet engine stuffed in the back.
Best line from his erudite and fascinating discussion of this subject:
And just wait till you see what he wants to do to his wife’s motor scooter.
Now playing: Alan Parsons Project – Voyager
[tags]VW, Volkswagen, VW Beetle, Volkswagen Beetle, jet engine, jet[/tags]
