The Nietz » Fun

Something Cool: dummyimage.com

Stephen — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:53:30 +0000

I am amazed no one thought of this yet. I cannot tell you how much time I spend in PhotoShop or Fireworks creating placeholders for images. Invariably they all come out looking poor. On a wireframe they stick out like a sore thumb and clients just cant see past them. Well, those days are over. Need a FPO for 350×250 image? Easy. Just point your browser to:

http://dummyimage.com/350×200

and viola!:

Any combination of height and width’ll work. It’s simple and elegant. And it gets better…

In addition to height and width, you can do all the standard ad sizes, screen resolution, even video format. For a full-sized banner, just use:

http://dummyimage.com/fullbanner

Different colors? alt text? jpg or png? just as easy:

http://dummyimage.com/400×100/0099ff/CCCCCC&text=TheNietz

Too lazy to save your own images and don’t want to link to their site? They have that covered too, just download the source (MIT license) and run it on your own server.

If you do wireframes, this is a must-add to your toolchest.

[dummyimage] via [lifehacker]

All Edie needed was a hug

Stephen — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:45:20 +0000

If this doesn’t move you, you have no soul:

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Youtube] via [Neatorama]

OK Go: This Too Shall Pass

Stephen — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:22:01 +0000

An even newer new video!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Their first video for this was awesome, but sadly not embeddable (unless of course you embed the Vimeo version…). This caused a bit of an uproar to fans since it was embedding which made them so popular. The Band responded, mostly that they were at the mercy of the labels. This time it looks they worked around it with a little sponsorship (note the StateFarm truck at the very beginning, and the logo at the end). So watch the video then add some collision covarge. Enjoy.

Bonus: The marching band video after the break

The original. Equally as awesome:

Click here to view the embedded video.

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Visualizing Information: Olympic hockey on facebook

Stephen — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:18:50 +0000

From Techcrunch, This is what the USA v Canada hockey game looked like on facebook:

The first big spike comes 24 seconds before the game end, when the US scored tied the game. A few minutes later, a giant spike when Canada won the gold. 3.5 million status updates.

source: [TechCrunch]

Awesome

Stephen — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:42:45 +0000

[NASA]

Something Cool: fav4

Stephen — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:12:30 +0000

I use the fastdial extension in firefox, and love how Chrome and Safari give thumbnails of favorite sites, but I’m really digging fav4.org. It’s simple and elegant:

You pick you fav 4 sites (from ~50) and that’s about it– you have a new start page. One trick pony, but a very pretty horse.

[fav4.org] via [Gizmodo]

Hipster know-it-alls talking about how fascinating ordinary people are? There’s an app for that.

Stephen — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:10:00 +0000

This American Life has it’s own iPhone App. Access to all the podcasts and a handful of extras $2.99. Money well spent. Screen shots and a full review in a few.

[iTunes]

Something Cool: Stellarium

Stephen — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:07:14 +0000

Armchair astronomer? Stargazer? Space geek? Want to impress people by just looking up? Then check out Stellarium.

Stellarium is an open-source planetarium on your desktop. More than just a starchart, Stellarium can take a point in time and space and see the heavens. Curious what the sky over Bethlehem was like in 32 BC? Just enter the coordinates, the date and time. Not just stars, but the planets comets, nebulas, you can even incorporate weather conditions.

Stellarium can even output to a fish-eye projector for actual use in a planetarium (or you can buy your own pre-loaded with Stellarium).

When I traveled to Tibet last year I installed Stellarium on my Macbook. The night before traveling to Base Camp, I was able to pull up my exact location and map out the stars over the Himalayas. Something very cool.

[Stellarium]

note to self: I need free time (and not to live in a no-fly zone)

Stephen — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:53:00 +0000

I still remember my old Estes kits. Apparently they’re still making them, and they are even re-releasing their old kits.

Scratch build vintage rockets via [Make]

Autocompleteme

Stephen — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:19:48 +0000

Via Neatorama,

Google’s helpful. Even if you’re not sure what you’re searching for, Google wants you to search, and it will do it’s best to help you search as quickly as possible. Fortunately, they don’t always get it right. When that happens, autocompleteme is there.