Month: July 2005

If you haven’t already, you will at some point in your design career be forced to composite hair or fur into a project. The specific reason isn’t important. But how are you going to do it? Use a plugin? Not any of the ones I’ve seen. Copy and paste hair from another image? Too much of a pain, what with the complex masking and color matching. So what will you do, paint the hair follicle by follicle? Absolutely. But it isn’t anywhere near as time-consuming as it sounds. With the tools available in the Photoshop 7 Paint Engine, you can generate hair and fur with as much detail as you like in almost no time at all. Link.

Kirk von Rohr, the Art Director of MAKE Magazine took some pictures of the press check for volume 03 in Wisconsin. I really like the machine that cuts, folds and stacks the magazines at the end of the line. Be sure to subscribe to MAKE to get volume 3, we’re also announcing our digital version soon too! Link.

Months before the Xbox 360 will ship there’s already a community of fans designing Xbox 360 faceplates. Awhile back we heard there’s a Chia version. This Flickr photo poll has over 125 to check out. These seem to be part of a contest, the winner will be announced soon! Link.

“The Most Beautiful Machine” is an idea of Claude E. Shannon, who died in 2001. His “Mathematical Theory of Communication” is the fundament of the digital machine. It’s a communication based on the functions ON and OFF. In this special case the observers are supposed to push the ON button. After a while the lid of the trunk opens, a hand comes out and turns off the machine. The trunk closes – that’s it!. [via] Link.

Awesome. In January of this year, I was pulled over by a traffic officer for “disobeying a steady red”, a.k.a. running a red light. I pleaded “Not Guilty” to the charge, and today – nearly six months later – I went to court to find out the fate of my ticket violation. Check out how Google Maps saved me some serious cash – and points on my license! Link.

I have owned a PSP for about 2 months now, and love it. Except for one thing. I HATE having to hold the unit when watching movies. I happened to be at Lowes today (its like a Home Depot) and picked up some PVC pipe and a cutter. I came home and made a crude first prototype of my new invention…The PSP Hands Free System. Future enhancements to include battery holder Link and Link.

MAKE will be testing in-flight Wi-Fi, have questions about it? Post them in the comments and I’ll ask the tech staff. The event is an exclusive flight onboard Connexion One, a Boeing 737-400 used to demonstrate the Connexion by Boeing signature high-speed in-flight Internet service. Also, if you want to Skype, iChat, SSH, IRC :-] in the air with me, let me know. Link.