Pass the open source please and a torrent of sociability

Chris — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 06:50:24 +0000

I’ve come across a number of cool sites and projects over the last week, as well as read a number of really thought provoking articles so I figured that I would filter for the best (in my mind) and put them up here.

1. Hexagon.cc

A torrent search engine / tracker site that has a definite social media feel and focus – which is pretty trendy at the moment.

Apparently the site is foundered by, amongst others, one of the admins of the large torrent search engine IsoHunt. Hexagon.cc looks really interesting as it will allow people to start up their own social-sharing networks for torrents and videos. The site is really cleanly designed and seems to be focusing on the convenient sharing of torrent information for legitimate material. Looks really promising!

http://hexagon.cc

2. OS FLV (and FlowPlayer)

The open source, embeddable FLV player.

This player is great for embedding your own video content on your site or blog, without hosting your video material on a third-party website such as YouTube or Vimeo. Whilst I have no problem with either of those services (I use both quite regularly) sometimes it is nice to have your video hosted locally, and have more control over how it is played back (you can have videos start automatically, loop and even customise the ’static image’).

Another player that looks great (maybe even better) is FlowPlayer, but I’ve not played around with it too much yet.

http://www.osflv.com
http://www.flowplayer.org

3. Zero-S Electric Motorcycle

Fully-electric street legal motorcycle.

Fairly-decent max speed (90kph) and mid-range ‘mileage’ (~80km) makes this look like a really promising green motorcycle solution. At that range and top speed it would be a pretty decent bike for intra-city riding, not so good for inter-city, given that most highways in Australia have a limit of about 100-110kph). Give it a few years and I imagine we’ll see bikes with highway compatible top speeds and a longer range. It takes about 4 hours to recharge – what I would like to see is ‘battery exchange programs’ at fuel stations for electric bikes.

http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/zero-s-specs.php

4. Stargate Worlds

Being a big Stargate fan I was stoked to find out recently that their was an MMORPG being made for the Stargate universe! It looks as though it is in beta too, with a tabled release of 2009. I might even consider getting a Windows box up and running to play this game, reviews pending.

http://www.stargateworlds.com/

Aaand some interesting articles (ripped from Twitter)

Not every cloud has a silver lining: the real attraction behind cloud computing (@doctorow in The Guardian) http://bit.ly/19qSGI
RT @slashdot: MPAA Pushes Once Again To Close the Analog Hole http://bit.ly/3wTZ6O

My five favourite web comics

Chris — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:50:00 +0000

This new technology that people are calling the internet has spawned a large number of serial web comics (like, probably over 8 of them). There are heaps of comics out there of varying quality, from the very well polished to the not so good. I’ve decided to share my ~~four~~five favourite comics that I follow regularly.

XKCD

This is the first comic I got into. It is by Randall Munroe, who describes it as a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Thanks to Mike for getting me into this.

http://xkcd.com/
Updated Mon, Wed, Fri – make sure you check the mouseovers too.

Dinosaur Comics

I got into this around the same time as XKCD. It is by a dude called Ryan North who is/was/could be a computational linguist, and it shows: The comic always has the same panels, with a heavy focus on the dialogue.

http://www.quantz.com/
Updated weekdays – check the mouseovers

A Softer World

This is a great comic by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau who design and write the comics respectively (yes, I arrange sentences in such a way that maximises the number of times I can use the word respectively) (yes, there is a subtext there). Peppered heavily with dark humour.

http://www.asofterworld.com/
Updated semi-regularly (once or twice a week) – once again, check the mouseovers

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC)

The latest comic I’ve been reading. By a guy called Zach Weiner. Zach seems not to be burdened with the terrible weight of political correctness. Awesome.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/
Updated fairly regularly (between daily to couple of days a week) – press the red button

The Perry Bible Fellowship

This isn’t really updated much at all anymore, but the content is solid gold. It has a pretty dark flavour and you need your thinking cap to ‘get’ many of the comics.

http://pbfcomics.com/

Anyway, there you have it.

Check them out and enjoy. Oh, hey, Dinosaur Comics have this comic randomizer, giving us over 3.26×10⁰⁹ comics – Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

Oh, and as a little side note, I’ve been watching Sanctuary, a series created by the brains behind the Stargate series. It even headlines with Amanda Tapping from the Stargate series. I’ve only watched a couple of episodes, but I think I’ll be able to get into it just fine. Thanks Jane for the tip off (and your honest thoughts on the Merlin series ).

chrisduran.eu » internet