Archive of month: March 2009

Adding PIL (Python Imaging Library) to Mac OS X

I continue my newbie MacBook exploits, currently I’m enjoying the fragmented installation process on a Mac…why is it harder to get stuff installed than on both Ubuntu (lovely apt-get!) and Windows? Installing the Python Imaging Library takes a couple of steps.  There is a 3rd party installer but it assumes you’ve installed their base Python2.5 […]

Undimming a monitor using libGaze?

I’m sitting here using my MacBook and the screen dims after a minute or so.  I look back down from the movie I’m watching (Mutant Chronicles – dodgy sci-fi!) and the MacBook’s screen stays dim.  With so much CPU power available, why can’t the screen auto-un-dim when I look at it? The camera is looking […]

BrightonJobDoom – 5k App Entry

My twitter robot (@BrightonJobDoom) has been in development for a month, now it tracks 5 job sites as it tracks Brighton’s descent into tribalism as we run out of local jobs. Initially I was tracking just the Wired Sussex and TechCrunch sites, now I’ve added Chinwag, EscapeHatch and The Argus (within 10 miles, last week […]

Screencasting tutorials

Over on the ProCasts blog we’re building up a screencast tutorial series, planned to be 9 episodes long, that will teach anyone how to make a beautiful screencast that helps them explain their product to their new users. By explaining your product you’re more likely to convince first-timer visitors to stick around and try out […]

Big pile of technic Lego for sale

Linc Smith of Sussex Uni departs our shores in a week to return to Canada.  He has pictures of the very big pile of technic lego to sell, contact him if you’re interested. Linc is a keen robot builder, helps at the Robot Brighton nights and has been a presenter and helper at our £5 […]

Hand-carved spinning tops

At likemind on Friday I met a Thomas Forsyth, a recent graduate from Brighton Uni’s design dept. who hand-carves wooden spinning tops.  You push a pencil through the rubber grommet and spin it in your hands, it wanders over a sheet of paper making lovely pictures: His business cards are lovely – they’re cut from […]

Does a PhotoBin exist? (a PasteBin for photos)

From the ‘I want something like this…’ dept:  Whilst working in my log-book for my long-running science/physic client I sketched a ‘Win32 Console App -> DLL/COM interface -> Matlab -> (wicked pointer casts) DLL/COM interface -> fn in Console app’ diagram. You don’t need to know what the above does, just imagine three big boxes […]

ProCasts’ third open-src advocacy video – AdBlockPlus

I’m rather chuffed to say that Wladimir Palant, the chap behind the excellent AdBlockPlus.org ad-filter for Firefox, has added our advocacy video to his frontpage – it shows you in just over a minute how and why to install AdBlockPlus.  As Wladimir says: Ian and Richard […] offered me to create a screencast for Adblock […]

ShowMeDo server move + Python 3 videos

We’ve spent the last few weeks migrating ShowMeDo to its own server after 3 years operating out of a shared box.  Moving the site was a pain as I’m not a low-level Apache hacker but all in everything seems fine now and we have extra capacity to grow. Kyran has skinned the blog so it […]