Monthly Archives: December 2008

What Every One Ought to Know About Vectors

By Peter Backx | Published: December 30, 2008

If you are working with printed media or Flash, one obstacle you will run into on a regular basis is that source material on the Internet tends to be bitmap based, while it is much easier to use vector based images for those types of things. I myself have written about it, but there’s a [...]

Posted in VisualMedia | 5 Comments

Big Band for Change

By Peter Backx | Published: December 26, 2008

Matthew Herbert is something special. He is a sampler, and he does not re-use any existing samples. He makes his own, wherever that might take him. He is also very politically engaged and wants to change the world through his music. But I’m not sure if any of that matters, because, above all, he is [...]

How to Circumvent Your Cheap Webhost’s Restrictions: gzipping Without mod_deflate

By Peter Backx | Published: December 23, 2008

An important rule for website optimization is to Gzip everything you send over the wire. The practice of compressing web pages, CSS and JavaScript is supported by most modern browsers. This has two advantages: Smaller files will download faster and less bandwidth will be used on the server. On most servers, modules exist that can [...]

Posted in JavaMedia | Tagged recommended | Leave a comment

The Secret of Holiday Shopping

By Peter Backx | Published: December 19, 2008

… is to do it online. Just in time, I have added an extra category to my store. Nine products that will tickle your techy brain cells. There are a few gadgets in there that are so useful, you really need them and there’s some dreamy out-there things, to keep that imagination going. Order today [...]

Posted in MetaMedia | Leave a comment

Tutorial: Here’s a Quick Way to Connect Your PC to Your Television

By Peter Backx | Published: December 16, 2008

Want to watch YouTube on your TV? Want to endlessly zap away? Want to watch everything for free? Once you’re PC or laptop is connected to your TV screen, and thus your TV is connected to the Internet, there really is no limit to the hours you will spend in your couch watching TV.

Posted in JavaMedia | Tagged recommended | 7 Comments

Turn a Stock Photo into a Stunning Comment Form

By Peter Backx | Published: December 12, 2008

Inspired by this great article, I got working. I found a nice picture on Flickr and this is the result. Now let me tell you, the article makes it look dead easy to get such a nice form. In reality, it is in fact not that hard, but it’s a lot of pixel hunting, trying [...]

Posted in JavaMedia | 2 Comments

Stories: Lost in an Abandoned World

By Peter Backx | Published: December 9, 2008

We’re all lost in some way, but lets not talk about that problem for once. A favorite story device of many books, movies and especially games, is the abandoned world. You’re left alone, in many cases with amnesia, and the only option is to move forward and figure this thing out. Warning: many time-consuming links [...]

Posted in OldskoolMedia | Tagged recommended | Leave a comment

The Question You Should Be Asking Yourself

By Peter Backx | Published: December 5, 2008

The Big Ask (Belgian site with new clip by Nic Baltazar) is a campaign for a strong action to preserve the climate and the world by association. Because who is going to help diminish the CO2 levels? The government who’s only interested in getting reelected at the end of their term? Big Oil? Seriously? Think [...]

Posted in ChangingMedia | Leave a comment

JEE vs Drupal – On Apples and Oranges

By Peter Backx | Published: December 2, 2008

Lets compare apples and oranges, shall we. In this post: why Drupal is the winner and the Java Enterprise Edition (JEE, previously known as J2EE) is just too damn complicated. What I’d like to compare is a fully customizable content management system (Drupal) with fully custom-developped enterprise software (JEE). In both cases, feel free to [...]

Posted in JavaMedia | 3 Comments