Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

WordPress, web development, and world domination.

Scottish Mood-Enhancing Ice Cream

Feb282002

Scottish ice cream maker Mackie’s is launching what it claims is the world’s first mood-enhancing ice cream, according to a report in Scotland on Sunday. The company, based in Aberdeenshire, Scotland has added the essence of an orchid native to Alaska to a low-calorie ice cream, a recipe it claims makes people happy.

I never thought that ice cream needed anything extra in it to make me happy. Mmmm…. Ice cream….

Dr Bernard Senior, a food expert at Dundee University, added: “I have heard nothing like this before. I think it’s a load of codswallop. Many people are gullible and there are those who will go out and buy it. No doubt it will make a lot of money for someone.”

Ooooh, a new word — “codswallop”. I’ll have to remember that one. As far as the money goes, I think that the Alaskan orchid sellers will be the big winners in this, because they don’t stand to lose anything when this product flops.

iStockPhoto Relaunch

Feb262002

We web designers are always on the lookout for sources of images to use in the sites we create. Most image sources are either low-quality, or very expensive. One great exception is iStockPhoto, which offers royalty-free images uploaded by its own members, many of whom are professional photographers or designers.

To support the site, they are now charging $0.25 per download, $0.05 of which goes back to the original artist. I’m hoping that this will be a very sucessful model for them. Especially since I’ve been meaning to upload some of my own photos for a while now.

World Wide Web

Feb222002

Emphasis on the “world wide” part.

I chatted with tjp from Hungary(!) earlier. tjp asked me to look at this cool little drawing app. The page is in Hungarian, but tjp’s English was fine, and I was able to get some tips to get me going.

  • caps-lock will toggle you between “click” mode, “pen down” mode, and “pen up” mode.
  • right-click a pixel to set it to the background color.
  • The links at the top are (left-to-right):
    • Back to main
    • Creative Gallery
    • Canvas Erase
    • Saturation –
    • Saturation +
    • Hue –
    • Hue +
  • Click the link labeled “Elõnézet” to update the square on the right with a small version of your drawing.
  • The text boxes at the bottom are for your name, and the title of your drawing. The “Mentés” link will save your drawing.

Blogchat!

Feb222002

New web site feature: blogchat! Courtesy of Brent Ashley. In my menus, you should be able to see whether or not I’m online. If so, you can pop up a chat window. Hoopy!

Sarnik

Feb152002

Sarnik is a graphical role playing game written completely in cross-browser client-side DHTML. Impressive.

The Iceberg Secret, Revealed

Feb142002

I wish I had seen this article a couple of years ago. It might have saved me some grief on projects I’ve worked on. Joel Spolsky’s The Iceberg Secret, Revealed explains:

If there’s one thing every junior consultant needs to have injected into their head with a heavy duty 2500 RPM DeWalt Drill, it’s this: Customers Don’t Know What They Want. Stop Expecting Customers to Know What They Want. It’s just never going to happen. Get over it.

New Digital Imaging Technology

Feb112002

A company called Foveon, Inc. has developed a new imaging sensor which should radically improve the quality of images from devices such as digital cameras. Standard sensors have separate sensors for the red, green, and blue pixels, and the devices that incorporate these sensors must do complicated post-processing of the captured data to render the final image that we download. The new “X3” sensors will capture all three color components within a single sensor. Less processing means you get an image that is truer to the original source, with less chance of artifacts being introduced.

Update: Here is another article about the Foveon X3.