Primer

This is an American Sci-fi film about the accidental invention of a time machine. It deals with multiple time-lines throughout, and has to be the most confusing film ever created. In order to demonstrate just how complex it is here is a link to a time-line of the film.



Timeline



Although this film was created on a budget of only $7000 it has remarkably good production values and could pass for a far more high budget movie.

It is good, but leaves you confused about just what happens and does require watching at least twice in order to begin to understand what is happening.

Cuban Council

CubanCouncil.com

I came across this site after my brother asked me to create an image for one of his own sites, he used this as an example of the kind of thing he was looking for. It caught my interest because it was similar to what I was looking for in terms of photoshop art but it had been used in a commercial manner. I particularly like this website though for its creativeness with visuals and language.

Learning to code

There are many people out there willing to help you learn code. The best thing to do is to start small, don't set yourself and enormous project with out any real ides of how to achieve it, you will only get frustrated and give up, as I have so many times.

As I have already said there are many languages used to make web sites but only a few are necessary, in my opinion. These are HTML, PHP, JAVASCRIPT and MySQL. However PHP and MySQL especially, are only necessary if you want interactive sites which store data.

I myself and relearning a lot of these languages and as part of my project I am going to post links to the sites I create. Unfortunately my internet connect is not set up yet at my flat and I have to use the library computers to post here so it may be a couple of days!

Wordpress

Wordpress is another software package much like phpbb but offers a different set of abilities. It primarily allows you to create a personal blog and generally the styles work well, but you can also create your own but knowledge of HTML and CSS is required.

The great thing about Wordpress is that you can create lots of accounts and effectively create a news stand for a community of bloggers where they could write the content for you allowing you to just run the site.

Again there is little or no scope for wealth generation from this software and is only for the casual user.

Joomla

Joomla is a much more powerful piece of software. It is basically a content management system allowing you to create a whoel host of different website from blogs and forums to online shops. It is designed to be modular allowing you add different plugins to achieve different ends. Agaan a basic web knowledge is recommended with more advanced skill a definite bonus.

This is a better option for people wanting to create shops and make money but still has the draw backs of being not 100% customisable and limited to the plugins that you can get.

PhpBB

PhpBB or “Php Bulletin Board” is popular piece of software used for creating forums. It offers Usability and Customization tools as well as the back end of a forum system and as the name suggest is written in PHP. The good thing about this system is that it allows novices to create forums on their own servers without having to be a coding wizard. However it does have its drawbacks. Although it is customizable there are limits to what you can create and how you can style it, and unfortunately visually the you always know it is a Phpbb.

This software is primarily designed for the casual host who just wants a forum and an online community and has no ambition over that. There is a possibility for a small income from a forum like this but it would require the site's traffic to be come very large otherwise advertisers wouldn't see any value in it.

Internet Revolution 2.0

The internet is becoming an increasingly competitive place to be with websites springing up all the time often in direct competition to existing ones. I believe that we are seeing the next web revolution in action (what some people call web 2.0). "Web 2.0" refers to the internet becoming more than a one sided creator to user system, you are now able to add your own content and comment on other peoples content with ease, and with more and more people having access to the internet all over the world the internet is becoming a very busy place, just look at all the bloggers.

The reason for this explosion in new sites it the relative ease of running an interactive website, this site for example is completely free to me and took me all of 10 minutes to set up. There are other solutions however, a home server is a fairly simple thing to create, at my house for example my brother runs a server with a couple of small forums nothing major but he did it with in a small amount of time with an old PC he bought off eBay. And there are plenty of applications and people out there able to help a novice create there own forum or blog, things like "phpbb" and "wordpress" are great pieces of software that allow you to instantly create a blog or forum from your own server and manage its look, feel and content from a handy administrator page.

From there you can learn to script yourself. There are a few different languages that can perform different tasks on a website, and even if you've never seen them before they are fairly easy to learn. The most basic of which is HTML this can perform simple layout tasks and store data in a fixed format, however when it is combined with other languages such as php and Mysql it becomes a seriously powerful tool and would allow you to create pretty much any website that you see on the internet, and whats best about all these languages is that the are opensource, meaning they are freely developed and free to use pieces software. There are other solutions however for example asp.net which is in direct competition with php but these solutions are not free and generally do not have the support base and communities that the opensource software does.

The first internet revolution came about because sites became easy to access with lot of people buying home computers, this second revolution is happening because content is becoming easy to create, view, edit and comment on. I think this is a great time to be involved with the internet and I hope it continues.

Spore

Another Game from the "Sims" creator Will Wright. It was released on September the 5th but I only go my hands on it yesterday. Its a great game as promised and really fun to play. For those of you who don't know, the game centre's around the evolution of your species from a tiny microbe up to a space faring civilization in 5 stages, microbial Stage, Creature Stage, Tribal Stage, Civilization stage and space stage. The first stage doesn't take too long and can be completed in around 20 minutes after that the stages get longer, as there is more to achieve in order to progress. You get to the space stage after about 4-5 hours of game play, and this is when it really opens up, as you fly around space Trading and fighting to expand your empire.

Graphically the game is very impressive, but only if you have the hardware to handle it, this game requires a lot of power so make sure your system is up to it. My favorite visual feature is the the way as you progress through the stages you gradually zoom out from the planet revealing more and more detail and then you can zoom out past the solar system to a cluster of stars and then on to view the whole galaxy, its quite impressive.

The editors are also really nice, throughout the game you decide how everything looks using the integrated editors. You decide how your creature evolves and what your the building and vehicles look like, and its all very intuitive and customizable, or you can pick other peoples designs through the "Sporepedia" which is a massive ever growing database created buy the users and can be accessed from within the game, should you be feeling lazy.

This game is truly revolutionary and the developers have done a great job and I love it.

LHC - Large Hydron Collider

Today is the day that the Large Haydron Collider at CERN was switched on. The world hasn't ended as so many people predicted, and as far as I know Geneva still exists. The purpose of the collider is to smash tiny particles together with a tremendous amount of energy, these interactions will form other particles that don't naturally occur and even create tiny black holes. It is thought these experiments will help us understand what exactly was going on during the "big bang".

A lot of people have been scaremongering and saying that it would cause the end of the world, not today however, because today was only a test at low energy and it wont be used at maximum energy for at least 1-2 months, maybe we'll all die then.

The reason I am talking about this structure is because of the sheer size of the structure they created. It spans two countries (Switzerland and France) and has a circumference of 27km. Architecturally its nothing special to look at just a giant ring on the surface of the earth but it is still a major feat of engineering and has to be seen as one of the great pieces od 20th century architecture.

Chevrolet Captiva Advert

I was very amused when i first saw this ad, it is a brilliant way of looking at the social dynamic of siblings in a comical way and highlight some true to life stereotypes i.e. boys like cars, where girls appreciate a much deeper fantasy world. This advert also highlights the inability of men to grow out of these childish stereotypes.

Photoshop Paintings

In my first year me and a friend stumbled across a tutorial on how to create realistic looking star maps and planets. The tutorial was written by a Graphical artist called Greg Martin, the work he creates in photoshop is astonishingly detailed and impressive. Take a look here:-

Greg Martin

These picture inspired me to try my hand at a few of these images, with surprisingly good results:

IMAGE TO FOLLOW

There is still hope

The Alfa Romeo 8C is a spectacular looking car however many of us will never even see one in anything other than an photograph, but all is not lost for Alfa Romeo has saved the day with the introduction of the MiTo an 8C inspired hatchback designed to compete the the Mini and the upcoming Audi A1. It shares many of the visual elements of the 8C but all in a smaller and more affordable package, thanks Alfa Romeo you've made my day, Again.

Best Looking car of all time!

The Alfa Romeo 8C "Competizione" is in my opinion one of, if not the best looking production car ever designed, from its long nose and low grill, to its wide hips and Italian round tail lights, every piece of this car is a pleasure to lay your eyes on. The first car was delivered to its owner in October of 2007 and but that time all 500 had already been sold, no chance for me then! The car was designed for Alfa Romeo's relaunch into the American market this year after it pulled out in 1995, and what a way to begin, well done Alfa. I will probably never see one in the flesh, and with only a few coming to the UK, sadly most of us wont.