Penguin Pete's Blog

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Forty Webcomic Strips That Make Me Feel Better About My Webcomic
2009-03-13 16:37:00
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/4 0-comics-strips-for-web-designers/ I've been having tremendous guilt over Doomed to Obscurity lately. I've gotten busy with work this week and, inevitably, I've just been rushing the strip out with whatever tired joke I have on hand at the moment, producing a very phoned-in entry. Until I saw 40 Comics Strips for Web Designers and realized that I'm not doing so bad by comparison. Two or three of those show me up, the rest give me hope that even when I'm doing mediocre I'm still in the race.
More About: Make , Feel

A Reminder That Asstroturfing Exists
2009-03-06 22:05:00
Fresh off the presses, another asstroturfing site brags about how they game social bookmarking like it was Three-Card Monte. The story got posted on Reddit so Redditors can laugh and point at Digg, as if the exact same thing never happens on Reddit. Of all the spam and advertising fraud out there, it is perhaps asstroturfing that is the meanest. Asstrturfers undermine the social web. The story you see that's voted up to the front page, even though it's a troll? People were paid to vote that up. Your social-network-site "friend" who recommends spams and scams to you non-stop? He's paid to pretend to be your friend. The comments that flood a story, flaming about one side of the issue, insulting and modding down everybody who objects, and make it sound like it's the world-against-you? They're paid actors. The troll who harassed you in a thread for numerous replies until you gave up in frustration? Paid to do that. Like email spam, there is no calculating the damage done to socie...
More About: General , Reminder

Tech Worker Meets Real World - Recoils In Shock
2009-03-05 17:46:00
Anybody who's just breaking out into a career in tech can sympathize with this account of the woes faced by a programmer in his first four jobs. While some of you might dismiss it as whining, it is true that CubicleLand is a jungle. The main fault I can see is that the individual just needs to suck it up and keep trying. Equally telling are the comments on Reddit solicited by the author, which rapidly share their own horror stories from the trenches. Yeah, a lot of these stories sound familiar, too. In D&D terms, think of the universe as Chaotic Neutral in alignment. Sometimes you get the bear; sometimes the bear gets you. Yes, I just pulled off references to Big Lebowski and tabletop RPG in the same paragraph. Anyway, this reminds me of a few anecdotes I could share about friction I encountered in various workplaces I've had before, and what I did to solve them. Take them all as a whole approach to workplace philosophy. #1: The idea is only good if it comes from somebody else....
More About: World , Shock , General , Tech , Real

Why the Philosophies of Nietzsche and Rand Are Poison To Geeks
2009-02-27 18:04:00
With a title like that, I hope you're not expecting this post to be light reading. I'm also blindly assuming that you have at least a passing familiarity with the concepts of Objectivism and the Übermensch. If you aren't familiar with these concepts, you can skip this. I envy your bliss. Now, then. You don't have to be a genius to see the effects that having a high IQ would have on the personality during a young person's development. The very gifted have a hard time fitting into society, which is why they get names like 'nerd' and 'geek' in the first place. They can't find anything in the media that doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator, they're bored in class doing work that everyone else is struggling to keep up with, and in social settings they listen to the chatter around them and think, "How can they go on like that? Doesn't it bore them silly?" So in the geek we have the potentially dangerous combination of high intellect and maladjustment. And quite a...
More About: Geeks , Nietzsche , Poison

The Losing Battle Against Technology Freedom
2009-02-26 04:23:00
Even notice that you can hardly use a computer anymore without being in somebody's cross-hairs? Somebody, somewhere, is always out to get you. All we want to do is use these clever devices they keep making for us to buy, and be happy and not bother anybody. But somebody out there apparently didn't learn how to play nice with others. There's the SCO attack against Linux. It drags on still. It's been set back so many times, any sane entity would have given up by now. But it won't end until the very last possible penny. There's the couple who tried to sue Google for taking their picture in StreetView. Thrown out, of course. Who could possibly have not seen that coming? The Pirate Bay is under attack, again. Of course, the case is falling to pieces before it can even get rolling, but you think that'll stop more filers from trying? Welcome to the new century, people! You do not own your media. You do not even own your own image if you're out in public view. You cannot control...
More About: Freedom , Technology , General , Battle

New Flash Demo #11: A Card Shuffler
2009-02-24 17:22:00
It's nothing to get too excited about, but I've made up a small deck of Poker card graphics and some Actionscript to shuffle them. Check the card shuffling demo and grab the GPL'd source code here, if you'd find it useful. Note, however, that the card graphics are just suits and ranks. I did that to have them be small and yet readable, with an eye towards making a BlogSquare-sized Poker game for the sidebar later. If you want bigger, better cards, Wikimedia Commons has a whole playing-card category, to say nothing of the deck graphics that come with KDE and Gnome card games which should be reusable. This is one of those classic "should be solved only once" type problems. So now everybody has a deck of cards and a way to shuffle them already pre-built for open-source Flash development, all you have to do is write the game around it. The code isn't brilliant or elegant, but "stupid and robust". One note about the code that needs explaining: Actionscript uses zero-indexing when...
More About: Card , Demo

After Seven Months, the Terry Childs Witchhunt Drags On
2009-02-19 05:34:00
I'm glad to see some follow-up to this story; Slashdot has a new post up about the case of Terry Childs, the so-called "rogue sysadmin" of San Francisco. And after reading the new information, I still see no reason to change my opinion from seven months ago. In fact, I'm now more convinced than ever that Childs found himself on the dirty end of some office politics, with somebody who had a personal beef against him. Still no concrete charges to bring against him. Nothing but "what if?" and "maybe?" I love Childs' closing comment, when Paul Venezia asks him what he would have done differently: "I'd have gotten out before it came to this." Yeah, those of us who were lucky enough to quit cubicle-land before it ate our sanity are nodding our head in agreement.
More About: General , Months

Some Completely Meaningless Flash Animation Loops
2009-02-18 19:20:00
Every now and then, playing with Flash animations is an itch I've just got to scratch. This time, I looked back on the method I used in one of my earlier tutorials. The next logical step was to write a script that automates the whole process, turning a POVRay scene into a Flash animation in a single step. The script method I used is quite simple: It takes a POVRay scene with the variable "FACT" declared in various places, loops through 0-to-350 for the variable (changing the rotation of abjects controlled by "FACT"), generates the frames, uses Image Magick to crop the frames to 240x240 squares, saves them in sequence, builds the Flash script, and calls the swfc compiler to compile it. Before anybody asks "Why don't you just use png2swf for that last step?" - I tried it, but the animation comes out much choppier. Very efficient, although limited in what it can produce without some fancier POVRay programming. But I think I've lost everybody now, so I'll just post what I've ...
More About: Animation , Loops , Flash Animation

Some Thoughts on the Economy and the Web Industry and Independent Comics
2009-02-09 13:45:00
I promise that the new webcomic won't take over my whole blog, but temporarily the webcomics medium is on my mind a lot. So I chanced upon this heart-tugging message by Max Cannon, creator of the strip "Red Meat". Now, I adore Red Meat and all, and I agree with many of the points here, but I'd just like to re-assure those of you who are worried that the recession is going to nuke all of your favorite content online. Specifically, neither my website nor my comic pays for itself directly, nor do I expect it to. But it's so cheap, I can go on doing it for a hobby indefinitely. I don't know how it is for anybody else out there, but for me I spring (I think I remember) $15 per year for domain registration and then $10 per month for hosting. Granted, not the luxury package that can handle infinite traffic, but adequate for my needs. Compare my other vices: I blow about $30 per month on coffee (grinding my own for homemade espresso) and $15 per month, tops, on pipe tobacco. Just tre...
More About: Economy , Industry , Comics , Thoughts , Independent

Yay! My "Doomed to Obscurity" Webcomic Got Reviewed!
2009-02-08 06:04:00
With only about a month and a quarter publishing history and being up to number 20 as of now, I'll take all the notice I can get. So here's a review of Doomed to Obscurity for ya'all to contemplate. Even though the review is tepid and basically stands me with my nose in the corner, I am nevertheless completely accepting of it. It is quite fair, and it is actually showing me that I'm right about where I thought I'd be at this point. Let's treat it like the performance reviews I used to get in CubicleLand and respond to each point with action items: Page features: I intend doing a lot more with the page, as time permits. I do want to add an archive listing and add the date and strip number to each post. Not hitting the same note as XKCD. Good. Nothing against XKCD, but I've got my own muse to follow. Ditto other popular strips. Some I get inspiration from, but this is definitely going to be my own show. Not enough "omph": This will improve over time. Right now I've been fra...

Shisen-Sho FAIL
2009-02-05 13:07:00
Was playing KDE's Shisen-sho, because I'm probably one of the few who actually likes that one. And this happened. You ever get down to four tiles in this arrangement? I get this all the time, no idea how to avoid it. Feel free to snarf for your own Demotivational poster fun.
More About: Linux Gaming

I Give Up: Civilization Is A Bust. Quick, Back To The Caves!
2009-02-04 08:03:00
I'm going to have to assume from now on that the audience I'm blogging for simply hasn't been born yet. So, to the Internet archaeologists of 1000 years from now: I'm sorry, I failed to bring the human race to terms with computers. But just look at what I had to work with! You see, I have a handicap. I don't have Alzheimer's disease. In my time, virtually everyone else had Alzheimer's. That's why they couldn't remember anything that happened before breakfast. Being in a continuous state of having a fresh reboot several times each day, most everybody was quite happy, because they couldn't remember any problems they'd ever had. Everybody was equal, because nobody could keep a train of thought going long enough to learn anything. There was no such thing as history, so every time anybody tried anything, it was always the very first time and the results were a complete surprise, which was talked about briefly and promptly forgotten. Take for instance, the blog post over at ...
More About: Humor , Civilization , Back , Quick , Bust

Weather Forecast From the Command Line
2009-02-02 12:35:00
For years, I've been getting my weather from Firefox plug-ins, usually ForecastFox. The trouble with these is they have to update every few minutes, causing a brief lag in bandwidth and even a small blip in performance if you're using some other program while Firefox is running. Recently, my ForecastFox started misbehaving for no particular reason. It would blank out and freeze up and so on. So I decided to uninstall it for now and explore alternatives. True, I could just bookmark the local news weather page and be done with it. But I like something that would run in the background, use the minimum of resources, and not be dependent on running a web browser. So I explored command-line options. weather-util The first I found is weather-util, a Python script done by a formidable fellow who is geek enough to have affinities for Linux, HURD, and OpenBSD all at once. Despite the INSTALL instructions telling me to put the Python module here and the man pages there, I just plonked t...
More About: Weather , Reviews , Line , Command , Weather forecast

Inkscape Tutorial - Raised Lettering Effect
2009-01-26 20:18:00
A while back I saw a search come in for "Inkscape bump-map". While a bump-map filter as such does not exist in Inkscape, there is a way to get shapes to have a raised 3D appearance. We'll use lettering for this example. Start with a large canvas - I'm using 800x800 here. I have Inkscape's name written here in the canvas font at 144 point-size, and I increased the size some more after that. We'll see why size is a factor later. Set the font to the darkest shade of the color you're going to use. With the shape still selected, Ctrl-D to duplicate it. Now set the color on this duplicate to just a shade lighter. Next, we're going to create a "path inset" - to do this, hit "Ctrl-(" - hold down the control, shift, and 9 keys to get the left parenthesis. You only need one inset step at a time, so only hit it once. Then, use the arrow keys left and up to nudge the lighter, inset shape slightly to the upper-left corner of the darker bottom shape. Now we just keep repeating these fo...
More About: Tutorial , Effect

Doomed to Obscurity: Now With RSS Feed
2009-01-23 15:59:00
Those of you who were clamoring for an RSS feed for "Doomed to Obscurity " now have one. This is the RSS feed link I hope I did this right, because this is my first time making an RSS from scratch. Normally I just leave it to the content-publishing software (e.g. blogs or galleries), but this time I'm micromanaging. So, the feed is RSS 2.0, and it checks out OK with the feed validator. If any of you would be so kind as to test it out, and let me know if it works or if there's problems with it, I'll be very appreciative. If there's no problems with it, I'll make it link from the main page. Right now, I'm doing it by hand and uploading it with each post. I'll get it scripted later. I'm still figuring out the Atom version.
More About: Site News , Feed

Cheers to Scott McNealy and the OSI. Now Git 'Er Done!
2009-01-21 22:46:00
It is rare that I talk about politics this often, but then again, it is rare that we have so many exciting things going on in the technology sphere that touches upon technology and specifically open source. So I am jazzed with joy to see that Scott McNealy will be talking about open source in a paper he is preparing for the new administration. High time! Other governments all over the world are embracing a more engaged view of technology in government. At the very least, the United States would be wise to catch up and look more into it, if for nothing else than the security benefits. And I'm not going to complain that it should have been Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman. Even if McNealy makes a pitch for Java and Open Solaris instead of GNU and Linux, we're still coming out on top. As I've mentioned in reviewing Solaris distros in the past, once you get each one booted and configured you almost can't tell the difference, at least from the desktop. I am also of a cautious mi...
More About: General

Shouldn't The President Be As Wired As He Wants To Be?
2009-01-14 02:35:00
I've been following the drama about whether nearly-president-now Barack Obama will be allowed to keep his Blackberry. With disgust. I'm disgusted because here, for once, is a president who doesn't want to be kept in a bubble - and our executive system is giving him such flack about it! I don't know about anybody else, but I want the Chief Executive of my country to have as much access to information technology as possible. I think he should not only have a Blackberry, but a smartphone and a laptop 24/7. I think he should have unfettered access to the Internet in whatever way he wants. I think he should be able to browse Technoratti over his morning coffee so he can find out what people think of him today, without having to wait for a Gallup poll result. I think, should there be a terrorist attack at 2AM, he should be able to reach to his nightstand and Google and Wiki the facts immediately. Preferably from lynx running in a console so he saves those crucial seconds. (dream, d...
More About: President , General , Wired , The President

A Gallery of Spambots
2009-01-10 16:42:00
Some of you, when you hear me complain about spam, might have asked "WHAT spam, Pete?" Well, if you have to ask that, then that's a good thing. It means I'm doing my job. But you do catch a glimpse of them before I delete them, if you click the 'last comments' link. This shows all last comments from all posts, and since I typically leave comments open on all posts indefinitely, much of the comment spam is in posts that are months or years old. Here's a little gallery of screenshots I've saved of some typical examples. If you see these on your site, you know them now for what they are! Chinese, I gather? Never trust anybody with two first names. But are they geeks? Some kind of graphics site, posts only in the graphics tutorials. This one always posts "thanx". Apparently W0rld-of-W4rcraft g0ld is big business. And yes, I'm deliberately munging the name to ward off search-guided bots. A bunch of them in the gaming articles. NOTE: If you're a le...
More About: Gallery

"Doomed to Obscurity" - New Web Comic Launched
2009-01-01 19:51:00
http://www.penguinpetes.com/Doomed _to_Obs curity/index.php For a New Year's Day surprise, I'm finally launching the webcomic I've always wanted to do. It's called Doomed to Obscurity and if you give it time, it'll grow on you. Strip #1 is up today; subsequent strips will be published every odd-numbered calendar day. That's the rule. Holidays? Yes, holidays too. Does this mean when the month ends on the 31st, you get another strip the next day on the 1st? Yes it does. Friday the 13th too? Yes Leap Day too? Not that it applies this year, but yes. Why such an unusual rule? Because nobody else does it. I like it quirky. And it's a good compromise between easy enough that I don't miss a deadline, and regular enough to keep readers. As hinted by today's date, this is a New Year's resolution. I will be keeping up the posting schedule all 186 odd-numbered days this year. I already have a buffer of strips drawn in advance, so I'm already ahead. I have a whole cast pre-drawn. I ...
More About: Site News , Comic , Launched

The Annual Christmas Online Games Speedlink Post
2008-12-25 19:05:00
Just when you were all wondering if I'd abandoned the dang blog, I'll carry on my Christmas tradition of posting a list of online games and toys that I found interesting this year. Because at least I got Christmas off work! Gallery of Computation - I love these Flash demo sites. This one has a huge gallery of experiments and explorations in Flash programming. Navigate through this swoopy spacey interface to surf the demos. Logo in your Browser - Yo dawg! We heard you like Logo, so we put some Logo in your browser so you can hack while you surf! Sorry, it wrote itself. I tried to stop it. Light Bot - A very unique game. You have to program a bot to walk and hop around, turning on lights on squares to complete each round. To do this, you drag and drop little icons for commands and execute all at once. Also has two functions you can program. Challenging at higher levels! Texas Hold-Em - Since you hear so much buzz about it - knowing how to program a gambling game site is a good m...
More About: Games , Online Games , Post , Online

How to Talk About FOSS Without Sounding Like a Total Dweeb
2008-12-09 18:55:00
If you run Linux, BSD, or any other Free and Open Source system, you know that every time you open your mouth about it in day-to-day life, you usually have to stop and explain what it means. Outside your office or school, there's everyday-type folks who have no idea that such a thing exists, and they'll all have to be taught, one person at a time. Through the years, I've sought to balance my desire to spread technology freedom everywhere I go with the urge not to make a roaring bore out of myself. For those of you who ask things like, "How do I tell my boss about Linux?" or "How do I recommend a Linux solution to my kid's school?", here's some rough rules of thumb I've carved out over the years which allow the maximum teaching with the minimum amount of pain - for both listener and speaker. #1. Eliminate computer jargon. I've tried every other way, and it doesn't work. No matter how simply you talk, there will be terms that somebody, somewhere, doesn't understand. Even ba...
More About: Talk , Total

Producing an EBook Cover With POVRay and Inkscape
2008-12-04 01:49:00
This is going to be half-tutorial and half-exhibition, for at least the intermediate graphics artist. In selling ebooks, even though you're buying an electronic document that exists only in the virtual world, sellers prefer to market the book with a graphic of the book as if it were a physical object. Which has given rise to a small market for ebook cover design and renders. Here, I've produced a hypothetical example: So I'll just walk you through the steps. It isn't worth pinning it down in detail, because that might change for an individual project. You might draw the cover and spine in something besides Inkscape , you might need a different size, and you might want to show a paperback or a spiral-bound book or some other design. I'm also going to use KPOVModeler and show how to do it in the GUI, since my usual POVRay tutorials degenerate into a gobbledegook of code which I'm not sure if that's lost on anybody or what. So let's try reaching the visual learners this time...
More About: Ebook , Cover , Producing

CrossOver Games for Linux Running Diablo 2
2008-12-01 04:31:00
For those of you wondering where the blazes I've been - this should answer your question! Between the manic pace of pre-Holiday-season work and getting back into Diablo 2 again, I haven't been much good otherwise. The back-story is that I saw the post on Slashdot where CodeWeavers was giving away licenses to CrossOver for a limited time. So I'd been curious about it, but not urgently. This was just the time to try it. Got the coupon-code and downloaded it and installed it, but I was stuck for what to do with it. Most anything Windows-based I'd already gotten running on Wine or DOSBox over the years? What's left? I wanted a real challenge to put CrossOver through its paces. Then I remembered that I still have the full Blizzard's Diablo 2 + LOD expansion disk set and dug it out. It runs like a dream! My hints for CrossOver are to go ahead and try something even if it's not listed as being officially supported, check the Wine database for clues as to what you'll run into for...
More About: Linux , Reviews , Running , Games

"Evil" and Technology: Not a Black and White Issue
2008-11-09 23:19:00
So, the other day, I'm in a lengthy discussion with an acquaintance, and as usual the conversation gravitates towards technology. I made my usual elevator spiel about Linux and BSD and FOSS, why I use it, blah blah. No, I say, it's not because "Microsoft is evil" that I use Open Source, but because Open Source is good. Then the conversation veers - "Let me ask you a question about evil.", he says. Sigh, I go, here it comes. So he left-fields me with a question along the lines of "Do you think the government should be restricting access to encryption technology for the masses?" Theoretical question. His point is that it shouldn't. I always get these. Questions phrased as if they had a yes-or-no answer. No, I said, that isn't the point, it's a question of logistics. Because of open source, I can make up any encryption scheme I want to and give it away and there isn't a damn thing anybody can logically do about it, because code is protected by free speech, so the whole point is...
More About: Technology , General , White , Black , Evil

I Have Never Been This Shocked
2008-11-05 06:14:00
I still can't quite let myself believe that Barack Obama won. Isn't this the part where they pull some recount monkey business out of their hat? But McCain conceded! He wouldn't do that if he was planning to steal the race, would he? Well, my theory is that I'm in a coma and I'm dreaming all this. So, while I'm in this coma, I guess it doesn't hurt too much to offer my own little concession. By the way, thank you, black Americans! You saved our cracker asses. We didn't deserve that. My concession is that I have been too cynical before. I had given up on my country. I had seen too many former friends in the past eight years turn to enemies because they suddenly came out Red (as in Red State) and I would not be a party to their terror-mongering. I had seen too much civilization rot back to savagery. I had seen too much racism. I had seen too much enlightenment torn down by too much ignorance. I figured the USA was never going to wise up. And that does happen to countries a...
More About: Site News

Blender 2.46 Tutorial - Boning
2008-11-03 16:46:00
It occurred to me that with all my graphics tutorials, I have never done any Blender ones. This is because, like everybody else including half its user base and even possibly a few of its coders, I barely understand Blender myself. However, I've gotten stupidly overconfident enough to think I can pull off at least one tutorial. So this will be about boning. Now, some call this "armatures" and some call it "linking" and "rigging" and other colorful metaphors and euphemisms. I call it "boning". You're taking a model and putting the bones in. OK? So, here's my human model, imported from MakeHuman. I've managed to give her something that resembles hair if you don't look too hard and even labored mightily to imbue her with a facial expression. She'll be volunteering for today's tutorial. However, since boning a whole body will be too complicated for this tutorial, we'll just need a basic limb. How about a leg? Thank you, volunteer. Now that we've ripped her leg from the re...
More About: Tutorial

Why I Am Not A "Linux Advocate"
2008-10-27 23:37:00
At first, you might mistake me for a "Linux advocate". I'm running a site about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), of which Linux is counted as an example. I certainly bring up Linux and the programs that run on it a lot. Yet my purpose here is actually not advocacy for a particular system. In the first place, I do cover BSD, Solaris, and other FOSS systems also. Many of what will run on one runs on the other. In the second place, to tie my "loyalty" to Linux would be just as bad as to tie it to a proprietary system. No matter how well Linux does now, there's no saying that it couldn't be corrupted to something worse later. I examine Linux (and all FOSS) with the same critical eye I would proprietary software. I have used Linux for ten years and have it installed on four machines and have sampled dozens of distros; and even then, it's still on probation. To do otherwise would be to stop treating technology like technology and treat it like a religion. My purpose here is onl...
More About: General , Advocate

Real Friends Don't Have To Brainwash You
2008-10-22 23:15:00
I haven't paid enough attention to Carla Schroder lately. It is such a tragedy, because she's normally a smart, geeky writer who has published some real get-your-hands-dirty Linux-tinkering articles. I find myself admiring her when she posts a pithy HOWTO or examines a dark corner of the Linux internals not commonly explored. We need more of that. And then just when I'm about to link to her, she publishes another pro-Ken-Starks article that's worthy of Big Brother's "Ministry of Truth". The message, which Ken Starks and his little cult of personality has been drumming for years now, is that Ken Starks is Your Only Friend. Ken Starks of course "humbly" concurs. It doesn't matter who writes Linux, who provides tech support for Linux, who builds a computer with Linux built-in and sells it on the market, who donates non-programming support to Linux in the form of documentation, artwork, and server space, or who teaches the public how to actually use it. Ken Starks roars that he ...
More About: Friends , General , Real

Windows Mobile - Like Being Dropped in a Toilet
2008-10-21 06:26:00
Anybody who owns a mobile device has had the experience, at least once, of accidentally dropping their smartphone or PDA in the can. It happens - it slips off your belt clip and falls out of a pocket, and 'bloop!', there goes another one. That's why I was jolted upon watching this clip over at Wonkette. See, they're having a benefit to raise money for breast cancer on the Ellen Degeneres show - normal so far - so their idea was to put Julia Louis-Dreyfuss into a giant pink cage and have her dunked by Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden throwing softballs. But it wasn't until the gal was dumped into the soup that I noticed the Windows Mobile ad. Because Microsoft, having failed to win hearts and minds with the drug-induced Seinfeld episodes (they were way too long to be mere commercials), figured that the next best thing was to buy ad space on the rim of something that reminds you of a potty. Stay classy, Microsoft! Some afterthoughts: (1) Too bad the Seinfeld deal went...
More About: Windows Mobile , Toilet

My FOSS Graphic Application WishList
2008-10-11 02:42:00
Dear Santa/Fairy Godmother... There's a number of new graphics applications that I've been searching all over for. They may or may not have been invented yet. So I'm posting this little list, to the purpose of either... discovering through some reader's comment that such a creation exists, with link and recommendation, inspiring some development team out there to pick up the idea for their next project, or finding out that if I'm ever to see such a program, it's up to widdle old me to create it. #1 - An Isometric Image Editor We're close already. Gimp has an isometric grid and snap-to-grid feature in the GFig plug-in, and it's also possible to render isometric perspective with POVRay and Blender. But what I'm actually after is a drag-n-drop block editor. The closest thing to what I have in mind is a Windows program named "AnkerCAD", uncovered over at Rea Maor's. I tried it out, but it behaves funky. #2 - A combined POVRay/Flash Editor As anybody who's followed my ...
More About: Wishlist , Graphic , Application