Mitch Ansara (Spacesick) created a fantastic series of 1960’s paperback book covers of novelized movie adaptations, from his fictional “I Can Read Movies” series. Mitch made the illustrations as part of his “Make Something Cool Every Day” project.
via Drawn!
illustrations by Mitch Ansara (Spacesick)
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1960’s Paperback Book Covers of Movie Adaptions
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What's a bokeh you say? It's that oh-so-wonderful fuzziness in the background of photographs with a shallow depth of field and accompanying starry highlights. You can create you own bokeh effects with a little craftiness.
The term bokeh is an anglicized version of a Japanese word used to describe the portion of a photograph that is out of focus behind the area of principal focus in a picture. When you see a portrait that has a creamy soft background and a nice crisp focus on the person being photographed, you are seeing bokeh. The shape of the highlights—sometimes round, hexagonal or other geometric shapes—is determined by the shape of the aperture in the lens.
Over at the photography enthusiast blog DIYPhotography.net, an interesting DIY project outlined in simple steps can create custom shapes for the highlights in your bokeh. By creating a combination lens hood and cap out of black card stock and then cutting out the shape of the desired highlights, novel shapes can be created in the final photograph.
In the top/first photograph, the author of the tutorial photographed the same scene with and without the the heart shaped filter pictured at right. 
In the photo at left, Flick user trazomfreak, used the same technique to create snowflakes. If you'd like to see more interesting examples of custom bokeh in action check out the follow up to the tutorial with user-submitted samples. One thing to note is that the wider you can set your aperture, the more intense bokeh effect you can achieve. If you don't have a lens capable of some of the wider aperture settings, like f/1.8, don't despair. We've previously discussed how to use pre-digital camera lenses on modern DSLR bodies, so picking up an old 50mm F/1.8 lens on eBay or at your local used goods shop is easy and great for this sort of experimenting. For more details on construction methods and tips, check out the full tutorial below.
a bit slow, but i can't help feeling for the little guy(s) :: the last few seconds will ease anyone's fears of robot world domination :: click below to watch ::
Chris Glass designed this “Special” t-shirt for Wire & Twine, inspired by childhood memories of CBS television Special Presentation intros from the early 1970’s:
image via Wire & Twine
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Television Special Presentation T-Shirt by Wire & Twine
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Linux only: The latest release of Linux app launcher GNOME Do serves up a helping of new plug-ins (including Google search and Remember the Milk), a clever "Docky" style, and much, much more.
Along with adding a bunch of new functionality through official and third-party plug-ins like Remember the Milk (which also provides task due alerts), TinyURL (paste in a URL, shrink it instantly), translation tools, Banshee and Opera support, and much more, GNOME Do 0.8 also fixes more than 100 bugs, including many plug-in problems. Memory usage has been knocked back, longer lines of text can be manually pasted into Do's launcher, and more file types get icon previews.
The biggest news, however, might be what initially seems like a theme choice, but actually opens up a whole new way of using GNOME Do—as a dock:
"Docky" gives you all the functionality of GNOME Do, putting your as-you-type results in a bottom bar, but also arranges icons and utilities on a Mac-like bar based on how often you use them. For a full read on what Docky's about, check out the Docky wiki page.
GNOME Do is a free download for Linux systems only. Tell us what you dig, and what you're still waiting to see supported, in the comments.
The Google Operating System blog points to one blogger's discovery of text inside the Google Pack software suite that basically lays out what GDrive will do:
GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and documents. GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device - be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone.
So GDrive is shaping up to be an any-file backup system that will roll out with a desktop client, web access. But with all the feature-rich competition GDrive's facing, one would think tie-ins with other Google Apps, and raw data space, would be what Google truly wants to crow about. Are you intrigued by GDrive so far, or wondering what all the noise is about?
