resistance to persistence

Make your images into polaroids

Poladroid makes your images look like desaturated polaroids. If you’ve got some fond memories of the now defunct polaroid cameras, download poladroid for your mac and turn digital pics into something that feels old and familiar.

monday night i attended toronto democamp 12. i was at democamp 2, a year ago but couldn’t never make the others since they were on tuesday and i had conflicts with other activities. this one was on a monday so i made sure to make it. even through a snowstorm, the turnout was huge and packed No Regrets restaurant in King West, the tech hub of Toronto. thankfully, we arrived early, got a great table in the center and settled back for an evening of tech demos. i won’t give the rundown on each presentation, but i snapped a few photos, so they should count as 13,000 words of explanation for the night.

in general, good presentations, i’d like to see a few more demos, but the updates from past presenters showed how successful some have been ($3M acquistion for bubbleshare!) and how much press and recognition people are getting thanks to democamp. i’ll definitely try to be a regular at more of these events.

View the larger photos at flickr.com by clicking on the thumbnails below.

Photos from Toronto Democamp 12

Today I came across an amazing site for visualization of complex systems. Graphic design along with visualization has always amazed me and this site provides so many examples. It’s a definite spot to spend lots of time browsing.

visualcomplexity.com | A visual exploration on mapping complex networks

VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project’s main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web.

buy a shirt - $18

with all the dangerous stories [video] of people trying to buy playstation 3 machines, be sure to show your friends you were brave enough to line up and face the crowds. buy a shirt to brag to your friends.

the results are in for the 2006 canadian blog awards and i’m very pleased to say that i’m currently in first place for “best photo/art blog”. i’m even in 2nd place for “best personal blog”. there’s some very good competitors and i’m honoured to be competing with them.

so what’s next?

round 2 of voting starts on saturday and runs for a week. only the top 5 continue. please give me a hand and cast a vote for me DAILY. it’s a close competition so every vote counts. go vote

Best Photo/Art Blog - Photo-Persistence
Best Personal Blog - Resistance to Persistence

vote for me!

I’ve been nominated for “Best Photo/Art Blog” as well as “Best Personal Blog” in the 2006 Canadian Blog Awards.

I’m REALLY excited about this and I’d like to place well to give me a boost in viewership. I think I’m a decent photographer and I’d like to get more eyes to see my photos.

There are two rounds of voting (think of semi-finals & finals). Voting for Round 1 ends Tuesday November 21, 2006 and you can vote once EVERY DAY. Please vote for me Daily.

Best Photo/Art Blog - “Photo-persistence”

Best Personal Blog - “Resistance to Persistence”

click the image to read the article

one of my personal software projects, DeliciousMind, is discussed in an online newspaper article at newsforge.com - “the online newspaper for linux and open source”. i’m shocked and excited. it’s been mentioned lots in blogs and other websites, but never in a real article. i’m very proud that it’s picking up more usage and getting noticed.

DeliciousMind is a java application to convert del.icio.us bookmarks into a visual mindmap which can be viewed in Freemind, an open source mindmap tool. Mindmaps are graphical tree structures which make it much easier to remember and review. The non-linear nature of mind maps makes it easy to link and cross-reference different elements of the map.

if you like using del.icio.us and would like to see them in a more visual way, give DeliciousMind a try.

click the image to view the desktop with explanation

This is my work desktop. And no, it’s not a Mac. This is Windows XP with a few tweaks and utility tools to make it look Mac-like so I don’t have to mentally switch between work (WinXP) and home (MacOSX) setups.

What I’m using:

Mac-like toolbar: RKLauncher
Additional docklets for RKLauncher: DockEx
Icon hiding to eliminate distractions: IconDesk
Multiple desktop switching: VirtuaWin
Desktop background: I got these OSX-like images posted somewhere online but can’t remember now.

This is all freeware/open source software, so it doesn’t cost anything and they’re very lightweight small apps as well.