Sunday, March 1, 2009
Work
Bulk Upload And Host Images For Free At Imagebam
9:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’re looking for a quick and dirty free image host for fast image sharing, Imagebam makes it extremely easy to get your photos out there. You can upload as many images as you want—the only restriction is 3MB per file and the images must be in JPG, GIF, or PNG format. Alternately, you can bulk upload by sending a zip file, limited to 100 files and 100MB total size. Besides your uploaded images, there is a BBCode for inserting the image into forums, an HTML link, a direct link, and a link that will remove the image—an interesting, helpful take on privacy and file deletion. If you’re looking for more functionality, free registration gives you access to image management tools, as well as a flash-based bulk uploading tool. We’re wondering—what’s your own no-hassle, quick-sharing photo solution? Imagebam [via MakeUseOf] More »
Fix
Build Your Own SATA Switch
7:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’d like to keep your operating systems and disks completely separate without having to keep cracking open your case, creating your own hard drive switch might work for you. Computer building and modification site Extreme Tech has a tutorial on making a basic selector switch for the power cables of your SATA drives. Why would you want to do this? By selectively offering power to only one of the drives you have hooked up, you recreate the effect of completely swapping out the hard drive. Instead of multiple partitions and boot loader applications, the computer just boots to whichever drive is powered as though it were the only drive with an operating system in the computer. If you want to or need to maintain completely independent disks, the simple switch makes it hassle free. Other than sacrificing a couple power cables to the knife and doing a little basic soldering, there isn’t anything fancy involved in the project. Intrigued by the idea but not so hot with a soldering iron? The author of the tutorial sells a three-drive switch for $US32. Alternately, and in a similar price range, you could pick up a single bay tray-less SATA rack that would let you pop hard drives in and out like cassettes—but you would lose the safety factor of keeping them all mounted safely in the case at all times. If you have your own solution for keeping operating systems and disks separate, tell us how in the comments below. The SATA Switch [via Extreme Tech] More »
Work
Create Crazy Sound Effects With Household Objects
6:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’ve ever wanted to play at being a Foley artist for your own audio recordings, sound designer David Filskov posts an interesting list of tricks he’s collected from other designers for turning common objects into audio trickery. It seems like a stretch, until you realise that movie soundtracks are rarely recorded from the source—often because doing so would be dangerous, impractical, or wouldn’t sound believable. The sound of people walking on snow? It’s made by recording people in the studio walking on flour or cornstarch. If you live in a cold, snowy climate, you know how rare that perfectly crunchy and squeaky snow is. The sound of a naval depth charge? A toilet flushing at half speed, with a reverberation filter applied. Alien sounds? Certain kinds of canned dog food make useful sounds as the food comes out of the can. The chunky stuff isn’t so good, but the tightly packed all-one-mass kind makes gushy sucking sounds when the air on the outside of the can is sucked into the can to replace the exiting glob of dog food. This sound can be used as an element in certain kinds of monster vocalizations, alien pod embryo expulsions, etc. Those without pooches can also try solid cranberry sauce for a similarly weird noise. If you have your own tricks for turning every day objects into cool sound effects, share the cinematic magic in the comments below. Extra points will be awarded if you link to your audio of a Chimera fighting a Liger, made with Saran Wrap, a Twinkie, and a startled house cat. Photo by M. Keefe. Epic Sound: The Guide to Sound Effects [via Make] More »
Design
Floorplanner Presents Your Plans In 3D
5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Looking to re-arrange the stuff of your house or plan a dream room? Floorplanner is a web-based tool for planning rooms and furniture layouts using a simple but powerful editor. We originally reviewed Floorplanner in 2007, but since then they’ve introduced some helpful new features. We originally dug it because of the easy drag-and-drop interface and the extensive library of furniture, fixtures, plants and more are still there. One of the principle reader complaints back then was the lack of 3D planning, but you can now plan in both 2D and 3D, switching between the views for a long view of proportion and layout. The free demo on their site doesn’t allow you to save, but does give you a feel for the tools and layout—though you might be tempted to sign up, after a little Sims-style rearrangement. Or, you know, they put that PrtSc key on up there on your keyboard for a reason. Floorplanner has a free and premium tier; the limitation on the free plan is one house or apartment floor plan. If you upgrade to Floorplanner PLUS for $US27.50 a year, you can create up to five home plans. Floor Planner [via GeekSugar] More »
Work
