Sunday, March 22, 2009
Design
Photovisi Creates Advanced Collages
9:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Photovisi is a surprisingly sophisticated collage maker with an assortment of options for tweaking your collage to your liking. Photovisi has eighteen collage templates for groupings of pictures ranging from only a couple up to 30 pictures. Once you select the pictures you can shuffle their order and crop them. On templates where there is some order to the photos, like a ring around primary photo as seen in the screenshot here, Photovisi lets you select which one will be the focus. You can bulk upload images from your computer or pull photos from Flickr. Photovisi [via MakeUseOf] More »
Fix
Create Edible Gummy Shot Glasses
8:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Trying to figure out what to serve your skittles-infused vodka in? Why, a flavored gummy shot glass, of course. ShesParticular at tinkering haven Instructables uploaded a ridiculously simple tutorial on making your own gummy shot glasses. The gist of it: you use a silicone mold intended for making ice shot glasses, you microwave a bunch of gummi worms on a low heat to melt them, and then you pour the mixture into the molds. There are some details to refine the process included in her tutorial, but the basis of technique is executing gummi worms with a microwave. Gummi Shot Glasses [Instructables] More »
Design
Master The Art Of Panning To Create Dynamic Pictures
7:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | What’s panning? It’s the photo technique that seems to freeze an object in motion against a blur of background movement. Slowing your shutter speed is the heart of a good pan and critical to creating a motion blur: The actual shutter speed depends on the speed of the subject but generally it will be 1/200th or slower. 1/200th if your subject is really flying along, like a speeding car on a race track, and maybe as slow as 1/40th of a second if your subject is a runner on a track. Steady hands or a tripod with a nice ball head are a must for a smooth pan. For more tips and example photos, check out the rest of the tutorial below. Photo by tinou bao. The Art of Panning [Digital Photography School] More »
Fix
Save Money With Homemade Body Scrubs
6:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Most luxury body scrubs are simply salt or sugar blended with moisturizers. Why spend big bucks on something with such a simple recipe? Culinary blog TheKitchn took the principle ingredients from several DIY body scrub recipes floating around and put them to the test. They tried various mixtures of olive and essential oil blended with brown sugar, granulated sugar, and sea salt. Their findings? We preferred the granulated sugar mixture. It felt like smooth sand and provided good exfoliation without being too harsh. The brown sugar was clumpy and brown (lemony yellow seemed more aesthetically pleasing). The salt was too abrasive for our skin, although it would be great for calloused heels. For more information about making and refining your own scrubs, including olive oil selection and mixing ratios, check out the full write-up. If you have your own tips for getting a posh spa treatment with a cold shower budget, sound off in the comments below. Personal Care Kitchen: How to Make Homemade Body Scrubs [TheKitchn] More »
Fix
Turn An Old Laptop Into A Wall-Mounted Computer
5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Why settle for a digital picture frame when, in the same wall space, you could mount an entirely functional computer/slideshow player/TV tuner? Lifehacker reader Justin took an old Sony Vaio laptop he wasn’t using and turned it into a wall-mounted computer. Why? Located in his office, it’s finding use as everything from a simple (but hugely more control-friendly) digital picture frame, to a testing ground for apps and other material. A nice, deep frame and matting means you’d never know a fully functional computer is tucked inside at a glance, and there’s room inside for him to cram all sorts of goodies, including a USB TV tuner and dongle for a wireless remote control so the build can also double as a television in his office. Justin notes that every build will be slightly different depending on the laptop you use, but essentially all he did was carefully remove the lid and keyboard casing and carefully turn the screen to face out outward before mounting it into the frame. For more pictures and information about his project, check out his site below. If you have an old laptop but hanging it on the wall isn’t part of your vision for it, make sure to check out our feature on giving your old laptop a new life. Custom Self-Contained Hanging Wall-PC [Glowview] More »
Work
Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities
2:00AM Kevin Purdy | It’s the little things that make a Windows system great—like utilities that use less than 10MB of memory to make your life easier. Here are 10 apps that pack a lot of greatness into very little space. More »
Fix
