Blog.Andrei.MD

Updated siter.com.au home page to include some Raphael-powered...

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 21:32:04 +1000

Updated siter.com.au home page to include some Raphael-powered goodness.

Skype Etiquette

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:04:00 +1000

Before you ring, You ping
Return calls (just like on mobile, see no.1)
Do not assume I’m there even if it’s Green
If you don’t have a camera, I don’t have a camera

I just recycled an old idea to create my own 3d photos that...

Sun, 29 May 2011 03:38:00 +1000

I just recycled an old idea to create my own 3d photos that don’t require glasses to see.

brockdavis: Gummy Bearskin rug

Fri, 27 May 2011 10:22:37 +1000

brockdavis:

Gummy Bearskin rug

This is partly why my dairy intake is almost zero (sometimes...

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:30:34 +1100

This is partly why my dairy intake is almost zero (sometimes unavoidable). Other reason is my health concerns. Some call milk “liquid meat” because it similar properties to meat. And I don’t eat meat.

lachstock:

This is so so fucked.

I guess from now I’ll be taking my coffee black.

Go to Animals Australia for more on this or directly to this page to send your thoughts to Dairy Australia.

via edm.fatpublisher.com.au

PHP MySQL localhost not finding socket on mac

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:20:22 +1100

On my mac, PHP wouldn’t connect to MySQL to “localhost” server. It turns out that when “localhost” is used, MySQL uses sockets instead of TCP/IP connection. Terminal mysql access to localhost was fine, which suggested that there’s nothing wrong with MySQL config. Only after a while did I think to look at php.ini to see if there are any setting there. Yep, my mac uses /tmp/mysql.sock and php.ini was setup to use /dev/mysql/mysql.sock. After changing to /tmp/mysql.sock and restarting apache it now works like it should.

Hope you find it helpful.

Video: Gary Null Lecture - Change your life

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:15:54 +1000

Video: Gary Null Lecture - Change your life

Video: Deconstructing the myth of AIDS

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:29:40 +1000

Video: Deconstructing the myth of AIDS:

I came across this video that provides a view on AIDS I didn’t know existed. It’s long but worth seeing.

On energy consumption of electric cars

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 10:12:48 +1000

We hear about electric cars more and more. Apple showed a Nissan Leaf iAd in their latest keynote. Australian agencies a looking forward to electric cars (CIO article).

There’s also talk about charging stations and distance one can travel on a 100% electric car. I am all for an electric car that drives quietly and without emissions.

However, as I think about it I realize that with electric cars we will need to take many more things into consideration while driving.

With petrol-powered cars electricity was free - it was generated as a by-product of the engine spinning the wheels. You can have as much electricity as you can consume (or as your generator can produce). Nobody ever hits the limit of available electricity when the engine is on. Nobody says “Oh, I can’t play my iPod because there’s not enough electricity”.

Heat production is a given, too. Radiator was invented to get rid of heat. When it’s cold outside and you want to heat your car, you just let the heat from the engine in.

On a hot day we turn on air conditioning. Cold air, unlike hot, does not exist anywhere inside a car for free and needs to be generated. Many of us understand that aircon eats up petrol and affects the distance we can travel.

What about heat and energy in an electric car?

It’s pretty simple, really. You will have to take everything into account. I mean everything. Kilometers or Miles per gallon will not make sense anymore. Kilometers per dollar will not make much sense either.

All of the things described above will consume electricity.

How far can you drive on a dollar? That depends on whether you want to listen to the radio, have a GPS plugged in, keep the air conditioner or heater running. I hope you get the idea - everything needs to be taken into account. The louder your stereo is on, the smaller is your travel distance. If you are driving at night, you will need more energy to get places. If you think you need your high beams on, you’ll need even more energy. What if it rains? Turning on the wipers is costly too. Freezing outside? Time to turn up that heater. And you know how that affects your home electricity bill.

In the end, it will depend on the size of your battery. And the size of your battery, just like the size of your petrol tank will determine how far you can go and what lifestyle choices you will make while driving.

Even with all these considerations I am all for the Electric Car. Can’t wait to be part of the future.

Last photo is taken from The Motor Report article which says Nissan Leaf is coming to Australia in 2012.

NearlyFreeSpeech.net DDOS effect

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:23:36 +1000

I’m using NearlyFreeSpeech.net (NFS) for some web and DNS hosting. It’s pretty cheap and has plenty of controls - just right for the technical person like me.

However, the recent DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack has shown me that their network is not resilient at all. Particularly, I’m concerned with DNS service. Commercial DNS offerings are meant to use geographically distributed servers NOT all on one network.

Couple of weeks ago, there was a network hardware failure at CrazyDomains.com.au. All of their web sites were down, but the DNS kept going. This is the way it’s supposed to be done.

Now, I’ll probably move all the domains to Zerigo.com and take advantage of their API and domain templates. I was thinking of using the DNS service offered by Linode.com when you sign up to one of their VMs. However, I feel I should go with a dedicated DNS hosting provider this time, not some free or cheapish add-on to hosting.

To conclude, I would like to say that there really aren’t many good DNS hosting services available.

Testing Balsamiq Mockups - an application I won a license for at...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:58:00 +1000

Testing Balsamiq Mockups - an application I won a license for at the recent Web Blast event. Looks good so far. I hope there are stencil libraries available to extend the stock offering.

First impression is positive.

New versions of SydJS logo featuring the opera house. Brackets...

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:10:00 +1000

New versions of SydJS logo featuring the opera house. Brackets and other geekiness have been dropped to make room for the famous opera house sails.

This time it’s been converted to Raphael - the web vector graphics superpower. Once in Raphael, I added a fancy gradient, just because it was so easy to do.

This particular background colour is not part of the logo and is there mainly to show the transparency of the graphic. Some consideration has been given to colour selection, so it’s not totally random. This is what Adobe Kuler told me when I asked it to give me some trendy colours. Must be trendy, then.

SydJS logo in Raphael

Scribble effect in Adobe Illustrator CS4 is my new favourite....

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:39:20 +1000

Scribble effect in Adobe Illustrator CS4 is my new favourite. Incredible editability of the “random look”. Yay!

Monetization idea for Vimeo, YouTube and others

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 15:01:00 +1000

“Paid Videos“ is where online video should be going. You can only get so far on advertising. Revenue share models based on ads don’t quite work. Main problem is they don’t encourage or sponsor original content. Another problem is that people don’t want ads everywhere.

Call me a cherry-picker, but I’m surprised big players like Vimeo and YouTube haven’t ventured into the land of allowing uploaders to charge money for videos. They have already built the platforms and fine-tuned the interfaces to user’s liking. Now it’s time to make it interesting for people to contribute original content. The infrastructure is all there. It’s time to make video profitable for the little guys just like Apple’s iTunes store.

Idea is simple:

I make good video and upload it
Visitors pay to view it
I get a cut of the earnings from the service provider

What could be simpler?

Right now Vimeo is trying to make money by getting me to pay to upload videos. This may work for a business that wants to embed a bunch of videos on their site and have Vimeo host it. But it doesn’t work if I want to make money off those videos. This encourages me to upload a small chunk of my new creation to Vimeo or YouTube and try them to buy a DVD or an iTunes movie or app.

It could be simpler.

I upload a short teaser trailer and show it for free on Vimeo. If you like it, you click and pay to view/download/rent/subscribe to the video. Easy. The trick to making money online is to let the end users pay for stuff. You cannot make money on free stuff. Nor can you expect advertisers to cover the bill. For the millions and billions of consumers our there there are only thousands or hundred of thousands of producers. If you focus on getting producers to pay to showcase their creations, you’re doing it wrong.

If monetization was offered, we would see new movies appearing on YouTube and Vimeo the same time they do on Netflix or Cable TV.

Video Formats

YouTube and Vimeo are not just sites. They are the media formats of the future. Forget MP4 or OGG or H.264 - they are just technical specifications. Nobody says “I watched that video in H.264 format”, they say “Have you seen this YouTube video?”. YouTube will deliver the video in whatever format the user can see with maximum quality, be it OGG, H.264 or whatever new standard may appear in the future. YouTube will also fight for distribution. They will make sure it can be played on the iPad, Android and the new Sony TV. You just have to make the movie. YouTube and Vimeo will also work hard to protect the movies against piracy instead of simply providing vehicles for it.

YouTube logo will soon be the thing you’ll be looking for when buying the new gadget. It will replace the “DVD” or “BlueRay” logos sooner thatn you think. Devices with that logo will be certified to play YouTube content by adhering to the API. There will be no licensing fees to be paid for using the logo because YouTube will be making the money by other means. This is no BetaCam or MiniDisk - excellent technologies of the day crippled by patenting and licensing.

Piracy

How many people know how to download a video from YouTube and later play it on the home entertainment system? Not many. From those who can, not many would be willing to go through trouble of doing so.

Consider this: If YouTube is one of the few de-facto video playback interfaces AND they guard against copyright infringements what are my chances of being able to upload a pirated video back to YouTube? Very close to zero.

If all your purchased data is stored online and managed in an official player, there’s no way for pirated stuff to get in there.

In another scenario, all pirates get together and create their own PiraTube. They invest billions to host and serve the content. They build custom apps that can be pushed to iPads and Androids. All the content is available for free. Then Apple rejects their app and the videos cannot be played on the shiny new device with the YouTube logo on it. Question: Why would pirates invest billions?

Monetization

This is the easy bit. Let the uploaders decide on the payment schemes. YouTube and Vimeo might have “premium” subscriptions that get access to select content without having to pay extra.

Media Storage

Buying a movie would add it to the customers set of items FOREVER. Say for $10 you get 10 playbacks for a lifetime, with extra $10 getting you another 10 playbacks. So if you buy a movie today, you can be sure that you can watch it next year again if you have the urge to do so. Players on devices like iPad and TV would report playbacks back to base.

ISP Access Fees

YouTube would partner with ISPs or give them rev share if they don’t count my traffic. Thus, by paying for the video I would be paying for my internet connection fees as well. Apple is already doing it for iTunes store.

Premium Content

I love TED talks. I wish I had access to all of them. I would pay a monthly subscription to view them all. I prefer to watch TED talks on YouTube because its less choppy and I have one less site to log into.

Free Content

Just like it happens with Free-to-air TV, a movie may be shown for free on a network like YouTube after it has been available for a fee for a while. Spiced with the right amounts of advertising and promotional content, it may be possible to occasionally make content available for free. It can also be bundled with a new release.

The future

For some, I may be stating the obvious. I suspect the big platforms like YouTube and Vimeo have plans for this. If they don’t, I would recommend they get a grip and get out of the Twitter business model of “Let’s build it very big and then somehow we will make money”.

Final Notes

These ideas are not new. Paid content is successfully used by many online businesses, including the book stores. There’s no reason to confine the video to a physical format to control piracy. Digital convenience is what people are willing to pay for.

If you run a video hosting platform and cannot summon the strength to pull something like this off, get in touch with me for some magic potion.

Paint Access graphic to go along with “leaving a mark on...

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:18:37 +1000

Paint Access graphic to go along with “leaving a mark on Australia”. This shows the areas that have ordered from PaintAccess.com.au

@SydJS Helvetica Australia Typographic Treatment with Brackets

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:21:47 +1000

@SydJS Helvetica Australia Typographic Treatment with Brackets

@SydJS Helvetica Typographic Treatment

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:18:00 +1000

@SydJS Helvetica Typographic Treatment

Another @Sydjs logo variant. This time it’s aimed purely...

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:21:00 +1000

Another @Sydjs logo variant. This time it’s aimed purely at developers by using a piece of valid JavaScript and styling it like a syntax-highlighting code editor would. Obviously a white-on-black theme is required to ring true with the most “hardcore” hackers. Monospace font is a must. Initial sketches were without the quotes, but that makes for invalid JavaScript and we don’t want people filing bug reports.

Styled as a sign with the necessary mobileweb reflections. Shadow, reflections and legs are embelishments. Without them the logo becomes a rounded rectangle with text, which easily converts to black and white.

{syd:’js’} is main logo idea

{sydjs:2010} is an alternate variant to signify the year the group was established (and to avoid using quotes without syntax errors)

If we suspend our disbelief that {syd:js} is invalid, we see that it looks much neater.

When presented in pure black and white it looks kind like a long iPhone or PSP. :) Geeky all the way.

Inspired by TextMate

UPDATE: because of the way tumblr presents multiple pictures, now all variants + work in progress are included in one file

From Keetra

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:49:44 +1000

From Keetra:

Great designs

My quick attempt at a logo for SYDjs (#sydjs @sydjs) SYDjs is...

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:01:04 +1000

My quick attempt at a logo for SYDjs (#sydjs @sydjs)

SYDjs is Sydney JavaScript group that came into existence about a month.

Done in illustrator. Vector art is available on request. Chunk Five font (open source).

Main idea was to make it possible to identify the group homebase on the map. Another idea was to allow other cities to mark themselves on the map and just change the “SYD” part to “MELB” or “PERTH” etc.

Feedback or sampling of this logo for your creative is most welcome.

The whole process of creation, including uploading and writing of this post took exactly 80 minutes. :)