Category Archives: Uncategorized

Mar 12 2007
Uncategorized

zPhoto Update

I’ve decided to call my aforementioned Photo Booth hack zPhoto. And I’ve updated it.

New:

  • “Dots” monochrome/halftone effect
  • Release as an actual application (no resources diving/replacing, just unzip the file)
  • New ‘countdown’ icons. They’re fun. 😉

Known Issues:

  • Blobs still won’t take pictures.
  • It’s technically still just a Photo Booth hack, so I’m not even sure if this is legal.
  • It still calls itself Photo Booth when running

If you know how to fix any of the above, please leave a comment or email me!

Get zPhoto HERE!
Just unzip it and put zPhoto.app in the Applications folder. As always, make a backup of Photo Booth first, just in case… But it shouldn’t matter.

Note: This is based completely off of Photo Booth, and thus has the same requirements as Photo Booth. I don’t know what those are, but this is a Universal Binary. I guess you need a computer with iSight, but I really don’t know. Sorry!

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Mar 10 2007
Uncategorized

Hacking PhotoBooth

I recently figured out how to open the Photo Booth effects in Quartz Composer. Simply view the package contents of photobooth.app, then it’s Video.qtz under resources. But whenever I modified anything, it seemed to either freeze or take no effect.

Well, after a day or two of heavy experimentation with the file, I’ve managed to successfully put my own effects into Photo Booth:

Photo Booth Hacks

For those that don’t use Photo Booth often enough to notice the new effects, I’ve added Edges, Pixelly, Trippy, and Blobs. There’s also Kaleidoscope in the second panel, which you can see in the image tray at the bottom. Blobs doesn’t actually work when taking pictures yet, it just produces an all-white image. It looks cool, though 😛

If you want to try out these effects for yourself, you can follow these steps:

  1. Duplicate Photo Booth.app – this hack overwrites some of the original effects, so you must make a duplicate if you ever want to use Sepia, Thermal, Mirror, or X-Ray again!
  2. Rename the duplicate something besides Photo Booth Copy.app
  3. Download this file
  4. Ctrl+Click the new Photo Booth.app and say ‘view package contents’
  5. Go to resources
  6. Move the downloaded file to the resources file, click ‘replace’ when the box pops up
  7. Go back to the applications folder and double-click the new Photo Booth.app
  8. Enjoy your new effects!

If you figure out how to make blobs take a picture correctly, please tell me.

Note: This hack will not change the labels for the effects panels. To do this, you have to edit Video1.strings and Video2.strings in Photo Booth duplicate.app/Resources/english.lproj using a text editor.

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Feb 17 2007
1 Comment
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Uru For Mac

Well, it’s official now. In a few weeks, us Mac users will be able to play uru on our macs, provided they are Intel-based. There’s a mac beta right now, but it’s private (invitation only), so I haven’t gotten a chance to experience it yet, but I really can’t wait until I won’t have to reboot to use Uru…That will be awesome.

Also, Uru Live was officially launched (taken out of beta) on the 15th, and a new age called Eder Tsogahl should be released very very soon. Hooray hooray…

Edit: Kato is right, I just checked and Eder Tsogahl is indeed already out. Thanks, man.

Edit 2: Fine, the Mac client is supposed to be released ‘next’ week, meaning this week. Now stop bothering me Kato, and don’t say I didn’t tell you so when it is delayed 😉

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Feb 12 2007
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OMGAPPLESTORE

Woot. We Bostonians are getting our very own Apple shrine store! Yes, we had ones in malls and stuff before, but this will be one of them 3 story glass cubes of a store, like the famous Fifth Avenue Store. Socool!

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Jan 31 2007
1 Comment
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Windows Vista Unboxing

Well, I got all the pictures I took yesterday up on Tabblo, so here they are:

Yes, I know. There isn’t much of the installation, or any of the actual Vista, because I had to leave before it was finished. Oh well. I went back today and it really is as amazing as they say it is.

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Jan 30 2007
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Windows Vista released to Consumers

Today Microsoft released the new version of their Windows Operating System, Windows Vista. I went with my friend Matt to pick up Ultimate Edition (he bought it, I don’t have that kind of money). I’m documenting it, and let’s just say it’s been an hour or so since we came back, and we haven’t gotten the installer started yet. Hmm. I wonder what that says about Vista? Just kidding. I’ll post the pictures when it’s fully installed.

Update: Almost 2.5 hours now, still no luck. We’re on the phone with the support person from Microsoft now…

Update 2: She sounds impressed that he built his own computer

Update 3: “You have to run the upgrade version by booting from the disc.” “I did.” *really long silence*

Update 4: Woot, It’s all installed now 🙂 He was running XP 32bit on a 64bit processor, and thus he was trying to upgrade to vista 64bit. Turns out that if you’re running XP 32, you have to upgrade to Vista 32, Vista 64 won’t work. Strange, but hey-it’s installed now.

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Jan 28 2007
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Shivering Isles Might Make Me Buy Oblivion

So, there’s this little game out there called Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which in reality is actually not very little at all. It’s actually gigantic, and very popular. It might have something to do with the weeks of gameplay content, the good storyline, and amazing graphics. But anyway, I haven’t gotten that interested in it since 1. it’s not really my kind of game (medieval fantasy hack&slash RPG), and 2. my computer can’t handle the über graphics.

Well, the second one can’t be changed, since my computer is a laptop, and a mac one at that, but the first one? Well, there’s an expansion pack that’s been recently announced, called The Shivering Isles, and I have to say, it looks like my kind of game. The world is supposed to be the creation of an insane god, hence the outlandish appearance. I think I’d really like this game, and its release might convince me to buy Oblivion.

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Jan 26 2007
1 Comment
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Buggy Saint's Row, The Musical

While surfing the net tubes, I came across a very interesting page. I found it on cabel.name, a pretty cool blog in itself, but Cabel’s Buggy Saints Row is probably the coolest thing there.

What the guy did is he bought the game Saint’s Row, hoping for a good game. He got basically a Grand Theft Auto ripoff, filled to the brim with bugs. Really funny bugs. So Cabel got out his video camera and filmed said bugs, then added some extremely well-made music to the collected footage, to make a musical. It features 3 songs: “Where’s my f*cking car?!”, The car door song, and “What is this place?”.

I have to agree with a commenter on there, Cabel does win at the internet.

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Jan 22 2007
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Wiiview 2

Well, my friend Cutter just (as in, yesterday) got a Wii, so I got to play it for real. For real meaning no pressure from surrounding con crowd, and correctly set-up sensor bar. The experience was much better.

It could be that I was playing a different game each time, Wii Sports at the con and Warioware at Cutter’s house, but I had way more fun with Warioware. For those of you who haven’t experienced the…(how shall I put this)…unique experience that is Warioware, the game consists of extremely quick minigames (really quick, you have 5-10 seconds to finish each one). The games are very strange, everything from using the wiimote as a fly swatter to squish flies on the screen to a pump handle you have to move up and down to pop a balloon, to a finger you have to use to pick a virtual nose. It’s a very odd-sounding game, but trust me, you have to play it to understand.

There are different “forms” you are taught throughout the game, starting with the remote control form (which is just like holding a TV remote), then gaining umbrella form (holding the wiimote vertically, like an umbrella handle), to many more, such as handlebars, janitor (a broomstick), and the most outlandish being mohawk (where you hold it flat on your head, like a mohawk hairdo). As you learn these forms, more and more minigames involving these forms are unlocked, such as the hula hoop game (where you hold the wiimote at your side in ‘big cheese’ form, and pretend to hula hoop. This cannot be done correctly with any other form, or the guy on-screen doesn’t move. You have to be willing to embarrass yourself to play) or the balloon pumping game (which only works in ‘handlebar’ form, where you hold it like bike handlebars).

All in all, the game is extremely fun, whether you’re playing it yourself or watching others play (since you can laugh at them, despite the fact that you’ll be doing the exact same thing in a few minutes). The wiimote can be a bit unresponsive at times, but its usually just because we don’t have it pointing enough at the sensor bar. Cutter said he’ll figure out the best positioning for the bar, but I think some of it is just an inherent weakness in the Wii, since you’ll always be compelled to point it directly at the TV, or swing it away from the TV all together.

I can easily see the Wii becoming the king of the current generation of consoles.

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Jan 09 2007
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The iPhone Released

Well, new iPod/gadget from Apple Inc. (no longer Apple Computer Inc.) is here (or actually, it’s been announced. It’ll be here in June), and it’s called the iPhone. The name is a bit deceiving, since it’s really a lot more than just a phone, it even tops most of the smartphones out there (think Blackberry, Treo, etc.).

So, the features. It is a phone, yes. It lets you make calls at the touch of a button (a virtual button, the thing is like one giant touchscreen), and access your “visual voicemail”- a list of the missed calls with voicemail messages attached. That way you don’t have to listen to all the previous saved messages to get the one you want, just scroll until you find it. It also lets you access your e-mail (via any IMAP or POP3 e-mail service), send SMS text messages, and all that jazz that phones do. It also has a 2 megapixel (better than the built-in iSight and most other webcams, also currently the highest megapixel count in a cameraphone) camera in the back.

Aside from the standard phone features, the iPhone acts as a full-screen iPod as well. It allows you to scroll through the menus of artists, albums, songs, etc. by “flicking” the screen up, as if you were dragging it. One tap, and the song starts playing, with standard iPod UI. It shows the album art, as well as all the other album art you have, and lets you flip through the art like in iTunes 7. If you turn it on its side, the picture on the screen rotates to landscape view. Video? It does that. It shows video in landscape mode by default, on its 3.5″ 340×480 screen.

The iPhone does internet, too. It comes with both WiFi and EDGE (so you can connect to the internet anywhere you get phone coverage, basically), as well as Bluetooth compatibility for the new wireless headphones (mad ugly, in my opinion) that come with it. The iPhone has its own version of Safari built into it, and supports syncing of your bookmarks from a Mac or PC.

It comes in both 4gb (at the standard inflated Mac price of $499) and 8gb (again, $599) models, and should be released this June.

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