Alunnyville

Developer Humour: MailWasher Pro 1.7.0

Alundra — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:09:07 +0000

I love Mailwasher Pro. It’s the only reason I actually download and [eventually] read my email these days. I can empty my inbox before even opening it, and it’s just an amazing time saver.

In fact, if it wasnt for MailWasher Pro making email exciting and not such a hassle, I would have stopped checking them sooner. In fact I did for a year but that’s off topic..

Today I got an update popup when I opened my fantastic MailWasher Pro and scrolled through the text to see what was new and check if my license would still exist (cause I didn’t want to buy another as I’m poor and Australia doesn’t even have electricity so I couldn’t use it anyway) and I discovered something funny in the change log…

Brightened my night! I then spent 20 minutes photoshopping it into a 500px aroundabouts size and taking screenshots of the text in portions for this blog so NO STEALING. Thank you MailWasher Pro for the giggle!

Quickflix – Australian DVD Rental Review

Alundra — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:48:15 +0000

So I’m a poor Facebook gamer and I play a game that has offers to earn Facebook credits. One of those offers was 240 credits for trying Quickflix. I had wanted to try it anyway but wasnt game to spend that much money, so I paid my $2 trial fee and set about my business.

Imagine my excitement when I got DVDs in the mail. I about crapped my pants. My dreams were coming true! Finally! A Netflix like service down under! I watched those DVDs with gusto and I’ve been meaning to take them up the street to the postal box since but I havent.

That’s my major caveat with this sort of system in Australia. In America you put mail to be delivered in your own mail box and call ahead if you have a parcel…in Australia you walk your lazy ass to the nearest post box (which for me is about 100 meters away, a damn miracle, but even that’s agony).

The feeling of having DVDs delivered to your door and movies available to be streamed at your command!

Anyway I digress. Amongst the sunshine and euphoria I was experiencing I decided I wanted to watch some of the online streaming I’d come to possess for my $2 trial. I loaded up a movie called To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday and waited for buffering. I picked that movie because it was featured and I just wanted to watch something – so I had no attention span for searching through a catalogue.

Now there’s something you need to know about my laptop: I have to keep it on 30-50% volume because above that is too loud for me. I had this movie on 100% and it sounded like it was on 20%. I had to strain to hear. I had to turn the fan off in the adjoining room to even have a chance. Or use headphones….but what good’s that if you have friends next to you? Suddenly you notice they breathe like their lives depend on it; really loudly and interrupting the movie.

I probably had more euphoria than this guy, and he got more DVDs than me!

So I closed it. It was pretty crappy quality anyway. Stupid older movies. I went looking for a newer one but my friends and I decided we wanted to watch Flatliners instead. We made it through the movie only because we breathed in buffering breaks and there was absolutely nothing else to do at that point in time. We also decided we must all need glasses because everything was blurry and pixelated. It looked like there was water on the screen.

So my friends abandoned ship and I was left wondering where the sunshine was and since I felt cold in the lack of it I decided to get dressed and stop dancing around like a loony. With the high gone I started to notice how sour things were…

How you feel when you realise you've just been screwed over by your dreams

Why Quickflix isnt worth the money

Their prices are a little messed up (more on that later).
It’s too expensive for what you can get.
The Australian Postal system isn’t set up for it, so it’s not as convenient as it sounds. Yes you don’t have to go and get the DVDs but you do have to take them back so you might as well have, you’d at least get the DVDs faster.
Our Australian internet isnt really ready for it either if you plan to do streaming – it’s got bandwidth limits and slower speeds than the states. Who wants to be shaped after watching a great movie? Who wants to have to wait 15 minutes just to get a quarter of the way into the movie without buffering?
Streaming isnt worth it:
Most of the streaming stuff is uninteresting, old, or not the sort of thing you’d hire from a video store.
All of the streaming movies are about 1/5th of the volume your computer is displaying…at least in my experience (yes, the video players volume was on max, I’m not an idiot).
Anything you stream is really bad quality visually, even on such a small screen (laptop remember!). While I understand that it cannot be perfect, there were WAVES of pixels in this sea. No really, they looked like waves.
Did I mention most of it is stuff you don’t want to watch anyway?
If you have a bunch of tabs open and you close the browser or shut down and come back you have to log into each and every tab again AND it wont redirect you back to where you were. By the time I’m done logging in I have to spend extra hours of my life to work out where the hell I was and getting back there.

I live on my PC. It also has a DVD player but I have a nice large TV available to me so I go and associate with people for my DVD viewing experiences. Afterwards I bathe in Detol but that’s another story.

Simulated horror, real thing coming as soon as I'm unshaped.

I use my PC for a LOT of my movie watching experiences….and I was SO excited to have streaming back in my life. When I was with the love of my life, Netflix, I would stream movies ALL THE TIME. I’d even sometimes watch them downstairs on the big screen because we had a little box from Netflix that let us watch instant videos on our TV…and it never buffered EVER on the TV for me. In fact I don’t remember it buffering past the first loading point on the PC either. So maybe my idea of speed and buffering are distorted….but the quality is SEVERELY lacking.

So I must go into the prices, because if my only real issue is the streaming I can suck it up and get DVDs with awesome quality. Right? Let’s have a look see at the prices:

Now, just to be irritating let’s table that in Excel with some extra information and use some auto sums because I fail at math… Beforehand though let’s take a look at the possibility factor. I just spoke to Australia post about delivery duration on regular and reply paid envelopes, specifically regarding Quickflix mail. I was told about 2-3 days per delivery was the time frame either way.

For the sake of clarity let’s assume we have a 30 day month and it takes you a full day to watch a movie (because most people can’t watch and repost on the same day). That would be an even pattern which would not change monthly, where you would have 6 deliveries max assuming it takes 2 days to get to its destination (you or Quickflix). If it takes 3 days each way you would get 4 deliveries a month. With that in mind take the table below into account:

Package	Max DVDs	DVDs a Time	Price	DVDs a Month (2 days)	Price Per DVD	DVDs a Month (3 Days)	Price Per DVD
Light	2	1	$5.99	2	$3.00	2	$3.00
Basic	4	2	$16.99	4	$4.25	4	$4.25
Regular	0	2	$22.99	12	$1.92	8	$2.87
Ultimate	0	3	$32.99	18	$1.83	12	$2.75

Why does it cost me more per DVD for the basic package than it does for the light? USUALLY things get cheaper as you buy more or get more into the packages, which happens with the last two packages. I’m kind of iffy about this because the basic package should be less per DVD than the light one, so the light one should be more expensive per DVD. The fact that they’re both miles away from the other two in terms of price confuses me too. It’s very messed up…if additional DVDs are supposed to cost MORE, why is it CHEAPER for me to buy additional DVDs on the basic package?

Here’s a table that takes the price of streaming into account as well (so if you’re on the light one just quit now and go to Kmart and buy one of those DVDs that has 5 in one):

Package	Max DVDs	DVDs a Time	Price	DVDs a Month (2 days)	Price Per DVD	DVDs a Month (3 Days)	Price Per DVD
Light	2	1	$19.99	2	$10.00	2	$10.00
Basic	4	2	$24.99	4	$6.25	4	$6.25
Regular	0	2	$29.99	12	$2.50	8	$3.75
Ultimate	0	3	$39.99	18	$2.22	12	$3.33

So streaming is definitely not worth it, but it’s interesting to see the table anyway. Unless you’re going to watch a movie a night or every second night, I wouldnt do it. And even then, I just wouldnt do it because the quality is horrifying and if your internet is slow it just wont load, end of story. I could stream movies online free for better quality.

Quickflix has a lot of growing up to do before a movie buff like me will be satisfied. As for the pricing I’m still deciding on its worth to me personally but I suspect it will shortly become a thing of the past for me unless I can get my friends to join in for movie nights every week and split the costs.

Have you tried Quickflix? What did you think?

Meredith Brooks – Bitch

Alundra — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:30:42 +0000

This song was my mothers favourite song when I was growing up, and she used to sing it with me in the car. When I found it again I was so excited I just had to tell her, but it didnt seem to have as much sentimental value for her as it did for me. Typical!

Regardless this is still a pretty awesome song. It was released in 1997 and has two names. Bitch, or “Nothing In Between” if you want the censored version. Since Asshole is already on the blog I didnt think this one would make much difference!

It was nominated for a Grammy, reached number 1 in the USA and 2 in Australia. Not bad, but this was a one hit wonder of sorts. It’s been parodied a number of times, the best of which I think is Chris Franklin’s song Bloke. You can see the video [really bad quality because the others don't allow embedding] and Chris Franklins parody below!

You can find out more about Meredith Brooks on Last.FM.

Meredith Brooks:

Chris Franklin – Bloke (Parody)

It’s Time – A Video

Alundra — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 01:41:59 +0000

I watched a really awesome movie the other day. I was wondering where it was going and I DID NOT expect the ending. I was so wrapped with it I have to show it here!

So here’s the video, which I support and love soo much. It’s VERY well done!

Bye bye ugly CSS!

Alundra — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:47:55 +0000

As a designer and coder hybrid, and somewhat of a “can’t stand default; must edit” person, I’m CONSTANTLY facing ugly code and ugly CSS. And when I say ugly I mean it’s so ugly it could make you cry.

You’re probably thinking what I have to work with isn’t that bad, right? Right?

Put some sunglasses on, the below example will burn your eyeballs out of their sockets or make you wish it did:

If you saw no problem with that you either have WAY too much experience with people who code like that, or you’re one of those people who code like that. If you’re one of those people who code like that I hate you. How the HELL am I supposed to work with that?! It’s one thing to optimise your code, but collapsing it like that cannot make that much of a difference.

You know what’s worse than that? This…

Why is it worse? Well for one it infuriates me the most. It is the ugliest, laziest, pathetic-est attempt to code CSS ever. If you code like this I hate you too!!

One second there are spaces between the property and values, and the next there are not. One second the class is defined beside the class, and the next it’s defined underneath. It’s a minefield that is hell to work with. One wrong find and replace and you’re screwed, and the alternative is to grow a beard trying to fix it. I’d know, I did it for the first lot!

The problem is this:

When things are starting and stopping all over the place it’s hard to read. No matter how colour coded it is.
When things arent formatted consistently it throws up bogs that someone scanning or attempting to edit gets stuck in because it looks like something’s wrong (because something is different).
You can’t simply find and replace all “:” because they may be part of a class or property, such as a:hover.
Bad coding practices (as far as I’m concerned). For starters it looks like you’re using the Dreamweaver hint system, which is fine, but seriously add spaces.
It’s UGLY and unsexy!
It’s LAZY AS HELL!!!

I’ve taken the liberty to highlight the two main issues, which in short is simply that the creator infuriates me by not taking the minuscule amount of time to either code better or consistently, and I can’t fix it on my own without loosing precious hours and gaining a beard.

So I went to Google and begged and pleaded for something to help me before my eyes were completely melted or I’d have to book in for a sex change. I found the most AMAZING website in the entire UNIVERSE and it makes me so happy I could kiss the creator and give them my future first born child! Okay maybe not but if I had a disposable income they’d be getting a pretty substantial donation!

I discovered CSS Beautify! It’s the most AMAZING and AWESOME website in the entire universe bar none. You put ugly CSS in, and get beautiful, sexy, and professional looking CSS out. It’s not like the others that remove spaces and make it ugly, it’s of its own genre and it’s absolutely amazing. In fact, it’s so amazing it saved me enough time that I could write this blog instead of fix ugly CSS.

Beautiful CSS from CSS Beautify (the first example fixed):

So go on, bookmark it. You know you’ll need it to fight the ugly CSS epidemic out there!

Photoshop – Water Nymph Tutorial

Alundra — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:00:50 +0000

I made a simple tutorial on creating a water nymph for my course and figured I should share it here!

My main goal in this tutorial was to make the woman look like she was made of ice and had the power to manipulate water.

I also wanted to create depth, and make it somewhat believable. It’s a pretty quick tutorial that can be done in 30 minutes, and the technique can be used on other images as well. Just because the tutorial ends doesnt mean you have to stop, you can continue to enhance the work too, adding more effects as you like.

I designed the tutorial as a PDF, so I’ve made it available to be downloaded instead of rewriting it here. I’ve also linked to the files that I would normally include in the package.

The final product looks like this. A smaller image (which does it no justice) is below:

Get the tutorial here.

The source images can be found here, but easily substituted if you want to use something different:
BigBubbles.png (I rotated mine 90 degrees CCW).
Bubbles.png (I flipped mine vertically).
Nymph.png.
Backdrop.png.

If you use this tutorial, or do something different with it, link me to your work so I can take a look!

Advertisement – Emphysema Test

Alundra — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:00:31 +0000

I stumbled across this advertisement today while looking for a different, ineffective, advertisement I wanted to talk about. I soon discovered that despite its pixels, it’s a highly effective emotional advertisement.

The advertisement is a “breathing test” to show people how it feels to have emphysema by getting them to participate in the test. The thing about this advertisement, however, is that you don’t actually need to do the test for it to have an effect on you.

We’ve all tried to breathe in as much air as possible at some time or other, usually as a kid in the playground or in an attempt to cure hiccups, so we all know how it feels to hold your breath and try to breathe more in when you can’t fit it. Anyone who’s ever had asthma, been winded, or suffered from a very phlegmy cold can also relate. Because we all know what it feels like, and we have someone doing it in front of us, we tend to “do” the test without having to actually doing it.

The impact, of course, is felt most with the phrases about suffocating and impending doom for the future if you smoke. I don’t know about you, but I found it hard to breathe while watching this ad (and even while thinking about it now) and I wasnt even doing the test. If I wanted to take up smoking, this has sufficiently scared me away. See the advertisement here:

The Sims 3 – Create A World pt2

Alundra — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:07:57 +0000

As you’ve probably noticed, creating a world is quite time consuming. If you at least made a start on the steps in part one you’ll see how helpful they are as you start using CAW to bring your world into being.

In part one we went over getting inspired and knowing if the inspiration is usable. We also looked at creating a (hi)story for your world, and perhaps integrating the above steps into drawings. These drawings will help you stay on target, steam ahead, and remember all the little things you wanted. This is important because creating a world isnt always something you can do in a few hours – so drawing and writing your ideas will help you remember through time. It will also help you once you start seeing your world take shape in CAW, because I can guarantee you’re going to start making up new stories and plans as you go! Perhaps because it will get your creative juices flowing, or because you encountered a hurdle. Either way, it will happen and you might want to record it – having drawings allows you to edit them directly or put notes on them.

How to CAW Like A Crow

Since you’re familiar with the game, now it’s time to get familiar with CAW!

Figure Out How CAW Works
If you can’t use it, you can’t make your vision become a world. The Sims 3 Create a World section links to the manual which will help you figure out what each tool does. Beyond that you can also ask on a forum. I recommend Mod The Sims because they’re helpful, friendly, and fast to respond. It’s also easier to keep track of things there than on The Sims 3′s community. One of the most helpful things I learned on MTS was how to speed up the scrolling speed of CAW (I hold the left mouse button down, use the arrow keys, and move my mouse in the direction I want).

Play around and get used to the options. For example, see what happens when you change the strength/opacity and falloff. Sculpt some land and paint it, see what effects you can and can’t achieve (on a personal level especially). Practice and play around. Zoom in and level yourself so you see how big it will be from a sims perspective. This should help you start to get a feel for the size of things in CAW. Don’t forget there’s a grid button there to help!

Don’t forget the things you can and cannot do from part one, which will also help you if you get stuck.

World Size Matters!
Pick out the size that best suits you. I was afraid of picking both the huge and small sizes so I picked medium. I soon found it was too small to do what I wanted, and had to do a lot of technical stuff to make my world work out on a larger map. It’s much better now though, so thanks for asking!

Hints for picking the right size:

Lay some roads down, don’t be a perfectionist about it, it’s just to check the map out and you can always restart or delete them when you’re done.
Lay the biggest lot you can. That’s pretty much the size of the two skyscraper lounges.
Click the show grid button and zoom in. The squares will keep resizing to match the zoom. When they stop resizing, close to the ground, that’s about the same as the in game grid.

Once you’ve seen the size of these things you can make judgements about the size based on your plan. If you want a small world for example, I suggest upgrading to a medium and having more space. That will allow you to take advantage of expansion packs as they come out, and have room to move and grow.

Start Sculpting Your Masterpiece!
Once you’ve picked the perfect size you can begin sculpting. To give you a very quick rundown on the sculpting and painting process I use, I’m using a tiny flat map with 200 as max height.

I always pick the flat maps because this gives me total control over the landscape.

The first thing I do is set the sea level. To do this I raise a small hill very quickly so I can select a spot on it (as it’s hard to do this without a hill). Having the sea level set allows me to sculpt land and see where water will appear at the same time. There’s no guesswork, and I can build the land up (as opposed to having to do both to get rid of the flatness) which makes things faster.

I sculpt the land so that it matches or is close to my “map” idea. If you refer back, you will see I based it off my crappy drawing.

Don’t forget you can export and import height maps. Photoshop can be used to edit these to get the shape and height you want if you’re having trouble with the tools. You can always fix Photoshop mistakes in CAW later too, to smooth things out if you have a big square edge for example.

In fact, you could draw your whole world in a rough fashion and fix it completely in CAW later. Just remember that height maps use shades of black and white to show height. If you’re having major trouble, there are Photoshop brushes available that can create mountains which may help you out.

Time to Make Some Grass Stains and Do Some Roadwork!
Once you’re done sculpting you can start painting and laying roads. STOP! Do you want to share this world with others or play it? Do you want it to load or set fire to peoples computers to the sound of screaming graphics cards?

I hope you answered that you’d at least like it to load, because this is what you need to know about painting: You cannot use more than 8 paints per chunk boundary. A chunk boundary is basically the outline of the “chunk” of world which loads at one time. If you have MORE than 8 paints per chunk it will show up RED. It’s okay to have a couple, but they slow games down and should be avoided like the plague.

Above you can see a red chunk boundary on my world, caused by using 2 types of sand, dirt, grass, and rock, and then adding one type of weeds. When I remove the weeds by painting over them the chunk turns blue again. Sometimes, chunks turn red because of a tiny amount of paint, so it’s good to know that too. Make sure you keep track of the paint’s you use per chunk, and always check under the water (by adjusting the sea level). You can see the chunks in your world by going to View > Show Chunk Boundaries.

You can also use the eraser tool, turn visualize layers, and export paint layers to photoshop on to help you get the look and feel you want.

Now that you know about painting limitations, it’s time to get started! I recommend working on one area of your world at a time and completely painting it to perfection and laying the roads where you want to. Once you’ve done that you can start adding lots, either as you go or at the end. Ensure you’re completely finished painting before placing lots however, more on that later.

When I paint I always have my falloff set to 0. It makes blending easier, and makes things smoother. I also have the opacity near 15 or 20 for dark colours, and up higher (anywhere from 25 to 50) for lighter colours. Having a low opacity also helps blending.

Using this method when covering large areas of ground leaves bare patches. I think these make the ground look more natural. Sometimes mistakes can make things better, and it’s better to try to paint quickly as opposed to slow and painstaking. Nature isnt perfect, and that’s exactly what makes it perfect.

When I paint I lay out a base colour, in this case semi transparent dark sand, and then I go over the “highlight” areas with the lighter version of the texture, light sand. Finally, I go back over the darker shadows and indents with the first texture, but with a higher opacity. That way it looks like I used three different colours because there are 3 different shades in the area.

Where roads are concerned, I usually lay them before painting so I can use the road grading tool to smooth out the roads and re-sculpt where I need to without interrupting my paintwork.

If you’ve used Illustrator before you’ll recognise the anchors and handles, which can be used to bend roads and paths via the selection tool. Don’t forget you need intersections to connect roads together and at the end of every road. You can connect them by dragging the dark blue road anchor to the edge of the intersection.

When you’re done laying roads and making sure they’re positioned properly you can smooth them out using the road grading tool. Make sure you’re smoothing connecting roads (unless you need to do single sections), and terrain smoothing is a very handy option to try out too.

Laying footpaths works the same way except you don’t need intersections on the ends, only when connecting multiple footpaths. You don’t have to connect them, and the game works fine with them disconnected, but you should never lay roads or footpaths over each other. Remember that there can only be one level of routing (which counts lots, so you can’t place lots, roads, and footpaths over each other).

Time to Call In Some Builders…
When I’m completely done painting an area I place lots. I wait until the painting is complete for the area (if not the whole world) because lots cannot be painted over, or rather they can but their CAW and game preview will always have the old colour which looks odd in game. Even if it’s not as drastic as being placed on grass and then having sand painted over it, it will look weird to have a green square in an area where the grass is spotty or multiple shades.

When I’m done painting and placing lots I put in my decorative objects. In this case it’s a lighthouse, which I got from the environment objects in the metadata. I filtered the objects so I could find the right one quickly and double clicked it so I could place it.

I’m completely done now, even though it was very quick and rough! You should put some more care into the creation of your world than I did for this tutorial, what I did was super quick so I could give examples .

It’s not all that stunning. I didnt finish painting and I rushed it. My current world, Hunaki La, is much much better. If you’re creating a world right now, show me some screenshots!

Later in the year I’ll be going over some advanced techniques you can use in your world creation, such as making your own textures and rabbit holes. Keep an eye out!

A little more organised

Alundra — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:31:09 +0000

Anyone who’s seen my room in the past knows just how much stuff I can fit into a wardrobe, under a bed, and all of the other “hiding places” offered in a home.

If you’ve lived with me the phrase “clean your room” is one you probably don’t want to utter, unless you want my room to look like a bombs hit it before it gets clean. My idea of cleaning a room is to pull everything out and sort through it, then pack it away neatly… effectively making it look like I threw a tantrum at being asked to clean up. The picture on the left speaks a thousand words.

Recently I moved house, and I didnt have as much space as before. I did, however, manage to tidy some things and have a little fun with it…

This is my clean closet now. Beforehand all of my things were just tossed into the crates willy nilly, and I had six more boxes of stuff. I’ve eliminated four boxes, and 2 crates, and pretty much organised everything else. I still have some sorting to do yet but it’s a lot neater and more organised.

This picture cuts out my school bag and the HUGE suitcase I’m using to put socks and things in until I get a chest of drawers, but it shows how awesomely my stuff is stacked!

This picture is a close up. My labeling may be a little silly, but it made it a lot of fun and I worked faster so I could write a smartassed comment on a piece of tape and put it on the box…so I think it was quite an effective way to label things. I also know what’s in each one, so it’s not like they’re “mislabeled” . I’ll explain the labels below:

I wish I were a tub: Junk I need to sort out.

Puter Crap: Basically exactly what it says, games, software, CDs, USBs, peripherals, etc, etc.

Medical Supplies: (In case of: medical emergency, apocolypse, boo boo’s, zombie invasion, and other non listed events) Has everything from band aids to heat packs and toiletries.

This tub feels so empty: An empty tub.

Art Crap: All of my art supplies.

I lost this tape for a whole week: Stuff I have to keep but can’t really sort. IE: Fabric and teddies.

BunnyRabbitSex Crap: Everything for my website BunnyRabbitSex.com, from merchandise to competition prizes.

And I almost died!: Stuff I have to sort through.

School Crap: all of my school assignments that I’m saving. I’m going to make a portfolio of the good ones so I can always look back .

Fish Tank + Nintendo: Since I can’t use either in my new place yet, they’re both together in a box. Normally though, I’d have a fish tank box, and an electronics box, which would also fix the I almost died! box right up!

I REALLY LOVE THIS TAPE!/This label isn’t very helpful: Practically empty, this just has some things I need to ship to my mother. She’s too stingy to send me money (Kidding mum, I love you!)

Advertisement – TAC Curtain Airbags

Alundra — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:46:23 +0000

I wouldnt think this ad was effective at first. It’s blatantly emotionally manipulative and for that reason I sort of rejected it…

Problem is it grew on me like some sort of virus incubating. Guess who’s going to ask about curtain airbags when she buys her first car?

Emotional advertisement works on striking emotional chords. In this case it’s probably fear and insecurity towards ending up like that, and towards being in a car without curtain airbags. It’s appealing to us in a not so nice way and sucking us into its way of thinking.

It grows on you because you get into a car almost every single day, or you go past a car, and they’ve planted a seed of doubt into your head as to whether that (or any) car is safe. Essentially they’ve brought a question to the table that you likely cannot answer and you’re faced with every day.

The seed grows and buds all through your mind and before you know it you’re hysterically clawing at your local mechanic screaming for curtain airbags. Well maybe not, but it could happen. See the advertisement here:

Checkout TAC’s Victoria (Australia) YouTube Channel.