StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty - you shall be mine

The release of StarCraft 2 has to be one of the greatest gaming events of the year. For me anyway. This is the one game I never tire of waiting for. Ever since I've discovered StarCraft, and later on Brood War, I have waited for a new and hopefully improved version.

There was nothing wrong with the old Starcraft, but you get the urge for something new once in a while. There are what, more that 12 years, since the release of the original StarCraft, and people are still playing it. I doubts any other game in history has had that kind of success.

The very balanced units and abilities of the three races (Terran, Protoss, Zerg), the great resource management, the different technologies available and the ability to play multiplayer games over LAN makes this one of the greatest strategy games of all time. I remember this was the number one game we all wanted to play the moment we installed the local area network in our apartment building. We were hooked.

The rush of killing the Ghost at the very last second before being able to plant the nuke, the frustration of not being able to take down those Siege Tanks while they're clearing your base or the amusement of bringing down a dozen Carriers with a pack of cheap kamikaze Scourge. The long wait against a huge attack or the speed at which a well placed drop can render you useless. I also remember those damn High Templar and their Psionic Storm or the accursed Arbiter with that Stasis Field and Recall, the Battlecruiser's devastating Yamato Gun or the Gurdian's incredibly long atack range. I remember them all. Those were my days of glory in StarCraft.

And now, after so much time waiting and hoping for the release of a new version, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty makes that dream come true. Damn you Blizzard for making me wait that long. All you did was mess around with that blasted WoW and did nothing for the rest of your players. Even more, you created a first person shooter. Who the hell cares about a first person shooter related to a strategy game? But now it's finally our time. Finally I can carry on interstellar battles against my enemies. I will bring them pain and despair and maybe I'll even live long enough to tell the tale.

This has got to be the only thing I have waited for this long. Just a few more days until July 27th and StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty will be in my grasp. We shall meet again dear friends: Terran, Protoss, even you Zerg. Again we shall battle 'til the last man. And glory shall be ours!

To validate or not to validate?

This post is intended to address the issue of HTML validation from my point of view. I will try to point out the advantages and the reasons a web page needs to validate (again from my point of view of course), but I will try to line out a few other opinions on the matter. Long story short, I will try to answer a simple question: "Should I care about validation or not ?"

What is HTML validation?

For those of you that still don't know what validation really is, here is the short explanation. Validation is the process by which an HTML or XHTML page, meaning it's source, is brought in accordance with world wide accepted standards. What this means is actually writing the source code of the page in such a manner that is respects all the guidelines implemented by the W3C (that's the World Wide Web Consortium). In order to make sure your web page is valid from an HTML or XHTML point of view, you can use a lot of different tools, but my favorite is the online one provided by W3C at http://validator.w3.org. Simply type in the URI of your page or copy/paste your code and hit the "Check" button. That's it.

Does it even matter?

Believe it or not, it does. There are people that say that validation is just something that developers thought up to brag about their skill. Others just don't care if it's not valid as long as it works. But here is where the funny thing comes in. For it to work it still needs to be coded after some specific guidelines, so unintentionally people do give a though to validation. After all, they do want their pages to look nice, don't they?

There are many situations when a page full of errors looks flawless, the layout is just the way it was planned. That doesn't mean it's right and that it doesn't need to be coded differently. It just means the browser is aware there are bad developers or that errors might slip by unnoticed and it just ignores the situations and renders things just like nothing happened, mostly "guessing" how things should have been.

So browsers fix things for me. Then why should I bother to validate?

The idea here is that browsers can't fix everything. There are situations when you do need a valid page and a well thought out structure. One of the most common situations i when you're using JavaScript, like the many wonderful frameworks available out there (jQuery, MooTools, Dojo to name just a few). These don't bother to check your code, they just use what they are given.

For example if you forget to close a paragraph (<p> tag), the browser will render just fine. When it finds the next paragraph tag or the next block element, it assumes you closed the previous one. But if you use some JavaScript code to work on your paragraph tags, let's say for example that you want to change their background when you hover over them, errors will appear. JavaScript will assume that the paragraph ends when it meets the closing tag (</p>), but that will cause the change to be applied to the next elements (maybe other paragraph or maybe lists), until that closing tag is met.

That's all? Closing tags?

No, that's not all. Because browsers continue to evolve and improve, a strict set of rules is required. And these rules must be respected by everyone, both website owners and browser developers. If they are ignored, progress will be just a long list of hacks and fixes from either side. Browser developer will try to support obsolete and sometimes wrong interpretations of standards just to please the users and not render the pages chaotically. And website owner and developers will try to work around browser incorrect renderings by various CSS, HTML or JavaScript hacks.

---

In closing, I would like to say that I try my best to make every page as valid from a W3 point of view as possible. There are situations when it's jut too much work and it's not worth rewriting the entire code just to shift a few pixels. But these days things are a lot more easy. Modern browsers even support standards not yet officially recognized in preparation for when they will be made generally accepted, like CSS3. The only thing developers need to do is focus on the new implementations (which are already pretty old by now) and leave behind the old hacks. And if a browser doesn't display the page the right way, it just means it's the browser's fault. Most likely it's an outdated version and the users should upgrade for their own sake.

On the same note, I would like to keep a moment of silence for the soon to be dead and hopefully forever forgotten, IE6. Your death's coming soon.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Version Market Share

September 13th - Death of Tupac Amaru Shakur

Today is the anniversary of the death of Tupac Amaru Shakur, also known by his stage name of 2Pac or Makaveli, who died on September 13th, 1996 as a result of the four shots he received 6 days earlier.

But probably many of you that are familiar with his music already knew that, so there's no point in reminding it. Songs like "Dear Mama", "Changes", "All eyez on me", "Keep Ya Head Up" or "California Love" are forever engraved in the memory of those contemporary with Tupac. And most likely in the memory of those that followed, seeing as they're as popular as ever. And how can anyone forget, Thug Life ("The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody")? Not just the group Tupac was a part of, but the way of life. Because, you see, in his eyes, thus is "someone who came from oppressive or squalid background and little opportunity but still made a life for himself and was proud".

So what can we say about such a great character that hasn't been said already? Even after so many years from his tragic death, 2Pac still remains an icon, and one of the great artists of his generation. I guess it's safe to say that his death only made him more famous. And, sadly, allowed others to take advantage and earn celebrity off his name.

I heard a lot of people claim that they're big fans of 2Pac's music, but that's not the only thing about him. Tupac was also a poet and an actor. His poems are published in the volume "The rose that grew from the concrete" and are very similar to the things he depicts through his music. Here's one of them here. All the others can be found in the book, which I'm sure you can buy on Amazon, and some of them are scattered all over the Internet. I got this one from 2pac2K.de:

In the event of my Demise by Tupac
In the event of my Demise
when my heart can beat no more
I Hope I Die For A Principle
or A Belief that I had Lived 4
I will die Before My Time
Because I feel the shadow's Depth
so much I wanted 2 accomplish
before I reached my Death
I have come 2 grips with the possibility
and wiped the last tear from My eyes
I Loved All who were Positive
In the event of my Demise

I sometimes wonder what other thing would he have accomplished, had he lived. He is one of those artists that I never get tired of seeing or listening to. From my point of view, and I'm sure others share my opinion, Tupac Amaru Shakur reinvented hip-hop. You could say that he was the successor of The Sugarhill Gang, bringing a new type of music to the people, a different way of seeing things.

Attempt to validate a default Blogger template (II)

Image by RXAphotos

Read the first part of this post: Attempt to validate a default Blogger template (I).

5. This error is caused by an unescaped ampersand ('&') at the import of a dynamic CSS file (http://www.blogger.com/dyn-css/authorization.css?targetBlogID=xxx&zx=xxx). The import is not present in the source HTML, so it is added later. We'll just leave this one alone for now.

6. Many times declaring an incorrect Doctype messes up you entire validation. In this case there was a Strict Doctype declared, but the template included iframe tags (navbar). So I replaced

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> 

with

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">.

Remaining 68 Errors and 62 Warnings.

7. Some of these error are displayed by the "Edit post" button when you are logged in. Comment or delete the line <b:include data='post' name='postQuickEdit'/>. Others are displayed by the comments link at the bottom of the post. I describe how to fix these lower down the page.
Remaining 64 Errors and 58 Warnings.

8. These are personal and intentional errors to accentuate the fact that your posts also need to be written in valid html/xhtml. I added the alt attribute to the image and changed the closing tag to />. This needed to be done in the body of the post, not in the template.
Remaining 58 Errors and 58 Warnings.

9. Errors disappeared because of previous modifications

10. A lot of errors caused by the "Quick Edit Widget" buttons. I removed all of them by commenting them. A easy way to do this is to search for name='quickedit' inside the template and comment the entire element (<b:include name='quickedit'/>).
Remaining 39 Errors and 39 Warnings.

11. Problems caused by the fact that the archive is displayed as Hierarchy. The easiest way to fix this is to change the way the Archive is displayed. For this go to Layout - Page Elements and edit the "Blog Archive" gadget. I changed the Style parameter to Flat list.
Remaining 8 Errors and 8 Warnings.

12. Errors disappeared because of previous modifications

13. Errors caused by the unescaped ampersands in the dynamic css and the comments link. Note that there would be more errors if you have more posts on the specific page you validate (or less if you have less posts). This is the tricky part. Let's start with the comments.
Find the line that says:

<a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'>

The problem is with the expression expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl'. This gets replaced by something like http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=xxx&postID=xxx and the problem is the unescaped ampersand. To fix this change the expression to this:

expr:href='"http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=xxx&postID=" + data:post.id'

where xxx is the id of your own blog. You can find out what your blog id is by viewing the current link. Note the hack that i used after blogID (&amp;amp;). This is because of Blogger's engine: every &amp; is replaced with &, but luckily the engine goes over the template only once. While this is a feature in blog posts, it's a problem in URLs. They do work, but they don't validate. This same method can be applied for "Email post" links if you have that activated. Just make sure you replace "comment.g" with "email-post.g"
Remaining 3 Errors and 3 Warnings.

14. Errors disappeared because of previous modifications

Now the only problems that remain are caused by the loading of a dynamic CSS file. From what I know this is a new "feature" and can not be removed. This first checks whether you are logged in to Blogger and according to that it creates a specific set of CSS rules. And because of the way it is added to the template, it makes it impossible to fix. Unfortunately, this also prevents my Yoboo from validating. And I was so happy when I saw that green bar a while back :(. I'll keep on looking for a solution to this. If anyone has any ideas, you're more than welcome to share.

And that's about all I can do for now (due to lack of time and mood). Note that I focused solely on the front page. It's very possible that other pages still have errors. I hope this helps you minimize the errors you encounter in your own validation experience. If you find that I missed something or you know of other ways to do things, please tell me your own methods to validate a Blogger template.

Attempt to validate a default Blogger template (I)

Image by pitel

Because the previous post regarding validation had somewhat of a success, I decided to do another one. This time I decided to try to validate a default Blogger template and I will also try to be more exact in the steps you need to take. Please note that the solutions I provide might not be the best or they might not be suited for your own template. In several occasions I remove elements I personally do not use, but you might find useful. However the general pointers I give should apply across the entire Blogger platform.

For now, I will deal with the default Minima template. The reason I chose this one is that I consider it to be a very clean one (from a visual point of view), that many people choose for their blogs. And on top of that, it's the one Blogger selects by default when you create a new blog. That being said, let's begin.

Template: Minima
Front page, two test posts
Gadgets: Archive, Profile, Labels
Encoding: utf-8
Doctype: XHTML 1.0 Strict
Initial errors: 339 errors, 73 warnings

Leaving the template HTML unchanged, we do an initial validation check. This is to see the things we need to fix, obviously. So here we are, a list of the main errors, somewhat grouped:

1. "Missing xmlns attribute for element html. The value should be: http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
2. Warnings: multiple comments in comment declaration
3. There is no attribute "name". There is no attribute "description". There is no attribute "type". There is no attribute "default".
4. Element "Variable" undefined. End tag for "Variable" omitted, but OMITTAG NO was specified
5. General entity "zx" not defined and no default entity. Reference to entity "zx" for which no system identifier could be generated.
6. There is no attribute "src" (<iframe src="http://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID=xxx" ... >). There is no attribute "marginwidth". There is no attribute "marginheight". There is no attribute "scrolling". There is no attribute "frameborder". There is no attribute "height". There is no attribute "width". There is no attribute "id". There is no attribute "title". ... element "iframe" undefined.
7. general entity "postID" not defined and no default entity. reference to entity "postID" for which no system identifier could be generated.
8. "Required attribute 'alt' not specified" and "End tag for 'img' omitted, but OMITTAG NO was specified"
9. "There is no attribute 'target'"
10. several "General entity not defined" caused by de quick edit buttons that you see when you are logged in to Blogger
11. more "General entity not defined" caused by the archive toggle link
12. many "XML Parsing Error: Comment not terminated."
13. many "XML Parsing Error: EntityRef: expecting ';'"
14. a few "Opening end ending tag mismatch".

 

Image by svanes

So now let's start with fixing stuff. I started from the top rather that analyzing what are the major errors and fixing those first. The reason for this is that it's easier for me to follow. You can use whichever order you like. Another way I recommend to start is with the Doctype declaration. Analyze the page, see in which Doctype it fits (or in which one you would like to fit) and change things accordingly.

1. The error is pretty self explaining. When I checked the HTML code, there were already several xmlns declarations, but none of them appeared in the source sode of the page when viewed in browser. So I removed all of them and replaced them with xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml". After saving the template the deleted attributes reappeared. I guess they're needed for something.
Remaining 338 Errors and 73 Warnings.

2. There were two lines of dashes (-) before and after the copyright notice in the template. Although these were commented out, they still caused errors. So I removed them.
Remaining 256 Errors and 73 Warnings.

In the skin section there were more dashed lines under the different sections described by the CSS (header, sidebar, comments, ...) used to separate and organize them. Although only the header section style comments created errors, I removed all the lines just to be sure
Remaining 79 Errors and 62 Warnings.

3. Errors disappeared because of previous modifications

4. Errors disappeared because of previous modifications

Continue to part 2 of this post: Attempt to validate a default Blogger template (II)

Lineage II or World of Warcraft - which is better?

This is a question that puzzles me for a long time, although I already know the answer to it. But I won't reveal it just yet. The thing is that each one of these MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game, for those of you that still are in doubt what this post is about) has it's own followers, or maybe dedicated worshipers in some cases. And both games have their own advantages and disadvantages compared to the other. So let me lay things out, from a personal point of view, of course.

First of all, I want to start out by saying this: I know Lineage II and World of Warcraft are not the only online games. I'm just talking about them because they touch the same market segment and they have some of the largest percentage of users. Besides, these are the ones that set the standard in all MMORPG games, and the rest just follow. That's my opinion anyway. And now for the comparison.

From a visual point of view

Putting the two face to face you immediately observe one huge difference in term of design. The world of Lineage II is a lot more close to reality than the one in WoW and the characters tend to look a lot more realistic. The buildings have a certain look that tends to mimic real life castles and towns. On the other hand, WoW has a more cartoonish look to it, The buildings and colors are not so dull, they are vivid. The characters are based on the ones from the famous Warcraft III, also from Blizzard. This difference between them continues throughout the entire world they depict and through the user interface. I guess it's a matter of preference here. Both of them have a certain beauty and fall together nicely.

From a player point of view

There are a lot of things to say here. I doubt I can remember all of them.

Let's start with the economics. Because both of these games are based on a subscription, the main currency is the online one. The two have a somewhat different way of the representing money, although the basic concept is the same. If in L2 the only currency is Adena (most likely derived from the name Aden, the main kingdom of Lineage 2), WoW goes for the concept of subdivision, which we all now. The smallest coin is the bronze one. One hundred bronze coins are equal to a silver coin and one hundred silver coins are equal to a Gold coin. Simple isn't it?

Another important aspect of an online game: the monsters. There's not much difference here. Sure, the names are different, they're in different places, they look different, but besides that they're practically the same. You still have zombies, wolfs, walking trees and other stuff like that. It's not much to tell here: you kill monsters, you gain experience and money/items and then you kill some more monsters.

Quests: as it would be expected, the quests are different. You can have two online games with identical quests. But of course, the rewards of the quest are the same: experience, items, money. One thing that is different between them and I particularly found useful was the fact that in WoW you can see right from the start of the quest what reward you will receive. That saved me a lot of time on worthless quests.

Races are a subject that I don't want to discuss. Both of the games have several races, each divided into classes and each class with it's own good and bad parts. Trying to compare the two would take ages and I doubt it's even possible, considering the fact that the worlds they live in are not identical.

From a performance point of view

I personally find that World of Warcraft runs a bit smoother than Lineage and I think part of the reason is the fact that the textures in Lineage are a lot more complex, thus harder to render. But I wouldn't bet on that, I'm not a game developer. Also, the sounds might make a difference, but not too much. I tend to believe that the major difference is in the engine used to power the game. Lineage 2 uses the Unreal game engine, while WoW uses it's own World of Warcraft Engine. But that tech stuff is beyond me.

Other resources

If you look around, I'm sure you'll find more information on this subject. Here are just a few of them returned at a quick Google search:

• Lineage 2 vs World of Warcraft - a PK Perspective
• Lineage vs WoW - Obsidian Forum
• WoW vs Lineage - pwnem.com

Conclusion

There are a lot of points that have not been discussed and I'm sure fans of either side have a lot of cool things that have not been pointed out here. Well people, I'm sorry, but I'm just too tired and just now I realize that you cannot compare these two. Both of their developers have done a great job in defining them as uniquely a possible and each one of them has it's own edge: like L2 has it's stunning graphics and WoW has it's huge user base.

So, now that we've reached the end of this post, which one do you prefer? Lineage 2 or World of Warcraft?

Now we're getting somewhere

This Friday was the last day I worked on the ASUS WL-500g Premium Routers, but I've been out of town for the weekend and never got a chance to write about it. Not that there is much to brag about. With the DD-WRT firmware it was pretty easy to configure the routers to work in WDS (Wireless Distribution System). They all talked one to the other, everything was all fine. Until...

It all got turned upside down when I've tried to implement a measure of protection. You see, in WDS, you have the option of selection which type of network you want to use: B-only, G-only or mixed from what I can remember. The first type I saw this I was like "What the hell are these?" Even now I'm somewhat confused. I've found a pretty good explanation about it here: http://cwnp.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1244. Everything was fine up to this point. Only the problem is WDS can't accept WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) except if it's set to use a G-only network. That shouldn't be a problem if you use a laptop to access the Internet. But since this guy wants to have access on his mobile phone, we have a problem. The phone doesn't work in G-only WDS. It manages to connect to the first router, the one that's closest to it or has the stronger signal. But after that it can't go any further. WDS is not working. So we were forced to switch to a mixed network type in the settings. It started to work again. We were on the right path. Until we remembered that we need to implement at least a method of protection. So this guy, although I told him that WPA will work only if the network is set as G-only, went ahead and placed a WPA pre-shared key protection. And guess what? It didn't work. The WDS stopped functioning so I guess we're stuck with a WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). An older and less secure method of protecting your network, but I guess it's better that nothing.

I'll get back to those routers as soon as the guy that has them returns to the country. He'll be gone for two weeks. Until then, I'll try to find out how to implement a VPN (Virtual Private Network) server and what else we can do with there cute little toys.

Damn Asus router

I said before that I can't wait to see what we can do with those routers. Well, we managed to do something: we locked ourselves out. Great, huh? But luckily that problem was solved by flashing a new firmware. And another one. And then another one and the whole problem was solved. The good thing is, now there is a firmware, DD-WRT, that allows great access to the settings required for the WDS (Wireless Distribution System) part of the router. This was the main thing that interested the person that has the routers. What he wants to do is to set them up in such a way that he can have access to the Internet from anywhere inside the building. So that shouldn't be a problem. These routers have a pretty good range and the area is not that large.

But here's the catch: he wants to have wireless Internet access on his mobile phone. You're probably saying now: "Of course wireless, you moron! That's why it's called «mobile»". OK, so I could have said just Internet access, but what I meant is he wants to have it while he walks through the building. Still everything clear? Fine! His phone has a crappy antenna and only works around 6 to 7 meters from a router. Oh, things start to make sense now?

What I need to do is to figure out how we can set the routers in such a way that it will cover the entire surface of the building. I hate it when people give me tasks. It puts the responsibility on me, and I'm not very responsible in my nature. Anyway, the best way, and the recommended way from what I understood, that I can set up these routers is to use a "star topology" and to place the routers in such a way that I have a complete coverage on the building. I see a lot of walking around with a phone in my hand in the near future. To test the connection of course. The reason for a star topology is that with WDS, at every hop you lose half of the bandwidth because of the communication with the master router. So if you would have to use two hops (I presume it's possible) you would just have a quarter of the bandwidth, with three hops just an eighth and so on. I found the formula on Wikipedia when I did a search for WDS. Here it is: T=1/2^h, where T is the throughput or available bandwidth and h is the number of hops a client has to take before it reaches the server or the master router or whatever. So "star topology" it is.

The funny thing is he said at some point that it would be great if he could have access from a pub near by. I felt like chocking him to death. Maybe it would be easier if he would buy himself a better phone.

Another day, another post

Today is a day not different from all the other ones. I get up, I go to work, I waste my time and I go home. Talk about monotony. Or so I thought. Today is one of those days in which I have the chance to do something different. Like what, you ask? But please, let me tell you.

I met some guy that needs a certain job done, but doesn't have the required technical know-how. Neither do I, but that didn't stop me to give it a try. You see, he has purchased several ASUS WL-500g Premium wireless routers. And what he wants to do is this: he plans to spread them all over his office building creating something like a hot-spot that he can have access at any time. And he doesn't need just that. He wants the standard firmware that they have installed on them replaced with a modified one. For this we might choose either Oleg's firmware or FreeWRT or OpenWRT. We'll see. The advantage with these is that you can practically create a miniature Linux server that can incorporate a Samba server, a small web server, a FTP server, it can act as a firewall and many others. The possibilities are limited only by the small amount of flash memory that these routers posses (although 8MB is fairly enough for these minimalistic distributions). The cool part about them is that you can attach an USB hard-drive and thus the storage space increases greatly, or you can install the operating system directly on an USB memory stick. I can't wait to see what we can do with these. The fact that you can have a fully functioning Linux server that can sit on your desk, it doesn't have a fan or a hard-drive to make the noise a non-stopping server would, small and with a possibility for wireless connection, is absolutely great.

After work I'll be on my way to see what we can do with them. If anyone has any good suggestions or knows of a great walk-through relating these devices, please drop a link. I've already found all sorts of information relating to them on http://wl500g.info and other great discussion boards.

That was a stupid idea

I opened up this blog today and I noticed something that really bothered me. All that talk about God and religion apparently had a side effect that I didn't anticipate. It seems that now, all the Google AdSense ads on the main page have been "spammed" with religious content. I really freaked out. It's like I try to promote religion in any way I can.

On the other hand, the interesting thing is that I can see just how many types of religions, or should I say churches, there are out there. Without counting those already known by the vast majority of people, I found a few others (actually there were a lot more) that I've never heard about. Nor do I want to hear about them anymore. It's not like I have certain feelings towards those that are a part of them, it just isn't my thing. I find it a useless concept to pray to someone so your life would be better or things like that, instead of actually doing something to improve your life. But it's a big world and we live in a society that claims to respect other people's opinions and beliefs.

As to my problem, I guess I'll just have to limit the words that symbolize the things that I don't want to promote so that AdSense would put less of them. Or hopefully none. I'll have to look a little more into how this advertising method chooses it's content. But I already know it won't be that easy. It's probably "classified information"!

Speed drawing/painting

A while ago I was going over some videos on YouTube.com looking for different drawing techniques and I came across quite a few speed drawings (paintings). For those of you who don't know what speed drawing is, the simplest explanation is to watch one. I don't know the exact definition of the term, but from what I know it's the action which involves the filming of an entire drawing process, playing it at high speed and completing it with an appropriate sound track. The result is a very good insight in how these people work and a very good knowledge resource.

As I said, the videos show you almost the entire drawing process, so you can see how sketching, coloring, shading and highlighting is done. If you want to start learning drawing or even if you are looking to improve your skills, these show you how certain things can be done. They don't beat a drawing class, but they're a good intro and even a better motivation tool.

If you look around on the Internet you'll definitely find all sort of websites dedicated to this form of art, some might call it. One of my favorite is http://www.speed-painting.com. The website owner is Nico Di Mattia and that's the place I've seen some of the best videos. On YouTube (probably even on other video sharing servers) you can find speed drawings of artwork created in the almighty Adobe Photoshop, but you can find some that are real amazing, like the one I've embedded below. It's entirely created using MS Paint. That's right, the lame one that comes with Windows. Just watch the video and you'll see what someone with proper skills and a lot of patience can achieve.

Back to religion

I figured I should say a few more things about my beliefs on religious matters. I say religion as in the "faith in God and other deities". There are of course other uses for the word, but I won't be going into those.

Let's take it all from the beginning, the way The Bible describes how everything happened. God created light, the sky, earth and water, plants and animals and eventually the human. And he set human as master over all living live. Now isn't that a little bit narcissistic? Of course it suits us humans, but that created the idea that human has the "God given right" to do whatever he wants. And why not? We wrote the book. The Bible I mean. We know it was written by humans. It didn't fell from the sky. So if humans wrote the book it's only natural that they written it the way they liked it and the way things were back then. It's not like they were going to say that humans were created to live in harmony with the other creatures of the earth. That way religion would have never been accepted by such a large number of people.

But why is it Christianity so popular? I guess it's a matter of comfort. Before it appeared there were many gods. Each with a specific duty. There were many days of worship, many offerings to be made and many gods that would be mad and vengeful if you forgot about them. That wasn't too nice. Then a religion appeared that said that there is only one God, that he is kind and merciful. That he takes care of all his followers and grants them eternal life in Heaven. That sounded great in my opinion. Why should I give praise to so many gods that will punish me if I don't when I can follow just one god that will take care of me? And when things went bad, it was God's way, God's greater plan for all humans. Stupid. I still can't figure out how thing could get so elaborate as time passes. I think all religions start out from humans inability to explain certain things at a given point in time, so they attribute it to a higher, supernatural being. Also, when bad things happen, the question "why is this happening to me?" finds its answer in God's plan for everything. I find it hilarious that people turn to religion most often when they are at a low point in their lives. And after that claim that God saved them and showed them the way. The way to where?

Anyway, back to The Bible. It says that at first there was just Adam and then Eve was created from his rib. I don't know why from his rib but never mind. You could say that Adam was the only man that gave birth :) Then they upset God by doing something bad: they ate an apple. Oh no! And also became aware that they were naked. And gained knowledge. After that they were banished from the Garden of Eden and became the humans we are today. OK. They first had two sons, Cain and Abel, the first of which killed the second. So far so good. Now human has discovered murder. A real breakthrough. But what happens next? A few years after I mean. How did humans get to populate the planet? There was just one woman. Let's assume that she latter had daughters. Did brothers mate with their sisters? Or did Cain had sex with Eve? Or did they just have a great orgy and no one knows who had who. That's not very ethic is it? Or they didn't thought about it back then: there was no one to judge them :)

That's just one of the many large mysteries of The Bible. I will try to remember others and I will talk about them some other time.

About God and religion

Now that's a delicate subject. I always believed that anyone has the right to express themselves in any form they chose. Well not exactly always. As a child I considered that my point of view was the right one and no one else could change my mind. In time, as I grew up, things took a different turn. But anyway, I was trying to talk about God and what are my opinions about this.

As a child you are told that there is a greater being that takes care of all people, and that it watches over them so that nothing bad happens. When you grow up and realize that things aren't always that good, you are told that it God planned for this and that to happen and that you shouldn't try to understand, because God has a plan for everyone. Many of you probably heard that a few times over the course of your lives. It's seems just a little too stupid to me. Probably because I don't believe in God. Some of you might ask "Why not? Can't you see all the wonderful things that he has created?" Well I can't. I have absolutely no proof that God created anything and no proof that it really exists other than some ancient writings that surely suffered more that a few modifications across time, considering the fact that they were first passed on verbally. And also considering the fact that those stories were told by simple men, without a scholar education. And also, those were times in which very few were interested in scientific discoveries and anything that didn't have an explanation was immediately categorized as a miracle. But those are just a few reasons.

But I will try to talk about this matter some other time. Now I'm feeling a little bit tired. It's been a long day. Let me put my thoughts in a certain order and I'll come back with a more detailed description of my opinion about religion. But let me be clear that I don't speak just of Christianity and the Christian god and I don't try to change anyone's beliefs. I will try as much as possible to refer to religion in general, but I will discuss aspects from a Christian point of view because I am more familiar with it as I was baptized as a catholic.

OK, I feel like I'm falling asleep and I can barely tie two words together. I'll come back on this later.

Comic Books

A source of entertainment for both kids and adults. The nice graphics and the catching story, the continuous battle between good and evil, the inner feelings of the main character, the funny conversations or depicted situations, the drama, the action, the comedy, ahhh...

Comic books give many of us a great way to relax, to forget about the mundane things and return to that time of our life when superheroes and super villains were real and they used their powers to fight each other. It the time when kids look for idols and role models. People they want to be. It's the time of happiness and inner peace when you don't feel the everyday worries and stress. I think that's mainly one of the reasons adults still enjoy reading them. It gives them back something they lost or they don't want to lose: their childhood.

Believe it or not but, but the first known comic book appeared in Europe in 1837 and was published in several languages. It's name was "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck" and it was a lot different than the comic books we know today. Back then there were no balloons, the text being situated under the panels, describing the story. There were more like books than comics, but those are the pioneers. The first comic books were published like part of a magazine. Soon the newspapers noticed the increased attraction in the phenomenon and started to publish short stories as a weekend bonus. In 1897 "The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats" comes out, introducing the phrase"comic book" printed on the back cover and the balloon as a mean to show what the characters are saying. For a while, this was considered to be the first comic book. Thus the basis of the industry was created.

The first real monthly comic book("Comics Monthly") was printed in 1922 and lasted for 12 months. Walt Disney released in 1931 the first Mickey Mouse comic book named "The Adventures of Mickey Mouse". After that several others followed. Around this period characters like Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy and Tarzan made their appearance in comic books. Different companies sponsored or ordered comic books to promote their name or products, increasing people's attraction for this kind of literature.

In 1938 "Action Comics #1" comes out and the world is changed forever. Why you ask? What was so special about this comic? It featured Superman. Yes people, that's how old Superman is. This was the first time ever the main character of the book has amazing powers, like bouncing bullets of his chest, flying, running faster than a train, leaping buildings and other cool stuff. Superman was the first in a long line of heroes end villains that had supernatural powers. A year later another great hero is created, Batman. Allthough he doesn't have any super powers, he has great gadgets and he's a man with secrets and tragedies in his life, not as pure as Superman.

A sad chapter in this history is Dr. Fredric Werthham, a psychologist that considered comic books to be bad for children. He started a seven year study on the effects of the comics on children. In 1954 he published "Seduction of the Innocent", in which he states that these are a major cause of juvenile delinquency and that children got wrong ideas about life, the laws of physics and social status. In 1954 the "Comics Code Authority"(CCA) was created following an U.S. Senate investigation in which Werthham was called to testify. This way the comic book companies had to follow a set of guidelines. The ones that qualified received the approval stamp. Many comics went out of, mainly horror ones business. Others transformed into magazines, the CCA having no authority over them. With time the approval stamp got smaller and smaller. These days the CCA lost it's importance and comics may or may not have the approval. It makes no difference.

Shortly after, comics got back on track. Many more superheroes were created by both DC Comics and Marvel: Conan The Barbarian, The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, The X-Men, Hulk, Iron-Man, Spiderman to name just a few. New stories and new adventures were invented. The 70's changed the way comics were created. They took a more serious approach and touched issues as drug abuse, pollution and racism. The characters and stories became more complex to reflect the changes in the social climate. At first they were not approved by the CCA, but seeing the support from the public their guidelines changed. This in turn gave the opportunity to create new comics that were previously denied by the CCA.

In my opinion comics have kept up with the new trends in media. In fact movies have been and continue to be released featuring famous Marvel and other heroes. Great titles like "Blade", "Hulk", "X-Men", "X2: X-Men United", "X3: The Last Stand", "Daredevil", "Fantastic Four", "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer", "Spiderman" 1,2 and 3, "Ghostrider" and so many others continue to hold a top place in the box office, reviving or creating new adventures for our heroes. Cartoons also make people aware of the complexity of the characters and their background, bringing back to life their old stories in an animated and revamped way.

Whatever other people might say, you're never too old for comic books. It's actually like learning history. Old comics and heroes have been around longer than many of us. And they most certainly have a greater history than many of the contemporary literature characters. Just reading all those comic books is like reading entire novels, spanning over almost a century and depicting the social environment and events of the time. They are more that just drawings. They are truly a form of art.

Graffiti. Art?

Wikipedia: Graffiti (singular: "graffito," although the plural is more common) is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, or more usually spray-painted on property that does not belong to the artist. Graffiti is often regarded by others as unsightly damage or unwanted vandalism.

Most of us already knew that. But what I didn't knew was that graffiti has such a longer history. Apparently it's been around since ancient times, being found in Greek(Ephesus) and Roman cities (Pompeii), as well as Mayan (Tikal), viking and varangian. During Renaissance, many of the great artists of the time carved or painted their names on the ruins of Nero's Domus Arena, thus giving birth to the grottesche style of decoration.

Although many people associate modern graffiti with hip-hop culture, graffiti predates it and has it's own culture and history. It seems that modern graffiti appeared around 1969 and reached it's peak in the mid 70's. Most of the places it was found at that time was on train and subway wagons. Some of the most notable names from that time are Stay High 149, Hondo 1, Phase2, Stitch 1, Joe 136, Junior 161, Cay 161, Barbara 62 and Eve 62. Taki 183, even if he is not the first graffiti artist, he is the first that attracted media attention.

In the period between late 1970's and early 1980's new forms and styles of graffiti developed. After 1985 it started to stagnate and because of several actions took by the US Government and the Transit Authority, who wanted to remove all traces of graffiti from their train wagons, it started to "move to the streets". This way modern graffiti, the one that each and everyone of us knows, is created.

But is graffiti a form of art? It certainly has been used for more than just defacing public or private property. Since ancient graffiti appeared, it's been used to send a message to others, being of political, social or personal nature. In modern time graffiti is used for showing others that the author has been there, much like marking territory. It's been also used for transmitting political messages, expressing an opinion, approval or disapproval for a new law, decree or election. Messages like "stop the war!" or "make piece!" are present in many of these pieces. Thus the author is expressing something through his creation. Isn't that art?

If you still disagree, know that artists like Crash, Daze and Lady Pink have their works exposed in the Brooklyn Museum, as part of the "contemporary art" gallery. Australian art historians ranked some of their local graffiti as visual art. Oxford University Press states in their "Australian Painting 1788-2000" states that graffiti has a key place in contemporary visual culture.

Still not convinced? I can't blame you. Seeing a beautiful white wall filled with awful writings is horrible. But if you see a boring white wall decorated with beautiful graphics and colors, showing a strong message that you agree with is awesome. And just so you don't have a narrow view on the entire subject, you can visit Wikipedia and find out more information about graffiti (this post was largely based on information found there). For a huge graffiti gallery, you can visit http://www.graffiti.org or http://www.puregraffiti.com

The beauty of fractals

A friend of mine told me a few years ago that instead of a classic desktop background, he prefers a fractal image. I had no idea what a fractal is and I didn't give it to much attention. After a while I saw a book about fractals. The colorful drawings on the cover drew my attention :) I started to read it and I remained astonished. The complexity that a simple mathematical function can generate and the beauty of the designs that can come out of that left me speechless. I afterwards realized that I knew the principles of how a fractal works long before. Ever heard of "recursive"? It's a programming term used when a function calls on itself. That's mainly how fractals work. They repeat the same function a number of given times or, if you wish, an infinite number of times. But that will most surely crash your computer eventually. This way the pattern it draws is the same every time, but the position, size, direction, color or other attributes it has may differ.

So what is the definition of a fractal anyway? Well, according to Wikipedia, a fractal is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole". Got that? To put it simple, if you zoom in on a portion of a fractal, no matter how many times, you see approximately the same pattern, over and over again. Voila. The best graphical representation of infinity.

The term of "fractal" was given by Benoît B. Mandelbrot, also known as the "father of fractal geometry". One of the most popular fractals bears his name, the Mandelbrot set.

Fractals also seem to be present in nature, but they are an approximate and finite form. You can find them in clouds, snow flakes, crystals, lightning, ferns, broccoli, cauliflower and even blood vessels.

But what are they good for, other than beautiful and colorful graphics? They're good for a lot of things. The fact that nature uses them in so many situations proves that a fractal is something that offers great advantages. But they are also used in domains such as art(computer generated, African art, painting), signal and image compression, seismology, computer and video game design, medicine and so many others.

The fractals have been around for such a long time and people have come across constantly. Thanks to the introduction of computers, they are now more accessible to everyone and a real science has developed to study and better understand them. This way we'll see them applied in more and more areas. The possibilities that they offer are endless.

Sidewalk drawings

Do you remember when you were kids we used to draw on the sidewalk, using colored chalk? Those were great times. I remember there were drawing contests and kids were drawing all sorts of flowers, people and houses. We would finish a box of chalk faster than a bag of candy. It seems that drawing on the concrete is a lot funnier that drawing on paper. But that was a long time ago.

Still there are people that don't seem to have gotten over it. And even more, they took it to the next level. Julian Beever is one of those people. He managed to turn "pavement drawings" into a real form of art, creating stunning graphics. Using a special drawing method, he creates the illusion of 3D.

The downside is that you have to look at them from a particular angle, otherwise you notice the distortion that is needed to create the effect.

For these and other great graphics created by Julian Beever, you can visit his website.

My first post (instead of "Welcome!")

Firstly I would like to mention that English is not my native language. That's why there's a high probability I will make mistakes. Mainly grammatical. I hereby apologize for any of them.

OK. Let's begin. You probably already noticed, my name is Stelian Andrei Adumitroaei. My last name is a little bit strange, and that's why people tend to bend it a little bit. But I don't believe that really matters.

Let me tell you a few things about me .I was born in 1984, April 19, in Iasi, Romania. That means I'm 23 years old. I went to kindergarten, school then high school and finally college.

And that's all for my studies. I now work as a web designer, but I don't have that much activity. That's one of the reasons I started to write this blog.

As passions or hobbies, the first thing would probably be graphics. Any kind of well made graphics: paintings, computer generated, 3D render, graffiti, architectural drawing or even concrete drawings. Mainly anything that involves the creation of a graphical object. Another hobby would be programming. But I haven't had the chance to practice it lately. I know I loved it in my first few years of college. Now the only things I do that are even a little bit close to programming are the scripts used at online forms processing. And even those follow a specific pattern.

Well, I guess that's all. What do I want to accomplish and what you can expect from this blog? Even I don't know. As I said, it was created because I had some spare time, so I don't have a goal set. I don't have anything special to share with the world.

See you later.