Automobile manufactorer logos / icons

I've found a lot of cool automobile manufacturer icons so I've decided to upload them here for you. They are all compressed into one rar file (5.5 MB). You can download them here.

jQuery, The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library

So what exactly is jQuery?
jquery.com says:

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

But let's take a look at this from a dumb man's perspective:

- it helps you make cool website interfaces like this one:
http://visionmasterdesigns.com/demo/ajaxinterface

- it can help you make cool galleries without stupid flash:
http://www.detacheddesigns.com/blog/samples/jQueryImageGallery/gallery.htm

- you can make nice handy menus with it:
http://query7.com/demos/jquerymenu.html#

- nice little image loader:
http://www.chazzuka.com/experiments/jquery-image-loader/jquery-image-loader-3.html

- nice little slide effect:
http://query7.com/demos/jquerybasicsslide.html

There are a lot of sites with tutorials for jQuery, here are some of them:
- jQuery tutorials for designers
- 15 days of jQuery
- 51 best tutorials for jQuery
- another 8 jQuery tutorials
- 35 essential jQuery tutorials
- Beginner jQuery tutorials

Cool Icons, do you need them?

If your answer is YES, then you can take a look @ IconLook (http://www.iconlook.com). IconLook is a icon search engine that can locate you tons of nice looking icons. It also has links to the licenses and the original authors. It's also quite fast and has a nice clean look.

Does anyone use iGoogle?

If not, you should. iGoogle simplifies many things. You can add many many gadgets and quickly take a look at important things for which you usually have to open multiple tabs or windows to see. For instance, you open a tab for the latest digg stories, you open another tab for your (g)mail, you open yet another tab for the weather forecast, etc etc. All that can be put in one page with iGoogle. You see what's up, then you can focus on one thing at a time. Well that's at least my 2 cents.

4Q - find out what your visitors think of your website

Their website says:

4Q, an Avinash Kaushik and iPerceptions collaboration is a simple, free survey solution that lets you ask these all-important questions to your website visitors, and gives you real-time, complete access to the results.

It looks like a nice and clean(non bloated) service that's easy to implement and use. Avinash Kaushik is a web analytics genius so I guess I can't go wrong on this one.

I' have registered an account there and will try using their service on this blog. I'm just curious ;)

Oh yeah, I forgot to post a link, so here it is.

SmugMug - A good photo sharing alternative

I was looking for a good photo sharing service and even though there are numerous websites out there, nothing impressed me like smugmug. They offer unlimited storage/traffic, you friends don't have to register to view your photos, no banners/ads, cropping, enhancing, ordering prints, private groups, sending photos to email, posting photos to forums or blogs, and much much more. It costs about $40/year and in 5 minutes I found tons of great photos. Congrats to guys @ smugmug, they have created a cool & enjoyable service.

Amazon S3 loweres prices, I love Amazon

As I said a couple of post before, amazon is great, and now they have lowered their prices dramatically, this will drive down my backup costs significantly.

Current storage price (through Oct 31, 2008)
US: $0.150 per GB
EU: $0.180 per GB

New storage price (effective Nov 1, 2008)
US
$0.150 First 50 TB / month of storage used
$0.140 Next 50 TB / month of storage used
$0.130 Next 400 TB / month of storage used
$0.120 Storage used / month over 500 TB

EU
$0.180 First 50 TB / month of storage used
$0.170 Next 50 TB / month of storage used
$0.160 Next 400 TB / month of storage used
$0.150 Storage used / month over 500 TB

In my last post about Amazon S3 I wrote about automating backups, here are some backup solutions that will make your life easier:

- s3sync.rb (A cool script written in Ruby).
- S3 Backup (Windows client).
- duplicity (A not so mature Python script).
- Brackup (A Perl script written by Brad Fitzpatrick).
- Jungle Disk (Windows, Linux, Mac client and also a local WebDAV server).

Chestnuts @ Velenje Castle

Yesterday we decided it's time to make some chestnuts, so where else to go then to the Castle ;)
As you can see we had fun and there's always more of us. I guess the next time we decide to make something like this we're gonna start selling tickets.


The one that made all this possible

Roberto closeup

The cook, he made allmost all the food

The clown

Chinese guy

Clown #2

The godfathers

The Bambulić brothers

don't know these 2

Security

Chocolate milk commercial

Rough rider

Chestnuts, the stars of the night

Hahahahaha aahahah

Norwegian working force

Backing stuff up on Amazon's S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service can in one word be described as great, but that's still an understatement. You pay for what you use and it's still cheap.
I needed a good place to backup stuff from my new servers. Finding a good backup solution can be:
- hard
- costly
- time consuming
- frustrating

When considering the cost of a decent backup hard drive like 300GB WD VelociRaptor (282,15 Euros = 384,767955 U.S. dollars at the moment), power consumption, noise, unpredictable home electricity shortages and the fact that you have to buy at least four of those to be an effective backup solution, you realize that S3 is much much cheaper. My current backup costs at S3 are less than $13 a month. Now that's cheap.

That's where S3 shines. You register an account within minutes and you're ready to go. All you have to do now is to get some software (windows,mac,Linux) or write a simple Perl/Ruby script that automates your backups(Linux/Unix servers). There are also a lot of good existing scripts out there so you only need to modify them to suit your needs.

I've decided for a mixed method. Since there are a lot of files on the servers, I would pay more then necessary because of the $0.01 per 1,000 PUT, POST, or LIST requests. My servers use cPanel control panel and it has a good method of backing stuff up on the server. Every user account is packed and compressed in one file, so at the end of the day I don't have millions of files (PUT, POST, or LIST queries) but only let's say 100 - and that saves valuable money. cPanel makes backups and sends them over to my home server. Backups go into a folder which is configured to be shared with SAMBA throughout the windows network. What I did next was that I used Jungle Disk - a windows S3 client to automate my backups to S3.

The reason why I went through all these jumps are next:

- I saved my servers from bandwidth outside my country/continent
- Servers don't have to encrypt anything, so that's saved server CPU time
- My customers don't feel a thing, since the backups are done fast
- Everything I send to S3 from my home computers is encrypted

To be on the safe side I also save backups on my home servers throughout multiple hard drives, you never know...

Barbecue @ Velenje Castle

Me and a couple of my friends got together to celebrate a couple of things. For me it was the end of Ramadan, another friend bought a car and another one was just along for the ride :)
Ramadan was great, I got to know who my friends were and how backstabbing someone you think is your friend can be. Aaanyywaay.....

So we went and bought some food and drinks (and a portable barbecue) & went to Velenje castle. It was one of those days when you can relax and have fun and not worry about anything else. Here are some photos.

Some more SCARY and WEIRD trucks

I've been looking around and came up with these trucks. Some are pretty scary, especially the one with the spikes everywhere.

The COOLEST trucks I have EVER seen - Luigi Colani design

Luigi Colani, (born in Berlin on 2 August 1928 as Lutz Colani), is a German industrial designer whose father came from Madulain near St. Moritz in Switzerland and mother from Poland.

The prime characteristic of his designs are the rounded, organic forms, which he terms "biodynamic" and claims are ergonomically superior to traditional designs. His "kitchen satellite" from 1969 is the most prominent example of this school of thought. Many of his designs for small appliances are being mass-produced and marketed, but his larger designs have not been built, "a whole host of futuristic concepts that will have us living in pods and driving cars so flat that leg amputation is the only option."[1]

The earth is round, all the heavenly bodies are round; they all move on round or elliptical orbits. This same image of circular globe-shaped mini worlds orbiting around each other follows us right down to the microcosmos. We are even aroused by round forms in species propagation related eroticism. Why should I join the straying mass who want to make everything angular? I am going to pursue Galileo Galilei's philosophy: my world is also round. — Luigi Colani[2]

He has received numerous design awards.

Colani currently resides in Karlsruhe, Germany.