Photoshop

It was Tom's birthday on Wednesday and as a present I thought I'd photoshop him. Now Tom likes his football so I thought I'd stick his head into an iconis footy photo. The results are as follows:


It took me about an hour to do and I actually used the lower part of Vinny Jones' Jaw and blended Tom's head on to it with the help of the smudge, sponge, blur, and burn tools with a bit of paintbrush here and there and a few other finishing touches. I'm very happy with it because I didn't just rush it and actually tried to keep improving it. When it's printed on to 6"x4" photopaper it looks much better.

Need more power from your PC?

You can now buy a Cray T3E-1200E Supercomputer on Ebay.
For those of you who don't know a great deal about computers this is shit-hot. It's a multi processor machine (about 120 in this baby, each at around 600Mhz) and is used for complex scientific calculations.
If you're interested the bidding starts at $350,000 which isn't too bad for a machine that cost $3,500,000 in June 1999! Happy bidding.

Renault Megane Problem

Hi. For the past few weeks the right indicator on my Megane has been playing up and flashing double time and actually making other lights flash too which is really funny if I want to die. Well I've been putting off fixing them because 1. I'm a bit lazy & 2. I wasn't quite sure what to do.
I'd tested all the bulbs and they were fine and then last week a new problem arose where if I had the headlights on and was indicating right the fog light indicator would light up on my dashboard and as soon as I put my foot on the brake the right indicator would stop working! A great trick if you like playing chicken when turning right in the dark.
Well I asked my friend Ian what he thought and he said "probably some sort of earthing problem". Cheers. So I went researching on the net and actually found a solution because it seems this has happened to a few megane owners.

THE CAUSE
Bacause one of the bulbs has lost an earth, when I brake I'm drawing an earth through another bulb to feed the defective light and by doing this it's creating a magnetic field in the second bulb making it light. i.e things be fucked up.

THE SOLUTION
Open the boot and remove the lighting block and disconnect the connecting block. You should be able to see a bit of blackening on one of the pins where it has overheated. Get a small file and remove the black bits and maybe bend the pins a bit to improve the connection. Do this to both the left and right set of lights and put everything back.

Brilliant I can now indicate and brake at the same time!

Old Geocities Sites

I've just been into my yahoo geocities account for the first time in years and found a few gems showing some exquiset design features.
Whe nI went to uni it was the first time I'd used the internet and so had a bit of fun playing with the web. Check out some of the sites below. I know they are shit but show a naivity of someone who hasn't used the net before.
Adem's Blockrockin' Beats Page Of Music Masters
The Personal Page of Adem

wow!

It's still snowing.

What's happened with the weather? I had fun yesterday driving to Tunbridge Wells at 6am, and trying to find a small village when all the road signs were covered in snow! Tsk!
Well I did take the opportunity to take a few photos. Also because winter has only just arrived in late February I think that it's about 2 months too late so I propose that we should add 2 months to this summer and that should bring the seasons up to date. I'd add the months of....ademelmus and djemilary...on the end of August and this should bring things into line which would mean that now would be december and we'd be happy because in 2 days time it'd be Christmas Day and I love snow on that day! Think about it, you know it makes sense.

Adem the Artist

I'm sure in previous posts I've mentioned my visit to Prague in January, my love of Photoshop, and also my digital camera.
I decided to combine all three and make something and so I got a few of my photos from Prague, dabbled with them in photoshop and came up with something that I'm actually quite proud of. Hey I could even sell them! Anyone interested? Check one of my dabblings below which I've framed. It's from a photo of the astronomical clock in Prague.

Free Mojtaba and Arash Day

click here

Concentration Test For Men

This one is only for the guys.
How good is your concentration? Click Here

The Perry Bible Fellowship

I discovered this brilliant collection of comic strips through Swens Blog which led me to The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The PBF is the work of Nicholas Gurewitch and I recommend that you check it out for some off-the-wall humour.

Now that's what I call initiative.

Strip club artfully slips by anti-nudity law

BOISE, Idaho (Reuters) - A strip club in Boise, Idaho has found an artful way to prance past a city law that prohibits full nudity.


On what it calls Art Club Nights, the Erotic City strip club charges customers $15 (8 pounds) for a sketch pad, pencil, and a chance to see completely naked women dancers.


In 2001 the Boise City Council passed an ordinance banning total nudity in public unless it had "serious artistic merit" -- an exemption meant to apply to plays, dance performances and art classes.


"We have a lot of people drawing some very good pictures," said Erotic City owner Chris Teague, who has posted many of the drawings around the club.


Teague said he got the idea when a customer asked if he could get in for free to sketch the dancers. Realizing that "art classes" were exempt from the law, Teague decided to bill Mondays and Tuesdays as art nights, and let the dancers go without their G-strings and pasties.


In the two months since they began, Art Club Nights have drawn full crowds of 60 people but no police citations, he said.

That's one man who is truely 'living the American Dream'.

World Community Grid

I've just signed up to the WCG which is a programme which utilises idle computer time to solve mathematical problems.
Basically I usually turn on my desktop PC, go and do something else whilst it's booting up, maybe go on the internet and check my emails and generally surf a bit, and then I may actually do some work on it (usually photoshop and dreamweaver).
Now there are large gaps when I'm only using a fraction of my processing power and this is where I can do my bit in helping humanity.
I install a small program (I'll spell it this way as they are a US company) and this downloads calculations for my PC to ...um... calculate. Currently the institute is working on the role of proteins in the body -'Human Proteome Folding Project.'
Small encrypted files of protein data are sent to my PC when I am on the net, and then I don't need to be on the net for the magic to happen, and when I do get on the net then it sends back the results.
Currently there are thousands of users linking into this Grid, and it has been estimated that 4,000 years worth of computer calculations have been done in the last 3 months!

People like recognition for when they do something charitable so there is also a ranking system where your run-time and calculations add to your total points.
If you'd like to help to then visit the World Community Grid

...To FTP or to UTP

This post may be a little boring to some but may help a few with certain acronyms.
I was ordering some cat5 cable with RJ45 connectors for a home network and was looking around to get quite a lot cheaply. I found what I wanted at the ever excellent lindy.com where I managed to get a 30metre cable for £5.22 in their special offers section.

Well I stumbled across the terms UTP and FTP. What do they mean?
UTP stands for Unshielded Twisted Pair
FTP stands for Foil Twisted Pair

Twisted pair

A thin-diameter wire (22 to 26 gauge) commonly used for telephone and network cabling. The wires are twisted around each other to minimize interference from other twisted pairs in the cable (Alexander Graham Bell invented this and was awarded a patent for it in 1881). Twisted pairs have less bandwidth than coaxial cable or optical fiber.

UTP, STP, ScTP, FTP
Twisted pair cables are available unshielded (UTP) or shielded (STP), with UTP being the most common. STP is used in noisy environments where the shield around each of the wire pairs, plus an overall shield, protects against excessive electromagnetic interference. A variation of STP, known as ScTP for "screened twisted pair" or FTP for "foil twisted pair," uses only the overall shield and provides more protection than UTP, but not as much as STP.

Isn't that interesting.

Wicked Wiki

Well every so often I do actually learn new thing from the internet. My new discovery was wiki which I learnt about last week and I only just thought it would be good to share this knowledge (or at least write it down for when I forget what it is.)
In layman's terms a wiki is a website that allows users to add content (a bit like a net forum), but where it differs is that it allows the users to also edit any content that is already on the site. In theory it means that everyone can be an editor of a wiki website.
An example of this is wikipedia which is an online encyclopedia where users can refine, make corrections, and generally make the entries more accurate.
If you want to know more about wiki then why not go to the wiki enclyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki and read about it.

Apparently wiki is going to be the next big thing, much in the way blogs are last years big thing. remember you read it here first (maybe?)

Night at the dawgs.

Last night 25 of us went to Sittingbourne dogtrack to celebrate Ian's 22nd Birthday....bless him. He did the obligatory drink too much, puke all over yourself number that has become a favourite pursuit of the birthday crowd.
On the dog racing front, I got quite into it and was studying their form, odd, lane preference etc. and feel like I learnt quite a bit (except I kept calling them horses!)
I managed to not lose much and won quite a few races (not me personally, I couldn't run thyat fast), and I think we'd all definately go again.

If you'd like to know more then visit www.sittingbournegreyhounds.co.uk

New Song

Ok they're coming to me now.....
Chris Isaak - Wicked Game

New track added

Here's another gem, and this time it's ......drum roll....

The Stone Temple Pilots - Pretty Penny

Aimee Mann - Wise Up

Goo Goo Dolls - Iris

Incubus – Mexico (Morning View - 2001)

A Perfect Circle – A Stranger (Thirteenth Step - 2003)

Johnny Cash - Hurt (American IV: The Man Comes Around - 2002)

Petrol Prices

What? Another post already?!
Well I've been surfing the web and found a site that may be helpful to those who drive in Thanet (where i live).
The site is www.thanetpetrol.co.uk and it lists the daily petrol prices from most of the major petrol stations in the area.

I'll add it to the links section on the right hand column and maybe I'll use this as an opportunity to remove some of the crap ones that I never use.

Injuries

About 3/4 weeks ago I sprained my ankle (whilst pissed so no sympathy). Well now it's almost better after weeks of not being able to do much on and if I tried my ankle gave way and I looked like I'd been shot by a sniper.
Well I made my return to Sunday League Football and guess what? I get a new injury, Only a pul on my hamstring which happened after being on the field for 2 minutes! I'll give it a rest for the week and hopefully it'll be all good. Silly silly injuries, I seem to get more the older I get (24 years at present) god it's all downhill from now.

New Entry to Soundtrack to my Life

I've got a couple of tunes to add to the earlier post.

these are....

Aimee Mann - Wise Up

Goo Goo Dolls - Iris

these are added to....

Incubus – Mexico (Morning View - 2001)

A Perfect Circle – A Stranger (Thirteenth Step - 2003)

Johnny Cash - Hurt (American IV: The Man Comes Around - 2002)

News Feed

For those of you with a Newsreader on your PC you can now add 'The Big Blog' to it. the address is ademblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml just like on the link to the right below the 'about me' section.

P.S. the Newreader I'm using is Feedreader.

Soundtrack to your life

Do you ever hear a song and think that it fits in perfectly with your mood at that time? It's almost like having a film soundtrack to your life with certain songs reflecting your inner emotions.

Well I do, and every so often I'll hear a song and think "wow" that is so me.

I am going to try and make a list of songs for certain moods I have but I know I won't be able to justify the songs to you as they are specifically for me and not to be rated by others.

Most of the songs are slightly depressing as I think most of the songs in the world rely on the theme of love, be it gained, lost, or unrequited. Even a few of the songs are ones that I morbidly sometimes think I'd like people to hear at my funeral (or even hear myself at my own passing).

You can find the songs at SoundFlavor.com and use the search at the bottom right of the screen.

Well here we go for a start, these are 2 that automatically spring to mind and I'll add others later.

Songs to be depressed to...
Incubus – Mexico (Morning View - 2001)
A Perfect Circle – A Stranger (Thirteenth Step - 2003)
Johnny Cash - Hurt (American IV: The Man Comes Around - 2002)

Nothing new to say

I can't be bothered to write anything but wanted to show that I was still alive....have a look what I've bought:


It's a very big TV if you hadn't guessed (it's bigger in real life!)