Steve Maclntyre from the Oilers said “it’s part of the game,” and I’m sure a great number of players/fans think alike.  Players get frustrated and need to let off steam but that doesn’t mean they have to fight.  Even kids learn from their parents fighting is bad.  So how is it right in hockey?  I just don’t see the connection I would much rather watch a fast pace game of hockey and having to waste 3 min of my time watching two grown men fight like school girls.  If I wanted to watch a good fight I would go watch UFC / boxing match where the men can actually fight (where no one dies, or get knocked out into a coma because referees keep their fighters safe).

Folks may argue that because hockey is such a contact driven sport that players need to fight.  Well so are football and rugby, and fighting is not a norm in those sports.  Besides hockey I don’t think there is any other sport where fighting is allowed it’s just unprofessional. The hockey league should start changing the rules and make the game more exciting to watch for the fans and safer for the players.

After going through a few projects and picking up some css skills along the way here are some neat css tricks I’ve learned and found very helpful.  So helpful I figured I write somewhere so I can always find what I need instead of using google all the time. The first bit of code is setting transparency for objects like images and divs. it can be a nice effect for  setting transparent backgrounds behind some funky bg image.

Codes for setting transparency:

For current firefox, safari browser
opacity:0.7;

For firefox browser
-moz-opacity:1.0;

For ie browser
filter: alpha(opacity=100);

Now here is something I’m completely stoked about and that is rounded corners.  I’m not sure about you but  I’ve always hated cutting out rounded corner images out just to make rounded corners(my blood is boiling just thinking of it).  Luckily the code below help eliminate most of these issues below are the code to create  rounded corners for safari and mozilla.  As for ie I don’t believe they support it yet but if you know they do please let me know ;D

Code for making rounded corners:

For Safari browser:

this code sets all the corners
-webkit-border-radius: 10px;

This set of code allows the user to specify which corner the user wants to be round.
-webkit-border-top-left-radius:10px;
-webkit-border-top-right-radius:10px;
-webkit-border-bottom-radius:10px;
-webkit-border-bottom-radius:10px;

For mozilla firefox browser:
-moz-border-radius:10px;

This set of code allows the user to specify which corner the user wants to be round.
-moz-border-radius-topleft:10px;
-moz-border-radius-topright:10px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft:10px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomright:10px;

ie currently doesn’t support rounded corners

It can be very challenging trying to pick the right color template for a web site.  Especially if you’re dealing with colors you don’t typically use.   But don’t threat! Kuler is too the rescue! Kuler is a product created by Adobe.  It lets users generate their own color combination by choosing the following options:

• Analogous
• Monochromatic
• Triad
• Complementary
• Compound
• Shades
• Custom

After the user has generated their color theme the user can save it to a place called “Mykuler”. Users can also save color themes as Adobe Swatch Exchange files (.ASE) where users can import and use in Adobe Creative Suite.  The online application is very easy to use so definitely give Kuler a try.

Here are some color blindness definitions found on the web:

• Protanopia means difficulties to distinguish between blue and green colors and also between red and green colors, or no sensitivity to red.
• Deuteranopia is blindness to green.
• Tritanopia is blindness to blue-yellow.

Designers who ignore color blindness can lose or confuse about 10 percent of potential viewers. To avoid this problem Vischeck has a nice tool that will load your website, and display how people with these symptoms will view your site.  From there you can see how clearly your sites is readable and adjust your site.

The winner will be picked randomly and the contest ends August 8 12:00pm EST so hurry and post your comments today!

I get this question all that time, is it okay to use rapid surfaces for my final tooling? Well it really depends on what the object is. But there a few there is a few guide lines to follow if you do plan on rapid surfacing your data for tooling.

Do you plan to make any changes with this data? If so how big are your changes going to be? Are you just adding or subtracting parts to the data? If so feel free to rapid surface it adding/subtracting stuff to rapid surfaces are easy. But if you plan to make changes like editing a fillet size or pushing and pulling surfaces I suggest you grab your trusty surfacing/CAD app and spend your time slowly modeling it.

Budget! Now that can a huge factor here especially for start ups, rapid surfacing can be super cost effective when it comes to creating a CAD model for manufacturing. Let’s use a golf club head for example. It would probably take weeks for a CAD modeler to generate an accurate model of such a complex object, but with rapid surfacing it could easily be done in a few hours with the accuracy of +/- 0.01. As long as you’re original data is good you’re good.

Now too quiet down the doubters in the surfacing world telling you that these surfaces are not good enough to manufacture with, and you will get a bad result out of it. That can be true if you had bad data to begin with. I’ve been doing for years which might not mean much, but if Ford can use rapid surface to rebuild tools why can’t you? Just make sure the data you’re surfacing from looks close to perfect compared to the original. If your object is since and smooth make sure your data looks nice and smooth, or if your data is covered with texture like a tree bark make sure your data should looks just like it and you will be okay. A good way to sum it up rapid surfaces is “What you see is what you get!”

An animated Diablo 3 sony ericsson cell phone theme .
Feel free to post it anywhere but please put a link back to “http://peepinmymind.com/” Thanks!

Theme for Sony Ericsson with screen of 176×220 (z610,k610,618,z710,W710)

Theme for Sony Ericsson with screen of 240×320 (k800, W850, k790)

Warhammer Online is currently having a Squig contest. The contest is pretty simple go download Spore Creature Creator and make your own version of a Squig. Once that is done post it on youtube and submit your entry to war-contests@ea.com. Oh make sure u signed up on warhammer online. Contest ends July 14, 2008.

Here is my Squig entry for warhammer online. I wanted to do a bit more with it but since the free version is very limited this is the best I can do for now. Good luck to everyone who is entering! and here is a link to the video of my Squig.

An animated theme with Cloud from Final Fantasy Advent Children.
Feel free to post it anywhere but please put a link back to “http://peepinmymind.com/” Thanks!

For Sony Ericsson with screen of 176×220 (z610,k610,618,z710,W710)

For Sony Ericsson with screen of 240×320 (k800, W850, k790)

So a friend of mine brought over a bottle of Hpnotiq last night with some warm 7up. Now usually I would be jumping for joy but the Hpnotiq was warm, and I had no ice. But luckily I had some Freezies! So we grabbed some blue and white freezies and mixed it in our drink! and OMG was it ever good! So without further adieu here is my Hpnotiq Freeze recipe.

3 - 4 oz of warm Hpnotiq.

2 -3 Small Blue or White Freezies.

Take the Hpnotiq and Freezies dump them in your shaker and shake it till the Freezie has melted. If you don’t have a shaker just dump it in the glass and twirl the Freezies in the glass. Cheers