It’s a fantastic piece of flash software that helps you create simple web mock ups in a ridiculously fast time. It’s free to use (with a few features hidden, such as browse for image) but you get a popup every now and again asking you to buy the full version. It took me 10 minutes to produce this (admittedly lacklustre) mockup.

Using it is simple. You drag on items, such as tabbed containers, images, text boxes, buttons and even iphone layouts, until you have created your mockup. You can then export it as a pdf or a png, ready to show your client. The most impressive feature is the amount of detail they have included. You can change the position of the scrollbars, selected which tab is active and even add in disabled/selected checkboxes. Everything is customisable.

I’ll definitely be using it if given the opportunity.

After looking at the upcoming game Scott Pilgrim vs. The World:the game, I really liked the artwork. I then found out, via a little bit of digging, that it was by Paul Robertson, the same man behind:

• Pirate Baby’s Cabana Street Fight – Part One
• Pirate Baby’s Cabana Street Fight – Part Two
• Kings of Power 4 Billion% – Part One
• Kings of Power 4 Billion% – Part Two

Which pretty much just made this game a must buy!

For those that don’t know, The Human Centipede is about a mad surgeon who has designed a new procedure, to connect humans together via the gastric band to form a centipede. It’s been getting both good and awful reviews.

Personally I enjoyed it. It didn’t drag, and I found the concept pretty interesting. I’m glad they didn’t add loads of gore, they kept quite a bit to your imagination. The only thing I didn’t like was part of the ending, but the rest was good.

I’m not sure why it’s been getting such bad reviews; sure, it’s not the best film in the world, but it’s hardly the worst. The way people write about it it’s the sickest film they’ve ever seen, but it really isn’t that bad. It’s no worse than Aftermath, any of the Guinea Pig films, most Miike Takashi’s, or even more mainstream ones like Clockwork Orange and The Hills Have Eyes (bad comparisons I know).

It’s shot fairly well, acted well (ish, Dieter Laser is great but the female leads are only good once they can’t talk), and has a decent premise.

What did anyone else think?

http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/a-new-type-of-phishing-attack/

To summarise: The user leaves page focus for a minute, and the page changes it’s design to that of a well known site, complete with log in box. The site then records the user’s details, and voilà, the user can be hacked.

I’ve not yet experienced this (I hope!), nor seen it in action, but I can easily see how it could fool someone. I often leave tabs open, forget I’m logged in and then have to log in again on session timeout. Thinking about it, I don’t check the url when I do either.

Also, from a non phishing point of view, I think it’s be interesting to change the page depending on the level of the user input. Leave focus for a minute, have a popup appear for instance. This could be especially useful on a form, warning the user of a session timeout/limit.

I might have a play with it, see if I can make anything interesting.

And here it is – Toddish’s scripts page.

It taps into my delicious account and spits out all the sites with the tag “toddish_script”, using the excellent phpDelcious script. It then sorts out the tags, stripping duplicates, and displays them. You can also filter the results via some added jQuery.

Let me know if you find it useful!

Just in case it happens and I miss it

The site chanbara.co.uk is basically a modified WordPress blog. I found an amazing theme called Sharpfolio, which was originally designed for showcasing art work, but I loved the simplicity of it.

I also added various plugins, such as the All in one SEO pack, Gig Press and Audi Player. All of which help add extra functionality to the blog.

Hopefully, what with the upcoming gigs and studio time, it’ll be updated fairly regularly aswell!

Anonymous Accounts

I like the idea of anonymous accounts, I think it’d encourage more people to post, comment, and rate each feature. It means everyone can jump right in, and start using the site as it is meant to be used, without having another arbitrary login slowing them down/putting them off.

Required Registration

On the other hand, allowing the users to create an account would allow them access to better features, such as a control panel with all their posts, favourites, comments etc. It may put users off from using the site though, if they think that filling out a registration form to post something is too much effort.

I think a happy medium may be to allow both, maybe anonymous comments and ratings, but signed in to post?

How many people would be put off by a registration form?

While using an ActionScript 3 file, the video begins playing only when enough of it has downloaded so that it can play the FLV file from start to finish. This behavior can be altered using ActionScript.

Fantastic!

So I was stuck. I then began to notice that the metaData was received only after the file had been loaded. Hmm. After a little while of searching, I found this gem of a blog post.

Such a simple answer:

• Rename the flv to a mov
• Open it in Quicktime
• Save as over the top of the original
• Rename it back to flv

And all is well again, the file loads as soon as the buffer limit is reached!

Hopefully someone may find this useful, it took me long enough to figure out!

I’ve also been working on a new improved version of erant, which will go back to basics, and offer a much better experience than the old site.

Also in production is a new jQuery plug in, and a collection of AS3 scripts I’ve been working on, both of which should be live by next Monday.