COME ON! It really took a scientific study to determine something that a visit to the DMV would have confirmed? How much did this study cost? And how much of that money was via federal grants? More than $15k I’ll bet.

The idiots conclude that reforms in federal pay would save tax payers billions. I’ve got another way to save billions…stop shelling out tax payer money to fund studies that tell us shit we already know!

New study: Federal workers are overpaid | J.P. Freire | Beltway Confidential | Washington Examiner

Uberdouche to Get Current.

Posted: February 8, 2011 by lesliesrussell in Notes

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Current TV is the perfect place for the Olbermonster to finish his days as a self-proclaimed journalist. It’s a match made in heaven, or at least it’s a match made on mypartner.com. They’ve got low viewership, he’s got low viewership. He can slip out of his straight jacket every evening, slip into his comfy sweater, down a handful of haldol, swig of the finest cognac , and rant to to choir.

Olbermann Said to Be Going to Current TV – NYTimes.com

Facebook Founder Has a Girlfriend! Oh and Something About a Stalker

Posted: February 8, 2011 by lesliesrussell in Notes

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has a couple of things the rest of the neck/b/eards will never have: 1 billion dollars, a personal stalker, and a girlfriend named Chan. Not zunechan or anything but still….

The stalker presumably exploited Facebook’s weakass security to collect all Zuckerberg’s personal info, and then tried to Google map a route right into his pocketbook, or man purse, or whatever. 

Mark Zuckerberg — I Fear My Facebook Stalker | TMZ.com

Cock Kills Dickhead

Posted: February 8, 2011 by lesliesrussell in Notes

 

Good news everyone! The animals, who have suffered cruelty at the hands of scumbags with more time than sense, have finally begun their revolt. Thirty-five year old Jose Luis Ochoa smelled what the cock was cookin’ after the bird shanked him in the leg with a with one of the metal spurs attached to its leg. Two hours later the cock died. The article doesn’t say what became of the bird.

 

Rooster Kills Man Attending Cockfight « CBS Los Angeles

How to make Windows desktop icons in Gimp 2.6.11

Posted: February 7, 2011 by lesliesrussell in Notes

I read a post on lifehacker.com that explained how to create desktop icons for Windows that look kinda like iOS eyecandy. Trouble is the author used Photoshop. Gimp is free, so I adapted the tutorial and thought I’d share.

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Create a new 512×512 pixel document.

Create a new transparent layer, name layer "Background"

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Create a 483×483 rounded-rectangle selection with 80 degree radius

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Fill selection with solid color

Set background color to black

Create new transparent layer, name it "Starburst"

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On "Starburst" layer:
    Filters>Distorts>Blinds
        Verticle, Displacement=70, Segments=46
    Filters>Distorts>Polar Coordinates
        Circle depth 0.00, offset angle 0.00

Image-0034

On "Background" layer right click, alpha to selection

On "Starburst" layer press Ctrl+I to invert selection, then press delete to remove unwanted portion.

On "Background" layer. Alpha to selection.

Create new transparent layer named "Highlight"

Select>Shrink Selection by 3 pixels

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Select>Border Selection by 1 pixel with feathered selection.

Fill selection with white.

Deselect

Filters>Gaussian Blur by 5 pixels.

New layer named "Gloss"

Drag elipse selection across the top half of the image.

Fill selection with white.

Set layer to 42.2% opacity.

Fliters>Blur>Gaussian Blur at 50%

Aplha select "Background" layer.

Activate "Gloss" layer.

Ctrl+I to invert selection.

Delete unwanted.

Now either save the result as a PNG or from within Gimp save it as an ICO.

Computer Screen Ruler

Posted: August 4, 2010 by lesliesrussell in Notes

Having an on screen ruler at hand may be very handy at times. Sure, many design related applications offer their own rulers, but other programs may not. A standalone computer ruler can aid the user in designing a form for a website or software, measuring the exact size of an object on the screen, or if the work requires different scaled rulers.

rulers

A download is offered at Softpedia

via © Martin for gHacks Technology News, 2010. >>

Computer Screen Ruler

 

This is such a great idea. I am surprised that nobody thought of this before!

Quisple ScreenshotImagine the situation: you step into a store for a few seconds, and they happen to be playing that extremely catchy song from the 80’s that you used to love, and now its in your head and won’t go away, and you feel that you have to look it up and listen to it again. So what do you do?

Many people use YouTube to look up songs on-the-fly. And so does this strangely named free app. Quisple, in a nutshell, is a searchbox that floats on your desktop that can look up and play any song that you seek, provided that it can find it on YouTube (it will play the audio part only).

The other thing that it will do is keep a history of searches, as a kind of playlist, and optionally let you share it with other users of Quisple.

I installed this little app quite a long time ago based on an email tip and out of curiosity. Didn’t think much of it at the time but to my surprise found myself frequently using it to look up various songs that I wanted to listen to, and thus it earned itself a review spot on my site. More notes as follows:

  • Works well: in most instances the song you searched for will magically start playing as soon as you finish typing.
  • What to search for: be specific, enter the artist and song name for best results. The search is akin to the "I’m feeling lucky" search on Google; it will NOT give you a list of results to choose from. If it gets confused, nothing will show up.
  • The success rate: is high. However, it will miss some songs you’d think will certainly be there. Blame YouTube for that though. The other thing: be prepared to get a "live" or "bootleg" version of the song you are after; again, the reason is that this is what YouTube offers for that particular song.
  • The playlist: is not a playlist at all but a history of searches. You can go in and clean up the "playlist" by deleting searches which did not work or missed the mark. You can also extend the number of searches that the program will keep. Lastly, you can share your playlist with other Quisple users, although I did not try this myself.
  • Memory consumption: this app will minimize to the system tray when not in use, and takes a very small 6 megs in memory.
  • Downloading songs: is not supported. If you must download use Dirpy or Video2mp3 or see my posting on how to extract sound from YouTube videos.

The verdict: honestly a very nice little app to have for those instances when you just want to look up and play a song from your desktop and don’t want to bother with logging into YouTube or a search engine, etc. I am not personally not too keen on YouTube as a source of audio but what the heck, this thing works very well for casual listening. If you’re looking to download high quality audio there are other options out there.

Version Tested: 1.0.0

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7. Works on 32 bit and 64 bit OS’s.

Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 2.89 megs). You will have to create an account with a valid login in order to download.

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Quisple: find and play any song from your desktop (via YouTube)

Prompt 4/22/2010

Posted: April 22, 2010 by lesliesrussell in Notes
1. You are asked to volunteer to serve on the County Planning Commission for
three years.

2. A woman’s body is found murdered and the perp admits to the crime, but
claims s/he was sleepwalking. Where was the body found, how was she murdered,
who is she and what is the relationship between the murderer and the victim.

3. You’re driving home late at night and you see someone you think you know
standing beside the road. You stop….

4. April is fast coming to a close. Join us in a rousing good poem to life,
liberty, and the pursuit.

5, How many times a day do you wish you’d done something differently. How
different would your life be had you done things differently?

6. You are a care-giver to an old person who continually gets in trouble.

Windows Alternatives To The Macheist Bundle

Posted: March 4, 2010 by lesliesrussell in Notes

MacJournal is a pretty cool (as with all Mac software, emphasis on pretty) application. Keep a journal, do research, write a book, and pay around $40 for the software.

clip_image001

Pasted from <http://digitaldump.wordpress.com/projects/rednotebook/>

RedNotebook is an equally cool application for: Windows, Linux, and OSX. You can do all of the above, and keep your damned money. It has tons of features that make it the right tool for the job.

A prettier alternative, but still powerful alternative is InCollector.

RipIt is a cute little app that rips DVDs to your hard drive.

clip_image002

Pasted from <http://editingvideos.net/images/handbrake_dvd_ripper.jpg>

Pretty much exactly what HandBreak does, but you don’t have to spend a dime. Yay! More DVDs!

Clips is the neatest of the bunch and the only one I covet. There are hundreds of clipboard managers, and extenders for Windows, alas none as beautiful as Clips. However, as far as power goes Windows clipboard managers can hold their own.

My favorite is Ditto.

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Pasted from <http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=84084>

But you can also try xNeat, ClipX, or YankeeClipper. All free for personal use, and very powerful.

Coverscout…$40? Jesus H. Christ! Come on, just use iTunes, or MediaMonkey.

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Pasted from <http://www.mediamonkey.com/information/free/>

Or better yet, use Songbird. It keeps getting better. Holy hell I can’t believe people are spending $40 on that piece of crap.

Flow is an FTP/SFTP app. It is pretty sweet, and there are a plumber’s butt crack of alternatives for Windows. My favorite is WinSCP.

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Pasted from <http://winscp.net/eng/docs/screenshots>

Or you can try FileZilla, or SmartFTP.

RapidWeaver is the fusking shiznit. Sadly, there just is no free alternative for it on Windows. Oh you can try

KompoZer,

But if you want real power, in this case you have to pay for it. My favorite alternative to RapidWeaver is CoffeeCup Visual Site Designer.

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Pasted from <http://www.coffeecup.com/designer/>

Oh yeah, there is some kinda game or something included in the Macheist bundle…whatever.

How to Write a Log Line

Posted: May 22, 2009 by lesliesrussell in Productivity
Tags: , ,
How To Write a Log Line

How To Write a Log Line

I was digging around, cleaning up some junk on my laptop, when I found a group of mind maps I had used in a screen writing class.

This one, How to Write a Log Line, helped me make it through that class. Sometimes it helps to have a fill-in-the-blank formula, especially when you have four other classes tugging at the hem of your creativity.

I have about six other mind maps I used for screen writing. As soon as I clean them up a little I’ll share them as well.