Wednesday, March 10 2010
Written by Michael Swengel on February 27, 2010
Blender 2.5 (now version 2.5.1) includes a beautiful smoke simulation engine. This engine allows for the simulation of highly-realistic smoke and fire. This new version of Blender is giving professional plugins like FumeFX a run for their money. (Note: I did not create these videos.) Blender 2.5 is currently available as an open alpha. This means it is not yet complet...
Written by Michael Swengel on February 25, 2010
Development on the groundbreaking Blender 2.5 has progressed considerably since my initial Blender 2.5 post. Blender 2.5 Alpha 1 has been released. This is an update of 2.5 Alpha 0, the first testing release. The Blender 2.5 roadmap includes a series of six releases: culminating in the release of Blender 2.6 in mid 2010. The releases are as follows: Alpha 0: First testing release Alpha 1 ...
Written by Michael Swengel on February 9, 2010
The next installment in the Ubuntu Linux saga is due out in April. It is code named Lucid Lynx. Ubuntu 10.04 is an LTS (long term support) release - meaning it will be officially supported for three years on desktops and five years on servers. My tests with the current alpha version show a greatly improved boot time over that of 9.10 Karmic. For this coming release, the Ubuntu team wants to cut...
Written by Michael Swengel on February 2, 2010
For a limited time, Classics - a collection of classic books in a very attractive package - is available at no charge in the App Store. The Classics app provides a beautiful reading interface - including the ability to jump to a chapter and place bookmarks. With Classics, users get the following books (FREE): Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass Robinson Crusoe The Jungle Book...
Written by Michael Swengel on February 1, 2010
During an internal meeting in the wake of Apple's release of the iPad, Steve Jobs explained to Apple employees why the iPhone and iPad have yet to support Flash - and likely never will. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5. Really? Flash is buggy? An archit...
Written by Michael Swengel on January 31, 2010
With the release of Apple's iPad running iPhone OS version 3.2, we see the operating system still lacks support for the Adobe Flash platform. The iPhone OS shows the infamous blue lego where Flash content should be. Adobe's Flash platform is actually a collection of Web 2.0 technologies that allow content publishers to deliver a rich, interactive media experience to the end user. Flash brings to...
Written by Michael Swengel on January 7, 2010
A Little Background When I started out with 3D design and visual effects, I used Blender 3D, a free and open-source 3D modeling, animation and compositing application. It boasts a powerful feature set with an astounding price: $0.00. That was back in the early 2.x days. At the time Blender 3D was a sweet program but not much more than a hobbyist's toy. It was fun to use, but it was lacking much ...
Written by Michael Swengel on November 12, 2009
When the iPhone was first introduced to the market, it was readily adopted. It's touch-screen interface and multimedia capabilities were revolutionary in the smartphone market. But it left a lot to be desired. Immediately, developers were eager to get their hands on the guts of the operating system and start fabricating their own apps for the platform. At the time Apple was understandably relu...
Written by Michael Swengel on October 23, 2009
The iPhone OS and the App Store have been an excellent platform for programmers of all sizes to design and code applications for delivery to customers. Unfortunately, writing applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch requires a working knowledge of Apple's developer tools and the Objective-C programming language. The Objective-C programming language is the foundation of Apple's Mac OS X and the ...
Written by Michael Swengel on September 15, 2009
FIRST IMPRESSIONS As a graphic design fanatic, I'm always looking around at shiny new tools available to the design community. A friend of mine recommended that I take a look at Pixelmator. At the time, I was using OS X 10.5 Leopard. I proceeded to download the app and play with it. My first impressions were extremely favorable. The user interface is beautiful and well-designed. Several filters - ...
