Compiz Fusion is collection of plugins for Compiz, an OpenGL based window manager for the X Window System (read: available for all Linux distributions, natively build in Ubuntu) that uses 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management.

Most of you have heard about that great piece of free software, and I really don’t want to rewrite what was already written. Instead, I’m gonna share with you a well-performed video demonstration of all Compiz Fusion plugins which was recently recorded by one of my compatriots. Definitely worth watching (RSS readers - below is a little preview).

Here are the links to the video showing all the plugins in action:

• AVI version (206 MB, the higher quality, scroll down the page to download)
• OGG version (56MB, quality comparable to the previous one)
• YouTube version (terrible quality, but it is also available )

For further information go read Wikipedia. And for those of you who would like to show off a little with their own Linux installations - here’s the Compiz Fusion installation guide for Ubuntu users. Cheers.

Everyone knows GoDaddy, it’s the largest domain name registrar in the world. The company is mostly known from pulling shitloads of dollars into the booby Super Bowl marketing campaigns filled full with sexually suggestive material, which get always rejected a number of times before being accepted to air in the television. Anyways, soon it is going to be the renewal season for me, also it’s the final time to purchase a bunch of new domain names, so I was stumbling around in order to find the best offers. The inherent curiosity took me to GoDaddy, and guess what…

How much time may it take to find complete information about pricing on their own website? Five minutes, maybe ten? Well, I’m sorry but this time I simply have no idea - and I can only tell you that after 15 minutes of hard-digging through the all of their marketing brainwash I came up with nothing, so I tried Google Search. And check out what I found under “godaddy renewal prices” - a series of comprehensive articles clearly showing the way GoDaddy deals with people. Go on, find out how the world’s most popular domain registrar does it’s business. It is really interesting and worth reading, just go on and read.

The GoDaddy Girl - Candice Michelle

After visiting Wincent’s website I’m sooooo glad that GoDaddy has nothing to do with my domain names. Be anxious - in one of future postings I may publish a list of trustworthy companies where you don’t need to worry about all these hidden catches and never-tells (which I’m trying to complete right now). Also, I think I will try to bring it to you together with a shiny collection of promotional codes

PS Danica Patrick is ugly. Bring back Candice Michelle.

Volleyball is an Olympic team sport in which two teams of six active players, separated by a high net try to score points against one another by grounding a ball on the other team’s court. The complete rules of volleyball are extensive, but in general, play proceeds as follows… OK… forget the rules… as if anyone cares who the winner is anyway!

Instead, let’s focus on the real benefits volleyball brings the world…

Following a rigorous selection process and a great deal of deliberation (*cough*), I am finally able to present the 10 finest pictures of the 2007 FIVB Women’s World Cup, showing only the sports hottest cheesecakes in all of their athletic glory

Katarzyna Skowrońska (POL)

Read the rest of this entry »

I changed my mind about Twitter, and registered a profile. Be shamefaced Bart, not long ago you maintained that you will not ever have a Twitter account! Well, yes - but let’s say that my point of view changed a bit. I was digging through the web and - completely unintentionally - I found a list of Firefox plugins. Two of them (number 5. and 6.) can give you a great ability to make an untypical use of your Firefox search bar.

I have no clue how could you all use that sucky “search bar” thing - as far as I know when I need to do a search I just type “g search phrase” into standard address bar of my browser, then I hit enter. So let’s say that additional search bar filled full with affiliate links that Mozilla has included in it may be even totally useless, and in fact it would be great to completely remove it from the toolbar. And - I didn’t know about it - but there is a very simple way to get rid of that thing. Read that comment added by Asa Dotzler of Mozilla below my writings (it actually makes me feel sooooo damn cheap on my shameful lack of the basic FF know-how so I’m updating that post once again, you won’t notice )

So… These two plugins mentioned somewhere above allow you to post updates to Twitter directly via your Firefox search bar. Think: “hey, what a great occasion to use it as the most comfortable miniblog tool in the world!“.

Two awesome extensions that actually make totally useless thing useful, this just cannot be true. And you see, unfortunately it isn’t - both of them are currently not available for download. I wrote my own - kinda funny, it required only 10-lines long XML file. If you would like to download click here, all instructions are included within the readme file. I use it together with tweaked version of Wordpress plugin written by Alex King.

After four weeks of silence, author of that blog finally enters 2008. Better late than never - glad to see I’m not alone in publishing my first post THAT late this year.

Happy New Year?

If you haven’t yet heard about it - yesterday AOL announced that Netscape (an icon of internet, acquired by that company for $4.2 billion almost 10 years ago) will be officially dead on February 1, 2008.

Okay, honesty it’s been many years since Netscape is dead unofficially. But whatever browser you use (current share of Netscape Navigator is around 0,6%) - story of that program should be really important to you. Deplorable ending of that brand is a great example of the way that corporate business affects great things. You see, there was a time when Netscape and ICQ were great programs, in fact. I swear - before mental giants from AOL bought them, they were.

That’s why I’m actually glad to see that Facebook and Digg haven’t been sold. They will keep the good work, I mean.

Have you read recent news? Internet Explorer team announced that they had taken a major step towards standards compliance by correctly rendering the Acid2 Test. But think twice before you start to praise hypocrites from Redmond, or wait with all of your compliments until the date of official release. Seriously - be smart, and just put it off.

Bart, that’s not ok, at least not all products of Microsoft are doomed to failure! Well, maybe not - Silverlight looks pretty nice. But you see, I have a good memory. And clearly I remember what these guys were saying 14 months ago, when they added IE 7.0 to Windows Vista. Hey, I can even have a quote!

In IE7, we will fix as many of the worst bugs that web developers hit as we can, and we will add the critical most-requested features from the standards as well

Liars, liars. For example - we successfully added support for the alpha channel in PNG images. Wait… Oh crap, looks like we found a problem! Do you need more examples? Okay, just tell me how many of them do you need to have a critical point of view?

Comment quoted below (taken from Slashdot) ideally shows the way people do their best in Redmond

if (url == acid2 test page)
display jpg of correct acid2 rendering
else …

PS Scrollbar does not disappear. This is a bug isn’t it? Have a look into The Guided Tour of Acid2.

Alright, this time I’m back to blog for a longer period of time. End of the year is a great opportunity to make some New Year’s Resolutions. Do you plan any commitments for the coming year? For my part - personally I think I have two goals

PS Picture comes from that site, it is a poster available to purchase and hang on your wall