Polaroids in HTML

1 Reply

To make the showcase on the Hack42 wiki look better, i came up with an idea: polaroids. Instead of showing default lists with pictures, you can also show them in a fashion people can relate to. In about an hour i worked out the idea. The list of pictures now looks like a spread of polaroids with words written on them.

With the intelligence in most browsers, it looks even better than expected. For the nerds: below the picture i’ll explain what i did. Also check the project page on the 42 wiki.

 

HTML, CSS, CSS Fonts

The pictures are normal pictures inside a <div>. The div has a padding of 10 pixels. Because of the description, the text under the picture adds to the polaroid effect.

The divs have a 1 pixel border, and use CSS3.0 (and browser specific) shadow and rotation.

The font is called GoodDog. It’s supposed to look like handwriting done with a permanent marker. The font face declaration uses external fonts that are located on the web server. The link is always black, even if you’ve visited the page. The CSS was injected into mediawiki, so it works in all skins.

Check out the information on the project page on the 42 wiki, source is on this page.

What you get for €2,55

Leave a reply

Just visited the local “second hand store” and found some nice stuff: a few house CD singles and a Brada laptop stand.

Aly us – Follow me

Time defining house classic. Slow and smoothly moving to a place where we can all be free. Includes an instrumental, a dub version but of course the original track with an extended edit.

Ruffneck ft. Yavahn – Everybody be Somebody

This cd features 9 mixes (73 minutes) of this house track that’s been produced by Dwayne “Spen” Richardson, Derek A. Jenkings & Steven B. Wilson for Backroom Productions & Groundlevel Entertainment. Samples where taken of the AWESOME Yello – Bostich. Most of the action is on track 8: the full 8 minutes of the tune. The names of the masters at work also appear on this CD but most importantly: the live triangle has been performed by Starvin’ T.

SL2 – On a Ragga tip

Speeds up the sound with breakbeats from London. From XL recordings came this track by Slipmat and Lime (SL2). It’s fast, has the classic rasta influence and is a golden oldie. The CD features four tracks including the five minutes original mix and two other breakbeat tracks using pretty much the same breakbeat. Track 3 is pretty OK, but still a b-side. Extended version it is.

Lidell Townsell – Nu Nu

Piano house classic that can withstand the test of time for the larger part. “She looked so fine, i just had to speak”. Parodied by the 704 boys and the same organ was used by Crystal waters. Including an acapella/dub version for mashing and mixing. Also check out the So Fine Mix The password is play.

Quasar –  Last Train to Paradise

Something from the Turn up the Bass era. The last train to paradise. Bought this one to hear if there where some great remixes that would have less piano and more funk. There is some more acid, an acapella and some percussion. The fun starts at track 4: the 303 edit.

Unfortunately an empty sleeve of 400 hz – i’ve got the music in me 🙁

 

KK Travels – Pippi Langhouse

One of the all time maximum facepalm house classics for kids. It’s based on the Swedish child series Pippi Langkous (Pippi Långstrump). There was a version dubbed in Dutch. That one was sampled, sequenced, mashed and filtered into a house production that is nearly bearable to listen to. The B sides of this record really raises some eyebrows 🙂 And that’s why this is great.

 

Next to the cd’s i found a brada laptop lap stand to place your laptop on your lap. In real life it would look something like this (if i where tanned and wearing white clothes):

Hack42 site header

Leave a reply

I just came across a nice wordpress plugin that makes site-headers look absolutely gorgeous. So, using my Photoshop skills and general knowledge on web development, i made one for Hack42. It came out fantastic!

Shoop da whooooopp

In a few hours i selected some photos and created about 10 images with the size 950*200. Here’s a few:

With special tooling, that comes with the commercial version of the plugin, the slideshow was created. The tooling allows to choose what images to use, what titles and subtitles, the delay, styles and some other minor things. In the end it delivers a .zip file that can be uploaded to the site.

Now to actually make a header… things get creative and innovative.

Mad scientist at work

With some careful engineering and code manipulation tricks i actually got the header where i wanted it to be: the header. It required edits in the style.css and header.php files, as well as a dummy page for some workarounds.

One problem occurred: the site header is 200 pixels high, while wordpress insisted it should be 170 pixels. Somewhere, buried deep down in wordpress this was specified. I’ve looked everywhere but nowhere to find why or when 170 pixels high was defined.

Time to move in the heavy artillery.

If you know something on coding, you might want to get a bucket or two to vomit. Basically i change any value of “170” with “200” on a large portion of the site. This is the wrong way to do things.

<?php
ob_start();
wp_head();
$fuckingimageheighthack = ob_get_clean();
$fuckingimageheighthack = str_replace("170", "200", $fuckingimageheighthack);
print $fuckingimageheighthack;
?>

It worked like a charm.

Result?

Who cares about all the grunt work. We all want to see nice images and flashy headers. That’s what counts and that’s what we’ve accomplished with all this work. It looks awesome and professional. And that’s just the way i like things.

PS this website will soon also feature these great professional headers with images of my life.

(my first) liveset with Psychic & Ubik (HAR FM 2009)

Leave a reply

Today I stumbled upon an audio file from HAR FM. This was the radio studio on Hackers At Random, the large hacker-camp in the Netherlands in 2009.

At that time, i just started DJ-ing. At home i had two technics SL D2 turntables, bought for about three (3) euro. These tables are direct drive and have a stable platter. I also started using FinalScratch, which is a digital-vinyl solution.

The first liveset

On HAR2009, both 2600(de) and HARFM had some turntables up and running. This was the first time i could work with real turntables, and well: actually mix things for real! My first attempt was at the 2600 dj booth. They brought great german breakbeat music. Unfortunately i still don’t know the specific genre.

DJ Ubik was about to play that night, but he was stoned and zoned out. So Psychic and me proposed we would do a back to back session. This has been one of the most awesome experiences ever.

Ubik brought his Drum & Bass collection, a selection of very fine niche selection of Drum & Bass. He did the record selection and together we did our extreme best to mix everything together.

Thanks to the HAR FM team for recording the show and the amazing broadcast facilities.

Download

Download the Drum & Bass mix here: *click*.

CC Charts Tryout

Leave a reply

Today i made a tryout of a charts-show with music that is free to use in non-commercial productions. The tryout features 15 tracks in one hour, counting down from 15 to one. It includes various musical genres like rock, house and ambient.

My personal favorite is Zero Project – The Secret Passion, track number 8 in the show.

You can check out this tryout here: *clicky*

Stitch Liveshow – Episode 15 – Liquidstep

Leave a reply

Start the new year fresh with a selection of the best “liquidstep” (dubstep) from 2011 mixed harmoniously. Even though my gear didn’t really comply to my bidding, I managed to cram 35 songs in 70 minutes. Using digital vinyl mixing, this is a nice speed, especially when you’ve never mixed these tracks before.

The most difficult thing on mixing liquidstep are the overflowing melodies: mixing them in key requires some software tricks. I prefer avoiding trickery, in this case its the most feasible alternative though. The picture on the right shows recorded audio.

Later this year it’s time to change gear. Vinyl mixing has been great. I wanted to learn how DJ’s mixed together their songs back in the days. Using turntables and a mixer teaches you the basics the hard way: no sync button, having to do with the various discs and mastering on them.

I want to start focussing on digital mixing: i expect a boost in creativity and using things such as queue points, syncing and more use of filters and effects. Vinyl mixing still will be important to me, for example when playing early house tracks. To me, digital mixing gives a new dimension.

Enjoy this 70-minutes digital-vinyl-mixed liveshow!

Download

  • über-fast Download: right click, save as. (sponsored by: vexocide.org)
  • regular fast Mirror: right click, save as.

Filesize: 162.6 MB, 320 kbit.

Tracklist

“Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”

  1. Blackmill – Oh So Natural Blue
  2. Tronix – Blue Sphere
  3. Nutronic – Run Away (xKore Remix)
  4. Xilent – Choose Me (Dubstep Mix)
  5. Deadmau5 feat. Rob Swire – Ghosts’N’Stuff (Nero Remix)
  6. Kito & Reija Lee – Run For Cover
  7. Subscape – Apple Candy
  8. Camo & Krooked – All Fall Down (ft. Shaz Sparks)
  9. Dev – Dancing In The Dark (Proper Villains Remix)
  10. Loz Conteras – Love Life
  11. DKS – Feel 4 U (AFK remix)
  12. Gemini – Rise & Fall
  13. Crystal Fighters – Follow (Roksonix Remix)
  14. Fenech-Soler – Stop and Stare (Gemini Remix)
  15. Oh Land – Sun Of A Gun (Jacob Plant Remix)
  16. The Beatles – All The Lonely People (Nost3 dub step remix)
  17. Flux Pavilion – Haunt You
  18. Benny Benassi Feat. Gary Go – Cinema (Skrillex Remix)
  19. Caesars – Jerk It Out (Sawgood Remix)
  20. Don Diablo – Animale (Feat. Dragonette) (Datsik Dubstep Remix)
  21. Rihanna – We Found Love ft. Calvin Harris (CTL / Glitchdick Remix)
  22. Nero – Guilt
  23. Dodge & Fuski – Python
  24. Gemini – Vision
  25. Subscape – Square Albert
  26. Playma – We Can Live Forever
  27. Professor Green, High Rankin – Jungle (High Ranking Remix)
  28. DirtyLoud – Rock It Roll It (DirtyLoud Remix)
  29. KillaGraham – Drop It
  30. Chromeo – Night by Night (NEUS Dubstep Remix)
  31. MINDTRANSIT – Nobody But You (feat Syntronics, Strange Rollers Remix)
  32. Katherine E – I’m Alright (Butch Clancy Remix)
  33. Calvin Harris – Flashback (KillaGraham Remix)
  34. Skrillex – Ruffneck (FULL Flex)
  35. Ephixia – Lost Woods Dubstep Remix
  36. Feed Me vs. Knife Party vs. Skrillex – My Ping Reptile Party (Maluu’s Slice’n’Diced Mashup) (Stitch long-name-but-intro-only-chop version)

2012 rockets for 2012

Leave a reply

At Bit & Nieuw we launched 2012 mini-rockets from an old oil drum. Following the instructions on the label, we did exactly what was told: place it in a container [X], use a certified lighter [X] and keep your distance [X]. Result: a massacre and guaranteed much less safe than regular fireworks (so more awesome).

Step 1: take 2012 rockets

Step 2: place them in a container

Step 3: light it up and start yelling

(Video made by zarya)

(Video by Vicarious from AckSpace)

Best Wishes from Hack42

Leave a reply

Hackerspace Hack42 looks back at 2011. As one of the founders it’s great to see such prosperity. The future for Hack42 looks very bright.

Due to their move to KKN6 it has become one of the largest hackerspaces in Europe in terms of space. In the past year there have been over 50 activities and many projects. Will these numbers increase this year? I hope so!

The complete text is on hack42.nl (in dutch).

Cloud problems @ RevSpace

Leave a reply

Some serious cloud problems @ RevSpace. Read all about it. From the article:

The cloud at RevSpace has proven to be susceptible to more attack-vectors than previously reported after external consult. It appears that wiring everything through the cloud utilizing VirtualWire has made the importance of the cloud of upmost significance. Will RevSpace survive this cloud threat?

 

Backup of the news item, in case cloud-issues permanently affect hosting: