This is a small app I made for myself (it is also in the market) since there is always something that has to be done in 5 minutes.

It is a simple reminder app fixed to 5 minutes. Only 50kb!

Add to screen as program (not widget)!

When you press it a dialog will open. Now you can do whatever you want. Your default notification will sound after 5 minutes, lights will flash and the screen will turn on! The tee is ready (or whatever else…)

For your tee, yoga, meditation, situps… what else (share in comments)

Download it for free from the market:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.onetapreminder.fivemin

Encoding video into image is a part of a project I did in 2004.

We can take animation of 24 dithered 1-bit images and encode them losslessly in one color bitmap. This image of a special aesthetics can be decoded back into original animation.

This way we can have a continuous video loop packed in one image. So, what movie can we slice in several loops so it still has sense? … Exactly! This is how I got to the art installation “The Art Of Making Love”.

This is one of the first test I made back in 2004.

Now take a look at the Art of Making Love (2004)

This is the one of several images in the series titled “Hidden Overlay Images”.

They use graphic card overlay to reveal the image.

Follow the instruction in the image; there are 2 version:

1. Windows Media Player
2. VLC Media Player

They have different overlay color, hence 2 versions.

It works only in Windows XP, and might work if you have Windows 7 or Vista WITHOUT aero and overlay turned ON

VLC Version:

INFO Display is a digital billboard I designed and created. It has been used as informational city display with commercial character.

In technology behind it is RPTV (Rear-projection television) with ability to display 16 million colors in XGA resolution at 60 frames per second.

Screen dimensions are 160 cm x 120 cm – diagonally 200 cm (79 inch)

The thickness of the display is only 55 cm. Mirror system inside the display is created to achieve proper projector-to-screen distance.

Video of display in action; from the first days:

Located on the edge of the park, on the walking route of up to 3000 people per hour, it was a perfect solution for promotion.

The display has been removed from the location in 2010.

BIH: Displej je na prodaju; lociran je u Prijedoru.

This is a caricature of Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory TV series, acted by Jim Parsons. I already made the physical accurate digital 3D sculpture and rendering of him here. I did try to mix here his “bazzinga” face and his “Koala face”. It was a fun experiment…

I realize I have lost something while re-sculpting Jim’s head to a caricature, but I can not figure out what exactly. I ordered several books on caricature, so after I read them, I might take another look on it with different perspective.

3D sculpt of the actor Jim Parsons.

It is a watertight model made in ZBrush and rendered in 3ds MAX. That means the hair is also 3d sculpted and not done with plugins, and therefore looks unrealistic. You can see untextured hair a bit down to see what I am talking about. I am not satisfied with current “hair solutions” on the market so I did not invest too much time researching plugins, but also, it was fun researching how the hair is represented in traditional sculpture, and researching different techniques into realizing it digitally.

Here is untextured model so you see the details are not faked.

Sculpting process – Sculptlapse

Jim Parsons (born March 24, 1973) is an American television and film actor, best known for playing Sheldon Cooper on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

Who is Jim Parsons (IMDB)

EDIT:

I played a bit more with the model, and tried to make it into a caricature. I am not very satisfied with results but here it is anyway.

Why don’t I have an Apple device? There are many reasons. Some may not be up-to-date since I made my own Android news reading app, that filters out any news related to Apple and their products. You can download that feed reader here but you will need to insert unwanted keywords yourself, since under TOS of news websites, feeds need to be delivered to the reader unedited.

First of all, I do have to say they are great products (not sarcasm, really), but there are many BUTS. Please let me know where I am wrong and amaze me into buying an Apple product.

PS: I mixed here features of iMac, iPad, iPod, iPhone, and other Apple devices. If you do not know what sentence relates to what, do not join discussion since none of us will have benefit of your opinion. As someone said: Blessed is the man who has nothing to say, and still keeps his mouth shut!

1. A short story with some points. I am from Serbia/Bosnia, places where people let themselves be dragged into wars, but are otherwise pretty rational. Why would you pay double for the same performance, something you can not fix on any corner, you can not play games on, or install all the software you need?! Because of that, nobody was selling or buying Apple devices while I was growing up. So, I did not even see “the device Microsoft copied UI from” (Although I think XEROX was the first with GUI) before I moved to Austria to my M.A. studies. There, I saw devices where everything was flying around the screen, there was an icon bar that sucks in the transparent program windows, and where icons eliminated the need for user imagination. I had to use it sometimes to check my email and I always thought how horrible UX was in those few minutes while looking for a internet browser, using a mouse with only one button, then clicking 100 times a popup reporting wrong google website certificate, and so on.
2. Then the “Switch to Mac” commercial started and I felt offended by all the lies presented there. “Mac versus PC”… Apple marketing department could have googled that “PC” stands for “Personal Computer”! If Mac is not a Personal Computer than what is it? Is it a public computer? I joke about that in parody iPoo Toilet I made. More about why I got offended there and said to myself not ever to buy Mac are beneath following lines.
3. I can “think differently” without Mac. How I understood that commercial, they wanted you to be rebel and buy Mac; now they want all of us to be the same and brand us.
4. I am not rebel, I like having options, I like having choice, I like to be independent. I also like being able to buy all sorts of cheap hardware and have drivers for it.
5. There is more software available for Windows than for OSX; and larger rate Free-to-Paying apps for Android than for IOS!
6. I can get double the computing performance for the same money. I made a quick comparison here. What I want with computer is performance and not something to show off with! I am defined by other qualities that can not be purchased with Mastercard.
7. I will not invest one month of my life just to have something 1mm thinner; especially not if I am scarifying performance, and there are many TV shows comparing Macbook Air to other devices that did not leave me impressed buy Air at all. By the way, there are even thinner laptops, tablets and phones than ones made by Apple, so that is not criteria either.
8. I am advanced user. You don’t need to make it easier for me. If you have problems figuring out how to setup printer or do X, please switch to Mac and do not ask me to walk you through it over the phone.
9. I can be artist, designer or whatever I want without Mac. Today everybody is a designer and I meet them way too often. They send me text without converting it to outlines and say my 10.000×7.000px image can not be printed on A5 because “it is only 72dpi”.
10. I do want to be an walking advertisement. I do not want to be branded. I do not wear Nike either, so it is not about Apple, but brands generally with large logo. Why don’t you wear a jacket with your school degree glowing, or list of languages you speak?! Are you more proud you bought an X product like million others than in something you have accomplished? You would rather be one of millions than one of a kind?!
11. I want to be able to fix or upgrade my computer myself, cheap and in 20 minutes. There are at least 5 PC hardware stores within 5 minute walking radius. My deadlines are safe even if piano falls on my computer in the middle of a project.
12. I do not want to use iTunes.
    
13. I do not want to ask developers of cool software “when will you release Mac version?”.
14. I do not want to jailbreak. There must be a reason why it is called jail-breaking! Do you feel imprisoned, have limited freedom… what?
15. I wont be part of a cult… any cult!
16. I do not want porn on my phone but I know I could have some if I wanted!
17. I do not play games on my computer, but if I wanted, I could!
18. If I wanted a device in color X, I can have it without “leaving my people”
19. I am able to use more than one button on any device, and  I need mouse with at least 5 buttons.
20. You might say Macs are more than hardware, there is great OSX… but 98% of the time you are working, you do not interact with operating system, but with GUI of Photoshop, Aftereffects, text processor, 3ds Max (ups, not on Macs without Boot Camp)
21. I like 3ds Max, I like power of DirectX…

I did stop 2 friends from buying Apple computers, and helped 2 friends switch from iPhone to HTC and they are very happy.

I hope I did not offend anyone with this list! If you find something offensive or false, please let me know! I just want to start a conversation and learn something. Please use numbers when referring to something.

I am rational and open minded; please help me see where I am wrong, what is all the fuss about, what do I miss… Help me switch before they knock to my door, with a book with Steve Jobs’ biography, asking me: “May we talk about our lord?”

By the way, only on iPad and iPhone you can not enlarge images on this website for some reason… why??? I did not use any fancy javascript coding for that part and I do not have THE coool devices to debug in on, so I would like your help since I Google said that at least 25% of you came on this website using iPad/iPhone to see the iPoo Toilet.

Creating this sports car for my own pleasure, I have decided to play with semiotics. Headlights seen from the front, are divided with horizontal and vertical line forming the BMW logo. The nostrils, characteristic with all BMW models, are kept.

I have decided to simplify contour lines and this way I have lost a breaking between hood and windshield, and therefore gained on better aerodynamic look of the car. All lines and proportions are drawn according to golden ratio.

Formerly I sent this one as “BMW N3″

Yesterday my GF and I were in a computer store and she immediately noticed an iMac so I had to explain some things to her. Here is a little table I just did…

(Click to enlarge)

I made a quick comparison of 21.5-inch iMac with HP TouchSmart 610 Quad series All-in-One TouchSmart PC by looking for a HP device with the same price as iMac. All prices are from 30. December 2011. and from official websites.

My conclusion is:

Even though iMac looks better and has a better graphic card, HP has larger screen which is also a touchscreen. TouchSmart also has 26% percent higher processor clock, and 4 additional virtual cores which in serious rendering applications brings additional 20+% higher speeds. HP also leads with twice of both the memory and hard disk space… and has a TV tuner! I would go with HP configuration.