Gadzooki

How to print your own t-shirts

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Everyone likes a t-shirt that stands above the rest. Not just in color, not just the fit, not just the design, not so much of who’s wearing them, but it’s a combination of all. The attitude of the one who wears it is just icing on the cake but the really important part is the t-shirt itself.

There are lots and lots of good t-shirt designs out there, one in particular are the designs by Electrolychee as spotted by Aaron Roselo. Those tees are really a head turner and almost everyone would do almost anything to get their hands on those tees especially with the nearing start of the next school season.

Unfortunately the problem stems from there, since everyone wants that same t-shirt chances are, you’d be not the only one who’d wear them in campus or just out in the streets. It’s also a big bummer once you run into another person who wears the exact same shirt you are wearing. In this times of individuality and shameless self promotion, this incident is a definite No-no.

So how do you remedy this? Design and print your own t-shirts!

Here’s a cool video from the Make: Weekend Projects – How to screenprint your t-shirts

The things you need:

Silkscreen with a 1/10 mesh – it’s the most essential part of this project

A good design – A wolf face was used in the video, but in your own project, you could use any design you like or you can think of.

Emulsion – you can get this from your hardware store.

Dark room – okay not the one that’s used in developing photos, but if you have one, cool! If not, the bathroom or the basement with the lights out will do just fine.

Squeegee – you’ll need this tool to evenly apply your paint on the t-shirt

T-shirt – Didn’t I say it was a print-your-own-shirt project? Of course you can print on other stuff like a jacket, bag, door, etc.

Assistance – if you’re not 100% sure of what you’re doing it’s best you ask for help with your brother, sister, family, friend anyone who’d be there to help out in the project.

The steps are easy so go out there and create your own t-shirts! 😀

MADtv Parody: Apple iRack

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The issue of the Iraq war and how things over there have become uglier and uglier for American troops, the current Bush Administration and the over-all image of the United States worldwide have been the subject of much discussions from traditional media, the blogosphere, the punditocracy and the public at large.

However, all this talk has been confined to the real of mainstream media and news. The techies and geeks of the ‘Web 2.0 world’ seemed to have been on the sidelines and have not contributed much to the discussions.

Probably because there are still that do not understand the over-all picture. It’s not because they’re totally apolitical, maybe the subject has been less appealing to the geek and techie world because of the language being used. So for the benefit of the many techies out there, here’s what’s going on in Iraq and how the Bush administration has been fumbling with it.

A parody by MAD TV that pokes an eye of both the Bush Administration and Apple.

Wasn’t the “iRan” a bombshell?

Change of Heart: Intel joins the $100-laptop per child

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The web has been a buzz with the sudden change of hearts at Intel as the world’s top chip maker has joined the One Laptop per Child Foundation, the organization that makes the now infamous $100 laptops intended to help children worldwide, particularly those in the poor countries, receive education and a better chance to improve their lives.

In May this year, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, said the silicon giant “should be ashamed of itself” for efforts to undermine his initiative.

He accused Intel of selling its own cut-price laptop – the Classmate PC – below cost to drive him out of markets in the developing world.

“What happened in the past has happened,” Will Swope of Intel told the BBC News website. “But going forward, this allows the two organisations to go do a better job and have a better impact for what we are both very eager to do, which is help kids around the world.”

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, said: “Intel joins the OLPC board as a world leader in technology, helping reach the world’s children. Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children.”

This however does not mean that the $100 laptops would now be running Intel chips, rival chipmaker AMD has already landed that spot. Instead, the servers that will support these laptops would be graced by Intel technologies at their cores.

With Intel aboard, more technologies and more funding would get the project going even more. Not unless of course, criticisms about the project picks up wind and starts to convert observers to its side of the fence.

Such critic is Michael Dell who once said;

those so-called $100 laptops won’t be powerful enough to make much of a difference in their lives.

“The issue is not so much what does it cost, but what does it do,” he said during a question and answer session with customers and finalists of the Dell/National Federation of Independent Business Small-Business Excellence Award.

Things are certainly picking up for the OLPC project, now that Intel has jumped fences things will be more interesting from here on.

Green Apple is on the way

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With the amount of craze built around the public sale of the much anticipated iPhone currently dominating the headlines and RSS feeds of the internet, another timely news that would even boost the love wave Apple has been getting this past few weeks.

greenerapple

International eco-watchers Greenpeace has praised Apple, Inc. for its recent moves and efforts to make its electronic products cleaner and more friendly to mother nature.

Greenpeace has moved Apple up its green electronics rankings thanks to Steve Job’s promises to phase out PVCs and other chemical nasties from its products, but the top spot goes to Nokia.

Greenpeace takes an aggressive tone in criticizing electronics manufacturers for e-waste, stating: ‘The electronics ranking guide has been our answer to getting the electronics industry to face up to the problem of e-waste. We want manufacturers to take responsibility for the unprotected child laborers who scavenge the mountains of cast-off gadgets created by our gizmo-loving ways.’

It all started when Greenpeace launched the Green my Apple Campaign. A cyber campaign that aimed to increase the awareness among consumers and Mac users that the Macs they so love could be harboring environmentally-dangerous chemicals like brominated flame retardants (BFR) and vinyl plastics (PVC). It also called on for a more active participation of Apple in managing and handling old, discarded Macs so that their processing as ‘e-junk’ doesn’t do any harm to the environment, the people who process them and the community that surrounds the waste processing facilities.

Greenpeace rates the big electronics companies on the following criteria:

Chemicals policy and practice (5 criteria)

    • A chemicals policy based on the Precautionary Principle
      Chemicals Management: supply chain management of chemicals via e.g. banned/restricted substance lists, policy to identify problematic substances for future elimination/substitution
      Timeline for phasing out all use of vinyl plastic (PVC)
      Timeline for phasing out all use of brominated flame retardants (not just those banned by EU’s RoHS Directive)
      PVC- and BFR-free models of electronic products on the market.

    • Policy and practice on Producer Responsibility for taking back their discarded products and recycling (4 criteria)

    • Support for individual (financial) producer responsibility – that producers finance the end-of-life management of their products, by taking back and reusing/recycling their own-brand discarded products.
      Provides voluntary takeback and recycling in every country where its products are sold, even in the absence of national laws requiring Producer Responsibility for electronic waste.
      Provides clear information for individual customers on takeback and recycling services in all countries where there are sales of its products.
      Reports on amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) collected and recycled.

    • Enthusiasm and support from the community particularly Mac users proved to be effective as Steve Jobs finally made some announcements for a Greener Apple.

    It is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Apple’s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and they’re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today we’re changing our policy.

    Wonderful news indeed. And thanks to this, Apple has moved up the green charts of eco-friendly electronics companies. From the languishing in the bottom of the list last year, Apple has moved up the field into 10th position and Greenpeace has the details:

    Apple has finally moved off the bottom of the scorecard and is now in 10th position with improvements on many criteria. The company has committed to eliminate all uses of PVC and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in their products by the end of 2008. They now provide
    examples of additional substances that they plan to eliminate with timelines, such as arsenic in LCDs and mercury, and Material Safety Data Sheets for all their products. But, Apple has yet to give consumers products free of PVC and BFRs.

    Top marks to Apple for reporting on its recycling rate as a percentage (9.5%) of sales 7 years ago and for setting goals to recycle nearly 30% by 2010. It could score better by supporting the principle of individual producer responsibility for its end of life products globally.

    Kudos to Apple! Mac users worldwide must be really proud of their Macs right now and even more ecstatic that the iPhone is now available to the masses.

    Speaking of the iPhone, here’s one nagging question; How green is that iPhone?

    Photo by Outbreaker

    Is the International Space Station using Window$?

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    Okay, the title is just a joke. As of writing this post, I’m uncertain whether the computers in the International Space Station (ISS) are powered by Windows or some other OS but it appears to be so as another computer crash has once more set back the progress on the ISS.

    bluescreen

    Russian space officials said Friday they were considering moving up the launch of a Russian cargo ship as cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station struggled for a second day to reboot failed computers controlling the orbiting outpost’s orientation.

    The problem started with a spike in static electricity while cables were being hooked up to the station’s solar panels, said Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Russian state-controlled rocket builder RKK Energiya.

    He said Russian officials were considering moving up the launch of a Progress cargo ship by two weeks to July 23 to bring up some new parts.

    So it’s a power-related problem hence it’s also a hardware-related problem. Perhaps the cosmonauts and astronauts at the ISS forgot to bring up with them UPS and surge protector units? We might never really know.

    Of course the station has had computer failures before but never on this massive scale. According to them, this could put all work in the station to a complete halt as the computers that failed were responsible for keeping the station in the right orientation. Tsk tsk tsk.

    Maybe it’s a compatibility issue? The story says the problem could have come from the connections between the US-built modules and parts and the Russian-made counterparts. Traces or continuation of the Cold War? Isn’t that so Web 1.0, space geeks and engineers from US and Russia, wake up! Web 2.0 is already here; collaboration and networking is the thing to do nowadays. Tsk tsk tsk

    Or perhaps, this latest episode of equipment failure in the ISS is all but a clue that proves that man still lack the technologies to go out in space and do some work there. Like the moon landing was faked! Think about it, they said we’ve been to the moon several times and yet it’s been decades since the ISS project began, and it’s still not finished.

    Then it’s true that we the moon landings were…okay, I’ll shut up now.

    When your anti-virus software becomes the problem

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    Anti-virus softwares have been around for a long time now and after we have installed them in our machine, a Windows-based machine since OS X and Linux are practically immune to computer viruses, we almost forget about them.

    We are either lazy in scanning every portable storage device we plug in to our machine or a downloaded file from the web, or we are not that familiar on how to use the AV that’s installed in our system.

    Chances are that AV is one of the most popular commercial brands from the big security firms like Symantec, Trend-Micro, McAfee just to name a few. Since it’s from one one these brands, it is of course not for free. Not for free means coughing up something in the region of $30-$100 USD for a license that will allow you to use its full features until a new version is released usually in a year’s time. That amount maybe a bit heavy to some but it still is a good investment since these AVs do get the job done of protecting your PC from viruses, trojans, malware, worms and other digital nasties – most of the time.

    It works most of the time if that AV is regularly updated via the web, and this is usually done automatically. Apart from the standard update of its virus database, patches and other updates to the core of the AV is issued every once in a while.

    Occasionally, these patches and virus database updates become the source of computer mayhem instead of preventing and fixing them in case ‘badware’, worms and viruses do infect your machine. A particular case in point is the recent problem caused by a recent update to Symantec’s Norton AV has caused the famous AV utility to accidentally “attack” computers it’s supposed to protect.

    “Over 1000 customers had reported being affected by the incident in Guangzhou as of Friday noon. The common symptom is that the computer may suddenly encounter a blue screen and then be prompted with an error message. The same problem remains even after a reboot of the system.

    A spokesman for Symantec, producer of the Norton AntiVirus software, has confirmed that this incident resulted from inappropriate handling of upgrading AntiVirus software. He promised that the company was now working hard on a possible solution.

    The latest virus Norton database was upgraded on May 17. According to some PC experts, this software, after the upgrade, would regard two essential system files (netapi32.dll、lsasrv.dll) as viruses by mistake and clear them away from computers installed with Windows XP. That causes the computer to be locked up even after a reboot. Experts also confirmed that those using the simplified Chinese version of Windows XP and Norton AntiVirus will also be affected.”

    Talk about digital cannibalism. This among others has been one of the reasons why alternative and free anti-virus softwares have become popular and has entered mainstream usage. I remember that my very first AV utility was Trend-Micro’s PC-Cillin back in 2000. Today it’s now re-branded as Internet Security and retails at $49.95 for a 1-year license. I loved using PC-Cillin back then, it stopped every known bug that has managed to make its way into my machine all because I religiously updated its database. I even made recommendations of it to my friends who turn to me for computer help, advice and other geeky stuff.

    The relationship turned sour when I noticed that the free space on my hard drive was shrinking without me installing new programs or creating new files. Doing an observation for almost a month, I noticed that everytime PC-Cillin downloaded and updated its database the free space would decrease again. To confirm my suspicions, I checked out the system folder of PC-Cillin and I was surprised that all the previous update files from day 1 up to that time were still there! Almost a year’s worth of database update that took place almost 5x a week were all in my hard drive. Sure the update files themselves are no more than 1MB in size but when they pile up it’s like installing M$ Office twice.

    Another factor was that it uses too much system resources for my preference and would often get in the way of installing new softwares and games, I know it’s protecting my machine but it’s now protecting it from me as well. It’s was getting annoying back then.

    To make things worse, my 1 year license has just expired and thus my access to free automatic updates ended as well. I wanted to upgrade to the newer version which was PC-Cillin 2002 back then but the $50 USD price tag just stopped me in my tracks. Sure I could get a hacked or “pirated” version of it for less than a dollar from the local software pirates here in the Philippines or completely free from the internet, but since I’m too much of security freak I wouldn’t trust my computer’s well-being to a pirated or hacked version of an AV.

    So after reading an article in PC Magazine back in 2000 about how free alternative anti-virus softwares were getting better at protecting PCs and receiving recognition for it, I decided to brave the waters of free Anti-virus softwares. It was venture I never turned back from and I’m loving it up to this present times.

    My first try was Avast! Home edition, it was fast, lightweight and simply worked. Stuck with it for almost a year until I switched to a more powerful and still free AV, AVG anti-virus by Grisoft and I’m using it as of now.

    Friends and schoolmates would often raise their eyebrows and even laugh at me whenever they hear that I’m using a free anti-virus while they’re still on the commercial ones. Of course every now and then they would ask me for help about their AVs, that it wasn’t detecting viruses from their USB drives or can’t “heal” infected files etc. and soon after, they eventually switched to AVG Free as well. Let’s hear who’s laughing now?

    Badware: from floppies to webhosts

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    spyware

    Everyone who owns a computer or uses one hates malware, spyware and adware. Industries have been built around these three types of rouge software in an effort to combat them, which is meant from stealing financial information to just creating a nuisance for some. Either way, these kind of software has been scorned by users the world over since the first virus was made famous.

    However, the evolution of computer technologies has led to many changes. The internet in particular has been one of the most influential technologies to have facilitated rapid changes and progress in the world of computers and how we humans use them today.

    From this, sprang the terms and technologies themselves called ‘Web 2.0’, ‘new media’, ‘social media’, ‘blogging’ etc. However, the nasty software and technologies have evolved as well and continues to make their presence felt by causing lots and lots of troubles for us netizens.

    Back in the age of Web 1.0 and below, these malwares, adwares and spywares were distributed through old-school ways of sharing data; via floppy drives and disks. Alas, the old floppy has to give way to USB drives and flash disks and various types of storage media. This however was quickly lapsed by the internet as more and more users went online for nearly everything computing needs they have; commerce, meeting new friends, finding and actually having jobs, influencing the world through their content etc.

    This meant that in one way or another, a user has created a ‘website’ or ‘web page’ to suit their needs. From simple static pages to forums to their social networking profile pages to their blogs, I remember the great Mike Abundo summarizing this whole new trend in one clever sentence; “If you’re not on Google, you do not exist.”

    Unfortunately for us, almost all the nasty software we so scorn today are also getting to us via the web, and they do that through our beloved websites. Serviced by hackers, malicious coders hack their way in websites left wide open or with lack-luster protection and plant their nasty seeds of bad software or “badware” springing to life when unsuspecting users visit that seemingly-safe and innocent site.

    This is made worse by user who still use web browsers that are simply riddled with so many security holes Sponge Bob and Swiss cheese would hide in shame. (ehem! IE ehem!) This situation has unintentionally put all the burden on the common netizen who must go through the laborious process of regularly updating their firewalls, anti-virus software, anti-spyware, basically anti-badware, applying patches here and there.

    This one-sided solution has allowed some one else to have a ticket to just sit back, enjoy the profits and eventually slack off. Web masters listen up. Help your visitors and loyal fans by brushing up on your website security, weed out potentially troublesome scripts, patch up security holes, implement more effective security measures and follow some web standards while you’re all at it.

    This is Web 2.0 anyways so things will work better if both sides of the fence are working side by side to combat badware and make the internet a safer and cleaner place to be. Don’t take this lightly though, more and more sites are being infected and hijacked every day. The sadder fact is, some of the biggest hosting companies host most of the infected and troublesome sites.

    StopBadware.org, the consumer protection initiative developed to combat badware, today released comprehensive data detailing the five companies that host the largest number of websites listed in its Badware Website Clearinghouse. These five companies combined host a large number of websites that have been identified as distributing malicious software to Internet users.

    StopBadware.org analyzed 49,296 sites – sites submitted by trusted third parties to the StopBadware.org Badware Website Clearinghouse – and identified the following web hosting companies with the largest number of infected sites residing on their servers:

    • iPowerWeb, Inc., (10,834)
      Layered Technologies, (2,513)
      ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc, (2,056)
      Internap Network Services, (1,437)
      CHINANET Guangdong province network, (786)

    • This is a wake up call to all webmasters and webhosts big and small. Clean up, wise up and live true to your by-lines of providing quality web services 24/7. We do this, we make the web a safer place to be.