First 3D Animation

Just finalized my very first 3D animation! Done entirely in Blender.

Lemme know what you think!

Enjoy!

Sirus

 

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Canada Election 2015 – Who are you really for?

[ You from USA? Australia? Canada? UK? or India? This is for you! ]

Hello!

Today October 19th 2015, Canada Votes! (You have until 9:30 pm Eastern Time to do so.)

If you’re Canadian (or any other aforementioned countries) and haven’t voted yet, I strongly suggest you check out this awesome questionnaire which may help you understand who you might wanna vote for.

Tip of the Iceberg

BEFORE you jump in and start answering with your gut feelings, I want you to imagine that YOU are in charge of your country and must take decisions for the greater good. Keeping that in mind, and only then, answer the survey/quiz. You’ll most likely be surprised by the result… Thinking vs feeling really are two things.

Instructions :

1. Imagine YOU are the Prime Minister of Canada (or the leader of your country) and you’re the one taking  decisions for the greater good of the country.
2. Do NOT answer with your feelings, but with what you think is most beneficial for the country, the long term and humanity.
3. Don’t bother with the “how important is it to you” slider.
4. Fill out ALL questions; that means also clicking the “Show more X questions” links, whenever available.

See this below a category? Click it.

Okay! You’re in da zone and have the right mindset? Here’s the Canadian quiz!

http://canada.isidewith.com/political-quiz

As I mentioned, if you’re from USA, Australia, UK or India, there’s also a quiz for you! Simply choose your country link at the bottom of the website: http://www.isidewith.com/

So, was the result expected? :D

Enjoy!

Sirus

References
-http://www.elections.ca/
-http://www.isidewith.com/

Business military style phone calls – November Oscar Whisky!

Hotel Echo Lima Lima Oscar!

Ever heard or said stuff like that over the phone? I know I do. Daily. Like, literally every hours; spelling out names, e-mail address, company names, SKUs, serial numbers, etc. This way of spelling out words is called the phonetic alphabet, more specifically, the NATO phonetic alphabet.

How it works

26 code words (the NATO phonetic alphabet) are assigned to the 26 letters of the Latin/English Alphabet (common to English, French, German, etc.) in alphabetical order, their first letters matching the corresponding alphabet letter:

Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.

[ See Wikipedia’s Picture chart here ]

Note : The NATO phonetic alphabet is also valid in French, since all the words, even in French, are pronounced the same way. :D

Cool huh?

Why YOU should use it

If the reason for spelling out words using phonetic alphabet isn’t already obvious to you, let me give you a quick example of what could happen when you DON’T. In this example, you just purchased a rare item by phone from a Japanese store:

Foreign salesman: Thank you for your purchase! You can track your order on our website at “mmbnsc-transport.jp”.

You: Could you please spell out that website address for me?

Foreign salesman: Sure! It’s M-M-B-N-S-C _DASH_ T-R-A-N-S-P-O-R-T _DOT_ J-P

Instead, you could easily understand something else like: nnpmsc-transport.gb.

See how confusing and time consuming something as trivial as this can become?

Voilà! Enjoy your now enhanced communication skillz!

Sirus
sirusdark.ca

References
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKU
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_keeping_unit
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_writing_system
–

Downloads – LAME (mp3) and FFMEG (mp4) libraries

Here’s a quick post for all the necessary codecs/library you might need to work with MP3 and MP4 videos in Windows/MAC. Software like Reaper.fm, Audacity, etc. need to have these libraries installed separately because of copyrights. I realized it wasn’t easy to find so I thought I’d simplified people’s life and make all the files available here.

The websites is old, I know, but the resources are working, and it’s all we should care about. Heck, I couldn’t find elsewhere a working LAME 64bit library…

LAME (mp3 encoding)

http://aegiscorp.free.fr/lame/

FFMEG (mp4 videos)

http://aegiscorp.free.fr/ffmpeg/

Mirror

Just in case the link/website should die or if you just want to download everything at once, here are the mirrored files via my MediaFire account:

lame-ffmpeg-library_08-2014_by_sirusdark.zip

LAME Encoder

If your software requires the LAME MP3 encoder (usually lame.exe), here it is: http://www.free-codecs.com/Lame_Encoder_download.htm Software like Foobar2000 will require this encoder to rip/convert audio files to MP3.

FREE BONUS
Best file archiver ever. Free. Grab it now!
7-zip.org

If you have any questions, simply ask! Enjoy!

Sirus
sirusdark.ca

Resources
-http://reaper.fm/
-http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
-http://www.7-zip.org/
-http://aegiscorp.free.fr/
-http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Lame_Encoder.htm
-http://www.foobar2000.org/

New posts coming soon!

This blog have been a bit calm lately. Fear not! I have MANY more posts waiting to be published! You can soon expect a whole bunch of informative, useful posts on many different topics!

So stay tuned, new posts coming soon!

Enjoy!

FREE BONUS

Play across our very own Solar System and master the power of the Warframes today! (direct install or through Steam)
Finally, a free FPS action game set in Sci-fi world, fast fluid movements, awesome graphics and COOP!! Who knows, we could even fight together on Steam! @ Sirus

Sirus
sirusdark.ca

WordPress.com is SPAM friendly

Akismet – part of the problem

Why the heck do I get on a regular basis some 300+ SPAM? Isn’t Akismet, WordPress’ anti-spam service, suppose to block those? I have Akismet configured to “Strict: silently discard the worst and most pervasive spam” and still literally receive SPAM comments by the hour (I just got 5 SPAM in the past 30 minutes while writing this post). The real problem thought isn’t just Akismet: since I’m also using the “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” option, theoretically, only legitimate WordPress users/accounts should be able to post comments on my blog. Yet…

WordPress is da problem

Since I DO receive spam from “registered users”, it means there’s literally millions of bogus WordPress accounts out there sending SPAM. That’s the real problem.

So until someone figures a way to automatically drop/delete fake accounts, all WordPress.com users are gonna be plagued with the continuous income of SPAM from “legitimate” WordPress users.

It’s making me wonder if my traffic statistics are even real…

WordPress.org

Only WordPress.org users can implement real anti-spam solution, since the community edition give its user 100% freedom for plugins selection and settings configuration.

Do you receive SPAM on your WordPress.com blog? Share your thoughts!

Ciao!

Sirus
sirusdark.ca

Prevent Outlook.com to redirect to MSN on sign out – Part 2

Here’s a second workaround to prevent you from being redirected to MSN when you log out of Outlook.com, Hotmail or Live.

Simplicity

Simply go to your OneDrive app and logout from there. You won’t be redirected to MSN. If someone knows about any other working workarounds, please speak up!

My last workaround to prevents the redirection is now obsolete; Microsoft recently changed the way the redirection is handled and can’t be prevented anymore. Unless you logout from OneDrive or some other service.

Enjoy!

Sirus
sirusdark.ca