General talk

A place for all random thoughts and ideas that come across my mind and I can’t find the right “category” to put in…

The secret behind Google’s success

4

Group of research finds out why Google has achieved such a level of popularity. Precisely his advertising tool "Google Adsense".

Apparently Google "blackmails" all the websites out there with a medium popularity so that they'll use their ad program. Whenever it finds a website running another advertising program they'll set their PR to 0.
And this is taking place specially among bloggers (You are reading a live example of it), using advertising programs that I won't mention here (I'm trying to get my PR back :S )Ted Murphy said,

"Once again Google has proved that PR has little to do with blog traffic, influence or relevance and everything to defending their monopolistic stranglehold on search and online advertising"

There are thousands of blogs out there whose PR has been taken away by Google (Starryskye, mine, AndyBeard
... ) And this are just examples of people who have told me about it.

You might say that Google is doing it because "buying links" is forbidden, but that why don't they take away the PR of well known blogs like TechCrunch, they too have sponsored posts.

This is simply proving that Google's PR has degenerated into a tool for them to control the public, as they can use the power it gives them to undermine any other advertising business without any chance for them to answer!
There are already many options out there being developed to substitute Google's PR. Obviously all these advertising websites need to develop them since they pay according to the PR of the blog. In this field we can be sure that new PR systems will be developed, but what happens now with our search positioning?
Will we be affected by this decision? I can't even ask anyone to exchange links with my blog since I have a PR of cero, when I used to have 2...

I am asking all of you to blog about this, digg it, make the world know about this outrageous strategy by Internet's giant Google. We might not be as powerful as Google is, but if we make this issue known through out Internet I bet they'll have to change.
Bloggers unite ;)

Read more about this:

Enjoy,

Index the net

0

Contribute to the indexing of Internet, get the Alexa toolbar.

AlexaThe reason why I'm telling you this is not that I've been paid for it (I wish that happened ;) ), but that Alexa is making a very honorable effort to index the Internet, assigning one unique ranking number to every single website. The way they do this is by measuring visits per million, and the way they measure visits is with the Alexa toolbar. Every user that has it sends his visits to the Alexa server, and there they are added to the count.

So it will provide two useful things:

  1. You'll get to know the ranking of every site you visit. That'll give you an idea of its importance.
  2. You'll be helping the index of Internet!

Thanks!
Alex

Quantum Universe Simulation – The Unique beings paradox

12

Completely off topic for this blog, but at the time it is the best place to write about this. Read through the whole thing before judging what you see, then think about it, and then express your opinion.

The Unique Beings paradox

To start off I will check with you certain easy experiments that are the base of this. We both agree that the same set of variables, done in the same order in the same way must always produce the same result. An example of this is that if we had two identical containers full of the same amount of the same water, and using a machine we dropped two identical steel balls of the same mass in the same point of the containers and we recorded each from the same angle and the same lighting we would have exactly identical results in the water, each second of one would match exactly each second of the other, until the water flattened again.
So following from here and using as a testing environment a simulation in a computer, identical sets of data and operations would produce identical results, which could be expanded to more complex things. So if we duplicated the brain of a rat, and the simulation of the rat was presented with a maze, exactly the same as the real rat, they would behave in the same way (Supposing that the simulated rat was duplicated successfully) So we could go further in our expansion, until we reached humans.
Can we create a simulation with real humans? The answer is yes, although it is too complex to even think about it, since the amount of variables to take into account are too many. But my goal is to simulate humans, and the only way of doing it accurately is simplifying the task of inserting into the simulation all of the variables, so we need a common start for all humans, which we could find three. The most recent was our evolution from pre-humans, but still we have to simulate them perfectly, and that is even harder because of the lack of knowledge, so we have to keep going back. The next common event was the apparition of living beings on the Earth, back when they were monocellullar. But still we could create some sort of "similar" simulation, that wouldn't be as accurate as needed, so to do it perfectly we need everything to be the same, and that was the creation of the Universe, the moment in which the Universe was condensed to the simplest form, and then it expanded to be what we know today. The Big Bang. All is needed are the exact data of it, and a computer with a computational potential enough to simulate this.
The first thing is needed, data, is not currently available, but it will be eventually discovered.
The second thing that we need is a computer fast enough to calculate the Universe. At the moment not even all the computers on the Earth would be enough for this task, but there is evidence that within the next 10-30 years quantum computers will be available, the technology has already been discovered and it is being developed. Its potential is supposed to be the so great that not even a modern computer can simulate how they will behave.

Now from here on I am supposing that the criteria before has been met, so that the simulation of the creation of the Universe has been successfully done, and all the data was exactly identical, so that the consequences are all the same. Now we should be able to run the simulation at a higher time rate than normal, so we can reach current dates fast enough.
(Take into account that I am supposing that all data was entered exactly the same as it happened, so all things evolving from it are all the same too)
We could take a look at the Earth in its early years, see the complete evolution again, but this time on a computer simulation, but the past is not the interesting part, it is the present and future.

Since all things in the Universe have grown accordingly to a set of "casual" occurrences, so has the simulation, reaching the point where humans appear. Although you might think we have the freedom to chose whatever we want, we chose exactly what our genetically-determined-brain, our past experiences, and another number of factors determine us to chose, so that in the simulation all of it would be the same.
At the point when we reach the present, with you and me, and the simulation (Now in the future, but imagine you are living in the moment the simulation is achieved), the simulation would recreate the moment when I propose this theory here, would recreate the moment when the simulation is started!
So we have another simulation starting up inside the simulation. Since it would be an infinite loop (Without going too deep into math you can see how the number of simulations approaches an infinite number, over time) there would be an infinite loop of conscious beings inside the simulations, and those beings (Merely simulations of ourselves) would think exactly as we do, so they would be reading this exactly like you, and if they knew about the simulation they would think they were the "originals", but this has to have an origin, the ones who started the infinite loop, so we would want to check if we are indeed the originals.
So after a lot of thinking, we decide to alter the simulation. So in a Monday, we run the simulation until Wednesday, and we insert a tree in some common place in a city. And we all wait to see what happens. The strange thing is that when we were in Monday and we looked at the simulation of our Monday, there where two options, that we saw them (I'll follow this option later on) and we didn't see them insert the tree. So by the time we inserted the tree, they had done the same, and so did all of the infinite simulations.
Expectantly we would wait for Wednesday to see what happened. In our simulation they found the tree we had inserted, and they had found out that they were a simulation, and what would happen if by Wednesday we did too? If we ourselves found out too that we had a tree we would also think that we were being simulated but what would the consequences of that be? What if we decided to shut down the simulation? Would the ones above us do the same? Suddenly all of the infinite simulated identical universes know they are not original, and what's more, the one that woke up without a tree knew that they were unique, that they were not a simulation. But now, the simulations would differ from reality, so the whole experiment would have served to create a parallel universe different from ours.
As you've seen I've supposed that all the people in the simulations could think by themselves, but if that was true, it means that other living creatures could have also reached the technology that permitted us simulate the Universe, and I mean by this that they could have done the same as us, without us knowing. So there could perfectly be an infinite amount of simulations being done at a time, without one true original universe, since there would be no way of testing with multiple simulations...

Following the other option now, that we saw our simulation insert the tree before we reached Monday. If that did happen though a complex paradox is reached. Imagine we are on Friday in the week before. No one has come up with the idea of inserting a tree in the simulation, but we decide to forward a bit the simulation to see what happens. Remember that the simulation is exactly the same as what would happen in our world. The result? It would be impossible for them to come up with ideas before us, because if we chose to do that on Friday, they would have done the same with their simulation, and would have come up with the same results. We have to keep in mind that all we do, they'll do it too, even if looked into their future, they will have looked into their simulation's future looping endlessly.

The final conclusion is that currently the probability of us belonging to a simulated Universe is so high that it is almost certain (Taking into account that the number of simulated Universes increases over time towards infinite), although we could prove ourselves unique in certain small subsystems such as the Earth. The consequences of this over us are close to none, unless a simulation can be achieved in our time, in which case we would be diving deep in time traveling, and other paradoxical problems.

The reasoning for all of this has been omitted, since it is based on complex quantum calculations and simulation algorithms. If any of you readers knows anything about quantum physics will find this extremely interesting, just as I do. Please comment your opinion.

To understand better this, you can watch this video where several quantum scientists (Gregg Braden David Icke, David Lynch, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, David Wilcock, David Icke, Michael Talbot, Gregg Braden, James J Traitz, Robert Anton Wilson, Neil Kramer, Grant Morrison, Bill Hicks) talk about this subject. (See the video)

This article expresses a hypothesis I've been working on for some time now, and it shall not be copied without citing the source and author. Thanks to Reda Bouchami for clarifying this when I missed it.

Enjoy all of the great things you'll have to think about after this,
Alex

Creating grass in Photoshop

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A very beautiful resource for web designers is drawing grass, although it is usually hard. I've come up with this great tutorial on how to create grass, of any size, color, or anything.

This is the result you can get:
Grassy field:
Grassy field

Grass in a website header (This is actually a design I've done to add to this blog)
Grassy design
(Click to enlarge)

Step 1

In this tutorial we will be creating the first image, a grassy field.
So open up a new document (A medium size will do, I'll be using a 500x500) and fill it with a nice blueish gradient:
Step 1

Step 2

Download this set of brushes, which contain 5 different styles of grass, which will create the illusion of variety.
(To install this set copy the .abr file and go to C:\Program files\Adobe\Photoshop x\Presets\Brushes\ The x is your installed version of Photoshop )

Step 3

Select some tones of green, try to chose a light one and a dark one to start (And ones that look sort of natural) and with the fourth brush from the grass set (The one that looks darkest in the preview) create a sort of base with the darker color.
You'll end up with something like this:
Step 3
Now that you've got the base, switch to a more spaced brush, and with a bit lighter colors cover the base. I used for this the third brush.
It now looks like this:
Step 3_1
After this you'll have light green grass, but in the places closest to the bottom it is supposed to look bigger and darker, to look ok, so with the same brush (Or another one if you prefer) and darker colors paint in the bottom and corners specially, creating a more realistic feel.
It will look like this:
step3_2
And finally switch to a brush a bit more condensed and with medium greens fill in the blue spots, retouching and finishing up some details. This is just for a great result, and after all this tweaking it will look like this:
step3_4

Final steps

You can now add some text over the grass, as if it was standing on it. To do this simply type in the text and put it between two layers of grass. If you didn't separate the grass into layers just create a layer above the text and draw some more grass covering a bit the bottom of it. Then duplicate the text, distort it to cover the bottom and change the color of it to black, then use the gaussian blur and you'll have a shadow (Which should go also under the grass that covers the text)
It will look like the grassy field I showed at the beginning:
Grassy field
Here is another example of it:
Grassy Ad
Other uses are the ones I also showed at the beginning, for headers and footers in websites.

Enjoy,
Alex

How we became web developers…

3

Evolution of web developersI normally write to those web developers/programmers who are already good, experienced, and thus the articles are somewhat advanced.
But today I got up feeling nostalgic I guess, or I just felt like remembering back on my www birth, on my first impression of the Internet, my first site online, my first steps in w3c standards, the day I discovered CSS, my first table-less layout, the day i realized IE was total crap... In a few words, I wanted to talk about all the special events in a web designer life.

So first you realize you want to do something that you think will make you rich and famous, and you realize that millions of people go in Internet everyday, so you believe that if you learn how to design a website you will have those millions of visits. Come on, all of us once believed that was true ;)

So from here some take on an html/Dreamweaver course or they buy a book. I'm more of the book buyer, but I know many signed up in a class. It is now that you learn the basics, and you design a table-based website, which is about... Your favorite computer game! (Or pet, or music group, but it is always of that sort... ) And from there you start Your Own Website! which is about you, and you make it sound "professional", and you show it to your friends and they are totally amazed!
By now you feel like you are a genius, and suddenly, as you are in Dreamweaver doing some crappy tabled design, you look into the source code for any reason, and you find something that astonishes you, CSS styles at the top!
You are feeling surprised, and when you start playing with it Dreamweaver pulls down this enormous drop down of available things to do, and you are totally overwhelmed by the new capabilities you've found! So you just experiment for a while.
If you haven't done so already you get your own free domain, which always looks like "alexwebdesign.freewebsites.com" or something of that sort...
Either now or before CSS you find those "Cool JavaScript snippets" sites, and you fill up your site with "snow falling" and "mouse trails" and the weather, and the time, and all sorts of totally stupid things you think are cool... But don't blame yourself, we all did it...

You are starting to feel quite an expert, but you want to do one of those "Contact forms" that are so cool and different from your "mailto:..." hyperlinks, and you go into a forum and ask how they actually send the email, and they will probably tell you "PHP does it", and of course your next question is "php?"

And yet again you seem to see a new horizon appear in front of your eyes, full of new paths to explore, new ways of discovering the boudless capabilities that web development is opening for you.
At some point here you find that there is something called Databases, that you can use to dynamically store and display data, and you want to test them right away.
Your first dynamically generated pages take you about a week to get them to work properly. You struggle to do a simple INSERT query, but you are happy, of course.

If you felt like an expert before you now think that you could even create a replica of Google if you wanted, and in your high, you take on a dynamic website, with user registration and all of those cool things you've seen so many times. That website has your name on the footer of every single page, and it is usually about Gaming, Books, Music, Tutorials, or Animals. When you think you are done you are astonished to see that not even one user registers! And you suddenly find out that for the world you don't even exist...
You try to find yourself in Google a week after you make the website public, and it isn't there... You know nothing about SEO, you think that Google "magically" finds the websites, until yours is listed.
Once that happens you start asking how and why, and you dive into the world of SEO, PR, rankings and stats. You install Google Adsense and Google Analytics or similar software, and you check both everyday...

It is at this point where you either continue and become a good web developer (After lots, and lots, and lots of practice and reading), or you quit and remember it as an interesting adventure for the rest of your life.

If you chose the first alternative (Which I did, although I missed the "being good and practicing a lot" ;) ) you'll start to get clients, and work, and you suddenly realize it has become tedious, having no freedom to chose when and what to do... But well, it is now a job so...
Most of us also start a blog now, and here I don't know about the rest, but I was TOTALLY surprised to see the stats... I have to say it has been incredibly amazing and all thanks to you guys, so yea, check out where you are in the line, and see what you've got ahead :S

Enjoy,

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