My Top 10 Chrome Extensions

When Chrome was first released a good one and a half years ago.. You know what? Let’s cut the crap and get right to it. Here are my favorite Chrome Extensions. Believe me, I’ve tried different versions of them all, these surely seem to be the best!

#1 Tweet your brains out with Chrowety

While I was using Firefox, Echofon was my plugin of choice. Worked well, looked pretty nice and gave me everything I needed. When switching to Chrome this was no longer an option, so something new had to come. Chromed Bird worked, but the visuals sucked (sorry Chromed Bird Devs). Then I stumbled across Chrowety. I’m happy.

#2 Get rich with the help of that CEO from the Bank of Kenya and Google Mail Checker Plus

Not only do you get that sweet little preview screen, from where you can already reply, check as unread and even archive (or delete, whatever suits you) your mails, but… yeah… That’s pretty much it. You get a little number displaying how much you’ve got to catch up on. Nothing more to say here.

#3 Find out what the weight of pluto divided by the female population of Korea is with Chromey Calculator

Either use it for finding out that amazingly important information (who’d like to post the answer in the comments?) or for actually doing something productive. It uses Google’s Calculator and WolframAlpha to find its answer, so you know it has potential!

#4 Keep in touch with your non-existing virtual friends with Facebook for Google Chrome

Notifications (as in little numbers as a badge) and a well-made interface that gives you instant access to the news feed, your wall, facebook notifications and your messages. For everything else (as if there is anything else, ‘cept for you, you sick Farmville addict) you can just use it as a quick way to jump to the website itself.

#5 Read about what no one cares about with Google Reader Checker

There actually is a similar extension that gives you not only a badge but also a preview of what’s to read, but seeing as the preview didn’t seem to update it got pretty useless. Click the icon and you’ll be sent to your Reader.
You might also want to know about Google Reader Compact and Google Reader Open entry in background tab which make your experience even more enjoyable.

#6 Read that junk not now, but later with Instachrome

A fun and quick way to send your articles to Instapaper. Besides being able to add stuff (Duh!) you get a quick way to reach for your unread, starred and archived articles on Instapaper.com. And all of that with the simplicity and elegance of an extension. Nice!

#7 Stay up to date on crap from your favorite sources with RSS Subscription Extension Plus

In comparison to Firefox Chrome lacks that little RSS Icon in the URL field that you can use to see the feed and add it to your favorite reader (my favorite? obvious!). Well, now you get exactly that.

#8 See when that twister will tear down your four walls with gCast Weather

Depending on what exactly you want to know

#9 Find high res versions of your ex’s R-rated pictures with TinEye Reverse Image Search

If you know TinEye, you know what this does. If you don’t, please don’t ask me. Click here! ‘Nuff said.

#10 Keep those high res pictures saved as bookmarks across all your browsers with Xmarks Bookmarks Sync

Using two or more browser? Used to use two or more browsers? Working on different Computers? If any of those apply to you, you might want to keep your bookmarks the same across these. Do it with ease! (and style).
(Note: If uploading seems to have frozen up. Disable the plugin, enable it again and the go into the options->advanced->Download. That fixed it for me.)

I hope you enjoyed this brief overview. Now type something down below!

Finished -> Interior Scene

Ha! It has been done! Took about 2 weeks of my laziness to complete, but it was worth it! Just take a look, it’s awesome :D

comp

(click image for full-size version)

I’m not sure how well this would be received, but would anybody be interested in upcoming Maya tutorials? It’s a lot easier to model something than to come up with effects ;) Even though it might take a bit longer. But don’t worry, I don’t think it’ll be huge, just a few single objects, if I’m lucky I can squeeze them into the 10min YouTube limit.

Current Work-In-Progress

tv occ

This is what I’m currently working on. It’s an interior scene featuring a modernistic (Gosh I hope that’s a word) living room. Here you see the view from between the comfy chair and the couch (visible on the small picture) in the direction of the TV. The gigantic plate is supposed to be made of glass, which is not rendered transparent due to the nature of this basic clay rendering. The TV itself is actually in the middle, between the two speakers and behind the glass, but still attached to it. A lot, if not all of the detail is still missing. The shelf at the right there is empty just as the shelf beneath the TV is. Also the coffee table looks a bit clear, but there’s a few smaller things coming. As far as I’m concerned though, this is a rough approximation of all of the large stuff. With the exception of curtains the furniture is pretty much done.couch occ

I have to admit that this is part of a training series that I acquired from Digital Tutors. My Maya skills were a bit “rusty” and this training has so far been a really fun and definitely useful way to make them shine again. I’ve certainly found the feeling again. ‘Twas a good choice!

Thanks for checking back. I just wanted to post some updates ;)

Thoughts on the iPad

apple-ipadsmall

So here it is, Apple’s wondrous new product. For whatever reason this baby was pretty well known (with some exceptions) before the actual keynote. I really can’t remember this happening in this way with the iPhone. Of course there were a lot of very different rumors, but the essence was right. It’s a tablet, and it’s got a shiny Apple on the back.

Lots of people, including me, were a bit dissapointed when it was presented with an upgraded iPhone OS and not a - what would have probably been far more awesome - full-blown Mac OSX. The problem with that would have been the finger navigation, but it’s not like we wouldn’t trust Apple to turn it into something wonderful. And they did, just not quite the way we expected.

At first I was sceptical, it seemed like an iPhone HD, like a bigger cousin of the famous mobile wonder, but nothing more. Of course it has a gorgeous display and astounding visuals, that just can’t be it for a new Apple product, right? And it’s not!

There’s two things that really changed my opinion on the iPad. For one it’s the iBook App and Store. Of course it was clear that Apple wanted to make something that could kill the Kindle or at least get on the same level with it, so eBooks had to come somehow. That they’d however start an entire new Store and give the device such a beautiful way of displaying and handling Books was something that I didn’t see coming. I really hope that the launch of the iBook Store will be a success and that loads of publishers will see this as a fantastic idea and hop on board. I’d love to see this work internationally, especially here in Germany (duh :P). It’s like a new book coming out and only moments later am I sitting there reading through the first chapter(s).
Some people criticized that not using the eInk technology was a big mistake. How is this supposed to be mistake? I see how the eInk is a very useful way to make a mobile reading device display stuff and it certainly leads to amazing battery times, but it also limits the device to not doing anything else. Maybe you could make a simple web browser, a notes application and some of the basic other things, but in no way would video or media content of other kinds be possible in a sensible way.

Awesome innovation #2 is something that I missed on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Apple never made any steps to incorporate this and even though some 3rd party developers had tries, nothing really good ever came from that. It’s definitely also the case because of the limitations of the platform itself. A small iPhone screen could never be used to create presentations, text documents and spreadsheets in a way that you would no longer need to carry a laptop with you to create these on the road. It was tedious work and even with some clever developers giving Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support a few weeks ago, I don’t really see this going anywhere. All it’s really good for is basic notetaking - but who would’ve guessed, there’s already an app for that ;) - or taking down the scores in a family game. Anything beyond that should be done on a computer with a big screen and mouse and keyboard built in.
Then I saw the keynote. Wow. As Phil Schiller demoed the iPad Versions of Keynote, Pages and Numbers it was really getting amazing. It’s a shame I wasn’t there to actually try them out right after, but they seemed to be something that could very well be used for school and work. You can create all your beautiful documents on the go and it’s fun! If you haven’t seen this demo you should really watch the keynote recording, it’s worth it! Apple completely re-wrote their famous iWork package to create a wonderful tablet version that is controlled by just your fingers. The only problem is going to be that once I lay my fingers on that, I won’t have a single clue on what to write.

As you might have noticed already I fell in love with the tablet, even if it does have a few arguments against it. Seeing however that I tested positive for Stockholm Syndrome, I will not go into these points here now (or probably ever).

A quick test for a typography video

At first I was unsure whether I was going to post this video here or not, but you see where my decision has taken me. I wanted to create one of those popular typography videos that display the lyrics of a song in a very nice fashion. The song of choice was Ding by German reggae band Seeed.

However, once having worked a little more than a day, I found that the song was nice, but didn’t really fit into what I was trying to make. And it was getting quite tedious. So I stopped with the intention of creating a new one, of something shorter with a bit more… well, stuff behind it. Sounds weird, but I don’t know how else to put it.

I was just able to animate the first four lines of text and create a moving camera for my first project. It doesn’t look too shabby, but it definitely lacks the creativity that I only found right after rendering it out.

Now I’m still looking for a fitting candidate for my second try. Be it another music title, a movie scene or a bit of a good comedian talking. I’m actually leaning towards the last option at the moment, it sounds quite fun actually. Maybe take something from Jim Gaffigan, Bill Burr, Eddie Izzard or Demetri Martin. Sounds like a really fun project when I think about it.
Other choices are Papercut from Linkin Park or the Knights of the Round Table by Monty Python, though that second one again sounds like a great choice. Especially because it’s quite short and I’ve already had some great ideas.

Do you guys have any great ideas?

Oh, and here’s the video I was talking about earlier in this post:

(What’s kind of odd is that YouTube somehow managed to cleanly cut the background out of the shot. The original file had a nice radial dark blue gradient in the back, which is gone in the YouTube version. Odd…)

CarIndex - an iPhone Application

I actually once discussed this topic together with my dad. How fun could it be to identify the person driving in front of you just by their license plate, and that with an iPhone application. Here in Germany this wouldn’t be possible, not by a long shot. Our sometimes quite interesting laws prohibit such a thing.

This however does not count for Switzerland. For some reason this data has been available to the public for quite some time already. For your understanding: Switzerland is divided into different (I’m not sure if this would be an English term for it) Cantons (Kantone in German), much like the US States. These Cantons have different methods of providing this data. Some can be accessed over the internet, some only per SMS or email and a few have quantity restrictions. But still, the data is available.

The iPhone App which helps you gather this data just by typing in the number you see on the license plate displays the name, telephone number and address of the owner of the car. Quite astounding actually! Not only could you call the driver in front of you and tell him to move his a** a bit faster, but you could also start conversations with people you don’t even know with already knowing their name… Now both of these options (and a lot more in this direction) sound pretty fun and amusing, but unfortunately you can also take this into the wrong direction.
For instance it would be a matter of minutes to check the cars in the parking lot of a hotel in a popular vacation area and see where the owners live. Out of understandable reasons, their houses could very well be unoccupied while they’re enjoying themselves, leaving them quite vulnerable for potential break-ins.

Now I basically just wanted to share some information about this fun app and maybe get some of you to comment what you think about something like this.

New Design

UPDATE: Changed again. Lasted one looked good for starters, but quickly got on my nerves. This one is now clean and even, if you get what I mean.

The only downside (which I don’t really see as one), is that I’ve had to scale the videos and images down a bit. Everything should still look nice though :P

You’ve probably already noticed it. The page has been updated with a new design (and a new name…).
The old one wasn’t doing it anymore, at least that’s what I thought.

What do you think of it?

(There might be some new, fun content coming soon. You never know ;) )

Getting better tracking results

So you’ve got a bad track, or one that’s not even bad, it’s far worse than that. This can be due to numerous things like bad lighting, missing contrast etc. A bad track is usually just a track that didn’t work out. We’re going to stay with the basic After Effects point tracker here, just so you know.

When you analyze your footage, and the tracker jumps around wildly or fails to stay on the spot you want it to, you’re dealing with one of the reasons that cause a bad track.

So what can we do?

Well, there’s three really simple solutions to this problem. We’ll go through them step by step.

Number 1 - Pre-Shoot

What I’m trying to say with the title is that these changes can be made before you actually shoot the video. They’re simple and pretty obvious. Get some good lighting! It can be anything, a desktop lamp, a flashlight or some professional studio lighting. All that matters is that you get some more detail in the object that you’re filming. For demonstration purposes we’re going to be talking about an open hand. A specific spot in the middle of a hand is hard to track, there’s not a lot of difference there. So what do you say about creating our own differences? It’s easy, just take a small (really small) piece of colored paper and place it in the middle of your hand. Or even take a marker (preferably a color that’s actually visible -> black for example) and draw a small dot in your palm.
Tracking that will almost always work perfectly! When editing you can then cover it up, mask it away or leave it, depending on your desires.

Number 2 - While editing

This one’s a bit more difficult, but you should be able to manage it nonetheless. The idea is to create more contrast digitally, so the tracker can then find better points. After Effects however won’t recognize any effects you’ve applied to the video when tracking, so we’re going to have to trick it into thinking that the effects were there already. This is easily achievable with pre-composing.
So, we’re going to apply some crazy effects to our hand footage. Levels, Curves, Noise, etc. Just play around with the settings until you find something that makes the hand a lot more distinct. Where you think the tracker will be able to differentiate that certain point better from others. And don’t worry, we’re not going to leave these effects on our video.
Once you’ve got something interesting down, go ahead and pre-compose that layer by selecting it and going into Layer -> Pre-Compose. Be sure to move all the attributes to the new composition, it’s important here. Now you can just go and track it again. Not the video layer in the new composition, but the new composition in your original composition!
You should get some better results this time.

Number 3 - A different tracker

Yes, there are different trackers out there. However, I just wanted to say this option exists, I’m not going to be describing anything here. In case you’ve got After Effects CS4 you should already have a program called Mocha installed on your PC as well. Mocha is a far more powerful tracker than the built-in point tracker After Effects offers you.
If you google a bit you’re bound to find some interesting tutorials that help you better understand Mocha and how it works, I can tell you that it’s a gem!

So there you go, this information should definitely help you out with some of the popular tracking problems people keep on experiencing.

Making your video vibrate/wiggle

I was asked the question on how to make a video in After Effects vibrate or move randomly in a small amount of time. This is an easy task, but hard to explain in a YouTube comment.

Basically all there is to do is create a so called expression. Expressions are (simple) commands that you can use to control almost everything in After Effects. They work like programs (if you ever had the priviledge of writing even the tiniest amount of code in any programming language), you have to take care to use the correct syntax and use special commands.
Now, if you have absolutely no idea what I just said, don’t worry, you don’t have to.

So let’s get to it. First of all you have to find the layer you want to be wiggled (that sounds interesting ;)). If you have multiple layers you might want to precompose those (Layer -> Pre-Compose), so that you’re only working with one. Now open the layer’s properties (toggle the little arrow at the bottom) and look for the position attribute. Now see that little stopwatch? Hold down alt on your keyboard and click it. Something in the likes of a text field should pop up. This is where we’ll enter our expression.

wiggle

The one we’re aiming for is, if you can remember, the wiggle expression. It goes something like this wiggle(1,1). That’s it! That’s all you have to put in that box. Whatever was already in there, you can just delete that, it’s only a filler.

But we’ve got to take a quick look at the numbers and what they mean. All you have to do to understand them is to read the expression like this “Every 1 second, wiggle 1 pixel”. So the first number is the speed or time interval. It is also possible to use fractions of a second, so 0.5 or 0.1 would be perfectly fine. They would cause extremely fast movement however.
The second number is the distance the layer will move from it’s original position. I guess you could call it the amount it would wiggle. The best way to find the right number here is to play with it. Just use something, check the RAM preview and see if it worked out. If not, go for something else.

That’s it! Really, it’s wiggling like crazy now! Well, depending on your settings ;)

Something you might also need to look out for are the borders. If it’s moving, it can’t stay fixed to its borders of course. So for no black edges around your composition, you might need to make it smaller or your footage larger. The amount of change depends on the settings you used in the expression of course.

There you go, I hope that helped!

EKG Effect in After Effects

So here’s the new promised tutorial. It’s nothing big, but definitely looks awesome and can be used in quite a lot of different creative ways. It doesn’t necessarily only come down to the EKG’s (or ECG’s), it can be used for signs etc.
Here’s the promised sound effect: EKG Sound Effect

And remember, if you like the video, please comment, rate, post your creations… I love it all :D

The video automatically plays in HD, so be sure to go fullscreen for the best results! If it takes to long to buffer for you, you can click the video and watch it on YouTube.com in lower quality.

By the way: Something that I forgot but might also look really cool is a slight black vignette. New black Solid -> Circular Mask that only shows the edges of the comp -> huge feather -> opacity way down -> Awesomeness :D