The Unofficial Web Applications List
on
No Office Suite Google
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Whether Google plans to plunge into the web-based office suite or not, we don't know, but others have started to create web-based applications like Writely (word
processing), Num Sum (spreadsheet), and Writeboard, and most of them use
AJAX technology. This site called "The Unofficial Web
Applications List" lists dozens of
them.
Jason Calacanis is the owner of Weblog Inc. The man is $25 million richer today than yesterday, so give him some credit. Weblog Inc. network has 80 blogs, and it is sold for $25 million, so one blog is worth, roughly, $300,000. I'm happy to sell my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) for a lot less. Nevertheless, congrats to Jason, because he got into the game earlier and smarter than everybody else.
The latest versions of GIMP (the open-source graphics software) and Blogger (Google's blogging tool) are chock-full of improvements. I use both of them on a daily basis for my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/)
Can't say enough good things about GIMP
on
Pepping Up Windows
·
· Score: 1
Bless you if you got the dough to purchase Photoshop, but GIMP, run on my Windows PC, works like magic. With its "Script-Fu" function you can create logos in literally seconds.
The lawsuit brought on by Authors Guild against Google is less about ignorance and more about paranoia.
Writers are not dumb, after all, most of them know full well they cannot get rich writing books. But for some odd reason, the folks who are on the board of Authors Guild have determined, rather erroneously, that having Google digitize their books is equivalent to giving away their books for free on p2p networks, like in the music business.
The unfortunate reality of the book publishing is this: books, especially fiction, are nowhere near as popular as other media like music and cinema. Last year, when the five finalists of the National Book Awards were announced, it was quickly revealed that only one of them sold more than 2,000 copies of her book. Sad, yes, but that is the reality -- people do not think buying books is a priority in their lives. This ambivalence of authors who want their books to sell and yet resist the help from new technology is beyond any satirical interpretation.
According to Wikipedia, the world population as of 6/2005 is 6.45 billion. The democratic nature of blogging indicates that it is possible some day every single person on earth will have at least one blog, so the blog counting is unlikely to stop until it reaches 6.45 billion, that is, if some day all nations become democratic.
The "relevance" and "importance" issues mentioned by the Wall Street Journal article miss the point -- blogging is all about democracy and free speech. The human desire to self-express is unstoppable.
The basic idea behind OQO is to fill the gap between laptop and PDA. MS came out with tablet pc, but the jury is still out on that one. I personally would like to see something like a "Mini Laptop" that has the following essential features:
#1 Rectangular landscape screen about 4" x 8" in size, with a keyboard about the same size so the Mini Laptop can be snapped shut into a compact case no bigger than a 6" x 9" 300-page hardcover book.
#2 Runs full Windows, or Apple, or Linux operation system.
#3 Priced under $1,000.
Steven Soderbergh's "3-pronged attack" is being watched closely by Hollywood. This Theater-Cable-DVD simultaneous release of a new movie to the public is actually one of the counter measures against privacy movie people have thought about but never really dared to try. So, give Mr. Soderbergh a chance, and maybe years down the line they might even use words like "pioneer" to describe him.
"Bubble", shot for $1.6 million, may be a cheapo in Hollywood standard, but Soderbergh was serious enough to use the same high-definition camera George Lucas used for two "Star Wars" movies, as described in a New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/movies/22bubb.h tml).
These guys at Reporters Without Borders got guts -- on their website, they put the names and photos of the heads of states where there is no press freedom and call them "Predators of Press Freedom". Check it out at: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=1087
Blogging is the cheapest way to get some "head laundering". Why pay shrinks to talk about one's personal longings and anxieties? Simply register with a free blog account and pound your keyboard and your anxieties away.
My fellow Slashdotters ought to understand this sentiment -- as we crank out these comments, we are venting, and therefore undergoing some form of self-therapy, and it doesn't cost a dime. What bloggers do is very similar to what the commentators in this space do. I write about movies on one of my two blogs (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) and post news items on the other (http://sundroid.blogspot.com/), and the expensive shrinks of the world cry a little.
Let's say someone "illegally" downloaded 2,000 songs, but evidently he did not download 2,000 songs by the same artist, because no rocker is that talented yet. So, a rough but likely scenario is this: this person downloaded 5 songs by Metallica, 3 songs by Vanilla Ice, 6 songs by Britney Spears, and so on. With the value of each downloaded song being worth 99 cents, the financial tally sheet goes something like: this person owes Metallica 5 dollars, Vanilla Ice 3 dollars, Britney Spears 6 dollars, etc, you get the picture.
Here is the point: this person owes Metallica 5 dollars only if Metallica demands it; if Britney Spears decides not to ask for the 6 dollars she really does not need, then RIAA does not have a case as far as Mrs. Federline is concerned. We now know that many musicians are against RIAA's draconian way of suing the downloaders, but are afraid to voice their opinions for fear of offending their musician colleagues, I therefore suggest, as a legal tactic, that these single mothers publish their lists of "allegedly stolen" songs and publicly ask these artists if they want their 5, or 3, or 6 dollars paid to them. In other words, ignore RIAA, and go straight to the musicians, who, I'm almost positive, are more reasonable.
His rationale is that people who are accustomed to Photoshop user interfaces can learn GIMP faster this way. Having never seen or worked with Photoshop myself (yes, I am a rarity), I've had no problem learning how to use GIMP at all (evidence: see the graphics I've created for my website, Sun and Fun), so it is all novelty to me.
Geeking out about technology is fine, but real creativity and bravery happen when you pick up a video camera and start shooting.
I've just looked at "2001: a Space Odyssey", Kubrick's masterpiece, again recently, and although it was made in 1968--a time when these fancy computer-aided motion-picture tools were not available--the special effects still look spectacular. Yeah, 1968, when Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were both only 13 years old. Indeed, in "2001", you cannot spot a keyboard, a mouse, or a laptop, and guess what? A computer (HAL-9000) is one of the leading characters. I've written a re-review of "2001" (at http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/2005/09/2001-space-o dyssey-by-stanley-kubrick.html) on my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/), if anyone's interested.
This CNN article also says that the new IBM printer will lighten your wallet by $1 million dollars, although you can buy a "cheap starter" model for $500,000.
"all the industry has to do is offer a legal means to get the content and people will swarm to it."
There is already a "legal means" offered by Hollywood, and it's called "syndication", which is how they put old, popular shows on Sunday afternoons and Weekday mornings at 2am, so the fans can set their Tivo timer and record them.
I may be harsh on Hollywood people for their greediness, but I'd never call them stupid, in fact many of them are quite smart. Hollywood has already looked at this model of putting TV shows and movies on the fat pipe, but they have ("wisely", I might add) concluded that the money to be made in that arena is minuscule and not worth the hassle of having to build another infrastructure around it. They figure DVD is working out, Netflix is working out, and that's good enough for them.
OurMedia (at www.ourmedia.org), still in Alpha, provides storage space for video and film makers to upload their digital contents that use, mostly, Creative Commons rights model.
Seems like you're interested in providing existing Hollywood TV and movie products. The question I throw it back at you is: why bother? Anyone who has watched one episode too many of those bad or mediocre TV shows and movies churned out by the industrial machine, at one time or another, must have thought that the home movies made by his cousin, as amateurish as they are, still beat those glossy images produced by a group of people who are in it for the money.
Speaking of money, you should know by now that TV and film producers hang on to their rights as if giving them away were akin to giving their manhood away. The notion that someone out there is thinking, "Jeez, I can't watch enough of those shows on WB network, and darn it, where can I pay to download them online?" is, you know, counterintuitive.
Download.com (http://download.com/) has improved a lot, most significantly its pledge that none of the software on its site have spyware or adware. Download.com is operated by C/NET.
Their editors' rating is fairly reliable, if not, the users' comments usually set them straight.
On Slashdot, companies and individuals are being flamed and defamed every day, but Slashdot will always survive because people generally recognize the First Amendment free-speech protection reality. Out there in the business world, there are other realities to deal with -- trade secrets and trade wars. Apple sued some guy because he posted Apple's "secret sauce" on his site, but the guy is a big fan of Apple. This case mentioned in Wall Street Journal is different -- the two entities involved are competitors and hate each other, so basically, it's more in the territory of business rivalry than free-speech issue.
Just the other day, some prominent blog site published the pay scale of bloggers working for another prominent blog franchise, and I thought lawyers' phones would be ringing off the hook. People keep saying bloggers are irrelevant, the blogosphere is dull, well, my guess is that a movie titled "Blog Wars", starring Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields, could become a reality sooner than all of us think.
Over at Yahoo, they are offering a $5/month unlimited music download deal, so some people have come to a rather astute conclusion that illegal music downloaders owe RIAA no more than $5 a month.
In this fine New York Times article, it is revealed that Hollywood's real enemies are organized criminals who are able to spend up to a million dollars to buy DVD duplication machines in order to mass produce those pirated DVDs. Many Hollywood people, unlike the clueless RIAA crowd, know that college kids in their dorms downloading movies on BitTorrent are NOT their enemies, but there is an impatient bunch who are eager to put them in the same category as those career criminals.
Downloading movies is not the same as downloading music -- whereas somebody could download thousands of songs, but it is technically much more difficult to download "thousands" of movies. I know some college kids have time to kill, but come on, not that much time. Now let's do some calculation. Let's say some guy downloads movies illegally every day and gets caught by the "Download Police", what should his punishment be? I say he owes Hollywood no more than $17.99 a month for the duration of his "criminal downloading career", because that's how much Netflix charges per month for unlimited DVD movie rentals.
Lulu.com is founded by Robert Young, a co-founder of Red Hat, the famed Linux distributor. Lulu publishes books, images, music, etc. They use on-demand technology, and the creators own all the rights.
I've never tried their music publishing side of the business, but I have a novel published through them (http://www.lulu.com/content/138218). Lulu's technology of fulfilling customers' orders is topnotch, as good as Amazon.com. If you order a product from them, they inform you every step of the way -- when the book (or CD) is produced, when it will be shipped, when it will arrive at your doorstep, etc.
Reality check: you're not going to get rich by self-publishing, but it's a start, and starting online is a sound strategy, because there is a whole generation of people growing up being comfortable with buying things online.
I used to have Scolbe's and Doc Searls's blogs in my Bookmarks, but I haven't had them for months, because after a while, I just got tired of hearing the same tunes and the same philosophies. New bloggers are coming out every day with refreshing and unique angles of their own, and if they're good, the fans of Scolbe and Doc Searls will discover them and switch their loyalty in a Bookmark second.
This is nothing new. It happens to every medium. Like TV, for instance, at one point, people just got tired of "Seinfeld", or "Friends", so the shows got canceled, then the new Thursday-night lineups were announced, and life continued. It's called "evolution", and it's healthy.
Also, I think the term "geek blogger" is a bit oxymoronic, because a blogger IS a geek. The notion that somebody out there with the looks of Angelina Jolie is blogging away merrily is... Well, keep fantasizing. I maintain a blog (at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) for personal enjoyment, and I assume the thousands of people who sign up for new accounts every day are doing it with similar intent -- nothing unhealthy there.
I hope people realize that you can be a Microsoft Windows users and still use most, if not all, of the open-source software mentioned here. To me, the deal-breaker, the must-have, of the open-source software is GIMP. Unless you're a professional graphic artist employed by a company that is willing to buy the $600-a-pop Photoshop for you, GIMP is a perfect alternative. The Windows version of GIMP can be downloaded from http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html. It's a small 11 megabyte download; no reason not to try it.
I've never taken one single computer graphics class in my life and I've managed to learn how to use GIMP and created dozens of graphics for my blog at http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether Google plans to plunge into the web-based office suite or not, we don't know, but others have started to create web-based applications like Writely (word processing), Num Sum (spreadsheet), and Writeboard, and most of them use AJAX technology. This site called "The Unofficial Web Applications List" lists dozens of them.
Jason Calacanis is the owner of Weblog Inc. The man is $25 million richer today than yesterday, so give him some credit. Weblog Inc. network has 80 blogs, and it is sold for $25 million, so one blog is worth, roughly, $300,000. I'm happy to sell my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) for a lot less. Nevertheless, congrats to Jason, because he got into the game earlier and smarter than everybody else.
The latest versions of GIMP (the open-source graphics software) and Blogger (Google's blogging tool) are chock-full of improvements. I use both of them on a daily basis for my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/)
Bless you if you got the dough to purchase Photoshop, but GIMP, run on my Windows PC, works like magic. With its "Script-Fu" function you can create logos in literally seconds.
I use GIMP to create "faux" movie posters for my website (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/).
The lawsuit brought on by Authors Guild against Google is less about ignorance and more about paranoia.
Writers are not dumb, after all, most of them know full well they cannot get rich writing books. But for some odd reason, the folks who are on the board of Authors Guild have determined, rather erroneously, that having Google digitize their books is equivalent to giving away their books for free on p2p networks, like in the music business.
The unfortunate reality of the book publishing is this: books, especially fiction, are nowhere near as popular as other media like music and cinema. Last year, when the five finalists of the National Book Awards were announced, it was quickly revealed that only one of them sold more than 2,000 copies of her book. Sad, yes, but that is the reality -- people do not think buying books is a priority in their lives. This ambivalence of authors who want their books to sell and yet resist the help from new technology is beyond any satirical interpretation.
According to Wikipedia, the world population as of 6/2005 is 6.45 billion. The democratic nature of blogging indicates that it is possible some day every single person on earth will have at least one blog, so the blog counting is unlikely to stop until it reaches 6.45 billion, that is, if some day all nations become democratic.
The "relevance" and "importance" issues mentioned by the Wall Street Journal article miss the point -- blogging is all about democracy and free speech. The human desire to self-express is unstoppable.
The basic idea behind OQO is to fill the gap between laptop and PDA. MS came out with tablet pc, but the jury is still out on that one. I personally would like to see something like a "Mini Laptop" that has the following essential features:
#1 Rectangular landscape screen about 4" x 8" in size, with a keyboard about the same size so the Mini Laptop can be snapped shut into a compact case no bigger than a 6" x 9" 300-page hardcover book.
#2 Runs full Windows, or Apple, or Linux operation system.
#3 Priced under $1,000.
Then perhaps I'll consider buying one.
Here is the link to the court docket PDF file of "RIAA vs. Candy Chan": http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/chan.pd f
Steven Soderbergh's "3-pronged attack" is being watched closely by Hollywood. This Theater-Cable-DVD simultaneous release of a new movie to the public is actually one of the counter measures against privacy movie people have thought about but never really dared to try. So, give Mr. Soderbergh a chance, and maybe years down the line they might even use words like "pioneer" to describe him.
h tml).
"Bubble", shot for $1.6 million, may be a cheapo in Hollywood standard, but Soderbergh was serious enough to use the same high-definition camera George Lucas used for two "Star Wars" movies, as described in a New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/movies/22bubb.
These guys at Reporters Without Borders got guts -- on their website, they put the names and photos of the heads of states where there is no press freedom and call them "Predators of Press Freedom". Check it out at: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=1087
Blogging is the cheapest way to get some "head laundering". Why pay shrinks to talk about one's personal longings and anxieties? Simply register with a free blog account and pound your keyboard and your anxieties away.
My fellow Slashdotters ought to understand this sentiment -- as we crank out these comments, we are venting, and therefore undergoing some form of self-therapy, and it doesn't cost a dime. What bloggers do is very similar to what the commentators in this space do. I write about movies on one of my two blogs (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) and post news items on the other (http://sundroid.blogspot.com/), and the expensive shrinks of the world cry a little.
Let's say someone "illegally" downloaded 2,000 songs, but evidently he did not download 2,000 songs by the same artist, because no rocker is that talented yet. So, a rough but likely scenario is this: this person downloaded 5 songs by Metallica, 3 songs by Vanilla Ice, 6 songs by Britney Spears, and so on. With the value of each downloaded song being worth 99 cents, the financial tally sheet goes something like: this person owes Metallica 5 dollars, Vanilla Ice 3 dollars, Britney Spears 6 dollars, etc, you get the picture.
Here is the point: this person owes Metallica 5 dollars only if Metallica demands it; if Britney Spears decides not to ask for the 6 dollars she really does not need, then RIAA does not have a case as far as Mrs. Federline is concerned. We now know that many musicians are against RIAA's draconian way of suing the downloaders, but are afraid to voice their opinions for fear of offending their musician colleagues, I therefore suggest, as a legal tactic, that these single mothers publish their lists of "allegedly stolen" songs and publicly ask these artists if they want their 5, or 3, or 6 dollars paid to them. In other words, ignore RIAA, and go straight to the musicians, who, I'm almost positive, are more reasonable.
His rationale is that people who are accustomed to Photoshop user interfaces can learn GIMP faster this way. Having never seen or worked with Photoshop myself (yes, I am a rarity), I've had no problem learning how to use GIMP at all (evidence: see the graphics I've created for my website, Sun and Fun), so it is all novelty to me.
Apple sued Microsoft, the lawsuit was settled in 1997 when Microsoft agreed to buy $200 million of Apple's stocks (http://news.com.com/2100-1040-843145.html).
a nnounces+layoffs/2100-1014_3-5183848.html).
Sun Microsystems sued Microsoft, got a settlement in 2004 when Microsoft agreed to shell out $1.95 billion (http://news.com.com/Sun+settles+with+Microsoft,+
AOL sued Microsoft in 2002 alleging the latter crushed its Netscape, and now...well, you get the picture.
Blender (http://www.blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html) is totally free, as in open-source, no-strings-attached free.
3D Canvas (http://www.amabilis.com/products.htm) is a fun introductory 3d software for beginners.
Geeking out about technology is fine, but real creativity and bravery happen when you pick up a video camera and start shooting.
o dyssey-by-stanley-kubrick.html) on my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/), if anyone's interested.
I've just looked at "2001: a Space Odyssey", Kubrick's masterpiece, again recently, and although it was made in 1968--a time when these fancy computer-aided motion-picture tools were not available--the special effects still look spectacular. Yeah, 1968, when Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were both only 13 years old. Indeed, in "2001", you cannot spot a keyboard, a mouse, or a laptop, and guess what? A computer (HAL-9000) is one of the leading characters. I've written a re-review of "2001" (at http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/2005/09/2001-space-
This CNN article also says that the new IBM printer will lighten your wallet by $1 million dollars, although you can buy a "cheap starter" model for $500,000.
_ jets_pretty_big_how_big_is_yours.html) that says the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are buying a Boeing 767 jet for their personal transportation. Perhaps they can install this printer on board to print their own Google Library books.
There is a report at Silicon Beat (http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2005/09/09/my
"all the industry has to do is offer a legal means to get the content and people will swarm to it."
There is already a "legal means" offered by Hollywood, and it's called "syndication", which is how they put old, popular shows on Sunday afternoons and Weekday mornings at 2am, so the fans can set their Tivo timer and record them.
I may be harsh on Hollywood people for their greediness, but I'd never call them stupid, in fact many of them are quite smart. Hollywood has already looked at this model of putting TV shows and movies on the fat pipe, but they have ("wisely", I might add) concluded that the money to be made in that arena is minuscule and not worth the hassle of having to build another infrastructure around it. They figure DVD is working out, Netflix is working out, and that's good enough for them.
OurMedia (at www.ourmedia.org), still in Alpha, provides storage space for video and film makers to upload their digital contents that use, mostly, Creative Commons rights model.
Seems like you're interested in providing existing Hollywood TV and movie products. The question I throw it back at you is: why bother? Anyone who has watched one episode too many of those bad or mediocre TV shows and movies churned out by the industrial machine, at one time or another, must have thought that the home movies made by his cousin, as amateurish as they are, still beat those glossy images produced by a group of people who are in it for the money.
Speaking of money, you should know by now that TV and film producers hang on to their rights as if giving them away were akin to giving their manhood away. The notion that someone out there is thinking, "Jeez, I can't watch enough of those shows on WB network, and darn it, where can I pay to download them online?" is, you know, counterintuitive.
Download.com (http://download.com/) has improved a lot, most significantly its pledge that none of the software on its site have spyware or adware. Download.com is operated by C/NET.
Their editors' rating is fairly reliable, if not, the users' comments usually set them straight.
On Slashdot, companies and individuals are being flamed and defamed every day, but Slashdot will always survive because people generally recognize the First Amendment free-speech protection reality. Out there in the business world, there are other realities to deal with -- trade secrets and trade wars. Apple sued some guy because he posted Apple's "secret sauce" on his site, but the guy is a big fan of Apple. This case mentioned in Wall Street Journal is different -- the two entities involved are competitors and hate each other, so basically, it's more in the territory of business rivalry than free-speech issue.
Just the other day, some prominent blog site published the pay scale of bloggers working for another prominent blog franchise, and I thought lawyers' phones would be ringing off the hook. People keep saying bloggers are irrelevant, the blogosphere is dull, well, my guess is that a movie titled "Blog Wars", starring Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields, could become a reality sooner than all of us think.
Over at Yahoo, they are offering a $5/month unlimited music download deal, so some people have come to a rather astute conclusion that illegal music downloaders owe RIAA no more than $5 a month.
In this fine New York Times article, it is revealed that Hollywood's real enemies are organized criminals who are able to spend up to a million dollars to buy DVD duplication machines in order to mass produce those pirated DVDs. Many Hollywood people, unlike the clueless RIAA crowd, know that college kids in their dorms downloading movies on BitTorrent are NOT their enemies, but there is an impatient bunch who are eager to put them in the same category as those career criminals.
Downloading movies is not the same as downloading music -- whereas somebody could download thousands of songs, but it is technically much more difficult to download "thousands" of movies. I know some college kids have time to kill, but come on, not that much time. Now let's do some calculation. Let's say some guy downloads movies illegally every day and gets caught by the "Download Police", what should his punishment be? I say he owes Hollywood no more than $17.99 a month for the duration of his "criminal downloading career", because that's how much Netflix charges per month for unlimited DVD movie rentals.
Lulu.com is founded by Robert Young, a co-founder of Red Hat, the famed Linux distributor. Lulu publishes books, images, music, etc. They use on-demand technology, and the creators own all the rights.
I've never tried their music publishing side of the business, but I have a novel published through them (http://www.lulu.com/content/138218). Lulu's technology of fulfilling customers' orders is topnotch, as good as Amazon.com. If you order a product from them, they inform you every step of the way -- when the book (or CD) is produced, when it will be shipped, when it will arrive at your doorstep, etc.
Reality check: you're not going to get rich by self-publishing, but it's a start, and starting online is a sound strategy, because there is a whole generation of people growing up being comfortable with buying things online.
I used to have Scolbe's and Doc Searls's blogs in my Bookmarks, but I haven't had them for months, because after a while, I just got tired of hearing the same tunes and the same philosophies. New bloggers are coming out every day with refreshing and unique angles of their own, and if they're good, the fans of Scolbe and Doc Searls will discover them and switch their loyalty in a Bookmark second.
This is nothing new. It happens to every medium. Like TV, for instance, at one point, people just got tired of "Seinfeld", or "Friends", so the shows got canceled, then the new Thursday-night lineups were announced, and life continued. It's called "evolution", and it's healthy.
Also, I think the term "geek blogger" is a bit oxymoronic, because a blogger IS a geek. The notion that somebody out there with the looks of Angelina Jolie is blogging away merrily is... Well, keep fantasizing. I maintain a blog (at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) for personal enjoyment, and I assume the thousands of people who sign up for new accounts every day are doing it with similar intent -- nothing unhealthy there.
I hope people realize that you can be a Microsoft Windows users and still use most, if not all, of the open-source software mentioned here. To me, the deal-breaker, the must-have, of the open-source software is GIMP. Unless you're a professional graphic artist employed by a company that is willing to buy the $600-a-pop Photoshop for you, GIMP is a perfect alternative. The Windows version of GIMP can be downloaded from http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html. It's a small 11 megabyte download; no reason not to try it.
I've never taken one single computer graphics class in my life and I've managed to learn how to use GIMP and created dozens of graphics for my blog at http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/.