Comment Re:no user-replaceable parts (Score 1) 914
Yes exactly, they're a weird 'pentalobe' screw. You *can* buy screwdrivers for them obviously, but they're rare and expensive.
Comment Re:Agreed (Score 5, Informative) 136
They look pretty similar to the Virgin boxes that the residents seem to be fine about. Maybe a bit taller.
BT Infinity is made of fail anyway. It's expensive, slow and capped to hell. Rather than do real fibre to the premises they decided to roll out last century's technology.
BT Infinity is great, and pretty much the best choice for internet access in the UK, just as long as you don't get it from BT... Plenty of other providers which resell the same FTTC service but without the crappy throttling/shaping. I'm with Zen and get 60down/20up solidly, couldn't be happier to be honest.
Comment Re:Air taggs along. (Score 5, Informative) 201
Though it's not linked anywhere, cut-down installs of Adobe Reader can always be obtained from http://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/enterprise/
Comment North Korea? (Score 3, Informative) 75
As far as I'm aware, North Korea's internet is not filtered in any way, shape or form. It's simply that only the high-ranking military elite are allowed to access it...
Submission + - Blender 2.49 Scripting - Book Review
terrywallwork writes: Michel Anders — Blender 2.49 Scripting — eBook
A few days ago I received an email from Packt Publishing informing me of their new Blender 2.49 Scripting book. I was very interested in reading this book as there are very few Blender books that cover the scripting aspect of Blender 2.49 and Python. So I navigated my way to the packt publishing website and ordered myself the ebook version. They were having a special at the time and I ended up getting a full color ebook for less than £9. If nothing else the price is extremely impressive.
* Product Specifications:
* Name : Blender 2.49 Scripting
* Price : £16.99 (on 11th April 2010)
* Pages : 292 (roughly)
* Format : eBook
The author is Michel Anders, known as varkenvarken on Blender Artists forum. He is an extremely talented Blender Python scripter and has written many very useful scripts for Blender. Knowing who is behind this book explains a lot about the way this books is constructed.
The teaching approach taken, is to present a series of tasks that need to be achieved and then present sections of scripts that demonstrate the most important concepts and Blender Python code, to allow the tasks to be carried out.
At the beginning of the book a basic explanation of some of the terms and concepts are gone over and a few very simple Blender python commands are demonstrated to do the equivalent of a Blender Hello World script. This beginning part of the book is the only part that really can be classed as beginner level, everything after this has a much steeper learning curve.
Many of the scripts written by Michel are very technically advanced scripts, the same also holds true for this book. Most of the scripts and techniques described within require a very good level of understanding. I debated with myself as to weather it is an Intermediate/Advanced level book, but one thing is certain, if you are a beginning Blender user and your Python knowledge is beginner level, you will struggle to get much from Michel's latest work. I think that to get anything out of this material a very good understanding of Python, Blender and Mathematics (especially vector math and 3D related mathematics) will be required.
Assuming you have the requisite knowledge all the bases of using Blender through Python scripting are covered, for example, setting up materials, ipo manipulation, texture setting, texture nodes and so on. But again very simple things are not covered. To me it seems that it is assumed that you will just read the Blender Python API docs for the very simple things such as how to do rotations and scaling on objects, deleting and adding vertices, etc. You will have to be prepared to get a lot of information from the scripts supplied rather than be spoon fed information.
So if you are very knowledgeable with Blender and Python you will likely find that this book is very handy as it covers ways of scripting and leveraging Blender Python scripting to do some very clever things. I do think it would have been very helpful to have a less steep learning curve but that's a matter of my personal taste.
I am not a Python expert and so this has probably affected my ability to properly appreciate this book, that said I can see that a lot of time and effort has gone into putting this book together, especially given thw fact the Python scripting books for Blender are so few and far between.
It probably hasn't escape most Blender users notice that Blender 2.5 is now currently in Alpha state and it uses completely different scripting model, so stuff learned in this book unfortunately won't transfer to Blender 2.5, as it uses Python 3 and has a completely different API structure.
This book would of been much more relevant if it have been released a year or 2 earlier. Still if you're used Blender 2.49 and need an advanced Blender scripting book, you now have one to read.
I really hope Michel does a Blender 2.6 version when it comes out, and maybe makes it slightly more targeted at beginners and experts, so my head doesn't hurt quite so much.
Excluding the fact that I am not smart enough to fully get this book, excellent work Michel.
Review Score 75%
A few days ago I received an email from Packt Publishing informing me of their new Blender 2.49 Scripting book. I was very interested in reading this book as there are very few Blender books that cover the scripting aspect of Blender 2.49 and Python. So I navigated my way to the packt publishing website and ordered myself the ebook version. They were having a special at the time and I ended up getting a full color ebook for less than £9. If nothing else the price is extremely impressive.
* Product Specifications:
* Name : Blender 2.49 Scripting
* Price : £16.99 (on 11th April 2010)
* Pages : 292 (roughly)
* Format : eBook
The author is Michel Anders, known as varkenvarken on Blender Artists forum. He is an extremely talented Blender Python scripter and has written many very useful scripts for Blender. Knowing who is behind this book explains a lot about the way this books is constructed.
The teaching approach taken, is to present a series of tasks that need to be achieved and then present sections of scripts that demonstrate the most important concepts and Blender Python code, to allow the tasks to be carried out.
At the beginning of the book a basic explanation of some of the terms and concepts are gone over and a few very simple Blender python commands are demonstrated to do the equivalent of a Blender Hello World script. This beginning part of the book is the only part that really can be classed as beginner level, everything after this has a much steeper learning curve.
Many of the scripts written by Michel are very technically advanced scripts, the same also holds true for this book. Most of the scripts and techniques described within require a very good level of understanding. I debated with myself as to weather it is an Intermediate/Advanced level book, but one thing is certain, if you are a beginning Blender user and your Python knowledge is beginner level, you will struggle to get much from Michel's latest work. I think that to get anything out of this material a very good understanding of Python, Blender and Mathematics (especially vector math and 3D related mathematics) will be required.
Assuming you have the requisite knowledge all the bases of using Blender through Python scripting are covered, for example, setting up materials, ipo manipulation, texture setting, texture nodes and so on. But again very simple things are not covered. To me it seems that it is assumed that you will just read the Blender Python API docs for the very simple things such as how to do rotations and scaling on objects, deleting and adding vertices, etc. You will have to be prepared to get a lot of information from the scripts supplied rather than be spoon fed information.
So if you are very knowledgeable with Blender and Python you will likely find that this book is very handy as it covers ways of scripting and leveraging Blender Python scripting to do some very clever things. I do think it would have been very helpful to have a less steep learning curve but that's a matter of my personal taste.
I am not a Python expert and so this has probably affected my ability to properly appreciate this book, that said I can see that a lot of time and effort has gone into putting this book together, especially given thw fact the Python scripting books for Blender are so few and far between.
It probably hasn't escape most Blender users notice that Blender 2.5 is now currently in Alpha state and it uses completely different scripting model, so stuff learned in this book unfortunately won't transfer to Blender 2.5, as it uses Python 3 and has a completely different API structure.
This book would of been much more relevant if it have been released a year or 2 earlier. Still if you're used Blender 2.49 and need an advanced Blender scripting book, you now have one to read.
I really hope Michel does a Blender 2.6 version when it comes out, and maybe makes it slightly more targeted at beginners and experts, so my head doesn't hurt quite so much.
Excluding the fact that I am not smart enough to fully get this book, excellent work Michel.
Review Score 75%
Exam Board Deletes C and PHP From CompSci A-Levels 663
VitaminB52 writes "A-level computer science students will no longer be taught C, C#, or PHP from next year following a decision to withdraw the languages by the largest UK exam board. Schools teaching the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance's (AQA) COMP1 syllabus have been asked to use one of its other approved languages — Java, Pascal/Delphi, Python 2.6, Python 3.1, Visual Basic 6, and VB.Net 2008. Pascal/Delphi is 'highly recommended' by the exam board because it is stable and was designed to teach programming and problem-solving."
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It was pity stayed his hand. "Pity I don't have any more bullets," thought Frito. -- _Bored_of_the_Rings_, a Harvard Lampoon parody of Tolkein
