The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is currently the fastest, most powerful, and most expensive street-legal full production car in the world, with a proven top speed of 407.5 km/h (253 mph), though several faster or more expensive vehicles have been produced on a limited basis.

Veyron going 253mph:

Veyron vs. Mercedes SLR McLaren – No contest….

I dig Ferrari’s, Lamborghini’s and all those other supercars, but 253mph, makes the 140 I did in my Vette look like I’m on a moped. What are your favorite cars and why?

Home Run Pinball puts you in Times Square. Your mission is to cause as much damage as possible by hitting balls off of the taxi’s, neon signs and those huge ‘jumbotron’ televisions. There are extra bonuses for hitting out all the letters of the ‘Hotel’ sign, and when you are fully powered up, you can take out the new year’s eve ball. This is a challenge, but fun to play, as you only get 3 strikes, and the game is done.

In Home Run Derby, you take on another player in a home run hitting contest. This is a pretty basic game, is played in a stadium setting, with the first to hit 10 out of the park winning the contest. You also have the option to play against someone online.

In the Rookie Challenge, hitting and pitching are pretty straight-forward. Push the button and release, but good timing is essential. Also, running full bore from third to home just to obliterate the catcher is pretty fun and vice a versa.

I do have one big complaint, though, and its the horrendous outfield controls. The defensive AI is so good its ridiculous. They can perform home run robbing wall climbs with ease (like 5 in one 5 inning game), yet damned if I can pull ANY off.

I seem to be having trouble just getting the correct guys to go to the ball. Controlling outfielders just makes you look like the three stooges playing ball. This gets very frustrating, and I often find myself yelling at the players – “Pick up the ball!!” Anyone else playing “The Bigs”, and having the same problems?

All in all this is a pretty fun game, and from a non-sports guy like myself, I was pretty surprised. While there aren’t any true baseball sim sections such as stat tracking and manager type options, this is an arcade style game, even big sim fans should be able to have fun with it.

For Kubrick fans:

Enjoy!

Well, I caught it. The prize for catching it was that you kept it and took it home. My Mom wasn’t too happy about that. Especially when, on the way home, it pecked my older sister on the face. She was freakin out. I thought it was funny. Good times.

Luckily my grandparents lived on an acre, in Vegas, and kept chickens. So it became part of the flock in my grandpa’s chicken coop.

Here’s to hoping you have good memories of the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, and here’s a pretty good collage of presidents “singing” the Star Spangled Banner to start it off.

Photoshop

Gimp is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software for computers that run Windows.
Pixel is a RGB, CMYK and HDR image editing, photo retouching, graphics manipulating and animation program available for many operating systems.
PaintShop Pro You can do it all with Paint Shop Pro! Photography, graphics, art, and productivity all in one easy-to-use, affordable program!

Illustrator

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

InDesign

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout

Web Design

Programmers NotePad the free, open source, text editor with special features for coders.
Kompozer is a wysiwyg HTML editor (Nvu/Composer fork) aimed towards advanced users.
Notepad ++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.
Coda is “one window web development” for Mac
Stylemaster From beginner to expert, Style Master will make working with CSS more efficient, more productive, and more enjoyable.
Quantas Plus is a highly stable and feature rich web development environment.
HTML Kit is a full-featured free editor for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other text file types.
tlbox the best tools on the web

Resources

CSS

Cheat Sheets – XHTML, CSS, PHP, RUBY…etc One of the best links here!
W3C’s Starting with HTML + CSS Tutorial
W3C Web Style Sheets CSS Tips & Tricks
Architecting CSS
CSS Organization Tip
Veerle’s Blog – CSS
100 Freebie CSS Resources
71 CSS menus for Free
53 CSS Based Navigation Menus
70 Expert Ideas for Better CSS Coding
CSS Forms
CSS Based Forms
CSS Graphs
40 CSS Layouts
Listamatic-one list, many options
53 CSS Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

Grids

Yahoo Grids CSS
Designing With Grids
Five Simple Steps to Designing Grid Systems
Grid based design
Grid Computing and Design
Thinking Outside the Grid
Design By Grid
Grid Systems in Web Design

Spam

Javascript No-Spam email link
Protect Your Email Address From Spam Bots
Email address link

Photoshop

Photoshop Resources
Planet Photoshop Resources
Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop Tutorials & Lessons
Free Photoshop Brushes
Kuler Colors – Adobe gets its scheme on

I was out of town this weekend and needed a rental car. I just couldn’t pass this up. Now, I’m not much of a Mustang fan, my parents have the GT, but I prefer the smoother ride, and the faster get up and go of my Vette over the GT. I punch the pedal, and I am moving.

This is exactly how the Shelby responds. It has a wicked growl, and only get deeper as you put the pedal down. I highly recommend it. My brother and I drove it on the freeways of Southern California, so if you saw a gold and black blur racing down the 10, 605, 405, 91 or 22 freeways (yeah, we were all over)….I plead temporary insanity, cause this car just wills you to go all out. You have been warned.

• ENGINE 4.6-liter V-8
• TRANSMISSION 5-speed automatic
• POWER 325 hp
• TORQUE 330 lb-ft
• 0-60 MPH 5.1 seconds
• TOP SPEED 147 mph (electronically limited)

By the way, my brother, Jer, is a madman in this thing. I don’t think he will be borrowing the Vette again any time soon. I know its just a rental, but damn, he was a man on a mission. He just had to hit 130 before we returned it. I suppose it was a good thing I didn’t tell him the top speed was 147 mph! He would have tried for that. 130 mph on the 10 fwy is not a good idea.