This neat little graphic above is a feed icon. Usually it’s orange, but I like mine in purple. Now, that we got that right, I’ll explain what a feed is, why it is useful and how you can take advantage of it. News-feeds are generated by a lot of websites. It makes reading news or keeping track of blog-posts very easy. You install a feed-reader or use an online feed collection service and lift off. Whenever you see this icon: (here again, my favourite one is: ), you know: Oh! There must be a news-feed here that I can subscribe to, so I wont have to keep in mind, to enter this website again to check if there are new information! The most common feed formats are atom and RSS. If you feel like you want to know more about them, I linked the wikipedia articles on them. I for example am a reader of several news sites, the German greenpeace website and some blogs. So if you find this blog interesting and maybe like to read news (If you don’t you should start in my opinion) you should get a feed-reader and start feeding it

Recommended feed-readers are:

• Mozilla Thunderbird can handle feeds too
• Newsfox, a Mozilla Firefox Extension
• Sage, a Mozilla Firefox Extension
• LiFeRea (Linux, GTK based)
• Akregator (Linux, QT based)
• Netvibes.com (web based)

This reminds me a lot of the mob torturing the defenseless victim, a lot like it is these days. Think of it when you outnumber someone, think of how it would be if that would be you. Of course these insects are just “doing their job”. It’s not fun for them, it’s work. Their duty to keep their people alife.

I was out taking a walk with my aunt the other day and we passed a big anthill. I decided to make some shots of these little fellas. Suddenly my aunt said:”Look, they’re carrying something over there.” It was a grub, being carried away for feeding purposes.

Gobby is a multi user text editor for Windows and Linux. It works with a server/client principe. (One user opens a server, other users join as clients. There is a dedicated version too.) Gobby allows you to edit a document with more users at once. This can be used for many things like writings essays, group-work for school and studies or coding work. The last part is the best one in my opinion. It’s great to code a bit with your friends and develop programs together.

Links:

• gobby website
• download gobby

Santa Croce 588 is another comic done by Mei-ing Nieuwland aka ming85 on deviantART. Once more a world, not reachable for humans, but located in our reality, is the background of the story. It takes place in the beautiful city Venice. Ming even added some pages that explain by what she got inspired and other background information. But now let the fight between good and evil begin

Links:

• read Santa Croce 588 on deviantART
• Santa Croce 588 for sale here
• mingming.nl

Inkscape is a standard conform vector graphic editor. It has basic functions and is a very good tool for illustration. It’s not as advanced as Illustrator or Freehand, but you can create some very good pictures with it. Examples from my gallery: devotion, powerstation, both created with Inkscape.

Links:

• inkscape.org