Several months ago I started a DIY projector project. I had the idea of stripping an LCD and placing it on an OHP and building an enclosure for the screen out of good old cardboard.

Well that project was also built several months ago but never truly finished. The trouble was that I bought a 250w projector. A 250w projector is not bright enough for the screen size I required (6 foot) but will work rather well at 50". Because of this the projector has had little use.

Today I bought a 400w OHP from eBay which should be arriving within the week. This time around the project will finally be finished properly and hopefully it will have that extra bit of brightness required though it's a bit of a gamble at £70.

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If you don't know what Project Looking Glass is your either a Windows user or a Linux User who doesn't read too much

Project Looking Glass is a new 3D desktop environment being developed by Sun. It aims to bring inovation to the desktop without the confines of 2D. The project is open source and runs on Linux, Bearning in mind that this desktop environment is far from complete, a few weeks ago I set it up on my Linux box to give it a go so this post is a bit late coming sorry.

My first impressions were that it doesn't do a lot, it did less that I expected it too considering it's stable release is 0.61 at the time of writing. At first it seems like little more than a fancy looking desktop but you need to spend some time in it to learn what it can do as it's not very obvious. My favorite feature is the way windows can be shoved to the side of the screen and angled inwards. The DE also supports transparency and makes good use of it. If one was to have to windows open with one behind the other the one in the foreground would be solid until the mouse is moved off it, then it becomes transparent and you can see whatever's beneeth. Project Looking Glass also has an innovative way of using 3D looking desktops. The desktops are infact not 3D but rather a layer of images that float over each other to give the effect of 3D, if you think back to old Mario platform games where the background scenery passes much slower than the foreground this is the same effect.

There's no doubt Project Looking Glass has many cool looking features but what is the overall usefulness of them? Are they just eye candy or do they serve a purpose? I'm not so conviced they are usefull as I didn't see anything I can't do in a normal 2D DE. Of course it's early days and so I'll have to wait and see but I'll remain fairly sceptical about the use of the 3D DE for now.


More screenshots are available from my Project Looking Glass gallery.

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I bought a Nintendo DS on Saturday, being the keen follower of Nintendo that I am. It came with Rayman DS and Asphalt (some racing game). Overall both games are pretty decent. I had never played Rayman before but this game is very good, the levels are challenging and varied and the sounds fit in well. Asphalt is an "okay" game. I wouldn't say it was anything special but its fun none the less. Tracks feel a little too generic and boring for me. I like to have a choice of routes

The DS is quite a decent hand-held. The graphics are comparable with a PS1 which is quite a disappointment as I expected them to be at the standard of an N64. My main reason for buying a DS was for the upcoming Zelda titles. There are non that I have heard of yet but given that Nintendo have never produced a popular console that doesn't have Zelda I think it's a pretty safe bet. If it wasn't for Zelda I do wonder if I would buy Nintendo products. I'm no big fan of the PS mainly because the only games worth playing on it are available (usually in better quality with easier controls) on my PC however the idea of portable GTA:SA is very temping indeed but again this is going to be a game I shall own on my PC so would I buy it twice? Nope. With Nintendo I only buy games that aren't available for PC (with the exception of Beyond Good & Evil which I bought without realising there was a PC version ).

I still think Nintendo are capable of capturing the essence of a console game rather than sticking a PC game on a console

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The Government's lead agency for ICT in schools has suggested that schools "seriously consider" moving to open source software.

Primary schools using OSS have halved their costs. Secondary schools can cut up to 24% of their costs. Support costs were cut by around 50 to 60 percent.

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Wednesday was the first time I have been to a LUG. I had considered going to one before but never really did anything about it until I was invited along.

A LUG is basically a group discussing GNU/Linux and other computer related things, some have a formal style, some informal. This one was certainly informal and was a great laugh Discussions seemed to range from mail server's to bog roll stalactites .

The only downside is the distance, it's around eight miles from me and catching a bus that far is a pain and as soon as I get in from work I have to leave again which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't work three miles from where the LUG meets . Still it's worth the effort travelling there

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