celtx is a collaborative system for script management, including publishing capabilities with privacy guard, production breakdown, storyboarding, and report generation.

celtx is simple, easy to use software designed for people who work in Film, TV, Theater and New Media. It enables you to work digitally on script based projects, either on your own or collaboratively with project team members.

Internet Intelligence. celtx is specifically designed for the Internet. celtx runs "inside" a web browser using the Mozilla Application Framework to create a web intelligent, collaborative environment. celtx application components are based on modules that are Internet aware. This means celtx can easily integrate with existing Web technologies and is highly adaptable to new ones.

Off-line Access. celtx works off-line. It is built from web browser technology but it runs as a "stand-alone" application. celtx data is stored on the user's own computer. When off-line, users can access and update their project information locally. They can then share this information later when they are online.

Platform Independence. celtx runs equally well on Mac, Windows and Linux (and other) machines. The Internet is comprised of many different Operating Systems. celtx creates a collaborative environment where users can freely exchange information regardless of the OS. The Mozilla Application Framework acts as an interpretative layer between each machine's OS and the application.

Download celtx now!

I just did, and have been messing around with it for the last hour. It's a quality product which has had a lot of thought put into it. Take a look at the 3 minute walk-thru if you have any doubts.

I'm finally connected via a broardband connection here in my little town in Hokkaido. Horay!!!

Just for a small test I downloaded the 4 iso images for Fedora Core 3. Ended up taking about 45mins all up, but there were a few 421 errors in there, so I had to jump a few mirrors. Not bad at all, and a hell of a lot better than what I previously had.

Now it's time to start planning the move of all my hosted sites to a boxen in my home office. First off I gotta check the reliability of this connection...and work out what infrastructure my ISP is using, so I know who I'm dealing with. And I'll have to make a trip to Sapporo and hit the computers shops for some new hardware =)

But as for right now I'm in a I-want-to-download-everything-I-haven't-been-able-to-download mood. I suppose that's a good a test as any...suck up a bit of bandwidth and see how/if the ISP reacts. I'm on an unlimited plan, so hopefully there'll be no reaction.

P2P technology has been on the hitlist of big business since Napster started up. It's usually hyped in the media in a negative way - pirates, thieves, crooks, etc. And it made to look like developers and users of P2P applications are taking something away from the everyone else. Of course it's FUD that driving all this, and should be dismissed as fast as a junkie in King Cross asking for $2 to catch a bus home, because you can smell that somethings not right.

Recently people have been trying to ban P2P technology in the US, and in it's present state of being scared of everything and anything, there's a small chance that it just may happen. This makes projects that are based around making P2P technology available to developers all the more important and valuable in this day and age.

pdtp.org is such a project.

The Peer Distributed Transfer Protocol (PDTP) provides a method of transferring files using peers to aid in distribution of content, similar to BitTorrent. PDTP servers export a dynamically changing directory hierarchy, making it somewhat more like HTTP or FTP, and support a number of other features such as metadata rich directory listings and support for file integrity validation through the use of DSS signatures, and large networks designed to replace FTP mirroring. For more information, please see the FAQ.

It sounds like a nice idea, but it's important to note that it might not be suited for everyone. Check out the FAQ and Network Illustrations for more information.

It's only in the early stages, but Edo looks to have a lot of potential. Developed by Pauli Ojala in Finland, it's well worth checking out if you have compositing requirements.

Edo is a high-performance and high-quality image compositing application designed for maximum flexibility. Edo lets you combine and manipulate video files, 3D sequences and still images in a non-destructive way using a powerful node graph visual interface. The use of modern video card graphics processors (GPUs) enables true realtime performance, and support for industry standard file formats helps integrate Edo into many kinds of workflow.

At the heart of Edo is the composition tree, a graph that offers a unified view of all the operations that result in the final image. Operations are represented by nodes with inputs, outputs and parameters. Each node takes data from its input ports, processes it in some way and outputs the new data from its output ports. A simple mouse drag is enough to create or modify connections between nodes.

The node graph makes the compositing process more transparent and more easily modified. The entire process is visible at once, making it easy to insert or modify operations at any stage. You can also preserve an unlimited number of variations and alternative versions as separate "branches".

Although images are the kind of data that you're most likely to use in Edo, there are other useful data types that can also be processed in an Edo composition tree: scalar values (plain old numbers), drawings (resolution-independent video card drawing operations), and geometry (2D shapes or 3D polygon meshes). For example, you could use a scalar value obtained from audio data to drive the opacity parameter of an image processing node.

Because 3D operations are integrated directly into Edo's node graph architecture, you can animate an image in three-dimensional space by simply dragging a new 3D Layer node into your composition. 3D calculations take full advantage of your video card's 3D acceleration features, so nodes can perform very complex operations and still run in real-time.

There's often parts in your video material that you don't want to include in your composition. Edo lets you trim and time-stretch the clips within the composition (tip - use Ctrl- or Alt-click on the timeline in the Source node inspector to easily set In and Out times for the clip).

If you're familiar with Photoshop or After Effects, you'll probably appreciate that Edo offers many of the same blending modes (multiply, screen, overlay, soft light, etc.) and they produce the results you'd expect. In some respects Edo also goes beyond: for example, the Scale node offers the choice of high-quality Mitchell-Netravali and Lanczos algorithms that produce noticeably sharper results than bilinear and bicubic scaling.

If you're interested you may want to check out the feature list and then download it. Oh...it's OSX only =)

What I thought was going to be a DSL installation turned out to be a Cable installation. After stopping by a few weeks ago to measure the length of the of the wire required to go from my phone-jack to the street, today the workmen returned to install the cable and a media converter.

Due to the lack of information I was previously told it was going to be DSL, but recently I've discovered it's going to be a optical fibre connection. This is ok by me because I don't really have a preference, and so long as it's faster and cheaper than my current connection, I'm all smiles. And it's both. Presently my AirH connection is 128K [on a good day] and costs me about $100US per month for unlimited download. The new cable is going to be 100Mbit and is only going to cost $58US per month for unlimited download. Horay!!!

The installation wasn't the final word though. Although there is a media converter mounted on the wall, I still have to wait before I can start using it. Someone will stop by in about 2 weeks and test the connection. After that it should be ready for me to plug my router into and go for it.

At present the ISP is not allocating static IP addresses, which is a bummer 'cause I wanted to start hosting my own server from here. At a local town meeting regarding the cable connection it was stated that static IP addresses may be available in the near future, but it would cost about $200US per month for this service. This is a bit of an outlay for me, so I'm going to be investigating some alternatives.

No-IP looks like a good place to start. And there's always good old DynDNS which I used a few years ago when living in the US. I've got a little Netgear Wireless Router which will automatically send updates to DynDNS, so that might be the go if I can use one of my own domain names. I'll post the details when I sort it out.

Fedora Core 1 has been moved to the Fedora Legacy Project. Sounds kind of bad when you first read that, but once you see what the legacy project is all about, it's not so bad.

The Fedora Legacy Project is a community-supported open source project. It is not a supported project of Red Hat, Inc. although Red Hat, Inc. does provide some support services for it. The goal of The Fedora Legacy Project is to work with the Linux community to provide security and critical bug fix errata packages for select End of Life Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core distributions. This will allow for a longer effective life for those releases. To learn more please refer to the About page and the FAQs.

It's quite easy when using Linux to get into the habit of upgrading to new version as soon as you can download them. In my case, this has usually been the case with my Linux workstation, but with the servers [and all the important data stored within] it's a bit of a chore, and not really advised when you don't know how stable the newer versions are.

At present, all the websites I administer are running off a Fedora Core 1 box, and the applications I've recently developed for clients are also running FC1, so my LAMP develolpment server is matched to this environment. It's going to be a costly exercise, both in time and money, to upgrade everything. For some projects, especially intranet applications, it's not such a priority, but if you have an app exposed to the Internet, it's best to keep up with the latest versions for security reasons.

It's comforting to know that the Fedora Legacy Project will keep people up to date with security patches and bug fixes. Thanks people.

While I'm on the Fedora tip, did FC2 just come and go like lighting, or have I got some sort of time destortion problem?

As mentioned here on /. and here on Wired, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will start providing weather data in an XML format. This is a good move from a publically funded organization and it would be good if similar practices are adopted by all countries so we can all share in the data =)

The Experimental National Digital Forecast Database XML Web Service is probably a good place to start if you're keen on taking advantage of the data.

There's even RSS feeds of weather alerts - interesting to see they have adopted RSS 2.0 as the standard. It's also available in CAP/XML.

Common Alertings Protocol (CAP) is an non-proprietary standard data format for the interchange of hazard warning and reports. More information on CAP can be found at the CAP information: The CAP: What, Why and How

And NOAA has some crazy ass satellites.

I'm a big fan of mini-ITX motherboards for general computing purposes. I've had one as a development server for about 2 years now. It's quiet, small and the 800MHz CPU crunches numbers just fine. As a LAMP development server on an LAN, you can't go past one, especially in a SOHO environment. And they're starting to become big in the 'media center' space.

Early next year VIA will be releasing the first model of it Nano-ITX range, which is a 12cm X 12cm motherboard with most of the features of the mini-ITX boards. Google is full to the brim of pages that all combined have about 6 unique images of the little MB, so unfortunately there's not much visual detail at the moment, but the rest of the available information sounds good.

Measuring a mere 12cm x 12cm and combining the highly efficient VIA Eden-N processor and VIA CN400 digital media chipset, the VIA EPIA N-Series Nano-ITX mainboard provides an unequalled visual experience for smart digital media and mobile entertainment devices. The Chromotion CE Video Display Engine in the VIA CN400's UniChrome Pro IGP graphics core, provides unmatched support for intelligent video rendering techniques and flawless MPEG-4/2 digital video playback on all display types from CRT and LCD screens to standard definition TVs and HDTVs. The VIA EPIA N features a robust shared memory architecture and support for up to 1GB of DDR400/333/266 memory with the acclaimed FastStream64™ memory controller, and a high speed Ultra V-Link interface for a 1GB/s connection to VIA's feature-leading South Bridge options.

Incorporating the VIA Eden-N processor's PadLock Security Suite, the VIA EPIA N-Series Nano-ITX mainboard provides high quality entropy from two PadLock Random Number Generators (RNGs) and market leading AES encryption rates through the PadLock Advanced Cryptography Engine (ACE). Additionally, the VIA Eden-N processor employs PowerSaver 3.0 power management technology to help extend battery life for mobile devices based on the VIA EPIA N-Series Nano-ITX mainboard.

Through the onboard VIA VT8237 South Bridge, the VIA EPIA N offers a comprehensive range of integrated storage, multimedia and connectivity options, including Serial ATA, UltraDMA IDE, USB 2.0, onboard LAN and V-RAID, with support for multiple RAID configurations. The board also includes support for VIA Vinyl Six-TRAC 6-channel audio through 3 audio jacks in the I/O panel. The VIA EPIA N-Series also offers support for a growing number of LVDS embedded LCD panels and has a Mini-PCI slot for expandability.

Apart from a development server, I could use a home-made SAN, or maybe a quite desktop cluster. I hope the price, when it's released, matches their size.