Casino Royale is a very entertaining movie. I like the new Bond, Daniel Craig. He’s got two first names which people will find easy to forget. I did initially. Finally, a Bond with some muscle and grit. This new Bond has blond hair unlike the rest. I like the opening scene, the chase in the construction area. It reminded me of Planet of the Apes. It’s a super human trying to escape from the grasp of Agent 007. What was he thinking? How could he escape? Of course, 007 got the best of him. The rest of the movie was good and entertaining. Just like the rest of the Bond series, it has beautiful women, exotic cars, bad guys and girls and of course, you can’t have a Bond movie without gadgets. From what I know, Casino Royale is the first book in Ian Fleming’s novel series. One thing I would have liked seen in this movie is if they showed how James Bond got started in the world of espionage. Other than that. I give it 4 out of 5 sweating bullets.
Archives for December 2006
VoIP
VoIP stands for voice over IP or internet-based phones. There are currently 8.2 million subscribers in the US which doubled over a year ago. Vonage Holdings Corporation has the biggest number of subscribers with 1.95 million followed by Time Warner and Comcast. It may be worth looking into investing in these companies as more and more people switch over from traditional phone services to VoIP. Here’s some additional financial information.
Turning Text Into Graphics
How do you turn text into graphics? Easy. I’m using a small PHP script which converts any text into a graphic image. This article goes through the step-by-step process on how to turn your titles into graphic images in your WordPress Themes or on any HTML page that you like.
All you need is this neat and powerful little file called titles.php created by Patrick Stuart.
1. Before we get started, let’s test the script by cutting and pasting the following URL to your browser.
http://ulyssesonline.com/files/titles.php?letters=Hello World |
Awesome, it works. This script passes the text “Hello World” to the titles script via the browser. As you may have noticed, by default, we are using the Boston True Type Font.
2. Now, let’s try the simple PHP script. Download the titles.php and the Boston files and place both files on your web server. Assuming the file is in the root directory, you can call the PHP file using this HTML code:
<img src=”titles.php?letters=Hello Universe”/> |
3. Cool. How about using other fonts? Well, you can use hundreds of fonts that are freely available at webpublicity.com. Just download the fonts. For simplicity sake, rename the files in small caps without any spaces. Upload the fonts to your directory, then edit the titles.php file to reflect the new font. The sample code shows the Parisian True Type Font is now the default.
$font = './parisian.ttf'; |
4. To change font size, text margin, angle, color, background color, shadows, etc. just edit titles.php and change the following variables. Save and refresh the page.
$txt_size = 24; // Size of Text $x_margin = 5; // Set Margin of x of text $y_margin = 10; // Set Margin of y of text $txt_angle = 0; // Angle of Text $shdw_angle = 0; // Angle of Text Shadow $shdw_x_offset = 1; // Horizontal Shadow offset $shdw_y_offset = 1; // Vertical Shadow offset $bg_r = 255; // Background Color Red $bg_g = 255; // Background Color Green $bg_b = 255; // Background Color Blue $txt_r = 0; // Text Color Red $txt_g = 0; // Text Color Green $txt_b = 0; // Text Color Blue $shdw_r = 255; // Text Shadow Color Red $shdw_g = 255; // Text Shadow Color Green $shdw_b = 255; // Text Shadow Color Blue |