Getting Started With Animation

There are so many different ways that you could get started with animation, what I am going to try to do here is give you multiple options to choose from. The intention behind this post isn't for you to start making cartoons, it's for you to be able to make an animation which could eventually lead to you creating cartoons in the future.

• Wideo is an online animated video creation tool that allows you to create, edit, and share videos online for free. You can select their or upload your own images, backgrounds, and music that you want to use in order to create your own online video. Wideo was originally billed as a way to make animated commercials for your company.  

• Flash is the most widely used animation software and there are several tutorials available so you can quickly learn and begin animating. It costs $19.99 a month for Flash Professional CC or $49.99 a month for the complete Creative Cloud.

• Photoshop is an extremely useful tool for creating far more than just animations, but that's what we will focus on here. It costs $9.99 a month for Flash Professional CC or $49.99 a month for the complete Creative Cloud.

I have given two actual options to begin animating with, as well as provided where you can download them. Neither Flash nor Photoshop require the most state of the art computer to run so you most likely can begin today. If you aren't sure about paying for either product than you can get a one month free trial to see for yourself. Wideo is included as an option because there are plenty of people that just want to play around with animation and all you have to do is visit their site to do so. I plan on beginning animation as a regular occurrence on this site as an additional post and one day hope to be able to create my own cartoons for here.

Going Further With Torrenting

Yesterday I touched on How To Get Started With Torrenting, today I will further explain common terms you may encounter as well as where to get started with private trackers. I cannot post web addresses here as it is firmly against the rules of several private trackers but what I can do is post a reference to r/trackers here, where they keep a somewhat updated list. As I stated in yesterday's post, an issue you may run into on a private tracker is that the content you are looking for is not available, that's where specialty sites come in handy. If you cannot find what you are looking for on your private tracker of choice, let's say sports, then you can be sure that there is a private tracker that specializes in just sports, if you only care about football, you can find one that only features that.

On a public tracker you could download the file and be on your way, a frowned upon practice dubbed hit and run, but on a private tracker you are required to seed that torrent after you have downloaded it to help others leech from it. You may have to seed for a designated period of time, at least 48 hours or just simply seed back the ratio you have downloaded, example being if you download a 1GB file then you should upload at least the same 1 GB. That brings us to ratio requirements which vary by trackers but typically want you to have uploaded more than half of the data that you have downloaded, keep in mind that if you are trying to get onto a more elite private tracker then a 1.0 ratio is not that impressive. Some private trackers will have torrents designated as free leech where you can download the torrent and not have it count against your download total, effectively a ratio booster. So, I guess your big question is how do you get onto a private tracker?

• Some private trackers allow you to go to their site and sign up, this could be one of your best options for getting started and can also be a stepping stone for getting into the better private trackers available if they require proof of your ratio.
• Private trackers may hold open enrollment, a temporary designated period where you can sign up for that tracker without an invite.
• Invite only trackers are exactly that, you will need to be invited to join and unless you personally know the person inviting you, you may have to provide proof that you can understand how a private tracker works. Some of the more elite private trackers may only issue invites to their donors, people that donate money to the continued operation of the site. There are several levels of elite trackers, some of which you may have to take a quiz to be accepted to.

I feel at this point you understand the legality of torrenting; the difference in private and public trackers; how to set up your computer to start torrenting; where to look for private trackers and understanding common terms you may encounter in torrenting. Also, TorrentFreak is a great source to keep up with the latest news in the torrenting world.

Why The Government Doesn't Need To Spy On You.

People Overshare On The Internet: Individuals create their own online profiles to which they have attached their names, addresses, family trees, work history, pictures, cell phone number, hobbies, friends and almost anything else you could want to know about a person. Our cell phones have GPS that can give the exact location you are currently at and a healthy percentage of people are okay with letting the world know where they are at all times. In 2008 the Bling Ring robbed the homes of several celebrities by using Google, TMZ and the celebrities own Twitter accounts to learn when the stars would be home. The gang would then use Google Earth to study aerial photos of the celebrity homes to determine the best points of entry. The gang was finally caught after captured CCTV footage from the robberies of Lindsay Lohan and Audrina Patridge was released which led to the identity of one of the criminals while his Facebook led to the identity of the others.

People Don't Take Steps To Protect Themselves: The days of thieves dumpster diving to steal your identity are no longer needed, now criminals retrieve your personal data from improperly disposed of  PCs, servers, cell phones and memory devices. Carelessness in properly protecting your web device of choice can also lead to harder to remove adware, spyware and ransomware. There are plenty of people that spend their free time seeking and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network for profit, protest, challenge or simply enjoyment.

People Don't Realize Once Something Is On The Internet It Is On There Forever: In the old days if you wanted to take risque photos of yourself you would most likely use a Polaroid camera, the image would print instantly and you wouldn't have to take your photos to be developed where someone else could see them. Today if you wish to send risque photos of yourself than you would snap a picture with your cell phone and then message or e-mail them. Scarlett Johansson, Blake Lively, Vanessa Hudgens, Jessica Alba, Kat Dennings and many more celebrities have found themselves in the public eye for nude photos, some of which arguably may have been intentionally leaked. Girls that post themselves to popular nude posting forums, then later wish for them to removed, also learn that you can get a million sites to remove your image but all it takes is for one person to have saved them and those images are never gone. It's not just nude photos that people should concern themselves with, people can lose their jobs for what the post on Facebook. More recently in the headlines, Justin Bieber and his racist rants were released from back when he was fourteen years old.

If a service came along tomorrow that told people it would maintain their online profile from across Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and anywhere else they wanted to include, it would be a successful app/service but the same people that use it will wonder in ten years how there entire existence is documented online. Technology isn't going anywhere and it's only going to get more difficult as time goes on to remove this information about yourself, why not start protecting yourself better now?

Mining, Blockchains, Value and Further Understanding Cryptocurrency

In Making Sense of Cryptocurrency I posted links for both Bitcoin and Dogecoin which showed How to:

• Get a Wallet
• Get coins
• Spend coins

Now that the basics have been touched on we can focus on learning more starting with coin mining. Mining is not for everyone, it takes particular hardware specifications and may cost more in electricity than you can mine and there are also multiple ways to mine. I've included a link to a Beginner's Guide to Mining Bitcoins which will pick up where my first post ended. This is a link to a Dogecoin Mining Guide which also shows you how to build a Dogecoin mining rig. Now that you (should) have a wallet the linked post will explain how to get a client, the author of the bitcoin Mining Guide does a pretty decent job of explaining why he recommends joining a pool as opposed to using the basic software to make coins. "...The reason is that bitcoins are mined in blocks of 50. You can’t mine just 1 at a time. So unless you have a massive mining machine, the odds of you actually discovering a block at the current difficulty is extremely low. It actually might never happen. That being said, it can still be done, but it would be an extraordinary lucky occurrence. In a pool, you are working together to discover a block and you will receive a lot of smaller payouts with much more consistency." Another resource you should consult when deciding if mining bitcoins is the best course of action for you is the Bitcoin Mining Profitability Calculator. Assuming you have your hardware up to par and your wallet, the next step would be acquiring mining software.
 
What are blockchains? The blockchain is a public ledger of all transactions in the coin network. Blockchain.info allows you to navigate the bitcoin blockchain and also operates Bitcoin's largest and most secure wallet service. Dogechain is branded "the official dogecoin blockchain".


What's it worth? That varies, Here is a converter for Dogecoin/bitcoin value.

Hopefully between the two posts you can see how to get started with digital currency. If mining is not for you than you can always purchase from the previous link provided or if you operate a business than you can accept Bitcoin/Dogecoin as a form of payment. There is also the option of receiving cryptocurrency from tips, something that I will get into more in tomorrow's Dogecoin feature. 

I Make Gifs

I don't really think they are that good quality of gifs, but they are easy to make and it prevents me from having to search for a gif when I feel an online exchange will be enhanced by them.

I changed the gif size to Large for this post.

• A copy of the video, youtube link... : This should be a no brainer, if you are going to make a gif from a video than you need a copy of the video. You could download a copy from you favorite tracker or you could just find a copy of it on the internet.
• YTD Youtube Downloader : If you prefer not to torrent your shows I would recommend  making sure you have a downloader that works with the particular site, YTD is free and it works on several sites including multiple NSFW ones.
• Windows Live Movie Maker : If you have Windows than you should have this, I did not know this existed on my computer until I specifically searched for it almost two years after I bought my computer. Your video will not be able to be turned into a gif after this step unless you make sure you Publish Movie or Save Movie and not Publish Project in WLMM.

Add the video to WLMM

Edit the start/stop time, gifs under 5 secs work effortlessly with makeagif and imgur.

• makeagif.com : I registered an account to eliminate their watermark, it also raised my size cap from 2MB to 10MB.
• imgur.com : I registered and account and it increased my cap size. it also allows you to group your gifs into much larger albums. Imgur is an optional step.

This is definitely not the best way of making gifs and I don't believe it's the quickest but in the end it's free.