GeekwithEnvy

OSX

How To Use Emoji Icons On a Mac

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Emoji icons are a popular set of ideograms that became available on the iPhone with iOS 5 and are commonly used to when sending messages. But did you know you can use them on the Mac as well?

Whether your writing yourself a note or using Messages to talk to a friend, you can easily add Emoji icons to your text by following these easy steps.

(*Please note that will will need to have OS X Lion or later to access Emoji Icons.)

  • First, open the application that you want to use an Emoji Icon with. (In this case we’re using Messages.)
  • Head to the menu bar at the top of the screen and click “Edit”.
  • Select “Special Characters” or press Option+Command+T on your keyboard.

EmojiHowToSS1

  • Select an Emoji from the list.

EmojiHowToSS2

  • Drag and drop the Emoji wherever your text is and your done!

Blizzard to Shut Down Diablo III Real Money Auction House

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D3RMAH

Blizzard Entertainment has sent out emails to Diablo III owners with a notice that they are going to be shutting down the real money auction house on March 18, 2014.

The new feature initially received quite a bit of criticism but seemed to be holding it’s own during the first few months of the games release. Over time, Blizzard has changed it’s view of how the real money auction house impacts the game and has decided that it “ultimately undermines Diablo’s core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot.” Below is the official notice. Your can also read Blizzard’s blog post about the closure.

“We are writing tell you about an important change to Diablo III: we’re going to be removing the gold and real-money auction house system from the game.

When we initially designed and implemented the auction house system, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But after much review and player feedback, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo’s core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot.

We’re working out the details of how the auction house system will be shut down, but we wanted to share the news as soon as we made the decision in order to give everyone as much advance notice as possible. Please note that the final shutdown will occur on March 18, 2014. We will keep everyone informed as we work through this process, but feel free to check out our blog post on the subject, and stay tuned to Diablo 3.com for further details.

– The Diablo III team

Apple Sends Out Media Invitations, Colored iPhones Expected

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AAPLsep2013_eventinvite

Apple has sent out invitations to the media for a September 10th event where Apple is likely to unveil its latest version of the iPhone at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California at 10:00 AM Pacific time. We heard earlier this year that this could be the potential release date.

We are expecting to see two iPhone models launch at this event. The first model will likely be an upgrade to the current iPhone 5, perhaps an iPhone 5S with a rumored fingerprint scanner, wider aperture camera and dual LED flash.

iPhone5CLeak
iPhone 5c phones on Production Line

The second iPhone is rumored to be a more “affordable” iPhone which is currently being dubbed the iPhone 5C. The name seems to be all but confirmed in these recently leaked photos (above) of a finished iPhone 5C package. The iPhone 5C will likely be made of plastic and come in a variety of colors to choose from, this seems to be somewhat confirmed in Apples choice of color in their invitations.

Apple is also likely to showcase a completed version of iOS 7 which will launch alongside the new iPhone.

How To Make an LED Cube

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This is a great build video for an 8x8x8 LED cube by Kevin Darrah that I stumbled upon on the web. It goes over the basic build techniques  and shows you how to utilize a jig for assembling the LED arrays. As you watch the video you will quickly begin to realize that this project is not for the entry-level builder, clearly this is something that will consume a lot of your time and patience but the end result is awesome. Either way, it’s interesting to see how it all comes together.Blue LED in a cube

There are many Arduino builds out there that can be great for beginners. If you’re not familiar with Arduino then I highly recommend that you read this introduction to Arduino, it covers everything you will need to get up-to-speed on what it’s all about.

You can find many projects in the Arduino Playground, they include schematics and code to help you build cool stuff. If you want to make a much more novice-friendly 3×3 LED Cube you can use these schematics and code.

So what are you waiting for? Find a project and get building!

ASCII Art Generator

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ASCII stands for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange and it is a code that represents English characters as numbers in computers. There are a total 128 characters in standard ASCII and many of them can be used to create ASCII art, which is created by using the 95 printable characters out of the total 128.ASCIIHeart

You can easily piece together your own ASCII art by simply opening any text editing program but if you want a quick way to turn ordinary text strings into an ASCII art masterpiece, then check out this awesome Text to ASCII Art Generator by Patorjk.com.

Here’s an example of what one style of ASCII text art looks like. There are tons of different styles to choose from and there are even options to change format output.


 

/$$   /$$           /$$ /$$                 /$$      /$$                     /$$       /$$
| $$  | $$          | $$| $$                | $$  /$ | $$                    | $$      | $$
| $$  | $$  /$$$$$$ | $$| $$  /$$$$$$       | $$ /$$$| $$  /$$$$$$   /$$$$$$ | $$  /$$$$$$$
| $$$$$$$$ /$$__  $$| $$| $$ /$$__  $$      | $$/$$ $$ $$ /$$__  $$ /$$__  $$| $$ /$$__  $$
| $$__  $$| $$$$$$$$| $$| $$| $$  \ $$      | $$$$_  $$$$| $$  \ $$| $$  \__/| $$| $$  | $$
| $$  | $$| $$_____/| $$| $$| $$  | $$      | $$$/ \  $$$| $$  | $$| $$      | $$| $$  | $$
| $$  | $$|  $$$$$$$| $$| $$|  $$$$$$/      | $$/   \  $$|  $$$$$$/| $$      | $$|  $$$$$$$
|__/  |__/ \_______/|__/|__/ \______/       |__/     \__/ \______/ |__/      |__/ \_______/

You can also create images by using ASCII characters, you can use a picture to ASCII converter like Picascii. You can either enter a URL or upload an image to convert it to ASCII Art. There are even options for size and color plus an HTML formatter to ensure it looks correct when posting the art elsewhere.

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