Free (trial) Windows development virtual machines

Free (trial) Windows development virtual machines

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Pre-canned VM Windows 11 development environment

Did you know that Microsoft provides free virtual machine images of the latest version of Windows – with developer tools, SDK’s, and samples all pre-installed? Microsoft provide regularly updated virtual machine images for VMWare, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, and Parallels.

A few important points. The images are not activated and cannot be activated – even with a valid product key.

What about Linux?

If you want to install and run a Linux distro (Ubuntu for example), you can use Virtualbox/VMWare or the built in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). With WSL, you get a Linux command prompt mounted on your local Windows filesystem and can launch X-windows apps that pop up on your Windows desktop in separate windows.

The experience is kind of a weird mash-up of Windows and Linux on the same system at the same time. Kind of like a better/embedded version of cygwin. It’s not as contained as a virtual machine host app like Virtualbox/VMWare that keeps all your windows in the virtual machine host app; but this might be enough for most people.

I haven’t done any experiments, but would love to test out some OpenGL/Vulkan apps to see if you get full GPU accelerated rendering.

Polybius

Polybius

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Polybius is an urban legend about a video game that appeared in arcades in the 1980’s around the Portland, Oregon area. It caused people to migraines, have hallucinations, hinted at mind control, cause knife attacks on others, and government conspiracies.

Like most things, if you dig in there is very little concrete evidence. Instead, it appears to be a collection of events that were all real and related to video games of the era.

The Why Files does a pretty decent job digging into the legend and gets a good collection of the facts behind the legend.

This one is definitely better than the fake documentary from a few years back – a reminder that documentaries need to be verified too.

Bringing your favorite signers back from beyond

Bringing your favorite signers back from beyond

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Kid Klava wanted to sing a song he wrote, but realized his chops really weren’t up for the task. So why not get John Lennon sing it – with Paul on backing vocals? He claims it was surprisingly easy and it only took a few minutes to generate. If you’d like to have a go yourself, there are dozens of great YouTube tutorials.

https://youtu.be/pGk1nfStHCM
Catalog of urban legends

Catalog of urban legends

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Snook on YouTube did a video that covers just about every major urban legend and famous conspiracy.

Here’s a list of subjects he covers in his 70 minute video:

Gray aliens
Loch Ness Monster
Area 51
Bigfoot
Boogeyman
Men in black
Bloody Mary
Candyman
Spider bite
The hook
The kidney thieves
Glad you didn’t turn on the lights
Killer in the back seat
Humans can lick too
Body in the bed
Body in the water tank
Man under the car
Halloween hanging
Cropsey
Corpse in the chimney
Toxic fumes lady
The goat man
Dog boy
Mothman		Black eyed children
Chupacabra
Techiteki
Lo Llorona
Charlie no face
Slitilated woman
The Jersey devil
Krampus
Springhealed Jack
The Monkey Man
Paul is dead
Red cloak
The red room
Walking Sam
Seven midnight jogger
The night marchers
Stolens gateway to hell
The well to hell
Fatal flair
Foreign dreams
The rat king
Water babies
Pond monster
Pinky pinky

Making a John Wick 4 suit

Making a John Wick 4 suit

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Hacksmith Industries builds a lot of interesting stuff. A plasma light saber, magnetically attracted Captain America shield, and many other cool creations. This one, however, was really interesting.

I found the gunplay in John Wick 4 to be pretty ridiculous – which was made more so by a paper-thin suit that was supposedly bullet proof enough to get hit hundreds of times and still work.

These guys decided to put this idea to the test. They try to make a suit that is actually bullet proof.

It took them well over a year and many failures and a full reset that involved material research, testing, etc. However, in the end, it turns out that it is reasonably possible – at least for a few rounds. Like most things, if you shoot the same spot a few times, it’s unlikely to stop bullets. It also is unlikely to keep you from broken ribs and massive contusions caused by the round impacts. Still, surprising results.

Render using a virtual lens onto film – in Blender

Render using a virtual lens onto film – in Blender

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Sirrandalot is not the first person to use a film-grain/film-like shader effect to give a certain feel. He is, however, the first to use Blender’s Cycles path-tracing engine to create a highly detailed physical modeling of a 3D camera body, simulate the various properties of a glass lens (then multiple lens system), the properties of chemical film, and then render scenes through this highly complex setup to generate real film-like images. Check out the final not-photos here or on Imgur.

You can download the camera and play with it yourself.