The Download Munkey : Download This, Download That :)

Finally found time to read this free issue of Brick Journal #9 - a must-read for anyone remotely interested in Lego. While I haven’t been actively playing with Lego for close to fifteen years, occassionally I get the sudden inspiration to create something simple like this birthday present

© thoo2.net

The Lego blog The Brothers Brick and now BrickJournal, are surely inspirational stuff for anyone who has ever touched a Lego brick and dreamt of building something bigger and more ambitious than their brick collection (and for me, proper building skillz )

© Twomorrows Publishing

This free 148 pages BrickJournal issue showcases loads of cool Lego models as well as instructions to build a Mini Super Star Destroyer (Star Wars) amongst several other building instructions.

Some of favourite builders and models from this issue:

© Twomorrows Publishing

Fanis Dovas - Page 21

© Twomorrows Publishing

Matt DeLanoy - Page 34

© Twomorrows Publishing

LegoFest Ballabio 2007 - Page 100

Published by Twomorrows, BrickJournal is available for 3.95 USD per issue (digital edition) and 66/78 USD for an annual 4 issue subscription for readers outside US and Canada via surface mail/airmail respectively. Annual subscriptions for US and Canada are 32 USD and 50 USD respectively.

Download BrickJournal #9.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
BrikWars - War with Mini-Figs!
The Brothers Brick
Virtual Lego Designers
Warhammer 40,000 Vehicles in Lego

Foxit Reader has been my PDF viewer of choice since version 1.2 - I still remember keeping multiple builds of versions 1.2 and 1.3 of Foxit Reader as some builds could miraclously open PDFs that would crash other builds upon loading. Thankfully, the current version 2.2 of Foxit Reader is much more robust in terms of PDF support but is no longer the most dominant alternative PDF viewer as it was one to two years back during the time of Adobe Acrobat Reader 6/7.

I’ll run through the pros and cons of other alternative PDF viewers that I use. I prefer to use only viewers that do not require installation since I also use them on my thumbdrive for troubleshooting docs at work, so there’re going to be some glaring omissions in this list like Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 Also, I hardly print out PDFs so I can’t comment on print quality and such.

If you’re only viewing small, predominantly text PDF documents, any of the PDF readers below will suffice but I notice quite a bit of performance differences when it comes to larger PDFs, especially those which are basically a sequence of scanned pages or digital images. I have therefore elected to use the free 73MB official Bioshock artbook as the test PDF.

Foxit Reader

PDF-XChange Viewer

Sumatra

Interface
1. Sumatra 0.8
2. PDF-XChange Viewer 2.0
3. Foxit Reader 2.2

Sumatra has the most spartan interface of all with options like page sizing and page layout (single page / continuous, etc) only available via the menu. If you don’t dabble with page sizing and page layout that often, you’ll appreciate the uncluttered interface and extra screen space over the multiple toolbars of PDF-XChange Viewer and Foxit Reader.

Although PDF-XChange Viewer and Foxit Reader are freeware, the additional unlockable features (with a paid license, of course) clutter the screen with extra toolbars which are unnecessary for most users and eat up valuable screen space which means you scroll more (although you can always switch to full screen mode).

While I love and use Foxit Reader the most, I give its interface the thumbs down for its strange default omission of the status bar (page layout, page number and navigation).

Loading Speed
1. Foxit Reader 2.2
2. PDF-XChange Viewer 2.0034
3. Sumatra 0.8

Foxit is significantly faster than the other two both when loading the viewer application itself as well as for the actual PDF file itself.

Rendering Speed
1. Foxit Reader 2.2
2. PDF-XChange Viewer 2.0034
3. Sumatra 0.8

In terms of rendering, Foxit Reader is definitely faster and most responsive of the three. PDF-XChange Viewer is almost as fast with Sumatra being the slowest of all three. Unchecking Use MuPDF rendering engine under View for Sumatra does speed up rendering quite a lot at the expense of slight loss in image quality.

The advantage of PDF-XChange Viewer is that previously viewed pages render the fastest (cached?) while the other two viewers have to re-render the pages. This is very evident when rapidly scrolling through the PDF.

Rendering Quality

I would say that the render quality very much depends on personal preferences so I’ll just let you decide on the screen captures instead. Below is a comparision of the rendered text - I would say Sumatra offers the best text rendering IMHO.

Foxit Reader

PDF-XChange Viewer

Sumatra

Configuration
1. PDF-XChange Viewer 2.0
2. Foxit Reader 2.2
3. Sumatra 0.8

PDF-XChange Viewer allows you to adjust the CPU and memory resources for the viewer which seems to be a good thing (although I haven’t seen much difference in rendering speed, perhaps with a more powerful computer …)

Foxit Reader has very basic configuration settings, the most important which is Page Display > Display text optimized for LCD screen which will probably make the text display on LCD screens more readable. I’m using a CRT and selecting this makes it worse, of course

Sumatra’s configuration options are as spartan as its interface. Unchecking View > Use MuPDF rendering engine will provide a boost to rendering speed at the expense of a slight reduction of visual quality.

If you prefer a more scientific comparision (loading time, memory usage, etc) of 8(!) different PDF viewers, you’ll probably find this thread @ the DonationCoder forums very useful.

At the moment, I would recommend Foxit Reader 2.2 as THE alternative PDF viewer of choice although Sumatra PDF is a worthy contender given enough development time and resources (it’s still at version 0.8 at the moment). Since PDF X-Change Viewer’s strength is in its caching of rendered pages, consider it the best option if you view scanned pdfs on a regular basis

Download Foxit Reader 2.2, PDF-XChange Viewer 2.0 or Sumatra PDF 0.8.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Free Official Bioshock Artbook
Read Books on Your Mobile Phone with TequilaCat BookReader
Using PDFTK to combine PDFs
Free Military History Books @ Focal Point Publications
2008 Military/LE Firearms PDF Catalogs

One of my favourite armour reference sites, Fabio Prado’s The Armor Site, has released a PDF version of the Tigerfibel, which provides instructions on the operation of the Sdkfz 181 Pzkpfw VI better known as the German Tiger I tank. The mechanical operation of the tank is covered in substantial detail together with complete driving, radio and gunnery instructions.

The entire manual is written in German of course, but is extensively illustrated throughout to illustrate important points about the Tiger I. To cite an example, I’m positive that this irrelevant picture of a showering woman on page 18 indicates that the Maybach V12 HL230 engine (on bottom left of page) powering the Tiger I was a water-cooled engine

Other illustrations are much more serious like these diagrams on leading the massive 88mm KwK 36 cannon for moving targets (with a Russian T-34 to illustrate the point) on the bottom of page 78.

There’s some range charts at the back of the manual about the common enemy tanks likely to be encountered by a Tiger tank crew accompanied with the profile and armour thickness on the side, back and front hulls respectively. Not too sure what the numbers on the chart mean - perhaps effective firing ranges?

Rnage chart for the Russian KV I heavy tank - the Krasnogvardeysk encounter is a good read

Can’t really figure out the rest of the information written in the Tigerfibel until I brush up on my limited German though

If you are interested in examining individual pages more closely, there’s another version comprising scanned JPGs over at tiger1.info.

Download the Tigerfibel (scroll to the bottom) at The Armor Site.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Motofumi Kobayashi - Japanese Military Artist
Tiger I Papercraft Model from Sega
Renault Char B1 bis ‘Eure’
P.1000 Ratte Super-Heavy Tank
War and Game - Military History Blog
800mm Dora Railgun

Recently installed the J2ME text file reader, TequilaCat Book Reader, on my mobile phone to kill time during my daily commutes to work. Highly recommended for avid readers except if you’re driving of course

Download TequilaCat Book Reader from Alexey Vdovichenko (aka TequilaCat)’s website, which is essentially a Windows application to create the necessary .jar file to install the actual Book Reader onto your mobile phone.

Select your phone model from the list (choose MIDP 2.0 + JSR75 if you have a fairly modern model which supports flash cards) and click on the first button which reads Build to generate .jar and .jad files in the test subfolder in the TequilaCat BookReader installation folder. Copy these files to your mobile phone together with some text files, install and you’re all set

Before that you might want to embed some books into the text viewer (necessary for older phones which do not have a file system) by clicking on Add Book. Multiple text files can be embedded into the .jar file and if you need to add books in Word or PDF format, install Kryloff Technologies’ GetText utility - read the detailed instruction manual or the shorter FAQ on the usage of Book Reader.

Embedding books into the Book Reader is actually optional if you have a modern mobile phone as you can simply load your text files into flash card and browse to them from the Book Reader application on your phone.

Some useful options to tweak when using TequilaCat Book Reader:

Settings -> Wrap : I find that text formatted by option 5. Like TiBR to produce the most readable text for my phone with option 6. Justify By Width a close runner up.
Settings -> Fonts : I prefer a black background with white text so I checked 5. Use phone colors. There’re three different fonts sizes by default so cycle through them via the Prev. font and Next. font options.
Settings -> Scroll bar : If you find the scroll bar distracting like I do, you have the option of hiding it here.
Settings > Scroll options : If lines are being cut off when you scroll by page, you might need to check 1. Show incomplete line and/or 2. Leave one line.

You can also change these options in the Windows application before you build the actual .jar file.

The current position of each text file that you read is saved by TequilaCat Book Reader when you load another text file or exit the application so you can read different text files as and when you see fit. Right now I’m alternating between Jules Verne’s classic 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea downloaded via Project Gutenberg (subscribe to their RSS of newly added and updated ebooks), Jeff Head’s free techno thriller Dragon’s Fury and even the Ableton Live 6 LE manual.

My current reading List

TequilaCat Book Reader also supports handy functions to keylock your phone within the application as well as show your current progress via Info - Show Book Info.

Another Java-based textreader, ReadManiac, has the ability to rotate the text to read in landscape mode which is definitely useful, but I much prefer the text justification and formatting features of TequilaCat BookReader.

UPDATE (18 JUN 2008): TequilaCat BookReader actually supports rotated text too - more details here.

Download Tequila BookReader 2.28.

© Games Workshop

The Disciples of the Dark Gods supplement for the Warhammer 40,000 pen & paper RPG Dark Heresy, has been officially announced as the last product from the Games Workshop subisidary Black Industries which also probably means the end of Black Industries but not the Warhammer Fantasy & Warhammer 40,000 RPG since Fantasy Flight Games is officially the new publisher for these products. Yeah!

© Games Workshop

Dark Heresy is rather interesting as it allowed players the chance to delve deeper into the Imperium and play as Arbitrators, law enforcers of the Imperium (see ilustration of a grim Arbitrator armed with power maul by Andrea Uderzo above) or as part of an Inquistorial retinue as seen in the Shattered Hope, a demo adventure downloadable for free on the Black Industries site.

Preview assorted artwork like the cover for Shattered Hope (above) illustrated by Adrian Smith or check out the imaginative character art by Dave Gallagher - if you ever wished to know how some of the rarely illustrated characters in Warhammer 40,000 like pest controllers, Imperial cultists (below) or Imperial Chiurgeons look like, now you can

© Games Workshop

© Games Workshop

There’s also previews (above) of the lavishly illustrated and formatted 400 page Core Rulebook but it’s already sold out. Fantasy Flight Games will be reprinting the rulebooks and stuff soon

Download the demo adventure (11.4 MB) or view the artwork for Warhammer 40,000 : Dark Heresy.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Andrea Uderzo - Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator
Kevin Chin - Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator
Warhammer 40,000 : Medusa V Booklet + Codex Catachans