Steel Frog - A blog on web design and gaming

New site on the way

Steel Frog — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:16:12 +0000

So you might have noticed that the site hasn’t been updated in months. That’s because I’ve been working on a new web site for myself. Rather than hide behind the anonymity of a nickname, I’ll be creating a new site with my portfolio, blog and its articles under my real name. Until then, no more [...]

Rift Tweak Guide and Optimization Tips

Steel Frog — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:00:49 +0000

Having recently purchased Trion’s new MMORPG Rift and having a first-hand experience at its horrible engine optimization, I figured it’d come in handy to collect in a singular source all of the relevant tweaks I’ve found on the forums and various websites. I cannot take credit for most of these findings and have linked back [...]

Corsair Hydro H70 cooler review

Steel Frog — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:00:09 +0000

Watercooling a processor is not an option commonly accessible to the amateur builder; it requires a careful selection of pumps, radiators, tanks, hoses, coolants and acquired knowledge to ensure compatibility. For example, mixing copper and aluminium waterblocks can create rust particles within the coolant, anti-fungal agents must be carefully mixed in, lines must be bled [...]

Freebie: Phone Design

Steel Frog — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 14:59:14 +0000

I originally designed this phone several years ago for a pamphlet on information security. It was important to remind users that cell phones were not secured lines of communication and since the poster is no longer in distribution, I figured it could possibly be useful to someone out there. It had originally started out like [...]

Easily adjust your photo’s levels and mask away the excess

Steel Frog — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 14:22:51 +0000

Here’s a quick and dirty trick to make adjusting your levels a breeze. When trying to adjust levels, its common that you lose details, especially in extreme contrast zones. Using this trick, you’ll be able to quickly and easily identify affected areas and mask away the problematic spots to retain the most information while having [...]

Good and Evil Photo Manipulation, Redux

Steel Frog — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:52:44 +0000

In this tutorial we’ll be taking a photo and splitting it in two: one side of the photo will be light and colorful while the other, in contrast, will be dark, evil and brooding. This is a complete re-write of my popular tutorial with new stock photos. I’ll be covering some of the basics on [...]

Photo Pixel Effects

Steel Frog — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:33:29 +0000

This tutorial will guide you through the process of creating very simple, effective and attractive pixel effects for your website’s header images that will add that little extra touch of detail to your designs. The process is extremely simple and can very easily be modified to suit your tastes. While following this tutorial, you’ll learn [...]

Using WOL to remotely wake-up your PC

Steel Frog — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:41:58 +0000

I often find myself needing to remotely access my PC from work or from a friend’s or family’s house to grab a few pictures or documents I omitted to bring along with me. Thankfully, my computers are setup to be arisen from their slumber with nothing more than a properly-shaped packet of data sent to [...]

Test your website on IE6, Safari, Chrome or play Halo right from your browser

Steel Frog — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:23:38 +0000

A somewhat well-kept and cherished tool of many web designers, Spoon is a virtualization website that allows you to run many useful applications right from your browser. No installation required, to some extent – you’ll need to install their plugin. Not only does it offer all the browsers you’d ever need, it also lets you [...]

Freebie: Web Ninjas Slider Design

Steel Frog — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:30:14 +0000

Up for grabs is a concept piece for a company we were poised to created a short while back. While the project never took off, we did come up with several interfaces and I’ve started to dig some up from the ‘ol archives. While I can’t release all of the stuff, here’s a simple interface [...]