Itazura Neko Coin Bank

First seen on alafista.com that the preorder was open for these coin banks on Strapya. I couldn’t resist getting one because the instant I saw this, I knew this is (and ever will be) the most awesome coin bank ever produced by mankind. You can still get it here :3 and it will make a great gift for children and adults alike.

Edit: They are again available at Strapya or at Play-Asia too!

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Sudoh-Bucks Mug (svg inside)

Be awed by the Christmas present from roBernd we got 😀 (Thanks again! It’s great, I always use it when I’m in front of the computer which means.. a lot.) It’s the Sudoh-Bucks mug from ToraDora!. Unfortunately we dropped one 🙁 when it was still in it’s package. Hey, roBernd, if you’re on your way to make more, give us a call xD

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Portal Level Warning Signs

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The first svg vector resource 😀 Wheee~! (I created the category along with it) After I overwhelmed the initial troubles with using Inkscape, it has become quite fun making and tracing vector images. They are easy to make and hey, you can print them on shirts for showing the whole world too! I’d recommend you make yourself familiar with Inkscape if you haven’t done so. You could just search for a shirt you like on Spreadshirt of course and just buy it but it’s more awesome (and you don’t have to pay more :p) if you make it yourself. I always use Spreadshirt to let them make my shirts, granted. But the “you can only upload three vector files” really annoys me. >:(

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Companion Cube Plushie

So this is what I’ve been hiding for two months from NebuK (which was given to him as a birthday gift): a Weighted Companion Cube plushie from the game Portal. Literally everyone who has played that level is infatuated with this cube… I mean, it has pink hearts all over! And you have to carry it through the whole level. It just has to grow on you. Unfortunately, I don’t have any progress pictures. It has been hard enough hiding and making it without someone noticing who lives in the same room. Hey, for once I’m proud that I managed. Couldn’t help that our friends and maybe everyone in university knew about it since I did most of the work while lectures (NebuK was sick in bed at those two days ^^;).

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Robust HTML Parsing (in Ruby)?

Have you ever wanted to parse information from some rather complex or totally broken (in terms of html standards compliance) website? Maybe you tried fighting that problem with regular expressions or DOM or SAX XML parser. If you did you probably ran into some problems: Maybe there were too many similar matches for your regex as there are repeating similar patterns in the website or your XML parser went crazy with invalid formatted or non-xhtml-compliant content?

I wanted to parse a website that had no RSS feed for changes and create a RSS feed. I first tried around with various of the ideas mentioned above but as the website is kind of “irregular” (every item is a slight bit different) and W3 validator shows over 11k of errors (in 1.1 transitional) i had quite some problems.

Until i found Rubies Hpricot, a HTML parser that lets you realize robust HTML parsing of fucked up formatted and non-standard-compliant content at ease.

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Nyamo~~ nya nya fuwaaa~ Plushie

Plushie-time again, it is!

This is one of the awaited chrismas present tutorials, a gift we’ve made for a good friend who happens to like everything thats cat-ish, especially – of course – if it has its origins in otaku-culture, like this:

Nyamo and Miyuki (figure)
Nyamo and Miyuki (figure)

We decided to give a Nyamo (the small catish thingy) a try and make it. As a base we used the well known Poring Plushie pattern, attached ears and tail, cut the right face and swoosh, there it was. But step for step for now…

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