These are some photographs of your beloved Disney princesses by the Vancouver photographer Dina Goldstein. She brings these perfect Disney cartoon princess into a cruel reality check.

Happily ever after isn't all its cracked up to be for these Disney princesses.





Vancouver based photographer Dina Goldstein's project gives these fairy tale icons a reality check....





...with "happily ever after" being replaced by a brutally realistic outcome, a bald Rapunzel continues her chemotherapy.





Dina was inspired by her three-year-old daughters fascination with Princesses...





...to explore the dark and often gruesome origins of many of these tales in the original Brothers Grimm stories





In a combination of fantasy and reality, she juxtaposed Disney's perfect princesses...





...with real issues that were affecting the women around her





...such as self-image.





The project goes on display on October 15thDina's take on Princess Jasmine





Apparently true love's kiss wasn't enough as a comatose Sleeping Beauty ends up in an old people's home with her aging prince.



You can see more of her work here

Samson Audio was kind enough to send us one of their best microphones for us to use on Zixpk.com. They sent us their "Samson Podcasting Pack" which comes with a studio-quality USB condenser microphone, Cakewalk's Sonar LE software, a mic clip, MD5 desktop stand, and SP01 shockmount, all in an aluminum carrying case. Continue reading to watch our unboxing video and some nice pictures that we took.

If you have any questions over this Samson podcasting pack feel free to ask us in the comments.

I am proud to announce that the Zixpk forum as of this moment has opened its doors to welcome all new members. All you need to do is make an account and customize it a little and than just start posting away at the forums. Right now it is pretty dry so we need your help to make some interesting posts.

Visit the Zixpk forum by clicking on the link in our navigation bar at the top of the page or you can just click this link [http://zixpkforum.com/]

Firefox users take note: You need to do this. Now. As in, this instant. More savvy users are probably already familiar with editing Firefox’s configuration file but whether you’re a computer rookie or a seasoned veteran, Gnoted has issued a handful of tweaks that really get Firefox cooking. As much as we all love firefox, it can get a bit slow on occasion - especially if you’re like us and have 35 open tabs spread across four windows at any given time. By tweaking the way Firefox handles some caching functions, you can dramatically improve page load speed and even prevent Firefox from hogging your system resources while minimized.

If you don’t currently have any experience playing with your configuration file, don’t be scared. Just follow the simple instructions, take your time and if you want a security blanket to squeeze, jot down each setting before you change it so you can always restore the default configuration if need be. So without further ado, hit the jump and get tweaking - just remember to restart Firefox when you’re done.



Reduce the amount of RAM Firefox uses for its cache feature

1. Type “about:config” (no quotes) in the adress bar in the browser.
2. Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer”
3. Set it’s value to “0“;(Zero)



Increase the Speed at Which Firefox loads pages

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit Enter.
(Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.)

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 10.

This means it will make 10 requests at once.

3. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0“;.(Zero)

This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages faster now.
Optionally (for even faster web browsing) here are some more options for your about:config (you might have to create some of these entries by Right Click –> New– > Interger or String

"network.dns.disableIPv6": set “false”
“content.notify.backoffcount”: set “5“; (Five)
“plugin.expose_full_path”: set “true”.
“ui.submenuDelay”: set “0": (zero)



Reduce RAM usage to 10MB when Firefox is minimized:

This little hack will drop Firefox’s RAM usage down to 10 Mb when minimized:

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize”. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

This post is part of our weekly series of posts highlighting some outstanding and creative animated videos that users have created to stir up your imagination. This week 6/8/09-6/14/09 we have 4 incredible videos for your enjoyment.