Digital Photography, my own experience..

Some six months ago I bought my first digital camera, a Sony DSC W1. I chose this particular camera because of the 2.5 inch display ,the amazing price and the fact that it seemed an all round good personal camera.
Today I got back my first prints and finally I can admit that this little piece of hardware was worth every penny. The story was not all bells and whistles though. Couple of weeks back my girlfriend gave a CD full of images on a local photoshop run by a single individual. The prints we got back seemed fair to an inexperienced eye but left me quite disappointed. Sunlit faces seemed orange, indoor images and some outdoor images were 15% more green then they should be, all in all it was a disaster. The pictures seemed great on a computer screen but the best thing with photographs is that you can print them and show them to relatives without the need to boot up your machine. So I decided to visit a photoshop franchise called Photo Experts ( in Greece ) and give them a try. The results were simply amazing, my faith in digital photography was restored.

So rule #1 : Print your images on a good photoshop, they are worth it.

Great assistance to my whole image archiving process was Google's free software called Picasa. This piece of software is well thought out and it gives a great experience on managing photos even to a novice. You can quickly give your snapshots captions and labels for easy retrieving, it has a great search engine ( it is a Google program after all ), it has the ability to print multiple images on one A4 premium photo paper ( if your printer gives you good quality prints, it's worth it ) and to top it all off it has some imaging filters to fix your images and the ability to make slideshow cdroms to give away to relatives.

rule #2 : use some good archiving program or else you might easily get lost.

It's fairly easy to understand that digital photography is here to stay because of it's flexibility, ease of use ,cost cutback on film and most importantly the ever increasing quality of images snapped by modern cameras. Cellphones were made for phonecalls not photography so if you are planning a trip make yourself a favor and buy a real camera. Sooner or later you'll love it too.

IZak (portable DivX player) from Unibrain picked by LaCie

Several months ago the Greece based company Unibrain introduced a revolutionary device called iZak. It is a hard disc based multimedia player that you plug in at your PC and upload movies songs and images and the plug it to your TV and view all of the above content. Well it seems that LaCie has picked up this great player and OEM’d it. You can find more info at LaCie’s page..

Lokitorrent lawsuit , a hoax ? ( from Earthreactor )

LOKI TORRENT LAWSUIT :: THE FACTS: At the end of December 2004, the RIAA and MPAA began an international rampage in efforts to close down major bit torrent and ed2k file sharing sites. During the turmoil, one such MPAA targeted Bit Torrent site claimed it was willing to stand up against the evil powers of motion picture media thugs by fighting the legal issues in a court of law. LokiTorrent.com began accepting donations from the p2p community to support what they called "necessary legal fee's".
Some weeks later as the article suggests the whole thing was proved to be a scam on behalf of the lokitorrent owner to collect money from it's users and p2p supporters.
My guess is that this guy was smart enough to pull something like this, especially on tech-savvy and quite smart people. Is he going to pull this off without any punishment by the community ? I'm sure the goverment is not willing to help as much as in other cases of fraud but then again time will tell.. ( click the article's opening sentence to view the original post ).

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.1 Released ( from Mozillazine )

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.1 Released : Mozilla Firefox 1.0.1 has just been released. A minor update, this version fixes a few security holes and some other bugs. If you're using Firefox 1.0, you want this release. The official download link is http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
. Go fetch !

Charamel theme for Firefox updated

Here's charamel theme in it's full glory.. read previous post for more info

Like my Firefox Theme ? It's called Charamel and it has been recently updated. The Url to get it is http://members.shaw.ca/lucx

MediaGate MG350HD coming soon...

I am so buying this.. It's the Mediagate MG 350 HD, wireless network, DivX and other media playback, slick, that should make my buddies quite jealous..  

ExplorerXP - Freeware file manager for Win2K/XP

ExplorerXP - Freeware file manager for Win2K/XP Looking for a great alternative for Windows Explorer that comes along with tabbed browsing, shortcuts to folders, a renaming engine and a split file engine along with a huge bundle of little helping modules and on top of all that a free license ? Well look no further ExplorerXP to the rescue. I've been using this little app for the past 2 hours and since I am a shortcut freak I must say this one is a lifesaver. Tabbed browsing is the best, case sensitive renaming one of my favs, wildcard selecting oh boy.. I could go on forever but I suggest you give it a try and come up with your own opinion.

The 25 movies that made a difference in my life..

Having to list the best movies one has enjoyed is a hard task for every film fan. After some serious thought (and a sneak peak at imdb) I managed to collect the list below in no particular order. If I had to say thank you to the movie industry for the good stuff it has provided us, here are 25 reasons why..

01 Fight Club
02 Requiem for a Dream
03 The Shining
04 American History X
05 American Beauty
06 The Usual Suspects
07 Se7en
08 Donnie Darko
09 Platoon
10 The Game
11 Magnolia
12 Groundhog Day
13 12 Monkeys
14 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
15 Being John Malcovic
16 The Big Lebowski
17 Clerks
18 28 Days Later
19 Narc
20 Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless mind
21 Lost in Translation
22 The Fifth Element
23 The Silence of the Lambs
24 Kairo
25 Battle Royale

Having to limit my list on just 25 movies I had to leave some real gems out, but then again this isn't the Oscars, it's just my personal list. If you believe that a flick was wrongfully listed here, feel free to comment..

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: 1937-2005

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: 1937-2005 / Original gonzo journalist kills self at age 67 / 'Fear and Loathing' author, ex-columnist for S.F. Examiner dies of gunshot wound ( from SFGATE.com ): Hunter S. Thompson, the counterculture writer credited with creating a new form of journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," was found dead Sunday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Aspen- area home, authorities said. ( click title for the rest of the article )

Collateral did me damage.

I think I’ve had enough of bashing Hollywood, it’s about time I praise it. Hell I’ve never actually took the time to make a movie so my guess is that I should stop mentioning the bad and try to only mention the good, this approach is actually constructive.
This past Saturday I rented and watched a movie that should set the new standards in Hollywood filmmaking. The movie as the title suggests was Collateral.
My guess is that Tom Cruise amongst an elite of actors is playing in and producing some of the best movies the studios produced in this past decade. Direction from Michael Mann was a key point in this movie, his use of DV cameras made a huge impact and gave the movie the extra realism that made it stand out amongst other action – suspense films. Jamie Foxx’s excellent acting needs praise too. The plot of the movie was somewhat simple to digest but photography, direction and acting was what made it top notch in my book. Although the movie has been out for some time now, if you haven’t rented it yet go and get it now.
Just to be fair I will post my Hollywood top 10 list in the coming days..

UK Leads Illegal TV Downloads Market ( from Neowin )

Neowin.net - UK Leads Illegal TV Downloads Market: More and more Brits are turning to the web to download their favourite TV shows, research has revealed. A report found the country was at the head of a "worldwide explosion in internet TV piracy". Nearly a fifth of all downloads come from the UK, compared with 7% from America. ( click the starting title for more .. )

Well, well, it has been reported, now it will be hunted, next thing you know TV eps sites will go down 'cause of this report and five years will be lost until the studios realise they can actually sell those episodes and have built the infrastructure to do that. I for one am more than willing to pay for my weekly episodes ( a reasonable fee that is ), one of the few entertainment pleasures left in my weekly schedule, as long as they encode these episodes in the same quality as the groups do and as long as I don't have to buy extra equipment to play them back. Oh, one more thing they don't have to be DRM laden. I quess all this is too much to ask but my guess is that it will happen sooner than later.

DVD Copy Protection Strengthened ( from BetaNews )

BetaNews | DVD Copy Protection Strengthened: "DVD Copy Protection Strengthened"
Content protection software maker Macrovision announced Tuesday a software solution that could help curb the problem of illegal copying of DVDs.

The software, called RipGuard, plugs up a hole created by the popular DeCSS software. DeCSS allows the user to break the already present copy protection and make near-perfect copies of the discs for uploading to P2P networks or re-burned onto recordable DVDs. ( click on top link to read more..)

They just don't give up now do they.. They managed to shutdown all of the big torrent sites now they are back to where the trouble began. IF ONLY HOLLYWOOD STOPPED PRODUCING CRAP BY THE DOZEN THEN WE WOULDN'T BE TRYING TO GET CHEAP COPIES WE WOULD BUY THE REAL THING. God I'm so pissed off by this nonsence.

Tv-swarm.com closed permanently.

Yet another excellent torrent site with TV episodes was closed down today by it's operators. They mention that judging from the latest happenings in the torrent scene they don't want to get shut down by the MPAA ( or any other association for that matter ) and get sued afterwards like lokitorrent and co.
These news make my day all the more miserable. In my country we rarely ever get good US TV shows, not to mention that we get them about 2 to 3 years later. So far I found comfort in downloading my favorite shows and after the season ended I bought them on DVD. While there are still some sites that share episodes my belief is that they will go down along with the bunch.
I so wish there could be some way of purchasing those episodes for a reasonable price since I don't want to get left behind only because I live in a far fetched European country. If the studios are reading this consider coming up with a solution fast. Instead of suing people charge them a minimal fee and milk them of their precious salaries if they are willing to pay for their entertainment instead of waiting some 2 years to watch a tv show for free on their over the air TV.

eXeem dumps Cydoor spyware ( news from p2pnet.net )

eXeem dumps Cydoor
eXeem Drops Cydoor
By Tom Mennecke - Slyck

When SuprNova closed its doors on December 19, 2004, many believed this event spelled the end of BitTorrent. Quickly capitalizing on this panic, news began to spread regarding the advent of a new decentralized BitTorrent effort named "eXeem." Curiosity and anticipation over this purportedly revised BitTorrent protocol began sweeping P2P forums.

However, the initial buzz that surrounded eXeem would ultimately give away to disappointment. News quickly began to circulate that Cydoor would accompany this client. Cydoor is a thrid party advertising program designed send targeted advertising to the end user.
Visit p2pnet for the rest of the article..

Sunbird 0.2 ( Mozilla Calendar ) released

Mozilla Calendar home > Although it was news this past Friday, my weekend holidays got in the way, anyhow the excellent new calendar from the Mozilla organization is out on it's first public release, I have been using it for some time now and I must say it's a great start for a promising product. It is compatible with the Apple iCal, that means that you can share and import public calendars of holidays and such widely available at Apple servers for iCal. The GUI still needs some fixes but it's quite promising. All in all a great app, I will be looking forward for future releases.

Spontaneous Weekend Holidays continued 2..

spontaneous_005
Originally uploaded by alexk7110.

Same as below..

Spontaneous Weekend Holidays continued..

spontaneous_006
Originally uploaded by alexk7110.

Read comments below..

Spontaneous Weekend Holidays are the best part2

spontaneous_004
Originally uploaded by alexk7110.

Here's what me and Anta have been up to this past weekend, amongst other things we visited the waterfalls of Edessa and here are some of the best pictures..

Snow in Greece ? You'd better believe it..

Snow in Greece ? You'd better believe it..
Originally uploaded by alexk7110.

Most people think that it never snows in my country, let me just assure you that once every 2 to 3 years we too have the pleasure of snow. Here's a snapshot I took outside of my work building in Thessaloniki Greece.

Tony Almeida is BACK !

I have been watching the fourth season of the series 24 and so far I wasn’t that impressed, although I did read a lot of comments on the net from people highly praising this season.

Yesterday all that changed. Tony Almeida, the heart and spirit of CTU returned to the series (although quite briefly) and my enthusiasm boosted right through the roof.

The cast that was selected from scratch this year is top notch but something was missing. The scenario is your usual 24 “ everybody is against the US, everyday in every way “ but what makes this series great is the continuing agony and the last minute episode revelation. Well episode number 7 introduced Tony back to the series. I hope he is here to stay.

p2pnet.net - Vehicle security chips cracked

Vehicle security chips cracked Bad news for car makers – and others using some kinds of RFID (radio frequency identification ) technologies, sometimes called Spy Chips.

A Johns Hopkins University hacker team has cracked Texas Instruments “immobilizer" systems used by millions of of Fords, Toyotas and Nissans.

The cars won’t start unless their systems recognize a RFID chip in authorized keys.

“More than 150 million of the Texas Instruments transponders are embedded in keys for newer vehicles built by at least three leading makers, and in more than 6 million key-chain gas tags, the researchers said,” according to a CNN Money story.

I Happen to own a Nissan and although I don't feel threatened yet ( my door lock won't even open with my own key.. ) I might consider what technology my next car lock and immobilizer will use..