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Elsewhere on the web

The wilds of Singapore.
Tempest Blue on MacRitchie Reservoir’s Treetop walk.

The trouble with Borat.
“For example, Vassilenko lamented, women are not kept in cages in Kazakhstan as Borat has claimed. Kazakhstan’s national sport is not shooting a dog and then having a party. Wine in Kazakhstan is not made from fermented horse urine. And a person cannot earn a living in Kazakhstan as a ‘Gypsy’ catcher.”

Ps and Qs.
“‘In every family home … there’s a word which people find it really hard to say to each other. It ends in ‘y’. Can anyone tell me what it is?” A long and agonised pause followed, broken only by one boy shouting out – quite seriously – ‘Is it buggery?'”

Posted in Web.

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By Gobi – Monday, November 14, 2005

MMMGQ SIG, too

MMMGQSIG: Photoshop Elements

Another shot of Bandai’s MMMGQ Sword Impulse Gundam.

(In case you’re wondering, “MMMGQ” is short for “a ridiculously long designation which is frequently abbreviated because it really is ridiculously long.”)

I used Photoshop Elements to edit this photo and I’m once again impressed. Compare the above with the version edited in IrfanView.

JPEGs compressed with Photoshop Elements don’t have as many artifacts as photos compressed with IrfanView. For instance, take a look at the red portion of the shield. You’ll see a lot of compression-caused splotches in the IrfanView version.

Another major difference is the ability to tweak selective areas of the photo. IrfanView doesn’t allow you to, say, selectively tweak the brightness or contrast of a small area of the photo. It’s all or nothing. The original photo had a distracting shadow in the bottom right-hand corner which I easily removed with the aid of Photoshop Elements’ Magic Wand selection tool.

But this isn’t a fair comparison. IrfanView is primarily an image viewer which can be extended somewhat while Photoshop Elements (though watered-down) is still a photo editing powerhouse. If you’re looking for a better freeware solution for editing photos, you could try the GIMP.

Posted in Pix, Toys.

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By Gobi – Monday, November 14, 2005

Elements

I’m been impressed by Photoshop Elements 3.0 in the brief time I’ve been using it. Creating nifty effects is almost a trivial matter. I was so enamoured of the text effects in particular that I created some new site banners and buttons just for the hell of it.

It’s probably going to take me a while to get the hang of the photo editing features but the numerous tutorials and guides online should make the learning process a little easier.

I have discovered one thing about the program that bugs me, however. For some indiscernible reason, Adobe has decided two services, PhotoshopElementsFileAgent.exe and PhotoshopElementsDeviceConnect.exe, need to stay resident in memory even if you don’t make use of their features. According to services.msc, those services track files managed by Photoshop Album and launch Photoshop Elements Organizer when a device is connected. I’ve disabled those features in the program yet both services remain in the Task Manager list.

I suppose I could always manually disable them through services.msc but it annoys me I have to resort to that.

Posted in Software.

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By Gobi – Saturday, November 12, 2005

Elsewhere on the web

MyTempDir.
Upload files of up to 40MB in size. The site also allows users to delete files.

“They’ve found Godzilla.”
The actual size of this “100 per cent terrifying” sea monster: 13 … feet. This must be the paleontological equivalent of the rabbit of Caerbannog.

Unsuccessful college instructor applicants. [via]
“My last college didn’t give me enough freedom. They were too worried about students’ passing the class.”

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By Gobi – Friday, November 11, 2005

Price check

I got the Wacom Graphire from Low Yat Plaza today. Wacom’s dealer list included a number of stores at the shopping complex and I ended up in Startec.

I got the salesman to bring the CTE-640 box for inspection and I was a little surprised to see the price tag read RM609 since Wacom’s suggested retail price for the model was RM679.

I’m the world’s worst bargainer but being Malaysian born and bred, I naturally made a token effort to have the price reduced. I put on my most stern expression and asked whether RM609 was the best price they could offer. The salesperson brought out his calculator, punched in some numbers and showed me the result: 599.

I looked at the package again and then put on my most disbelieving face — an eyebrow was cocked — and asked again if that was the very best price they could offer. I told the salesman if he’d reduce it to RM590 I’d hand him my cash there and then. The salesperson replied he’d have to check with someone. He came back after a minute with a rather peculiar expression on his face.

The calculator display now showed 560.

I had apparently been shunted to some bizarre alternate dimension where shopkeepers don’t take advantage of awful bargainers.

I paid and went home still in disbelief over the price reduction. Perhaps the shop was passing off a shoddy unit. Perhaps I would go home, install the graphics tablet and my computer would, I don’t know, explode or something.

Imagine my befuddlement when Windows XP recognised the Graphire immediately and the driver installation went without a hitch. Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0? Working as advertised. Corel Painter Essentials 2? No problem.

Remarkable.

You know, there might be something to this eyebrow-cocking thing.

Posted in Hardware.

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By Gobi – Friday, November 11, 2005