Arts IT Savvy

I have had a particular interest in the history of computer gaming, and love reading about the developments and how one game led to the creation of a genre, such as Dune2 starting the whole Command and Conquer phenomenon (which incidentally also led to Warcraft), and early games like Wolfenstein 3D tht is now the first person shooter etc.

A great (online) TV show is called Play Value, and is a very well produced, short (10 minute episodes) look at the whole game development, hardware, software, personalities behind the scenes etc

Currently hosted by On Networks (I pick up episodes through iTunes)

If you are interested in computer gaming, and are interested in how we have gotten to where we are today, this is definitely worth a look.

A book that may also be of some interest (if only for the various game screen shots), is called “High Score!”

This is not to be mistaken for the documentary “High Score” made back in about 2005, where Bill Carlton attempted to break the 80 million point record for “Missile Command”

The documentary byline reads “One Quarter. Two Days. No Pause Button” Hopefully the documentary isn’t as long as the game lasted!

Adobe Product Range

Today’s IT Info Session will be a look at the Adobe range of products - there is more than just Acrobat and Photoshop in the range, as well as many different packages now available.  This will be a brief overview of the different products that there are, and what is included in the different packages (as well as the license prices (given we get them for well below the education rates))

The session will be from 1:10pm to 1:50pm in S403, Building 11, Clayton Campus.

No charge or RSVP necessary.

A number of DVD Burners these days are coming with a “Lightscribe” option.  The principle is: if you have DVD media designed for Lightscribe, after burning your data (or whatever) on to the data side of the DVD, you then remove the DVD, flip it over, and put it back into the burner.

Then, by running the Lightscribe editing software, you design a logo / image etc to be ‘printed’ on the other side.  The printing is actually a laser that burns the laser-sensitive material on the reverse side of the disk, which is why you need disks designed to be “Lightscribe”

Some initial impressions, after trying it out for the first time (actually the second time, but the first time was a couple of years ago, and I gave up because it was too slow to be practical).

1.  It is still slow - for the image I made, it took 16 minutes to burn

2. The image I chose probably wasn’t very suitable, and the results looked rather ordinary.  High contrast is definitely required.

3. If the image is not high contrast, the result looks very muddy.

4. Even with a high contrast image, the result is rather pale and dare I say, unimpressive. (And very low contrast)

I’ll try some other images and experiments, but at this stage, I still don’t see that there is much to recommend the Lightscribe process.

Spam and Scams

Have a look through a number of emails, and try to identify which are legit, and which are not, and where the common traps and pitfalls are.
Find out more about good and bad practices with tackling questionable emails, and overall improve your “spamdar” (Spam Radar) (or should that be “scamdar”?)

Session will be from 1:10pm to 1:50pm in S403, Building 11, Clayton Campus.

No charge or RSVP necessary.

Today’s IT info session is a repeat of Monday’s session: An introductory look at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Session will be from 1:10pm to 1:50pm in S403, Building 11, Clayton Campus.

No charge or RSVP necessary.  Come along and see what the program is about, how it can be used to keep your photos sorted, and it’s non-destructive editing capabilities.

Apple have released their new laptops, with a new MacBook, and Macbook Pro (with various optional configs as per normal).

New Apple MacBook

Not sure when they will be available here - around Xmas based on previous experiences.

Today’s IT Info Session will be focussing on Backup - that subject that everyone puts into the too hard basket, but bitterly regrets not taking that step to ensure their data / computer is actually backed up when it is lost.

The session will be from 1:10pm to 1:50pm in S403, Building 11, Clayton Campus.

No charge or RSVP necessary.  Come along and find out the different backup options that are available, and how to finally have a little bit of confidence that all that work you keep doing, the photos you are taking etc etc is actually safe from (the very commonly occurring) disaster.

Today’s IT info session is an introductory look at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Most people would be aware at least of the existence of Photoshop - a powerful digital image editing program.  However, few are aware of it’s newest cousin, Lightroom.

Designed specifically with the professional photographer in mind, it is never-the-less a very suitable program for anyone with a library of digital photographs (and most of us now have a digital camera), or a collection of scanned digital images.

Session will be from 1:10pm to 1:50pm in S403, Building 11, Clayton Campus.

No charge or RSVP necessary.  Come along and see what the program is about, how it can be used to keep your photos sorted, and it’s non-destructive editing capabilities.

According to Sophos, currently only email in 28 is legitimate.

So the next “unbelievable” offer, request for your account confirmation, “I really want to meet you”, “I have funds I need to get out of the country” etc etc email you get in your inbox, you might want to think twice (or more) before blindly acting upon it.

Thank goodness for spam filtering, but even so, a number always gets through, and potentially, these are the smarter ones that you really need to watch out for, as they may pose as something quite legitimate.

That isn’t to say you should stop reading emails, but like ‘they’ say: “don’t believe everything you see on TV”

Which may not mean a lot to most people, but they produced the software I blogged about on here recently called VisualHub and AudialHub.  The second I didn’t get to try out in the end, and the first is the primary solution I use for converting video files from one format to another, and in my case specifically, producing the iPod compatible mp4 files (H264 codec).

Apparently the products will still be compatible with the next Mac OS (10.6 - Snow Leopard), but with the recipient hardware changing regularly and rapidly (iPods etc), the software will become dated very quickly.

It is disappointing, and somewhat surprising that they’ve simply closed their doors and discontinued the product, rather than selling it.  Guess I will be looking for a new conversion solution in the near future.

The Turbo264 is ok, but doesn’t produce as small a file with the same quality, and more importantly, cannot handle static images (such as powerpoint slides) inside the video file - they tend to run like a watercolour painting in a rainstorm - weird, and unusable.