HDR Images

Sometime I surf by some fancy stuff and it will cost me a day or a weekend. This time I was amazed by some mind bending pictures that turned out to be HDR (high dynamic range) images.

So, I do have an SLR digital camera … I do have a computer … off you go. I downloaded Photomatrix and spent an hour reading the manual for my camera. Here is what I managed to get done so far:

Fancy, isn’t it? Ok it is not mind bending yet but it is pretty cool. The picture is based on three shots with AV+2 AV0 and AV-2. Unfortunately there are these watermarks in the picture as I am still experimenting with the trial version - think I’ll buy it pretty soon

links for 2007-10-25

• Eddie Izzard- Death Star Canteen

links for 2007-10-17

• Distributions/Ubuntu - Banshee
  Music management for Linux - install details for ubuntu

Me is become a Freetard

Booyakasha … it works. I finally did it - I downloaded this Umbongo stuff from the freetards and installed it. Can you imagine how you feel when your machine boots with the sound of African drums? You feel like you have finally found freedom … or you did smoke too much weet, but that’s a different topic.

Here are the technical details for you techies out there: Dell Dimension 8300, 2.8GHz, 1.5GB memory, 80GB HDD, Nvidia graphics, U.S.Robotics WLAN … Umbongo 7.04 works like a charm.

To say it with the words of FSJ: I honor the place where your OS and my PC become one. Umbongo.

links for 2007-09-26

• UNO/C++ Beginner’s Guide
  Introductional document for using the UNO engine in C++
  (tags: openoffice uno)
• Zolved - How to make OpenOffice run faster in Ubuntu
  (tags: ubuntu openoffice)

Top 10 killer apps for the Info Warrior

Unfortunately the world of the Internet is full of tossers that build their financial well being on the stupidity of “Private InternetSurf”.  Private InternetSurf is blinded by the flashing neon lights of the large internet Eldorado - while behavior is being analyzed, profiles are being generated, and Private InternetSurf becomes Prospect0815.

Fortunately Corporate America is full of acts of stupidity that sometimes remind me of the necessity to protect my internet identity. One of these acts of stupidity was the publishing of search logs for 500.ooo users of the AOL search engine. Another one is a recent law passed in the US enabling government officials at US airports to basically copy all the data you carry around on your laptop.

OK … you get the point? Time to become an Info Warrior! Here is my top ten list of tools you should have on your laptop when you want to protect your identity and your data:

CA Personal Firewall 2007 - what used to be “Tiny Personal Firewall” is now being sold by CA for $30. You can close all the holes on your laptop making sure even MS can only do what you allow it to do.

Avira AntiVir Personal Edition - A standard virus scanner with regular virus signature updates but … it is for free.

Sophos Anti Rootkit - To counter another act of stupidity (Sony using a rootkit for DRM) this little tool lets you check your computer for installed rootkits

Hijackthis - As some folks think they are funny, they try to install dodgy software on your box while you are surfing. Hijackthis creates a nice protocol of all the stuff that is installed and running on your box. Sometimes this may be quite surprising output …

Process Explorer - If you belong to the “seeing is believing” section of the house, procexp will help you fight your paranoia. This tool is so cool that even MS recommends it on TechNet.

Torpark - Once you have used all the tools above to protect your box, it is time to protect your identity. Torpark hides your identity while you are surfing the web. A nice sidekick: it perfectly tunnels your corporate firewall.

TrueCrypt - So you have secured your machine against the internet, your identity is hidden … all you need to do now is protect your digital belongings against the nice security officer at the airport. TrueCrypt leaves him with a copy of random bits that even NSA will have trouble to bring back into order.

Eraser - If you think you are safe by now … think again. The files you copied into your encrypted drive are still there - you just do not see them anymore. To really get rid of every piece of evidence on your hard drive, this tool is the right choice (meets US DoD 5220-22.M requirements). You can even schedule a disk wipe so that your disk gets cleaned every Friday at night.

TOP 9  … still open - please send me your suggestions

TOP 10  … still open

Do you still organize …

Haha … I just had to create this image

To search or not to search …

When you think of a document on your hard-drive … do you think of the drive where it is stored and the folder where it is located? If you do, you are actually ‘old school’ these days.

Today you stop being organized and start searching. X1, Google Desktop Search and Microsoft Desktop Search are stetting the direction of a life on the search.

With an average of more than 100 mails a day, I finally gave up trying to get my inbox organized. What good is it if I organize my inbox according to the departments I am dealing with, when I need to run a cross-departmental project? What good is it to organize my inbox according to products, if my company runs a campaign across multiple products? I have tried so many ways to get my files and my e-mail organized, but I have given up on it … now I just search.

Using search is a process of giving up your old-school habits. “Ingo, do you have this xyz presentation somewhere?” … sure, let me check on my network drive … office documents … presentations - wrong! Stop it! Go to Desktop Search, enter “xyz” and search for presentations - right? This is when this little devil on your shoulder raises his voice: “Are you sure the search result covers all the information you have?”

Search is so much more than just a functionality. I think that it is a shift in paradigm that might have a major impact on file systems and operating systems. Why do you need folders in a file system when you believe in search? What you actually need is a lot of metadata about your files! What is the document dealing with? Who wrote the document? When was it written? Is it my working copy? So the metadata - the information about the information - is taking over the role of a file system making it much more flexible and multi-dimensional. The more metadata I have collected about my files, the better I can define my search, and the more likely it is that I will finally find the file.

If you take a look at Microsoft Vista, you will not only notice that search is everywhere (you even search for programs to run), but you will also notice that metadata is everywhere. If you open up a file browser you will see the metadata for each file directly in the browser. You can click on any field of the metadata and update it without having to open the file. Just like in the media player, you can now also provide a rating for your files to ensure that search returns your favorite files first.

Maybe here is something that Google is missing … dealing with metadata. When I search the web, Google is my first choice - but if I search my desktop, I rather use Microsoft Desktop Search. In my daily work the knowledge of metadata makes the difference between having to fall back to navigating tree structures of the file system, and blindly trusting in the search results of a search engine.

What happened so far …

Quite some time has passed since I last touched this blog. Okay, I knew it right from the beginning that I am not a let-me-open-my-heart blogger and I am still surprised not having abandoned my blog yet.

The most hilarious blog I have found so far is the Cranky Product Manager’s blog. I confess: yes … CrankyPM … I have been there, seen that … fantastic how you bring it to the point.

When I was at our US headquarter last week to discuss what we will should do in our next release, CrankyPM became the favorite web site for our entire team. We went out on a couple of occasions to check the bars … but Mary … I did not know that you tried to scare me?! I thought it was quite some fun gunning the car over to Harrison’s … better luck next time! But it was real fun being out with you folks. I hope your head is fine again!

 Update: The CrankyPM must have sold her website … this new stuff is just plain stupid … sorry to say, but forget about the link. I removed it from my blogroll.

MS Private Folder

Just in case you missed the link to Microsoft Private Folder before it was removed from the official Microsoft web site … if you follow this link, you can still download it (but I do not know how long the link will continue to exist:-)).