Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

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Microsoft have stopped making my favourite image manipulation tool. The 2006 version of Digital Image Suite was the last, which is rather sad as I always quite liked the program. Unfortunately, the code is showing its age a bit now, and it doesn't handle raw camera images very well, and so I've had to look around for a new image processing program. Paint .NET is great for a freebie, but doesn't do much with raw images and I also wanted some image cataloguing tools.

So last week I downloaded a 30 day evaluation copy of Photoshop Elements from Adobe, and this week I bought a book which tells me how to use the program (essential in this case because even a seasoned computer user like me finds some of the ways the program works to be quite opaque). Next week (or perhaps the week after) I might even buy the software itself.

I've always had a kind of "dis-affection" for Adobe software. It never seems to quite work properly for me. Their PDF reader is a huge, unwieldy beast for something which is essentially a file viewer, and it really upsets me when such a lowly program insists on rebooting my machine when it has updated itself. It used to annoy me even more when it hid the update confirmation window behind everything else, and brought my machine to a standstill waiting for a response. Having said that, the latest reader does have some rather nice tools that you can use to annotate PDFs which are rather cute, although I guess they contribute to the "bloatiness" of the program and make it much slower to load when all I want to do is look at a document.

Anyhoo, I digress. The Elements installation went smoothly, and I quickly had a picture open for edit. And I got that sinking feeling again. All I wanted to do was darken one part of the image, to hide some of the background. An adjustment layer might have hit the spot, if I could have figured out how to mask it over the bits that I need. A darkening brush might have been nice too if I could figure out how to use it. There's usually a scene in most action movies where the hero gets into the pilot's seat in a helicopter, spaceship, ocean liner or some such and is confronted by a huge, complicated array of controls. You then get a close up of their baffled face as they scan the buttons, dials and levers in front of them. I get that face whenever I use Elements. Stuff I never want to do ("Conte Crayon" anyone?) is right in front of me and stuff I always want to do ("make this bit darker")  is nowhere to be seen. In the end I gave up and resolved to buy a book.

I then had a go with the photo catalogue software. Now, granted, bringing 50 gigs of images into the index in one go might be pushing it a bit, but I was hoping for something a bit more useful then a terse "import failed" message after thirty minutes of hard disk rattling.  I imported the pictures in a directory at a time and this time it worked OK. Then Elements started nagging me to do a backup of my catalogue so eventually I said yes, hooked up an external drive and pointed the program at it. At which point it put 24 thousand images into the root directory of the disk. Most backup programs that I've used create a directory to put their files in. Not Elements. Actually, kudos to Vista here, in that I managed to select all the files and put them into a more sensible place without the file explorer window tipping over.

However, the program is growing on me bit by bit. I've been reading the book I bought to find out what it can do, and it really is a powerful beast. And perhaps I've been a bit harsh in expecting it to just work. We shall see.

Vista Speak Easy

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I'm listening...

I'm presently marking loads of software submissions from our second year course. This involves looking at some designs, making some comments, coming up with a mark and them moving on to the next one.

A hundred times.

I thought that rather than type everything I'd try speaking it instead. So, for the first time, I hooked a microphone up to the computer and fired up Vista's speech recognition.

I didn't have particularly high hopes. The last time I saw it being used was when a hapless presenter tried to show off a beta version of windows at a talk they were giving. The results were highly amusing, and probably the product of beta code and a dodgy microphone setup. However, they did serve to put me off trying to use the system (although it is very funning when the presenter says "delete sentence" and the system dutifully puts "delete sentence" into the text).

The training session is interesting. You go through learning how to control the program whilst at the same time the system is learning how you speak. This means that you can say profoundly wrong things as you train it, and it still seems to work (although this will come back and haunt you later when it uses the trained data to try and make sense of your real speech).

It took a while to complete all the training tasks, but there are a large number of options and you really could use the speech interface to control pretty much all of the machine. The text correction stuff is very clever, and makes it easy to correct particular errors.

Then it was time to use the system in anger. And it worked pretty well. I could just dictate comments and they are decoded and fed them into the window where the cursor happens to be. I didn't find any particular need to speak more slowly, the system actually seems to work better if you throw a whole load of text at it rather than single words - probably because it uses a lot of extra context information from the text to decode the sounds. I knew I was on to something when I started using the voice input to write and send an email. The only problem is that you have to compose the whole sentence in your head before saying it, and this is not usually how I write.

Having said all this, I'm definitely going to get a proper microphone and start using the speech input as part of the way I work. If you've never tried it I'd recommend it, I'm not sure which versions of Vista it is supplied with (I'm using Ultimate - which seems to have everything) but if it is there it is definitely worth a go.

News at Ten

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ITV have brought back News at Ten, which used to be an institution in our house when I was younger. It was usually the cue for my sister and I to have an argument about whose turn it was to make the supper.

I miss those days.

Anyway, pop quiz question with no prize.

"What links News at Ten with Dr. Who?"

Rob and Jon in Games TM

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One of our students (thanks Tom) sent me an email about an article in the issue 65 of Games TM, a gaming magazine. Some time ago Jon Purdy and I had a phone call from one of their writers and it seems our remarks have now made their way into print. They are on page 24, in the middle of a very good article called "Breaking In", about how to get into the games programming business. I'd completely forgotten about the interview, but it is very nice to see myself quoted like this.

The whole magazine is a good read actually. They have always had a really good retro section and I've always found their game reviews to be pretty much spot on.

Wedding Daze

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Went to Iain and Suzanne's wedding bash tonight. Good food, good company and good music. I didn't actually dance (I'm not actually allowed to until the court order is rescinded) but it was a great event. I took the little camera and grabbed a few snaps.

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The figures on top of the cake were ace. Although I don't remember Iain having that much hair...

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...and they even had their own branded sweeties for us

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Congratulations, and the best of luck for the future.

ShutterBug

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I seem to be getting back into photography again. I've been selling computers and phones and buying cameras and lenses. And I'm not alone. I was in the newsagents today and there are loads and loads of photography magazines sprouting up.I think part of this is due to the availability of cheap digital SLR cameras, and also sites like Flickr which let you show off your pictures. Either way, it is nice to see, because photography is fun and with modern computer based technology there is no need to mess around in the dark with strange chemicals (unless you really fancy it). At Hull we even have a Hull University Photographic Society now, I'm looking forward to going along to some more meetings next semester.

I've been taking photographs since schooldays, when hiding in the darkroom was a very pleasant alternative to school sports on Wednesday afternoon. I had a developing tank, an enlarger and hands that smelt of fixer. I used to borrow books from the library about photographic technique and learn phrases like "contre jour". In those days taking a photograph was quite an effort. If you didn't have a light meter to measure the brightness of the scene you could use a little plastic calculator to work out the exposure. You gave it the date and time and it worked out how bright the outdoors should be. Then you had to calculate the distance, set the focus and finally fire the shutter. After a session in the darkroom you would get to see your negatives, which you would then convert into prints after another foray into the pitch black. Great fun.

Nowadays you just press the button. The camera decides what you are photographing, sets the focus and exposure accordingly and then makes a noise like old cameras used to do - just to keep you happy. You can look at the picture straight away, and print out copies of the ones you like best, with no darkness at all.

Of course, as someone who used to do everything the hard way, I think this makes it all too easy, but then again you can get nice pictures with minimal effort. I took the new camera and lens down to the marina and had a happy half hour taking pictures. Which I guess is what it is all about.

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Lifeboat

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Boats and tidal barrier

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Flags

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Hull Marina

Imagine Cup Last Chance

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In response to requests from lots of universities, Microsoft have again extended the deadline for Imagine Cup Software Design Challenge entries to January 16th.

They have also set up a Windows Live Messenger account where you can discuss deas and entries for the competition. This is on imaginecup@hotmail.co.uk and there should be someone on the end of this at most times.

If you are thinking about entering but aren't sure if your idea will hit the spot, you could have a chat with them about it before making your pitch.

I can't stress strongly enough the value of taking part in things like this. We are finding that employers are more and more concerned that potential hires should be "Out of the Box Useful" when they arrive in their job. Entering competitions, preparing and pitching ideas and working with other people are all the kind of thing that help build you up as a useful person, and you should take every possible opportunity to beef up these skills.

Rock Band Rocks

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Today, for the briefest of moments, I was the proud owner of a copy of the new Rock Band game. It is not available in the UK yet, and so before Christmas I thought it would be a wizard wheeze to get a copy shipped over from the 'states for us to play with over the festive season. I even sold three mobile phones on eBay to pay for it. It would have been a brilliant idea if it had been shipped in time, and the US Postal Service had not used the slow boat from China to deliver it.  Anyhoo, it arrived today and so we got it out and had a brief bash.

It rocks. Even though I only had a few minutes to play with it, I reckon it really rocks. I sent it off in the afternoon with Number One Son who will get more fun out of it than I will, and I'm going to get a nice lens instead. I'd decided this before we got the game out of the box, and having played with it I very nearly changed my mind. When it launches in the UK I'll probably sell something else and try to get a copy.

The thing I was most interested in was the drums, which turn out to be ace. The drum hardware itself looks very strong and sensibly designed, with proper drumsticks. They make a surprisingly large amount of noise in use, and you can really give the drumpads some welly. I found drumming quite hard to do myself, but number one son managed to sail through a couple of tracks on easy mode with no problem.  You'll need a big room though, as the whole kit takes up a fair amount of space.

However, the best bit in the game for me has got to be the guitar. It is splendid. It looks like a proper guitar, and has a virtually silent action, which makes playing along with solos much more realistic. The whole design and the heft of the thing is streets ahead of the plastic guitars that I've seen in the past, it even has silver machine heads and proper looking effects controls. It's wireless too, which is ace. I think when the game launches in the UK I'd get a copy just to have a guitar like this, it really is much nicer than the ones supplied with Guitar Hero. Number one son says that the word on the street is that it doesn't play quite as well, with stories of delays between hitting the bar and the note playing, but I thought it was fine. I loved playing the bass parts with it.

We didn't get as far as trying the microphone, we would have needed a third person for that, but I'm told it works well.

The game itself seems more polished than Guitar Hero, which on the PS3 looks pretty much identical to the PS2 version. The note displays seem more stylish and the animation a bit more detailed. They actually have a whole bunch of tracks that I've heard of too, and the ability to download a load more. Network play is also included, which would be amazing if it works (we didn't have time to try it).

In the brief time that we had before we crammed it all into a bunch of suitcases, we had a ball. With two more players and a day or so to spend on working through the band career mode I reckon we could have a whale of a time.

I'm now watching the UK game release dates with interest, and looking for more things to sell on eBay...

XNA Book Takes Shape

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Coming to all good book shops....

I've been uber-busy over Christmas and New Year getting the last parts of the book sorted out and preparing the sample programs (all 54 of them) for the companion web site. Today I got the final design for the cover, which I think is really cool. I've asked for one tiny change, to remove the S from the middle of my name. It works for Hunter S. Thompson, but I don't really have enough syllables in my name (not to mention writing ability) to carry off a middle initial just yet. The book will be going to print real soon, and should be in the shops by March.

This is a bit later than we had planned, but I think it is the first XNA 2.0 book out there, which is nice.

But What a Sound!!!

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I've spent some of today making sound effects for the demo content for the XNA book. Great fun. I've been sampling things using Audacity and I tried to export a little bit of a waveform to make the tick sound for a clock that I've made. Except that I exported all the tracks at once. The resulting sound however is fantastic. Take a listen here and try to keep a straight face all the way through.....

..just think how much I've saved

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Went shopping for clothes today. Went very well, got a couple of jackets and some jeans It might not seem much to you, but I'm only able to buy clothes a couple of times a year and this was one of them. I'm not telling you how much I spent, but I saved loads...

The weather was kind of interesting and wintry. Asked number one son to poke the camera out of the car window during the journey.

So he did.

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The first shot he took

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True Grit

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Not quite an oil painting, but it could be..

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As could this...