John D Geek Post

If you visit my site johndgeek.com you will see I have added a new 2d image to the portfolio. It's a photograph of my grand parents, mother, and uncles in the traditional dutch costume. The picture was taken just before they moved to the USA from Holland. At the time the photographer only offered the prints in black and white. The picture endured several decades until one day my grand father asked if I could colorize it. I didn't hesitate to help since I knew how to colorize a photo using Paint Shop Pro or PhotoShop and proceeded to work. It turned out to be taking a lot of time to complete because of so many details in the clothing and background. Then while reading the digg articles I noticed that someone had created a better way to colorize photos. I had to check it out for myself. The examples posted by the application's author were great so I downloaded a demo and tried it out for myself. The application was easy to install and has a small file size. Once I opened it t...

It isn't often that I come across a program that I think deserves to be mentioned. So often they miss the mark. Some programs will be intuitive and easy to use but lack the power or ability to do anything effective. Other times the application is powerful and give the user limitless potential but requires classes or several books to just learn how to use. This little application is one such wonder that makes it easy to use but just misses the mark on ability. That said I still like this programme. The first thing that sets this application apart is the ability to use PSD, PNG, BMP, EXE and ICO formats. Have a picture you want to crop and make an icon? you can do it with the standard windows paint program and Icon Sushi. Have an avatar or logo you spent hours in Photo Shop with to get alpha and transparency just right? you can open it in Icon Sushi and translate the work into icon form. It has the ability to create icons without sacrificing quality. It also has the ability to add al...

I just finished watching a report about porn junk mail on NBC's Dateline tonight and saw something that reminded me of some other business actions not allowed in the US. The story went along the line that people, family people, where receiving pornographic e-mail without asking for it. The reporter John Hockenberry then went on a journey of two continents and 4 cities to trek down and confront the actual person that send the e-mail. I found it interesting that even though each piece of mail is identified with a code that shows you who sent the mail, no one wanted to correct the problem. Through Mr. Hockenberry's trips to Toronto, Las Vegas and Montreal He came across companies that did not have a physical listing. At the same time he found that several companies employed the same people even though they know they are breaking policies set by the company. This is all fine and well and I do think that junk mail is a part of business that laws have turned there back on. What I don...

Recently the supreme court ruled that a company that makes software can be held accountable if it is shown that the intention of the software was for illegal use. Many other tech savvy sites equate this ruling to gun makers being responsible for gun related murders and armed robbery. I do see the similarities but I think gun violence is a far more serious crime then copyright piracy. And yet we have millions of dollars being spent to create legal boundaries on who is responsible when little Johnny downloads a song. If companies can be held accountable for creating programs like Grokster, Kazza, and Limewire then what about the companies that create FTP server and client software? What about the companies that create the old telnet bulletin board systems? Each of these are methods of transmitting software and each have been used in some form or another to pirate copyrighted material. I think this is all a waste of time because the simple truth is that if you take away the companies that...

In Michael Robertson blog, Legal Battles In VOIP: Vonage and e911 a few weeks back. He talked about disagreeing that "e911" should be mandatory by companies offering VoIP service. His argument is that it would be near impossible to pin point where an e911 call is originating and that the cost of getting this created would slow or even stop some businesses from continuing. I disagree with this statement because I think it would be fairly easy to create a system of software that would either register the device to an area and/or acquire the location of the net call from the ISP. It currently is done with trace routing software and that same technique could be used to generate a general origin and have either the user, VoIP vender, or ISP fill in the details of the address. I do see that Wi-Fi connections could be more difficult to manage. Especially when you get into a situation like WiMax or wireless anywhere connections because the triangulation would be difficult but even t...

It occurred to me that even though digital cameras have been selling for some years now, people might not know what to look for when buying a digital camera. Well in this post I will give some pointers that will hopefully give you a better idea of what to look for and how to recognize a good value. First off you need to know your budget or what you are willing to pay for a camera with all the features you are looking for. Please don't tell me you are not willing to pay anything. It's just to obvious. In any case I try not to spend more then $US 400.00. So far I have been able to find well made cameras that also have features I am looking for. Next decide what kind of zooming capabilities are necessary. Are you going on safari? Do you find yourself at the back of the school gym no matter how early you get to little Johnny's school play? You will want a camera with a large number optical zoom. Third you want to decide on a megapixle size. 4 megapixle...