Videopad

Videopad. The cause of many, many headaches during the past two months and since the first time I downloaded it on my laptop. For weeks I tried grappling with insufficient features and demo-versions that didn’t let me move on to the next actualization, all in vain. It’s slow, there’s not a proper downloadable version on the Internet, any version you download it’s temporary and will be obsolete in days, and even though I was about to fall for the usual lie they tell you about buying the actual software in order to get better features and decent outcomes, I simply was – am – unwilling to waste time and money on something that has already been proven to be utterly useless. Nevertheless, duty called and I couldn’t quit the project without it affecting my final grade on Computing, so I coped. Adding to my previous analysis of the programme, after having used up at least ten different demo-versions, I could not longer export any project at all from Videopad owing to the restrictions of these versions, and that has been my major problem for the past weeks. All my work, lost forever. My efforts, forgotten. I had to give everything up and go instead for a cheap, easy, quick project that I was only going to be able to work on at school. So here I am, angrily writing in my desk, completely aware of the damage Videopad has caused, and finally resigned to the fact that this time, in spite of the many hours I invested on my first projects that were likely to turn out perfect, everything I’ve done and spent time on will not be reflected on my grades. So, no, I am not content with this software. I have worked with it for months and the results were poor, slow, and not what I wanted them to be. Whenever I exported something, it came out much slower, with the different tracks and clips mixed up at times I had not programmed them to. After saving more than three times in a session, it closed up and warned me I had no more try-outs in the demo-version and had to buy the professional one if I wanted to continue working. Then, no, I do not want to. It may be useful if you find a good version, decent, at least, considerably inefficient, though, but it is something. If I had nothing else to go on, of course I would have to choose it. But given that my interest on video edition can be repressed for the moment, I’ll simply wait for a better, free, video software that responds correctly and doesn’t leave me hanging when I really need it to work at its best.

Net security

As you can probably see from my last three posts, the main issue to be discussed in Computing lessons today is internet security. Why? Well, because we live around the Internet and it lives thanks to us. Threats are out there, our computers aren't well-protected, and we know nothing about antivirus, passwords or bugs: it all screams "come and get me" as though it would if we shouted this at our neighbors right before going on holiday. Results? Your computer gets infected with virus, you don't safely surf the net, and you're constantly exposed to whatever awaits out there. The easy solution would be to simply ignore this all and ask somebody else to solve it for you, say, call a cousin to install a reliable antivirus, or ask a friend about how to disable cookies; but if you are really concerned about what you are dealing with and how to avoid it, then reading will help. Articles or wikipedia, blogs or books. It doesn't matter as long as you find a source that speaks honest truths. 

First of all, passwords. 

• Don't make them easy to remember, that's the first signal: if you can guess it, others can too. 
• Don't make them short in any way, mix capital letters with numbers and symbols.
• Don't use anything remotely personal as a password, since anybody close enough to you will be able to guess it.
• Don't let your computer save them in a file or in its memory.

This way, anyone wishing to fake your account will find a barrier shielding it, and if you have done this well, they won't get past it.

Another thing to be taken into account is the security around our computers. Antiviruses are paramount, of course, mostly if you use Windows, because it's the more used and most commonly attacked operating system. You can pay for them or download some simpler versions on the Internet that will protect your devices just fine. All in all, if you aren't working in anything too important, then you shouldn't have to pay for an antivirus if you don't want to. But if you're working on some designs for a Formula 1 car, or you're a well-known engineer, then go shopping and bring home the best antivirus you can find out there.

Unprotected computers are bait from the first minute. I had mine like that for some time and got myself infected with adware (advertisements) and God knows what else, so I don't recommend it. You also have available onine all kinds of PC cleaners that delete the information your computer stores that you don't really need, that is, cookies, historials, etc. Needless to say that you shouldn't download anything unless you're positive it's virus-free. But if you're really interested, you can ask around and find something that suits you.

If that's not the case, I can slip something in. For me, CCleaner's been working neatly and efficiently, so I don't see why you shouldn't try. And as to antivirus, my weapon of choice was Norton for a while, then I switched to Avira, and I just find no difference between them. My PC is clean and I'm happy, the result's the same.

Given that I already ranted about WiFi and privacy in previous posts, I'll be brief here. 

• Be careful to which WiFis you connect, specially if they're open. Never trust anything that's not official.
• WPA and WPA2 passwords are the best WiFi protection-codes you can find out there. Make sure you install them correctly, though.
• Don't be too explicit about anything in your social networks of choice (Twitter, Facebook, etc). You never know who's watching and reading.
• Public opinions shouldn't be shouted from the rooftops, specially when they're not precisely nice. The same applies to the media. Don't say anything you know can be used against you.
• Keep your profiles as private as possible.
• Don't contact people you don't know.
• Make a responsible, mature, and professional use of the technology we've been given the privilege to use and life will reward you.

"Better safe than sorry."

Open WiFi = alarms beeping

Apparently, yesterday I skipped this very important topic when focusing more on social networking and less on WiFI security - which is also worthy of mention and which slipped my mind. As well as the dangers of open profiles on social networks, open WiFi networks presents a threat as well. There are people very skilled out there in the vast world that can and will access your devices if you connect to an open WiFi, and the worst thing is that we think that it's just a myth, that nobody is capable of that and that no one in their right mind would ever do such a thing. Truth is, it happens. Whenever you connect to one of those so-called free WiFi, two things may happen: either it is a reliable one, or you're about to be tracked. If it's the first one, everything's okay and there's nothing to worry about. But if it's the latter, everything you own, everything you keep, every single word you have ever said on your open profiles of any social network, every single text, everything, will suddenly belong to someone else. Someone you don't know that now will know you. That's the main reason you should never connect to an open WiFi you aren't 100% sure it's safe. But this problem doesn't just apply to free connections. If we are not careful and don't use our resources to shield our home WiFi, it is perfectly hackable, and then it is the same loop again. It may seem stupid and impossible, but at the end of the day, someone could hack your WiFi to commit a cibernetic crime, and at the end of the day, when the police force accesses your computer to investigate, the main accused will be you .. not the ones that broke the law, just you. Because it will be your computer's IP that gives you away. And nobody is going to take the blame for it.

Net security

I'm not very knowledgeable in this particular topic, but I'm going to risk it.

Like I said on previous posts, the information we share on social networks is not always as private as we think, whether it be because of the lack of protections on our profile pages or because someone has hacked it secretly, which isn't very popular but can definitely happen.

Advices on this are everywhere, and they're usually ignored out of the boredom they cause by hearing them over and over again, but they are very correct, I must say.

They're not very difficult to follow if one tries to:

• DO NOT share any sort of personal data that may cause any trouble to you in the long term, aka, phone number, address, email accounts, passwords, and (this is not obligatory, just advisable) try not to let on more than you'd like strangers to remember you by.
• LEARN how to deactivate your account in case it's necessary (e.g.: abusive relationships, your being tracked ...)
• ALWAYS make your profiles private, if possible, so that only you can access to them and see them. Of course, you can also allow your closest friends and relatives to see it too, but make sure you don't click the very well-known button saying: "my friends' friends" 
• DO NOT share very personal opinions that may entitle others to accuse you of any sort of thing related to that. (e.g.: opinions on politics, offenses to others, public declarations, etc...), nor compromising photographs.
• PLEASE keep insults as far as you can from your profiles, if you want to insult someone, insult them in your mind, it's equally satisfying and no one gets hurt.
• REMEMBER that everything we post online is indelible, and therefore, it will be there whether we like it or not.

If we have these in mind, I think it's not hard to become responsible users that are less likely to suffer from unpleasant surprises related to the lack of net security.

Social Networks

What are they? What are they used for? Have we become dependent on those that spread communication among people? Do we truly know that whatever few secrets we let loose on them can be seen by others with not as good or innocent an intention as ours?

It is pretty clear, I think, that the term social network immediately brings to mind a very nitid image of one of those websites we're hooked to on which we exchange informations about ourselves and our private lives, and, in fact, that's what they are, it just isn't the only type of social network there is.

Twitter, Facebook, Tuenti, MySpace, etc ... they are all alike, with some characteristics that make them different and easier to identify, and the four of them serve a similar purpose, the unceasing, rapid, sometimes overwhelming flow of data. That's the constant that unites these networks: the data.

These last four I mentioned share personal data, things we normally don't say or make public outdoors but that we don't hesitate in publishing there because it's considered normal, because we would be considered to be weirdos if we didn't.

Nevertheless, there are kinds and kinds of social networks. The ones flowing around the writing-reading, author-fan topic. The ones circling around art and artists. The ones mainly about blogging platforms. The work-related ones. And the criminal ones. I could go on and go investigating to edit this post and add more, but as my will-power isn't that strong, I may as well drop the issue, keep the useful information I've learned about it and try to spread it by any means possible so everybody else can hear about it too. Just a little advice, though: use them well. (Harry Potter pun totally intended)

Prezi

First of all, I feel I must apologize for the long absence, but to be honest, there are not many reliable WiFi connections around when you're in the middle of a storm. Anyhow, here I am again, now to write about Prezi, the more advanced, non-linear alternative to Power Point and SlideShare that has undoubtedly rocked my "softwared" world.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit that at first I could not get the hang of it – so many different layouts, frames, typographies, so many uncommon ways to compose (so to speak) an interactive presentation that can change directions, colors, do some insight approaches, loops and a total amount of effects and things you'll be surprised. How was I supposed to master such a complex software in just one or two days? Was it impossible?

Yes, it was. Because, even though I tried my best to turn that mess into something halfway decent, Prezi isn't for amateurs with nearly no motivation and patience (definition of me, by the way). Once you delve into its many parts, you realize how professional it all looks and how hard it must be to learn to use everything.

So, lastly, here goes my slapdash Prezi about Social Networks, a topic I will very soon be writing about.

http://prezi.com/qqlaiqjljief/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

GIMP III

For the last gimp-related project of this term, the main task consisted of blending all the recently adquired skills together to form a new picture which was supposed to look enhancingly better than the previous ones. The desired outcome was to manage to insert successfully a face into the lemon's picture.

As always, we began with a basic photograph of a lemon. It was possible to choose among the immense varieties that the Internet provides, regardless of color, size or format. My choice, rather simple if you think about it, was to merge the lemon with John Lennon's face. At first, it began as a joke, because I intended to call the project "John Lemon", but then everything got a bit more serious when I started working on the photos and met my first and main obstacles: cutting and deleting completely parts of one layer without it looking too unrealistic. Of course, I am no professional, but I'm quite pleased with the final outcome of every layer.

To add a little extra interest, I duplicated one of the layers so that the whole face of the lemon looked better in contrast with the lemon skin, and by doing so I found myself knee-deep in mistakes. I had, then, to spend an awful lot of time adjusting John's skin to the double layer, manually blurring some parts.

When this came to an end, I thought about whether the project could be considered as finished or not. The final result was more or less splendid, except for the lack of a mane of hair, which I had deleted prior to merging the layers. So I searched for a fitting picture, then came to face the same problem again -- it's very difficult for an amateur to cut parts of the photograph and have it look mildly decent. Nevertheless, some sessions of hard work later, I finished pasting the hair into the lemon, and then proceeded to work a bit more with the layers' appearance.

And here is the result: