demimasque

Picasa

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I’ve heard some really good things about both Flickr and Picasa, and as I’ve been trying to migrate myself off my old CSUA account, which I’d have to secure FTP to (a bit of a hassle, that), I finally decided to start looking around and evaluate these two on their merits. They’re both very well received, and score very well with PC World’s reviewers. In fact, Flickr gets 4½ stars, while Picasa/Hello gets 4 stars. However, since Picasa also serves as an editor, it won out, since I’ve been interested in getting a replacement for ACDSee Classic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great program, even if ACD Systems no longer hawks it; but I wanted something a little more modern.

My research showed that Picasa really had the best features between the two. According to their guided tour to features, these are just a few of the things Picasa can do:

  • Make a label.
    Use labels to tag your photos into quick groupings inside Picasa. Viewing and sharing the pictures you grouped under a label is easy – they make great slide shows and movies or you can email them to friends.

  • Add a star rating.
    Give a gold star to any photo you love: it turns your favourites into visual standouts at a glance. Picasa even has a star search that reduces your entire photo collection to the best of the best in less than a second.

  • Keep one picture in multiple albums.
    Picasa creates a new “instance” of each photo you label without taking up more space on your computer, so you can put the same picture into multiple albums.

  • Password-protect collections.
    Have photos you want to keep to yourself? You can add passwords to any of your Picasa collections (this does not affect which pictures you and others can see on your computer’s hard drive).

  • Write captions that stay with the picture.
    Picasa makes captions the way journalists do – using the IPTC standard. That means your captions are saved within their pictures and stay with them, whether you export as a web page or make a CD presentation. Picasa captions are fully editable and searchable, and you choose whether to display them or not.

  • Know how to use a camera in manual mode?
    Photography aficionados can now fine-tune their photos with Picasa’s EXIF display. This window shows you all the camera data that is stored in a picture’s original file – such as camera model, date the photo was taken, even if a flash was used. The EXIF display also has a RGB histogram, a real-time graph that shows the intensity of colors in your picture and how they change when you make edits in Picasa.

  • Turn your photos into a movie.
    It’s so easy to play filmmaker with your pictures. Select your best shots, then adjust the delay time, dimensions, and video compression settings. That’s it – Picasa will render a movie, complete with title graphics, that you can play and share.

  • Make a personalized desktop picture or screensaver.
    Your best pictures are now on display. Pick a favorite photo as your desktop picture or add several into your screensaver rotation. What better way to enjoy your photographic genius at your desk?

  • Create a poster.
    Picasa can tile any picture you select, allowing you to print each part and reassemble them at poster size – up to 1,000% larger than the original.

  • Make picture collages.
    Select a group of pictures, choose one of the beautiful templates, and Picasa will create a collage that expands your creative horizons. Picture pile it. Make a multi-exposure image. Create a contact sheet. Done? Simply save your collage to a folder, as a new desktop background or as a screensaver.

I especially like that individual files can be used in multiple albums. I’m not particularly worried about disk space; I’m more concerned about the hassle of having to remember where a source photo comes from. I have a pretty straight forward way of naming my picture files: yyyymmdd[_nn]_[x]xx.jpg, where yyyy is the year, mm is the month, dd is the day, and xx is the series. The formulation allows for different events. (Signified by nn, an “event” simply acknowledges the fact that some days, there will sometimes be more than one distinct group of pictures.) While this is great for archiving, it can be a bit daunting when it comes to creating albums. For example, if a given picture portrays the family on a vacation to Hawaii, should that picture be categorized under “vacation”, “Hawaii”, or “family”? The most basic categorization is, of course, the year, but the filename already covers that. What if I want that picture also to be part of a collection of pictures of my brother? With Picasa, I can create albums without having to manipulate the underlying files. Thus, each file can have more than one reference. Simple database concepts brought to life!

Finally, the opportunity to use the IPTC standard for captioning digital pictures, which means that captions, which is one way I’ve been implementing “albums” in ACDSee, will now travel with my pictures, instead of requiring the transfer of icky Windows “hidden files”.

I’ll post again when I’ve had a chance to really take this for a test drive. If I forget, remind me.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Democratic Opportunity

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Most of you are more than familiar with my views on international affairs and politics, and some politely disagree with me. Looking forward, however, I think there are things that people of good will on both sides can work on together. The Economist reports on ripples of liberalism in the Middle East, using the recent Egyptian elections as the backdrop. What needs to be pointed out is the following:

Most Arab reformers warm much more to the caustic critiques of American filmmaker Michael Moore than to George Bush’s “forward strategy of freedom”. Most believe that when push comes to shove, America’s thirst for oil will exceed its democratic principles.

Yet there is little doubt that American influence has helped to tip the balance of regional forces in favour of reform. A coincidence, perhaps, but it was shortly after Condoleezza Rice, America’s secretary of state, abruptly cancelled a scheduled visit to Egypt that Mr Mubarak announced his initiative to hold contested presidential elections. Later, speaking in Cairo, Ms Rice won over even a few Egyptian sceptics by appealing to their pride, suggesting that their country should lead the region in political progress as it has led before in pursuing peace. Lebanon’s dramatic overthrow of veiled Syrian rule this spring was only made possible by American-led moves to de-claw and isolate Syria’s regime. And these moves were made possible, in turn, by the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

There are lessons there for everyone. You don’t have to have agreed with the reasons, whether official or publicly promoted, for the war in Iraq. But you can take a look at some of what’s been going on, and see an opportunity. For the Democrats in particular, this is a chance to sell themselves as the party most naturally suited in helping sclertoic autocracies face the democratic future. After all, it’s in their very party name.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Let Them Eat Organic Cake!

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Despite the opposition of President Bush to federal subsidies for embryonic stem cell research, the United States isn’t the only jurisdiction that has had problems coming to terms with the implications of the genetic revolution. Ronald Bailey reports on EU intransigence on genetically modified (GM) crops, and how these EU regulations are having dire consequences for the livelihoods of the world’s poor people:

[T]he constituency of anti-biotech environmental groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth is not poor African and Asian farmers and their families, but affluent and easily frightened European consumers. In response to ferocious pressure ginned up by the misleading campaigns of ideological environmentalists, EU politicians and bureaucrats have built an all but impenetrable wall of anti-biotech regulations around themselves. Wielding these onerous crop biotechnology regulations, the EU, on specious safety grounds, has essentially banned the importation of most biotech crops and foods. But these regulations do not only have consequences for European farmer and consumers.

The EU wants to export its regulatory system to the world, and it is offering “capacity building” foreign aid to persuade developing countries to adopt its no-go or go-slow approach to crop biotechnology regulations. Even more tragically, some developing countries are so afraid of the EU’s anti-biotech wrath that they are willing to risk the lives of millions of their hungry by rejecting food aid that contains genetically enhanced crops.

Activists usually blame the inaction of rich countries for killing people in poor countries. However, instead of outrage here, we get Greenpeace geneticist Doreen Stabinsky primly quipping in the Post-Dispatch, “Hunger is not solved by producing more food. We’re the breadbasket of the world, and we have hungry people in the U.S.”

Hunger may not be solved by producing more food, but it sure couldn’t hurt.

There’s a saying, that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a life time. What the anti-biotech groups’ approach boils down to is a refusal to teach their poorer neighbors to fish. This is unsurprising, as such groups are generally anti-liberal (in that they expect government to provide), and dispensing immediate aid doesn’t require teaching anyone how to be self-sufficient. This is of a piece with the anti-liberal hostility toward individual responsibility. (Do not confuse this with the liberal sympathy for the plight of the poor, as true liberals advocate both giving the man a fish and teaching him to fish.)

Rather odd, given the chidings that Americans are usually subjected to from Europeans dismissing our supposedly parochial attitudes toward technology. You’d think they’d know better. Then again, if their own farmers were at least marginally more efficient, they wouldn’t have to import food and thus run the risk of importing GM foods. Try telling that to someone in Brussels.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

It’s the Economics, Stupid!

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I’m not sure just what it is about people in my Property Law class. So far, we’ve been covering some basic economic issues, and today we touched on the topic of the tragedy of the commons. Despite some of the utilitarian thinkers whose names we were introduced to in the text, the ideas shouldn’t be so hard to grasp.

“Tragedy of the commons” may be a term of economics, but the idea is very basic. Let’s say you’ve got a communal pasture, which everyone can access, and which nobody has rights to. What happens, then, in a community of herders? You’ll get overgrazing, because when nobody owns the rights to the common pasture, and anybody can use it, nobody has an incentive to stop somebody else’s herd from grazing. It’s a recipe for environmental disaster. The basic economic idea underlying this is that, when there is open access, and no exclusive rights, resources will be consumed faster, resulting in underproduction or shortage. To prevent overgrazing in the commons, then, the community could either ban herding (which has the advantage of negating the entire scenario, but the disadvantage of being unrealistic and avoiding the question), or the community could create private property by dividing the commons into small parcels. Each property owner then has a vested interest in the productivity of his piece of pasture, and so will not only limit his own consumption, but invoke his right, guaranteed by the law, to prevent others from grazing on his part of the pasture by any reasonable means, such as by building a fence. Simple enough, right?

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Good Advice for Democrats

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Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe has some great advice for the Democrats:

IT IS TIME for Democrats to stop moaning about John Roberts and John Bolton and start doing something productive — such as figuring out how to win elections.

Even though Democrats continue to resist the outcome, George W. Bush won the 2004 presidential contest. His reelection triggered a time-honored cliche: To the victor, go the spoils. Bush selected a Supreme Court nominee and an ambassador to the United Nations who reflect his philosophy. Any Democratic president would do the same.

The Senate has the responsibility to press Roberts on his views and philosophy. But it should come as no shock that Bush would select a conservative thinker as his nominee. So far, activists’ effort to paint Roberts as an extremist looks silly. Here is a candidate whose first written response to questions from lawmakers states that judges should possess “modesty and humility.” Roberts understands how to market himself to the masses in a way the abortion rights lobby never learned.

This week, Bush bypassed the Senate and installed Bolton as emissary to the UN. In doing so, the president broke no law; he merely used a procedure that allows him to fill vacant positions when the Senate is in recess. If Bolton is as unsuited for the position as opponents insist, that will become clear soon enough. Ultimately, any failure on Bolton’s part will help Democrats in what should be the party’s main goal: winning back the voters who now view them as the powerless party of the petulant.

Of course, some of us have been saying this for some time. But beyond counseling Democrats to be less hysterical about the natural consequences of their election losses, Joan also provides some suggestions that Democrats would be wise to consider (emphasis mine):

Democrats should spend more time in places like Ohio, and it should be quality time. They should be listening, for once, to what voters are thinking, not telling voters what is wrong about their thinking and their past choice on election day.

Democrats should also do with stem cell research what Republicans did with gay marriage: present the issue for a vote on every possible state ballot. Republican Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader from Tennessee, just demonstrated the power of the issue. Frist’s surprise endorsement of a bill that would approve federal funds for new lines of stem cells enraged the right. But Frist knows the political center supports it, and the political center is where a presidential contender wants to be. In stem cell research, Democrats, for once, have an issue that fires up their base and cuts to the center, across diverse demographic groups.

I’m not sure the stem cell research issue is going to yield quite the dividend that Joan thinks it will, as I don’t see Bush ultimately going head-to-head with Frist on the issue. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try, and if Democrats can turn down the hate-mongering and turn up the optimism and the subtle, nuanced insinuations, it might just work (if Bush hasn’t pulled that rug out from under them by then).

It would be in the best interests of this country to have a truly viable two-party system. Thus it would be in the best interests of this country to have a healthy, competitive, optimistic Democratic Party that can offer reasonable and attractive alternatives to the GOP agenda.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]