Christmas lights

Just about all the malls are in full Christmas regalia now, but I haven't seen many homes in suburbia that have yet dusted off the deorations. For several years the good folk at Westlake in Halswell decorated their houses magically, until the hoons and vandals destroyed it for everybody. However, a private home at 370 Cashmere Rd, Christchurch, has opened up and for a small donation to a charity you can visit the owner's extensive Christmas display, mostly between the hours of 6-9pm over the next week or two. And Spreydon Baptist Church's wonderful Christmas Grotto opens again on 13 December - last year, 23,000 people went through. Meanwhile, if you'd like to try making something a little different in the Christmas lights line, here's some instructions on how to make a lighted Christmas ball.

Creating 3D photos

3D is making a strong comeback in the movies. Maybe we'll see a return as well to those wonderful stereoscope 3D photo viewing devices that were the delight of your grandparents. If you can't find a stereoscope, you can create your own 3D photos, using the instructions at this web page. Now... I'm really hanging out for when they show us how to create our own home 3D movies.

Ripped off, hacked and taken to the cleaners

Simon Hendry in the NZ Herald has some words of caution, and some helpful advice, on avoiding becoming another identity hacker's statistic.

Twenty years ago the typical hacker was a bedroom-based teenager with an IBM clone 386 PC, a dial-up modem, whose goal was to gain geek kudos by infiltrating and disrupting an unsuspecting corporate computer system. Today's more scary incarnation, says Owen Johnston of security company Blue Coat Systems, is a very smart IT graduate, probably living in Eastern Europe, who is in the hacking business to make money - lots of money.

Google Chrome and image searching

Google is constantly in the news these days. Last week the industry got a first look at Google's proposed new Chrome operating system (OS). Many were unimpressed and said it will never replace Windows or Macintosh. However, Robert Strohmeyer says they are missing the point - Google has designed Chrome OS as a platform for people who use computers primarily online, not for those wanting myriad desktop applications. And that has implications for the growing number who work on the move.
Meanwhile, back at the coalface, Google has introduced a new clustering system for when you do an image search. Up to now, for instance, if you entered the word "Jaguar", it was unable to distinguish between the make of car and the animal. That's changed, and you get a little "Find similar images" below the thumbnails, which helps to narrow searches down quickly. The idea's very much in its infancy, and not all searches get this option. But it's a big help where it does come up.

What is the Web teaching our brains?

Spending so much time in front of computers, and particularly on the Internet, is changing us, in some perhaps surprising ways. This NZ Herald article traces one researcher's line of thought.

Simple flash movie creator

Creating a Flash movie is not for the faint-hearted. (Flash in this case does not mean fancy - it's short for Shockwave Flash, which is a movie format used to produce streaming videos, animations for websites, and so on.) You can use a Flash movie to create more complex titles for your home videos, or to build advertisements for a website. It's only limited by your imagination. Most of them are created using the Adobe Flash program (which was originally developed by Macromedia before Adobe bought that company out). But it's hideously expensive, and very difficult to learn. However, I have just discovered and have been trying out a much simpler program called Powerbullet, which has the added advantage of being free. Because it's not as complex as the Adobe version, it has some limitations, but nonetheless it seems to be capable of some quite good results. It talks about being able to create multi-page presentations, but I haven't plumbed that far yet - still getting to grips with the basics.