D.O.G.
Goblin 380 Supporter
You're so right Tony. Flying is a great way to relax and get away from it all and enjoy life when you can
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What Did You Do Today???
- Thread starter Tony
- Start date
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RandyDSok
Well-Known Member
When it comes to downloading programs that I'm going to use or just try out... I also organize my downloads into their own folders. I probably hoard graphics editors the most of any type. I'll often find just a feature or two in an obscure program that I like... and use it just for that or those features. Downloading them all into just one folder will only lead to some confusion when you are trying to reload the stuff later.
Most programs will keep their interfaces the same but after time may want to update them to make them feel more modern to fit the times. In these cases, I will often have multiple versions of the same program that were just released in different years. I'm uncertain if Photoscape was what you were using or not, or if they just updated their interface ... but if you kept your previous downloads somewhere you may be able to figure it out by looking through your download folder.
murankar
Staff member
On my OS i keep a txt file on github. When i add new title i add it to the list and then iodate github. If i ever have to reload i just git clone and then run pacman against the .txt file. That way i dont have to remember anything.
RandyDSok
Well-Known Member
That will work also... as long as the URL's remain valid and are not changed due to the author/company are no longer online or moved etc. I never trust the internet/cloud for stuff... I like physical onsite backups as my primary method. Of course, I'm not perfect either and have misplaced my own backups of stuff and while I haven't had it happen, hardware failure could also cause trouble.
murankar
Staff member
With Arch its based on the repos. With as many mirrors available itvwould be hard to lose the link. The biggest issue is the proje t going dead.
RandyDSok
Well-Known Member
What you can do in Linux doesn't always apply to Windows. Not to mention that while it has gone a long ways towards it, it still isn't ready for the prime time public use. It's biggest strength is also it's biggest weakness... the proliferation of so many different distro's leads to the software devs asking themselves "what distro or distos do they want to support?". Not to mention the old school linux devs not providing a proper GUI level tools to use as an alternate to their command line ones they love so much. I use command line utils in Windows all of the time but I also recognize the advantage of giving the general public a GUI method to do the same even when it may not be as efficient.
I'm always sampling the top Linux distro's trying to find something that I can recommend to my own clients that are not tech savvy so they are not forced to go with Windows... or Mac if that is also one of their interests. So far none have made the mark yet but I'll retest them again in about a year to see what advances they've made since my previous testing. We have to find a replacement for both OS because neither Microsoft nor Apple are going to give the public what they really want. A secure OS that doesn't force someone else's self motivated goals upon them.
Rob Lancaster
Active Member
Rob Lancaster
Active Member
murankar
Staff member
Agreed. i have been on and off of linux since 2000. i have seen it come a long way. Sometimes linux cant get out of its own way sometimes. I just switched about 3 months ago perminatly as my daily driver on my desktop and productivity laptop. As for simple and easy Kubuntu , Mint or PopOs on KDE/Plasma. It has the most windowesq feeling. Arch is a pita to get installed but once it is your solid. One distro i am giving serious thought to is openSuse Tumbleweed. I want to see how it handles pentesting in vm first.
Rob Lancaster
Active Member
murankar
Staff member
Sitting here at work with almost nothing to do. All i have on my schedule is a laptop drop off at 1000hrs and then nothing. I have a feeling ill be out by 1415 as usual. My scheduled end time is 1600. Yes inget paid for the unworked time. Since i have absolutly nothing to do right now ibam building a VM of openSuse on my Panisonic CF52 productivity laptop. The story on this can be considered incriminating and ill leave it at that.
This laptop is a toughbook with a Core i5 duo dual core 4 thread cpu with 8 gigs of ddr2 memory, ati radeon (pre amd merger) wifi dial up modem 10/100 ethernet vga 4 usb 2.0 ports and a db9 serial port. Its not really anything fancy but for as unused as it is makes it worth the effort. The battery still gets almost 1.5 operating hours. I upgraded the hdd to solid state. It does what i want it to. Run a vm and and basic productivity and some lab work with pentesting. No games on this one.
Right now i am building a vm with opensuse for a start. Wireless speeds at work suck. The guest network is super busy an for what i am doing it means it will take over an hour to get the initial system installed. I work a huge hospital in Cleveland. Anyhow i also have to be cognizant of what i do on the guest network. At this point i woukd do better on dial up. Lol.
Here is to keeping busy.
This laptop is a toughbook with a Core i5 duo dual core 4 thread cpu with 8 gigs of ddr2 memory, ati radeon (pre amd merger) wifi dial up modem 10/100 ethernet vga 4 usb 2.0 ports and a db9 serial port. Its not really anything fancy but for as unused as it is makes it worth the effort. The battery still gets almost 1.5 operating hours. I upgraded the hdd to solid state. It does what i want it to. Run a vm and and basic productivity and some lab work with pentesting. No games on this one.
Right now i am building a vm with opensuse for a start. Wireless speeds at work suck. The guest network is super busy an for what i am doing it means it will take over an hour to get the initial system installed. I work a huge hospital in Cleveland. Anyhow i also have to be cognizant of what i do on the guest network. At this point i woukd do better on dial up. Lol.
Here is to keeping busy.
RandyDSok
Well-Known Member
Rob Lancaster
You've got some really nice shots already there... good going.
I'm going to use one for examples for the subject of composition... These are NOT criticisms they just present a situation that I can use to showcase some concepts I use when I'm post processing. I'm picking the baby birds on this... one I like the shot but it also is very similar to one I took long ago but had issues I couldn't address and ended up not using it as a final...
I had mentioned previously that I will often use a much wider shot than what I'm planning on in the end. This helps when it comes to leveling the shot if needed and also composing where my main subject or subjects ends up being centered at. So in my post processing of your shot... first I leveled what I thought the nest would be leveled at in real life ( I could be wrong, remember this is just a example of that concept only ). Next I tried to center the birds where I would want them, this time considering the rule of thirds. If the shot had been wider or taken from a little further back... I probably would have raised the nest a little bit higher towards the top... but I did get the birds on the left third so it still worked for an example. I often run into the situation where once a shot is straightened where I'd want it, I can't place the subject exactly where I'd like because when straightening you are limited to the height and width of the whole shot and turning it always makes the selection smaller.
I'm also showcasing a couple features I have using my ON1 Photo Raw software but not much of it. I lowered what is often called "haze" and this often improves the contrast slightly as well as makes the colors a little more pure so they pop just a bit more. It has the effect much like what a polarizing filter on a lens has but slightly different and usually more subtle than a software polarizer. If the shot had bright reflective surfaces that were blowing out those areas, I'd probably selected a polarizer but this shot didn't so I selected to use the haze filter instead because it is more subtle.
I also used ON1's Tack Sharp AI filter on the shot. This teases out the details in the shot but unlike most sharpening filters, it doesn't put halos around the sharpened areas... or it tends to not do it. I did lower the amount of sharpening that this applied typically because I did see some slight haloing happening and I do still see some of it... but still wanted to show what it is capable of. ON1 is about to release an update to this sometime next month that even further improves this filter.
To summarize... I first leveled the shot using the nest as what I was trying to level, next I composed the birds taking into account the rule of thirds for their placement in the shot... I dropped the "haze" colors to increase contrast slightly and pop the colors up a little... and then used the tack sharp AI filter for some sharpening.
Note that the rule of thirds is NOT a rule... for example your heli, if that rule was used would not look the same and that concept wouldn't be the right one for the shot. Still it is something to consider when framing a subject in some cases. What it does bring up is thinking about where do you want your subject in the final shot to achieve the feel that you are after.
If you have a program with a haze filter in it... The color of haze is sort of like the exhaust of a vehicle with a slight oil leak... sort of a bluish - whitish color... say as apposed to an overly rich exhaust color of sooty white... or gray. Again, not something you want all of the time but certainly handy when you need it... a time you would NOT use it is say you want to see the fog in a shot and do not want to diminish the effect of the fog any.
Sharpening is a great effect but must be used sparingly or it makes the shots look odd if over used. I will often have to re-edit a shot if I've used too much but didn't notice it until later. The photo editors I rely on the most are called non-destructive editors, they don't alter the original but use copies instead and they also keep the history of the changes so I can go back in time ( so to speak ) of the edits I make and do them differently if I need to.
Ok... here is your shot redone with the things I wanted to use as examples to consider when you are shooting the photos, post processing them and editing. I'll also try to find my own shot of the bird nest I took and share it if I find it. I always like finding when someone else has taken a similar shot to one I've also taken.
You've got some really nice shots already there... good going.
I'm going to use one for examples for the subject of composition... These are NOT criticisms they just present a situation that I can use to showcase some concepts I use when I'm post processing. I'm picking the baby birds on this... one I like the shot but it also is very similar to one I took long ago but had issues I couldn't address and ended up not using it as a final...
I had mentioned previously that I will often use a much wider shot than what I'm planning on in the end. This helps when it comes to leveling the shot if needed and also composing where my main subject or subjects ends up being centered at. So in my post processing of your shot... first I leveled what I thought the nest would be leveled at in real life ( I could be wrong, remember this is just a example of that concept only ). Next I tried to center the birds where I would want them, this time considering the rule of thirds. If the shot had been wider or taken from a little further back... I probably would have raised the nest a little bit higher towards the top... but I did get the birds on the left third so it still worked for an example. I often run into the situation where once a shot is straightened where I'd want it, I can't place the subject exactly where I'd like because when straightening you are limited to the height and width of the whole shot and turning it always makes the selection smaller.
I'm also showcasing a couple features I have using my ON1 Photo Raw software but not much of it. I lowered what is often called "haze" and this often improves the contrast slightly as well as makes the colors a little more pure so they pop just a bit more. It has the effect much like what a polarizing filter on a lens has but slightly different and usually more subtle than a software polarizer. If the shot had bright reflective surfaces that were blowing out those areas, I'd probably selected a polarizer but this shot didn't so I selected to use the haze filter instead because it is more subtle.
I also used ON1's Tack Sharp AI filter on the shot. This teases out the details in the shot but unlike most sharpening filters, it doesn't put halos around the sharpened areas... or it tends to not do it. I did lower the amount of sharpening that this applied typically because I did see some slight haloing happening and I do still see some of it... but still wanted to show what it is capable of. ON1 is about to release an update to this sometime next month that even further improves this filter.
To summarize... I first leveled the shot using the nest as what I was trying to level, next I composed the birds taking into account the rule of thirds for their placement in the shot... I dropped the "haze" colors to increase contrast slightly and pop the colors up a little... and then used the tack sharp AI filter for some sharpening.
Note that the rule of thirds is NOT a rule... for example your heli, if that rule was used would not look the same and that concept wouldn't be the right one for the shot. Still it is something to consider when framing a subject in some cases. What it does bring up is thinking about where do you want your subject in the final shot to achieve the feel that you are after.
If you have a program with a haze filter in it... The color of haze is sort of like the exhaust of a vehicle with a slight oil leak... sort of a bluish - whitish color... say as apposed to an overly rich exhaust color of sooty white... or gray. Again, not something you want all of the time but certainly handy when you need it... a time you would NOT use it is say you want to see the fog in a shot and do not want to diminish the effect of the fog any.
Sharpening is a great effect but must be used sparingly or it makes the shots look odd if over used. I will often have to re-edit a shot if I've used too much but didn't notice it until later. The photo editors I rely on the most are called non-destructive editors, they don't alter the original but use copies instead and they also keep the history of the changes so I can go back in time ( so to speak ) of the edits I make and do them differently if I need to.
Ok... here is your shot redone with the things I wanted to use as examples to consider when you are shooting the photos, post processing them and editing. I'll also try to find my own shot of the bird nest I took and share it if I find it. I always like finding when someone else has taken a similar shot to one I've also taken.
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RandyDSok
Well-Known Member
While I'm not against the alternate looking GUI shells... since I'm looking for a replacement for Windows so my clientele feel more comfortable if they choose to switch... the current one that I keep picking each time I've tested in the past... has been Mint using their Cinnamon GUI. It also needs to support running some Windows programs ( with Wine or similar ) that aren't covered by other open source solutions.
RandyDSok
Well-Known Member
I found my baby birds in a nest shot...
These are red winged black bird babies. How did I know, well Momma was not happy that I was right by her babies nest... This gave me a great opportunity to capture a bird in flight, she kept circling above me and all of the time was chewing me out for being there.... lol. She had actually been talking to me a lot over the previous days before taking this shot, it was only after I found the nest that I knew why. The nest was located about a yard into the pond in the middle of a thick growth of cattails and about 3-4 foot off of the ground, so I couldn't see exactly what I was taking a pic of. It literally was a point and pray shot where I took a lot of pics to get a decent one... as was taking the shot of the momma bird flying around so I could get an almost in focus shot.
These are red winged black bird babies. How did I know, well Momma was not happy that I was right by her babies nest... This gave me a great opportunity to capture a bird in flight, she kept circling above me and all of the time was chewing me out for being there.... lol. She had actually been talking to me a lot over the previous days before taking this shot, it was only after I found the nest that I knew why. The nest was located about a yard into the pond in the middle of a thick growth of cattails and about 3-4 foot off of the ground, so I couldn't see exactly what I was taking a pic of. It literally was a point and pray shot where I took a lot of pics to get a decent one... as was taking the shot of the momma bird flying around so I could get an almost in focus shot.
Attachments
RandyDSok
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure which distro I'd pick if I was looking for my own needs and uses. I do like what Mint looks like but there are others that are intriguing to me that I've played with. Personally at home I have one program which I heavily rely on that just doesn't work properly on any distro yet and there isn't a Linux substitute that I'm aware of... my radar program called GrLevel3. I can almost get it to work but not perfectly which affects the reliability of the radar info getting updates consistently. At work, sort of the same thing but with my accounting software Quickbooks... they have gotten older versions to work but none of the newer ones and I won't use the cloud version at all. I have an issue with programs that require a subscription not to mention that I don't want to rely on the internet being always available just to get to my point of sale, inventory and bank account info. I'd love to see GnuCash get some of those features that are missing in a full accounting system. Almost everything else I commonly need either has a Linux version or has an alternate solution that would work just fine as a substitute once I learned it.
murankar
Staff member
After almost 20 plus year with the OS and the many years of playing with Arch it was a tough choice. I have a number of reasons why I chose Arch one being it is what the steam deck uses for its base OS. I get a ton of steam support built in with the ground up. Running BTRFS was fairly straight forward at install time and I get native built in backup support through backtrack. The AUR has a ton of packages that just work and if you add the Black Arch repo you add a ton of IT apps that can be very usefully depending on what your doing. My runner up is a pure Debian build with Mate and XFCE4. Debian is a little bit heavy on resources but it is and next gold standard next to RedHat. Everything else out there is fluff to me. Novells openSuse is a RedHat derivative that doesnt get a lot of love. I am checking out the XFCE4 tumbleweed edition right now. For my end state its not there yet. The package support for pen testing is lacking at best. Kali is debian based so I would just build it from that base and add the repos.
Rob Lancaster
Active Member
Wow, it's really amazing where cameras are now. And to add them to computers and things like a fully loaded Mead LX 200's, would be even nicer. Nice to dream.
Rob Lancaster
Active Member
Yeah, there they are! Two li'll buzzy birds in the making.
Oh ho, I climbed up a few tress in my youth and had Cardinals, Mynah's, and all freak when I get to close to the nest. (Bird 101) stay clear or they may become highly agitated. LOL!
Good work on the archival find, I loved it..
I almost forgot, I heard small weak chirps coming from the nest today.
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