Not Everyone is Who they Seem on the Internet

When my youngest son discovered the power of the Internet back in high school, he trusted everyone to be who they said they were. I didn't and felt the innocent young woman my son started chatting with might really be some middle-aged man. My son didn't believe me but agreed he couldn't definitively prove me wrong and stopped talking with her.

I have had a lot of experience with people not being who they say they are. It is pretty easy to fool someone into thinking you are significantly different than you really are. Don't believe me, look at the number of anecdotal stories of people showing up on first dates with connections that don't look anything like their picture. I'll be honest, if I needed to create an online dating profile, I might Photoshop myself some hair. Fortunately I am happily married and don't need an online-dating profile.

In the past, I have also received e-mails from a number of African royalty asking for help recovering significant assets. Fortunately we all know that these e-mails are scams and not to be trusted. That doesn't stop certain criminals from trying new tactics that are just variations on this theme. Perhaps you have received an e-mail from a name that looks familiar and asking for help. My dad recently got an e-mail from a supposed grandchild that didn't exist. While there are a lot of grandchildren in the family, there are not so many that my dad doesn't remember them all.

Lately there are a lot of criminals posing to be law enforcement. Perhaps you have seen an e-mail telling you there is a warrant for your arrest. The message goes on to say that you can get out of trouble by paying a fine using gift cards. Should you ever be asked to pay a fine with a restaurant or store gift card, take a second to stop and think about it. Nobody ever asks fines to be paid with gift cards. You can ignore the message.

Some past scams have been obviously fake but criminals are getting more clever. All it takes is a fact or two to convince you someone really is who they say they are when that could be false. That is why it is so important to guard your personal information. Treat it like gold as that is how cyber-criminals view it. I also recommend a healthy amount of skepticism as there are a lot of fakes on the Internet. It is in your best interest to challenge identities and ask for more information from someone simply to verify his or her identity. If the answers don't match reality, it is okay to stop communicating.

Photo Editing with GIMP

Yesterday my youngest son and daughter-in-law dropped my granddaughter off so they could drive to Ohio in preparation for a move. I have always told my kids that they are welcome to leave their kids with us but to not be surprised if we take the kids to Disneyland. With COVID-19 that is impossible right now as the park is closed. I still wanted to send them a picture of us in Disneyland.

I searched through my phone and found a picture of the Millennium Falcon in Galaxy's Edge from our most recent trip back in September. Then I had my wife take a picture of me and my granddaughter at my work desk. The rest should be easy. Everyone always talks about Photoshop'ing people into pictures, so how hard can it be.

 My first idea was to use Microsoft Teams. I have been using it for a lot of my conference calls and rather than use my own office background, I have added a picture of the Snowbird tram to my Teams picture library. I figure I could add one of Disneyland, start up MS Teams, and take a screenshot. After playing for a bit, I decided that I didn't like my picture with my hands out reaching for the keyboard. Interestingly enough, my oldest daughter thought that I had used a Zoom background for the finished picture.

Instead I decided to try GIMP. I actually use GIMP quite frequently as it is a great little tool for editing photos and other computer graphics. Lately I have created a bunch of icons for a project at work with it. Unfortunately I have never used it to take a person (or two in this case) from one photo and add them to another. My first stop was YouTube. I watched the process where you add an alpha-channel to the photo with your people and then use the free-hand tool to trace them. Once you have them traced, you cut out the background. That looked really tough and so I searched for another video in case there is a trick to use. The second video showed multiple tricks. First, make the picture really large so you can see the fine edges. You can then drag the free-hand lines to fit the outline of the people better. The second video also suggested going in sections so you are pulling off a bit at a time.

I didn't really care that I did a great job creating the fake photo. In fact I wanted it to be fairly obvious that I had created the picture. Then I stumbled upon some more tricks that make my fake actually look pretty good. One is that I cut out my granddaughter and myself from a fairly large picture. Then I shrunk us down before pasting us into the Disneyland background. Shrinking the photo removed a lot of the imperfections from my cutting out the background. Then I only used a section of the picture above my waist so you couldn't tell I was sitting in my office chair. The finished photo actually turned out pretty good even though I didn't mean it to.

Once I finished the picture, I Air Dropped it to my phone and then texted it out to the family. My oldest daughter replied almost instantly with her suggestion on how I pulled off the faked picture. I got a few laughs from everyone.

Now that I know how to Photoshop someone into a picture, it is not that difficult. I'm sure there are a ton of tricks to make the photo turn out even much better than I did and I encourage you to do some Internet searching. I don't know how to make hair look more natural but figure it is just a matter of patience and choosing a picture with a well-combed head. Today my wife and I will be taking my granddaughter to Paris. Wanna come?

Building a Prototype Web Application

This past week I have been putting together a fairly simple prototype web application. Ultimately I will build it with a back-end database but right now it is about a dozen static HTML pages. This will allow others to look at the design and suggest changes or refinements before we spend a lot more time and money on the finished internal application.

Putting together static HTML pages is something I did many years ago while working as a consultant. Back then I would hand code all of the HTML as automated tools didn't really exist. Sure I could use something like Dreamweaver from Adobe but the underlying code was difficult to maintain in a non-Dreamweaver environment. That was close to 20 years ago and so I did a quick survey of HTML tools to see if there is something that would work for me.

I must have gone through 30 different tools and none really worked. Some had a steep learning curve and wouldn't quite create the look I wanted. Others were just plain awful. Ultimately I decided I didn't need anything too fancy and used a word processor to create my initial design. Then I had it save my file in an HTML format. That sort of worked, but not quite. Next I pulled out GIMP and did a lot of layout work with the graphics. Then I did an few Internet searches and brushed up on my cascading stylesheet (CSS) skills. Once I had a design I liked, I tweaked the look by hand editing the HTML using my favorite text editor: vi.

Now I am building out a few follow-up pages simply by copying the original page and making a few edits. I don't need to build more than a dozen pages to help my colleagues understand what I am trying to build and so this process works fine. If I needed to build a more complex prototype with a lot more pages, I might want to take the time to learn one of the more complicated tools. Until then, my current process seems to be working fine.

Going Viral

One thing about long plane rides to Tokyo is that I get a lot of time to read. During this trip I read an interesting article about how "going viral on the Internet" is really just a myth. The article stated that popularity on the Internet is not about a lot of one-to-one shares of information but instead come from large corporations or celebrities. For the most part I have to agree with the article but then decided to do a little research.

First I plugged the title of the article into my favorite search engine and got several hits. Unfortunately you can't look at the article as it came from a print magazine and the only way to get to the article is to have a paid subscription. That doesn't help for links in blogs and so I won't reference it. The 3rd hit pointed out that the author of the article I read just released a book and while I thought the article was actual news, it turns out to be an ad for this book. I wondered how a print magazine with so few advertisements could remain in circulation. Now I know, a lot of the articles are really just advertisements. So much for journalistic integrity and trusted editors. For the record, that magazine just went in the garbage and I won't be reading it again.

Looking at my own blog and the traffic it receives, I have to agree with the article that "Going Viral" is a myth. I have kept at this since 2009 with 71 posts per year and only get about 10 or so readers per posting. Factor in the search engines that stumble across my pages and one is tempted to believe that nobody really reads anything I write. However there is one exception: my Photoshop-clone article. That one article from 2009 has hundreds of page views. No, I wouldn't consider it to have "Gone Viral" but it does help prove the point that in order for something to go viral, it has to be worth viewing.

I have a fairly recent post that surprised me by its popularity: a video game review of Sniper Ghost Warrior 2. For some reason, this review has become my most popular. I don't think I did a particularly better job of reviewing the game compared to other games. Instead I think the content set it apart. Perhaps the impending release of Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 has a few people wondering if they should go back and play the 2nd game before starting the 3rd.

Personally I believe that "Going Viral" is a real phenomenon, it is just rare. Sort of like being struck by lightning or winning the lottery. The content has to be worth viewing, you have to sell it to everyone, and you need a bit of luck.

The Right Tool

This morning I took my son to Snowbird and we arrived at 6:45 am. He is on the ski team and has early morning training all of this week and the next. That means he gets to race down the mountain 2 hours before the general public is even allowed to load the lifts. In the past I have just gone to sleep in the car. One of my Christmas gifts was a set of climbing skins to go with my super fat powder skis that also have backcountry bindings. So instead of sleeping in the car, I got out of the car and hiked up the mountain. It has been difficult hiking in the past because I have had to carry my skis and hike in my hard-plastic ski boots. Having the right equipment makes things so much easier.

As I have had a lot of time off because of the Christmas break, I have also been working with my oldest son to fix his car. He is driving a 1996 Jeep Cherokee that keeps misfiring. This problem was occurring when we purchased the vehicle and the dealership that sold it to us was trying to narrow down the problem before we took over. They replaced the spark plugs and distributor cap. They also gave us a fuel filter that we had to install. We also replaced the fuel injectors thanks to a local salvage yard. While things keep getting better, we are still not solving the problem completely. I have narrowed it down to 2 possible problems: The fuel pump or a broken valve spring. Unfortunately I don't have the tools to figure out either one. So this afternoon, I will head to my local auto parts store and borrow a fuel pressure gauge and a compression test gauge. Both are necessary to further diagnose the problem. Having the right tool is very important for me to finish this job.

Computers, tablet computers, and smart phones are another area where it is important to have the right tool. While you can edit an electronic photo with a paint program, it is significantly easier with a photo editing program like Adobe's Photoshop or the open source program GIMP. So if you find yourself taking a lot of time to do something on your computer, tablet, or phone, you might not be using the right tool. Chances are, there's an app for that.

GIMP: A Free Photoshop Clone

Recently I was asked to provide an up-to-date family picture. Those that know me know that I hate taking family portraits. I prefer to get the family together on vacation or while we are skiing and have someone take a quick snapshot. Well it has been a while since we have all been together and I don't really have a recent picture of us. I am reminded of the scene in "Cheaper by the Dozen" where the father, played by Steve Martin, tells everyone that he will just Photoshop the absent oldest child into the family portrait they are about to take. The most recent portrait we have is missing our oldest daughter who is away at school and so I was hoping I could just Photoshop her into the picture.

The only problem is that Photoshop is a $700 piece of software. Luckily there is a free alternative called GIMP. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. That covers about all home computing environments.

GIMP is an acronym that stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Seeing as "gimp" is a word that is generally a friendly yet derogatory term we use with one of our friends who has recently injured an arm or let, I would probably have used a different acronym. However that is is the name the program was given and it is anything but a handicapped tool.

One of the first uses you may have for GIMP is to remove that annoying "red eye" effect you get when taking a picture of someone using a flash. Simply go into the "filter" menu and under "enhance" is an option for red eye removal. Doing a quick scan of the other filters reveals a number of really cool effects that you can add to your photographs. Just be sure to always work on a copy instead of the original. We have one screwed-up family picture where we tried to remove our dog's "green eye" effect (people have red eyes but dogs have green eyes when their pictures are taken with a flash) and didn't save a copy of the original.

There are a lot of classes, books, and Internet tutorials devoted to Photoshop. A lot of this teaching material translates to GIMP because the two programs are so similar. However there are some differences and so you will want to see if there is a tutorial specifically built around GIMP first. One of my favorite GIMP-specific tutorials shows how to make really spectacular buttons to use on a website (one is shown below).



My oldest college-aged daughter was doing some work for me this summer and I taught her some basic GIMP tricks. At the end of her day, she would hang around on the computer after work to do some image editing for herself. She built complex animated graphics of ballerinas dancing around the screen as well as collages of all her friends. When I asked her what she thought of GIMP she told me that she had been searching for an image editing program and was glad I had showed it to her.

While it is fairly easy to steal yourself a copy of Photoshop and avoid paying that $700 price, it is still stealing. Since a free version of a comparable product exists there is no need to become a software pirate.