There’s a distinct difference between fractal and raster images. Raster images are the jpeg and gif files you see all over the place. These don’t resize very well. Fractals are made up of mathematical descriptions of the objects in a scene or picture. Using these descriptions it’s possible to resize an image without losing any detail or introducing blocky artifects. (Feel free to comment if I have anything wrong above!)
Apparently Genuine Fractals from Lizardtech, enables you to create resolution-independent images from any size file and lets you print superior quality enlargements without any degradation in image quality.
The photos shown in this thread were blown up using that software and they look very impressive! (I don’t think his wife will let him change his camera after seeing those shots! *grin*)
I wondered if anything like that existed in the Unix world, but after a short search, this thread seemed to be the extent of it’s foray into Unix. 🙁
Ford Sportka | The Evil Twin
I saw this short film at www.the-eviltwin.co.uk on “The Panel” on Network 2 the other night. Unfortunately, the site is an awful flash site. To watch the “Evil Twin” movie, click on “View Highlights”, and then click on “Clip one”. It’s a tiny box, and I can’t see any download link for a sane version.
Update! That site is gone, but you can get the Ford Sport Ka ads here: http://www.allowe.com/Humor/video.htm – just scroll down a little. Thanks Brian for getting that!
Here’s a lot more info about the advert. Good read.
Spamassassin – scoring on DSL lines
Since upgrading to Spamassassin 2.60 yesterday I’ve noticed a (small) increase in false positives. There were only 4 out of 132 spams caught overnight, but almost all were from dsl or dynamic IP addresses. The default score for this test is 2.5, but if you add the following to /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf you can change the score:
score RCVD_IN_DYNABLOCK 0 1 0 1
That’ll give it a ‘1’ instead of 2.5 which is probably more reasonable. (Ironically, most of the emails caught were from “Karsten M. Self”, a critic of TMDA, who posts directly from his dial-up machine!)
Plug and Pray
Cork City slang filter anyone?
Basing my work on that done by Dougal before me, I’m going to try and write a Cork City slang filter for the site. Don’t worry, it’ll be optional, because as it says here, “C’mere biya.I realise some of de feenos and de wans have pure hassle with de Cork speak like. So have a lash of it and there’ll be less gowls around. How bad!”
New poll on the CorkLUG site
It’s OT for the site, but important IMO. A new poll on the CorkLUG site asks, “Should smoking be banned in the work place and pubs on January 1st?” I’ve already voted but please don’t abuse it by voting multiple times.
Piratizing your blog
Thanks to Dougal Campbell for writing a Pirate filter on his site. I copied the code and put it into a Smarty plugin. It’s available here for everyone on blogs.linux.ie to use as follows:
- Open the Template Editor of your blog and bring up the “Posting” template.
- Look for the
{$the_content}variable in there. - You have to pass that variable to the
piratefunction:{pirate content=$the_content}. If you’re using thehighlightsearchmodifier, then use this code instead:{pirate content=$the_content|highlightsearch}. - Save the template and reload your blog. If it doesn’t update, then click on the “Refresh Site” link in the backend.
Oh, of course, it’ll only work today, as it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day!
UF has a special Pirate Talk Day feature today! 🙂
openssh & sendmail updates
Advisories for both OpenSSH and Sendmail were released over the past few days. Both packages had remotely exploitable bugs.
I forgot to blog this yesterday, but the RPMs available from Red Hat are also on apt-rpm. Just do an apt-get upgrade to upgrade your server.
Looking for a house?
Eddie Irvine’s house is for sale, and a steal at the €6.5m guide price!
The RIAA For Dummies – 60 Second Edition
Tim has a frightening cartoon explaining copyright. Dare you sing’ Happy Birthday!’ now? You might get busted!