Amazing Google Earth Image

This has more than likely don’t the rounds of the Internet but I have just discovered it. This image is a screenshot from Google Maps™. The Coordinates work for Google Earth as well.

The place is between Medicine Hut and Maple Creek in the state of Alberta, Canada.

Exact Location: 50° 0’38.20″N 110° 6’48.32″W

Or click the image for a direct link to the Google Map

To say that this is amazing is an understatement. What are the chances of a mountain or old creek/riverbed eroding in such a manner as to create a giant carved head that we would recognise or associate with as being human in form? Or is there a bigger story here. By the way I am not convinced that it is a message from aliens but it is interesting. Nature is indeed amazing!

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Free Photoshop Plugins

I personally don’t use Photoshop, but it seems to be the most popular. I have been thinking that I would like to try it at some stage. Yup, I’ll just slot that in… Anyway for those of you that do have Photoshop and use it a lot and are always looking for plugins and custom effects, borders, filters and manipulations then you will be interested in what is on offer.

The Plugin Site offers plugins for Photoshop under three main categories. There are ones for both Mac and Windows. All of the offerings are rated as to their usefullness and free. There are 111 in total. The descriptions are good and make it easy to see if it is what you are after. The good descriptions make using the “find on this page” feature of your browser a useful tool if you are in a hurry.

The homepage also has other offerings of tools and some links to tutorials. Simple site but looks very useful. Who said you have to pay for everything, free is good. I can not speak as to the quality of these plugins, but if you happen to use them drop a comment on the post.

I’ll have to get a copy of Photoshop someday and see what I might be missing out on. But I must admit that these days the main things that I use my photo editing software for is optimising images for the web. Such as converting them to .png and resizing/scaling etc. Maybe there is a market for a photo and image editing client that is specifically made to accommodate such a user? I know I would appreciate a small footprint program that did the things that I have just mentioned, it would be very useful. Perhaps one that uploaded it to your hosting server as well, now that would be cool! Does anyone know of such an application?

Submit Your Best Posts

Don’t forget WordPress.com users that you can submit what you think is your best stuff to the FanPop WordPress.com spot.

For that matter if any visitor to WordPress sees a great post then submit it to FanPop. Someone might not think to do it or underestimates their work. Visitors to WordPress; feel free to head over and cast your rank for the stories there.

To make life easier for WordPress.com users I created a small logo for linking to the FanPop page for WordPress, it you want it then please feel free to download it and place it in your posts. You will need to link it to the page or wherever you like – it is just an image. Or you may find some other use for it, perhaps in the sidebar or something. I got the original from the FanPop Blog, if you want to have a bigger one.

It is good to see that there are more of us getting into the FanPop page. Plus after having a poke around the FanPop site it is actually a very good site I am glad that I joined. Keep it up and we will have a nice way to see some of the best posts on WordPress.com. Also please visit //engtech who’s idea it was.

I think that it is also an extension of the great community here at WordPress. It would be good to think in the long term that a good solution is found “in-house”. But I don’t think that is going to happen in a hurry. This is a great alternative until then and lets the admins know what WordPress users would like to see.

Just so you know, I am going into the quiet part of the week. This is the few days where the podcast is prepared for, recorded, edited and all the other stuff that goes with it. So the blog is a tad quiet over this time. But that means that you have to keep an eye out for the next installment of The Global Geek Podcast!

Web Cam Sets You Ablaze!

If you have a web cam you have to try this. I was reading the RSS today and I never had any idea people were doing this sort of thing, or why…

But it is cool that people are doing this because so far this evening I have set my hand on fire, my whole body and the cat and nobody got hurt.

Grant Skinner has written a Flash 8 demo that interfaces with your web-cam to give special effects based on movement. Anything that moves looks like it is on fire. My web-cam lighting is not that good in the screen shots mainly because it is night time. But it gives you the general idea.

It has no purpose other than being plain fun and cool. There is also another demo based on movement that makes it look like you are being snowed on, but for that one you need to sit still for a few minutes to get the effect. Still cool fun though.

But remember you need a web-cam and I can think of no better reason not to go out and get one! Anyway they are getting pretty inexpensive now, so you don't have an excuse. Remember to have fun and not to really set the cat or yourself on fire.

But you can pretend…Brawh haw haw haw…

Grant Skinner's Blog

Make Your Own Logo With Mikons

I have been really frustrated lately due to the fact that Sebastian and I have struggled to either find or create a logo for Global Geek Podcast. I have even considered buying a logo but it would not be an original and it would not be exactly what we wanted. Not to mention expensive for what you get. Then I found a great site called Mikons.

Mikons is another site based on a Web2.0 philosophy. That is users come together with a common purpose, to meet, interact, share and in this case create. With what is dubbed on the site as the “Mikon Machine” you can create your own logo’s, emoticons, or visual “tags” that are unique to you; the creator. The Mikon machine is in fact a Shockwave flash application that allows you to create vector graphics on a WYSIWYG interface. I actually do not know of any other website that offers such a service as this.

The editor also offers pre-designed pictures that you can put into your own design. Once you have created an account you can then save your design, edit it later, export them and share them with other people. If you want you to keep them all private you can do that too. The “machine” has absolutely heaps of options, such as copying images, resizing, resizing to scale, fill, custom shapes, group, hide, bring to front and many, many more. My only criticism would be that there are not enough fronts to choose from, there are only three at this point in time. I hope that there will be more in the future.

Having said that I actually exported my created Mikon, put it into Paint Shop Pro and add some of my own text and saved it in a different format. I also added colour to the logo that I have done for the Global Geek Podcast, and it looks awsome. But you will have to stay tuned for that one. The logo or Mikon that you see at the start of this post is as it was when I finished it on the site. A nice feature that is built in is the fact that all your original work is copyrighted for you being part of the site under a Creative Commons Licence. Nice touch.

There are some exciting things that you could use your Mikon for are endless in my opinion. I am thinking of things like an avitar, logo, mood message for your blog. Lots of things.

So please check out Mikons.com it is a very cool site and it is fun as well. I could not do it the justice that it deserves here so please check it out, in beta as usual with everything on the net these days so it can only get better. People have created some great mikons that you can download and use yourself if you are not too creative.

Note: This site is untested with “Site Advisor” that great Firefox extension that tells you if a site is nasty. That is that it is a grey site. But I did give it the thorough going over, there are no pop-ups or nasty code to worry about, I am sure that it will get the green light eventually. I have registered for the site and it comes highly recommended.