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I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.

- Stephen Hawking

I’m uber happy! (That’s my new hip and happening saying garnered from my 14-1/2 year old male offspring, which undoubtedly in his opinion will fail to make me look like anything other than a parental unit attempting to use teenage colloquialisms in a vain attempt at appearing trendy.)  My new camera came today! I knew my situation was pretty sad when the camera on my cell phone had more megapixels than my actual digital camera did. I’ve been using my cell phone camera for the last year, and while it certainly is handy in pinch (and it does take somewhat decent photos) it was no substitute for a "real" camera. It does have one big advantage - I can transfer the pictures via Bluetooth. But, sadly, no matter how convenient Bluetooth transfer may be - it doesn’t improve on the quality of the photos. So one evening, about two weeks ago, I sat myself down in front of the laptop (imagine that, me on the computer, go figure) and did some research. For various reasons I won’t bother going into, my selection options were somewhat limited, but I was able to find a quite satisfactory choice in the Canon Powershot shown below:

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I’m not sure if it’s akin to Big Brother is watching or not. Well, not really. The theory is good - but we’ll have to see how it works in practice. Yesterday Cloud Anti-Virus from Panda was released as a beta. Even after beta, it will remain free for personal use. Cloud Anti-Virus offers a new twist on the old AV.

The theory goes something like this - the program reports back to home base, creating the collection of data from which it pulls. This is the collective. The data is being gathered from the community (or user base) and it all lives in the proverbial cloud that is the internet. Rather than update definitions and scan on a set schedule, the premise is that Cloud will monitor for known nasties (nothing new) and will watch for behaviors which might indicate the emergence of a new threat in the community. If it is determined to be so, it will "learn" and try to knock it out at the get-go. As long as you are connected to the internet you are basically always up to date. For times you are not connected, there is a cached version of the "collective" stored on your machine to protect against the most widespread and known threats. Obviously, Cloud Anti-Virus is designed for and works best in an always on situation.

Currently XP and Vista are both supported but only 32-bit versions. 64-bit is apparently still in internal testing. Now, I like to live on the edge, or I’m really stupid one of the two. I installed this today on an XP SP3 machine, 2.8 Ghz P4 single core processor with 1 GB ram. I must admit it’s a nice light-weight program when it’s living in the system tray. There are no big options to configure, no confusing settings - it’s clean and clear as a whistle. However, choose to run a scan and it all goes very much like what we are all accustomed to. The RAM and CPU usage spike to about 40,000K+ and on my single core machine scanning took a little over 2 hours. It does however run background scans which are not noticeable at all during the course of normal use of the program so it really reduces the need to almost nil for a full scan.  Sure it’s a good idea to do a full scan from time to time, but in the world of the Cloud you are virtually protected in really real-time.

If you’re adventurous, read this for more information on the model upon which this is based and go ahead and give it a try! I can’t wait for the 64-bit version so I can give it a proper test, but for now my limited test on the older XP machine will have to satisfy my curiosity. (As a side note, you should disable and preferably remove any other Anti-Virus you happen to be running. Having more than one AV installed on a machine is not a good idea and there should never be two of them running at the same time.)

As usual, I’m not takin’ credit, I’m just passin’ on the smiles and snickers (no not the candy bar silly!). Kids are so innocent and so creative…

What, you ask, is ‘Butt dust?’ Read on and you’ll discover the joy in it! These have to be original and genuine. No adult is this creative!!

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I do believe we have a budding photographer! My niece took this picture and she has graciously allowed me to share it in my blogs.

It was the soft ding-dong sound of an email arriving. The system tray icon for Gmail Notifier (my official Gmail checker thingy) outlined the tiny envelope in blue. I had an email. Woo hoo! A quick click and the beta invite to Trillian Astra was before me. My good friend Philip had passed it along to me. Hmmm. I pondered it for a few moments, and closed the email. Mind you - I didn’t delete it. I simply closed it to think on it.

I mean, after all, I already had Digsby for multi-client instant messaging (and I rarely ever open it). And really, to tell you the honest truth (by the way - what is honest truth? The truth is by definition honest isn’t it? Why is honest added in front? Is there a dishonest truth?) as much as I love instant messaging - I’m not really a big fan of multi-client programs. Sure, they have benefits, but they just don’t feel right to me. I somehow prefer the comfort and familiarity of the original programs. I usually just open Windows Live Messenger (WLM) on the left side of my screen and Yahoo Messenger on the right. After all, the majority of my contacts are on those two. The ones on AIM and Facebook, well, sure - I wish I talked to them more but I don’t lose any sleep over it.

But getting back to my saga (I mean story) I chatted with Philip and he positively gushed about all the "eye candy" in Astra. Eye candy - great! But I like function. Pretty is nice but functionality that’s where it all hinges for me. Grudgingly, I peeked at the Trillian site to glance over some of the features. I was actually a wee bit impressed with some of them. (But I wasn’t going to admit to being too impressed with them.) The fact each supported service and it’s specific security and privacy options are preserved intrigued me. So I decided I’d give it a shot for a couple days and see how it went. I wasn’t really expecting very much - but hey, I should at least give it the benefit of the doubt, right?

Thirty minutes later I uninstalled it. I wasn’t impressed. But the next day, I decided perhaps I’d been a little over-critical (really, me? Over-critical? When have you known me to be critical of anything? Don’t answer that) and possibly hasty, so I reinstalled, and started investigating more of the features. A few meta-contacts, connections, and profile widgets later, I’m actually very impressed.

To be fair, a lot of what I like is going to be available in the pro or "premium" version of Astra. However, $25 garners one version full of upgrades and a discount when the next full version comes out (which after as long as this took to be released might not be for a few years). So while I don’t like having to pay for features, I’m actually considering it. I have three more weeks on my 30 days of testing left so I’m not at decision point yet. I’m planning on waiting until the last minute before I decide. I already spent $25.00 on a year subscription to Picnik (online photo editing made super easy and quite fun, which has a free version available to anyone but I decided I simply "had" to have the premium features which I may or may not ever use) instead of upgrading my Photoshop Elements (which is so embarrassingly old I won’t even tell you the version number).

I didn’t like that to use the built in Astra to Astra video chat it will require QuickTime. I’ve avoided putting that on the new laptop as I despise it almost as much as iTunes. But I may break down and do it. If I’m considering paying for it I might as well consider using all the features. (Video to Yahoo does work fine - it’s the built in native video that requires QuickTime.) There are also a few hiccups (I think) with the Facebook chat, but it works reasonably well. My contacts seem to get booted off a lot when talking to me - far more than they experience at other times.

I’ve installed some new skins (which required a small edit to the system.ini settings for one of the basic skins but it wasn’t bad and the instructions were very clear), checked out forums and plug-ins. I’m really far more impressed than I anticipated. Umm, honestly, other than for voice conference in Yahoo, I’ve not even opened WLM or Yahoo in several days. So, just as Philip took time to recant his previous distaste for Trillian, I suppose I’m doing the same. I’m actually growing quite fond of it. It’s definitely worth a look-see if you are in the market for a multi-client program.