Twitter for Research

We've all seen the pro's and con's of Twitter now. Sometimes it's difficult to even explain Twitter to someone new to it. Like most social media tools, if used correctly, it has a potential for massive harnessing of crowds and resources alike. I've been noticing the quick rise of information on Twitter alongside Google searching.

There is much to be discovered for both work and fun, but more importantly research and development. It's no secret, that the internet is possibly one of your most valuable resources for productivity in all facets of life, especially WORK and the growing amounts of mobile devices.

That being said, just as there are certain methods for better isolating your desired information on Google (see my Search Tips), there are also ways to narrow down desired information on Twitter. Constantly there are growing number of web based tools available for this. Here are two sites I have been using quite a bit lately for aggregating information.

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Andromeda CG Spaceships

These are pretty old now looking back, but I built the new versions of these spaceships for Andromeda's Season 4 and 5. I used solely Lightwave for the modeling and surfacing, and Photoshop to paint the texture maps.

Portfolio - Andromeda

Edit, Convert, Organize images for free in Windows

Looking for some simple FREE applications to view, organise, edit, convert images/photos in Windows? There are literally TONS of applications for this. Although I tend to do all my media manipulation on Macs, there are times when Windows is all that is available. That said, here are my picks which are totally free & reliable for use in Windows.

First a classic, IrfanView. Irfanview supports MANY file formats. Great for batch conversions, cut/crop/resize, thumbnail preview/organization and more.

Next is XnView. A utility for viewing and converting graphic files, much like IrfanView. It supports over 400 file formats, batch resize, rotate, crop, color adjustments, batch renaming, and more.

Finally, and this one is more photography oriented. Google offers it's free software called Picasa. Organize and edit your digital photos. Additionally you can create online albums to share. If you like Picasa, you will be pleased to learn that it's also available for Mac and Linux.

• IrfanView
• XnView
• Picasa

Linux based Backup/Cloning Applications

Having already covered cloning and backup solutions for OSX and Windows, here are some Linux based solutions I use from time to time.

My favorite Open Source solution is by far Clonezilla. Clonezilla allows you to do bare metal backups/Images and restoration of partitions/volumes or whole drive duplication. It comes in 2 flavors, Clonezilla Live, and Clonezilla SE (server edition) for massive deployment supporting multicast. It supports ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, xfs, jfs of GNU/Linux, FAT, NTFS of MS Windows, and HFS+ for the Mac OS. Providing maximum flexibilty for cloning GNU/Linux, MS windows and Intel-based Mac OS.

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Testing your IT Security defenses

The best way to make sure your infrastructure is secure, is to test its defenses. Just like with backups, you don't know if your system is fully functional until you've attempted a restore and succeeded. No matter how thorough you may be with your firewalls and network systems, we all make mistakes. Not only could you have missed something, but there are constant exploits & holes being released and tested on systems everywhere.

Hence, we need to try Hacking into your own system(s). This technique is commonly referred to as Pen-Testing (Penetration Testing). This is a deep field to go into, so I will just point you in a direction to start off with, by listing some of the common tools used in this field. That being said, the tools required for Pen-Testing, are the same used by hackers, so use caution.

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