Ask Some Geeks

While a lot of people think that the Loch Ness Monster might be some sort of eel, long necked seal, invertebrate, or perhaps just some debris in the lake such as a log, many people believe it is an evolved plesiosaur. These dinosaurs were carnivorous aquatic reptiles with the body shape of a turtle without a shell and a long neck. They were first found in England, so it is possible that they survived through the ages; however, the plesiosaur’s neck wasn’t designed to bend upward to the degree that they could left their heads above the water as most Nessie pictures show. Even if they could, gravity would have tipped their body forward which would keep most of their neck in the water. It is possible for their head to reach the surface, but not in the typical “Nessie pose” captured in most pictures of the animal.

Loch Ness is the largest body of fresh water in Britain. It’s 754 feet deep, 22.5 miles long, and 1-1.5 miles wide. It is said that the loch never freezes, which could account for how the dinosaur survived through the ages. Below 100 feet, a thermocline keeps the temperature of the water at 44 degrees Fahrenheit. There is a large cavern system deep in the lake that could be where Nessie lives and avoids detection.

The Loch Ness Monster has been a popular myth since at least 1933, but there have been reported sitings since as early as 565 by Saint Columbia, who wrote that a beast rose from the loch and attacked a man swimming out to retrieve a boat. There was another notable siting in the 1600’s and many in the 1800’s and 1900’s.

Over the past 4 years, people have debated the monster’s existence on a picture I took of a statue at Eccles Dinosaur Park near Ogden Utah of a Plesiosaur. The picture is located in my photo gallery at The Lens Flare. On this page, I ask the question, “Could this dinosaur be the ancestor of the Loch Ness Monster?” People have misinterpreted my question as “Is this the real Nessie?” and hundreds of people have commented. It’s been a fun debate to see what people’s opinions are of the matter.

The picture recently reached 100,000 views and is the first image on The Lens Flare to do so largely due to the fact that it often shows up on the first page of Google’s image search for phrases like “Loch Ness Monster” and other variations, and the number of visits to this picture per week has dramatically increased since the show “The Water Horse” hit the big screen putting Nessie back in the spotlight. I invite you to take part in the conversation of The Loch Ness Monster on my picture at TLF.

One of the most exciting things about digital photography is not the camera itself, but what you can do with the photo after the fact using various software programs such as Photoshop.

I like to take multiple images and merge them together forming a composite image. You can add a sky, mountain, or flower to an interesting sky or you might add animals such as moose or squirrels where there weren’t any previously. Sometimes different landscape and nature elements are added such as a nice looking rock outcropping or cliff. Often, it’s as simple as swapping out a boring sky for one that’s much more exciting to really add to your photograph.

It’s easy to add elements to a picture, but much harder to make them look right when all of the layers are put together. Little pieces of grass and other artifacts are common and time consuming to remove. Photoshop’s Extract tool is a good place to start. It will help you remove an object from one image so that you can copy it into another. It does a decent job of getting the edges right, but you’ll need to fine tune it some. What I do is duplicate the layer, then extract the object out of the duplicate. I convert this new object to gray scale and copy it to a layer mask. A layer mask is a gray scale layer that allows portions of the layer below it to be shown. The different gray values translate to opacity values. By converting the extracted layer to gray scale, I have a pretty good representation of the object that needs to be seen. I then paint on white and/or black to the edges of the layer mask to fix any edge problems in the original extracted layer. Once I have my perfectly extracted object, I can include that layer and its mask into the composite image and position it accordingly. Sometimes there are a few pixels that seem out of place once the layers have been combined, so I’ll fix those individually by zooming in and then I use the clone stamp tool to edit out the problems.

Extracting objects is really an art form all to itself. To do this so, you’ll need to know how to use the extract tool in Photoshop and how layer masks work, which I’m sure there are countless tutorials on the Internet that show you exactly how to use both. If you don’t have Photoshop, check to see if your photo editing software supports these things. If not, you can buy Photoshop Elements for about $99. You can also use the lasso tool to extract an object if it has an obvious edge. Hair and fur are harder to do, which is where the extract tool comes in handy.

Doug Hough from my photo gallery, The Lens Flare, has a lot of really great composites, and the thumbnail in this article was created by Donwrob.

I was the IT Director for a chain of portrait studios. Each store had 8-10 computers and a server that housed all of the pictures. Each computer ran Express Digital to proof the customer and a point of sale system that I wrote specifically for that company. We opened new stores every year, and this was when I made the large purchases detailed below. I would buy enough computer equipment and software for a store, which was about $25k-$40k. After that, the budget was quite small because it was expected that the computers would last 3 years.

I don’t like Compaq. The Compaq’s that I’ve used/purchased over the years have been pretty crappy machines. If this was school, I’d give Compaq an F. Although I have to admit that because of my poor experiences with them, I haven’t bothered buying a Compaq for over 5 years.

Dell is better. I’d give them about an overall grade of a C. They have decent machines, but their tech support is pretty poor. If you call them, plan on about a 45 minute wait, and then plan on arguing about whether or not your problem is “supported”. We were supposed to be on their best support plan too. I’ve had to get into some really heated conversations with them to get them to actually help me. For example, they had a problem with the front side USB ports on their small form factor machines. I called and told the girl that my bar code reader wouldn’t work and she said that wasn’t supported because I didn’t buy the reader from Dell. It turned out that the USB ports on the front of the computer don’t have as much power going to them as the ones in the back. The solution was to plug the reader into the back of the computer. This was after an hour of arguing about whether or not she could help me, getting a supervisor, arguing with them, etc. The problem was with their USB port, not the actual scanner. I think I left a bloody mark on my desk from banging my head into it multiple times before that problem was fixed.

I’ve been quite unsatisfied with the quality of service from them. Also, their sales staff is pushy and they don’t treat you very well unless you spend $50k or more. I’ve had experience with them at both levels. They were very kind, helpful, and worked hard for me when I was spending $50k+ a year with them. When I dropped below that level, there was a very noticeable change. They gave me the impression that I was a burden of their time. In all fairness to Dell, this was while I had an account level that was supposed to spend $50k or more a year. There are other divisions that deal with customers with a smaller budget. I dropped below that threshold because Tigerdirect.com beat their bids and we made some large purchases with them instead.

I just bought a Dell Laptop this month. I bought it online after talking to a chat sales representative. The person was helpful, and it was a good experience. I didn’t have to wait very long.

I’ve bought many things from Tigerdirect.com. Their service is excellent. Their sale staff is rock solid. I spent a lot with them and thus had a dedicated corporate account manager. He’s now a friend of mine and we talk on the phone from time to time about computer stuff even though I don’t spend money with him anymore - I’ve since moved to another job where I’m not buying all the PC equipment. His direct line is still on my speed dial on my cell phone; however.

I bought 40 computers from TigerDirect one time - their brand is called Systemax. I wasn’t happy with these computers. We had a lot of problems with them. My sales rep assured me that this wasn’t normal and that I got a bad batch, but out of 40 computers, we swapped out 2-3 motherboards, 3-4 hard drives, some bad memory, a couple of power supplies, etc. They gave us great service though. In most cases, a tech came out and fixed it for us, except for the stores where we had a person that could do it themselves. Some of the problem was probably caused in part by us. It seemed that the computers overheated fairly easy, and we didn’t help the fact because we put the computers in an enclosed cabinet with limited air flow. After a the first few problems, we put in a fan in the cabinet to help cool off the computers and that slowed down the problems. So, I’d give them a C when buying their Systemax brand as far as equipment goes, and an A in service. I’ve bought a ton of stuff from them such as extra hard drives, memory card readers, etc and all of that has been great.

Since I’m a tech geek, I prefer to build my own desktop. This way I know all of the parts that are in it and can easily fix it. However, if you don’t know how to build a computer and don’t want the headache of troubleshooting hardware problems, then I’d go with either Dell or TigerDirect.com. Between the two, Dell computers had less overall problems, but each problem took a hell of a lot longer to fix because their support staff sucks. Tiger had more problems, but each problem was relatively painless because their support staff rocked.

In both cases, you’ll want to come up with some sort of backup plan. You can get a hard drive replaced, but you can’t get your files replaced if you don’t have a backup - well unless you spend thousands of dollars with a data recovery company and then it’ll only be a partial recovery.