NC #581 Tree for Outlines, CotEditor Simple Text Editor, Security Bits with Bart Busschots

I got to ask all my image editor questions of Bart Busschots and Antonio Rosario on Episode 33 of the Let’s Talk Photography podcast at lets-talk.ie/…. For my simple needs, Tree from topoftree.jp/… for only $12 in the Mac App Store is a fabulous outlining tool. Because of our fabulous community I learned about the amazing free text editor called CotEditor. We’re joined again by Bart Busschots for Security Bits.

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Hi this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias. Today is Sunday June 26, 2016 and this is show number 581.

Let’s Talk Photography Episode 33

I’m a big fan of Bart’s show Let’s Talk Photography. Once a month he comes out with a show with one or more other photographers not to argue about whether Canon or Nikon is better, but to talk about technique, ideas for new photography projects, how to get your photos printed and more. Last month on Episode 32 he was joined by Antonio Rosario of the Street Shots Podcast (another favorite of mine). In that episode they went through the subject of Adjustments in image editing software. It was great because while their discussion used mostly examples from Lightroom and Photoshop, learning what all of the different adjustments mean is pretty transportable information between image editors.

However, as I listened, it opened up more questions. For example, vibrance and saturation both seem to intensify the colors, but why would you pick one over the other? And how about the whole idea of sharpening an image? What’s the difference between Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, Clarity, Definition and Structure?

The more I thought about those questions, the more questions I had! I was in the middle of planning out my Affinity Photo video tutorial for ScreenCasts Online, and I was trying to figure out the fundamental difference between Brightness, Exposure, Black/White Point sliders, Histogram points and Curves. Why would I use one over the other and why are they all there?

As I often do, I wrote a note to the podcasters (Bart and Antonio) and asked them all these questions. Bart was happy to get the email because he hadn’t yet thought of a topic for Episode 33 and this sounded perfect. But instead of Antonio and him just answering my questions on the air, he invited me on the show to ask the questions myself. I had a GREAT time – like being a student in class and having one-on-one access to the teacher’s brain all to myself!

The best part of the show is that often one of them answers, and the other one says, “Well, that’s not exactly right…” Bart’s skill with the tools is phenomenal, and Antonio’s knowledge of how these tools came out of the film era and progressed through the years in image editors is a perfect complement. They went back and forth and learned from each other while teaching me what I wanted to know.

I’m not going to tell you any of the answers to the questions, instead you can go listen at lets-talk.ie/… and look for Episode 33 of the Let’s Talk Photography podcast. The only bummer for me is that I don’t have an episode of the show to listen to this month, but you do!

Chit Chat Across the Pond this Week

In Chit Chat Across the Pond this week Bart is back with Programming By Stealth lesson 17 where we get into JavaScript Objects. It’s a bit of a brain twister but Bart’s excellent explanations finally drill it home to me. I was also very proud of myself for getting an A- on my homework from the previous episode. It was structurally and logically completely correct, and I only lost points because I forgot to indent one function line!

I have to admit that I had a lot of help from my teaching assistant, Allister Jenks though, so I can’t take full credit. It was great though to have Allister explain the same things Bart has explained to me but from a different angle. Really helped me cement some of the more obscure concepts into my brain, like anonymous functions.

Whenever I hear myself saying “this is too hard, I don’t get it”, I try to replace those thoughts with Professor Maryanne Garry telling us that the way to keep our brains in good health we need to find things that are difficult for us and to master them. Programming is what I’ve chosen to stay mentally fit!

Blog Posts

Create Outlines with Lightweight Tree App for OS X

Wisdom of Crowds Finds CotEditor

Amazon Affiliate link

I received an odd email from Amazon Canada about the Amazon Affiliate program I opened. They said that I haven’t gotten any purchases on the account yet and yet I know that at least some of the Canadian listeners have been great about using it. By now you’d think I’d be an expert in how these codes work for the different countries but to be honest it’s harder than you would think to figure out how to make a generic link!

I’ve not changed the Canadian link to go to the Computers and Accessories section instead of the main home page for Amazon.ca. I figure that’s where you all will start looking anyway, but remember that whatever you buy during that session (plumbing supplies, baby bottles, wrenches, lawn and garden stuff), a small percentage comes back from Amazon to help pay the costs to keep the NosillaCast going.

If you’re baffled what I’m talking about here, go to podfeet.com and look for the giant Amazon image on the left sidebar. If you’re from the US, just click on the image and you’ll be set to search on the affiliate code, but if you’re outside the US, click the link below it to find your country’s link. Or just go to podfeet.com/funwithflags to find the right affiliate link. I really appreciate all of you who do this regularly, and thanks in advance to our Canadian listeners!

Security Bits

Important Security Updates

Microsoft releases June Patch Tuesday fixes, including a patch for BadTunnel, which goes back to Windows 95 (Editorial by Bart: XP is NOT getting this patch, I'm declaring it dead now) – krebsonsecurity.com/… & nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
Adobe release security Patch Tuesday updates to Creative Cloud, Brackets, Cold Fusion & DNG Dev kit – www.us-cert.gov/…
Adobe have released an out-of-band patch for Flash to fix a vulnerability being actively exploited in the wild – krebsonsecurity.com/…
Apple released a critical security patch for their AirPort routers – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…

Important Security News

NetGear have emailed router customers warning of an as-yet un-patched vulnerability in some of their routers (thanks Allison for passing this on) – kb.netgear.com/…
Be on alert – the pond-scum of the internet is already attempting to exploit the Orlando tragedy to scam people – arstechnica.com/…
Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance is not giving up the fight against encryption, continuing to call for mandatory back doors – www.macobserver.com/…
New strain of Android Malware (named Godless) that can root 9 out of 10 Android devices found in Google's Play store – arstechnica.com/…
Facebook to tell advertisers when you visit their physical stores – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
Google have released a new, simpler option for 2FA – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
InMobi, A mobile advertising company that tracked the locations of over a million users with their consent has agreed to pay $950,000 in civil penalties – arstechnica.com/…

Notable Breaches

The hack of DeRay McKesson's Twitter shows the importance of protecting your account with your cellphone provider – enable as much security as you can, or an attacker could hijack your number, and hence, many 2FA tokens (editorial by Bart: this, and the known flaws in GSM are why I prefer authenticator over SMS for 2FA) – www.macworld.com/…, social.techcrunch.com/… & nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
A German university student has succeeded in getting arbitrary code execution on many important servers, including .gov and .mil servers in the US, by uploading booby-trapped versions of common software libraries to the net – many developers don't seem to bother getting their code directly from the source, and hence, expose their servers to this very trivial attack – arstechnica.com/…
uTorrent forms hacked – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
GitHub latest victim of password re-use attacks falling out from the large dumps (Editorial by Bart: you should probably enable 2FA on your GitHub account to protect your source code, and hence your reputation, from secretly injected malware) – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/… & arstechnica.com/…
Carbonite report that they too are seeing mass account takeovers that appear to be related to password reuse rather than a breach at Carbonite itself – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
GoToMyPC resets all passwords after what they call a 'very sophisticated hack' (without giving any details) – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/… & krebsonsecurity.com/…
IS hacker admits to stealing personally identifiable information on US service members, and passing it on to terrorists who he knew would use it to attempt to kill them – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
154 million US voter records exposed, including associated Facebook accounts, party affiliations, gun ownership, and views on controversial topics like gay marriage – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…

1 thought on “NC #581 Tree for Outlines, CotEditor Simple Text Editor, Security Bits with Bart Busschots”

Jennifer - July 11, 2016

I have spent a lot of time trying to find a good text editor. Turned up that it is quite difficult to find exactly what I need for an acceptable price. After few hours of exhausted searching, I have found one interesting site that lists some interesting text editors and a brief description: http://besttexteditor.com