As a professional photographer, I have strong feelings about monitor calibration. And as such, a considerable amount of my time has been spent clicking through wizards full of barely distinguishable grays, making careful choices between warmer and cooler blacks, and trying to ignore the same feeling I get at the optometrist when asked a hundred times: “A or B?” I always get the feeling that I’ll get one answer wrong, thus effectively screwing up the process and tainting the results, making it only worse than what I originally started out with.

So when you finally give up and decide it’s time to employ the help of a specialized device to make your monitor produce rainbows that would make unicorns blush, who do you go with?

Arguably the best sub-$100 choice is the Spyder3Express from Datacolor. What you get for the $89 price tag is a “measuring device” with attached USB cable and counterweight, one suction cup, a microfiber screen wiping cloth, and the software CD. After spending a little time with the kit, I am not absolutely sure that it does a better job than painstakingly comparing swatches of pixels in a calibration program like Adobe Gamma. However, it’s worth noting that the Spyder3Express is wicked easy, more consistent, and won’t cause eyestrain.

The install and setup is quick and basic, and the calibration process is merely just a short waiting game. Though it can be a chore getting the thing to hang properly in the center of your monitor. If you are having issues with positioning, then the alternative is to snap the suction cup onto the device and smoosh it onto the screen. This option was even less satisfying to me, as my screen is matte, so it resisted my gentle attempts to get a good seal between screen and cup. I quickly gave up on the suction cup when I felt that my fight for great color calibration had gone a little too far by becoming more of just a physical battle.

After making amends with my monitor and promising that the unpleasant manhandling was over, I draped the Spyder gently over the monitor and sat back to enjoy the show. The wizard flashes colors and shades which the three-footed alien device dutifully recognizes one-by-one with a little blue flash. I felt like I was watching someone else work, which was pleasant.

At the end of its color-correcting job (takes about 5 minutes), you will be presented with a comparison between your old settings and Spyder3Express’ own variation of those settings. It was really efficient and quite easy, but maybe too easy?

Truthfully, I was slightly underwhelmed with the resulting change in my monitor’s color and contrast (though, it was arguably more “correct” than the default settings), and I was also not thrilled by the way the thing just hangs there, but for the modest investment and ease of use, I can’t help but recommend the little bugger.

Score: 7 Olives

Flash Game Friday is a weekly feature that provides gamers with (uh…duh) a free, browser-based flash game. You may have played it before and you may have not, but it’s always worth checking out. We’ll be bringing you the latest, time-wasting, challenging, lose-sleep-into-the-wee-hours type of flash games.

This Friday we venture into the realm of combat and tower defense with Penguins Attack 2. It’s a strategy game where you place different towers (bullet, bio, shock, flame, flak, and plasma) in a configuration that best gets rid of the attacking penguins.

The penguins attack in waves, entering from the left side of your screen and traveling through your maze of machinery to the other side. You have to make it through 30+ waves without letting more than 24 penguins through to beat each level. As the penguin masses are destroyed by your defenses, you earn money with which to buy more towers.  You can also upgrade your towers for a minimal fee. Between each wave you are given 14 seconds to sell and buy new towers to better suit your combat needs. Beware! Penguins come through in airplanes and hot air balloons too. Head over to Armor Games to save the world from this Penguin invasion!

Flash Game Friday is a weekly feature that provides gamers with (uh…duh) a free, browser-based flash game. You may have played it before and you may have not, but it’s always worth checking out. We’ll be bringing you the latest, time-wasting, challenging, lose-sleep-into-the-wee-hours type of flash games.

This week we bring you Sushi Cat, a puzzle game from Armor Games in the vein of games like Peggle.  The story of Sushi Cat begins with him falling in love with a cat in a pet shop window. The game follows Sushi Cat as he pursues this mysterious cat of his dreams! As you progress through the levels you stuff Sushi Cat with, of course, sushi!

Choose a place to drop Sushi Cat down the plinko-style maze.  As he eats the sushi he will become fatter and fatter. You have to reach a certain quota of eaten sushi before continuing to the next level. It’s a fantastic time waster and one the few browser-based casual games that has an entertaining and rather engaging storyline driving it. Check out the game here!

Flash Game Friday is a new weekly feature that provides gamers with (uh…duh) a free, browser-based flash game. You may have played it before and you may have not, but it’s always worth checking out. We’ll be bringing you the latest, time-wasting, challenging, lose-sleep-into-the-wee-hours type of flash games.

This week we introduce Dale and Peakot, an adventure game from Miniclip. Your job: help grumpy old Dale (think Elmer Fudd meets Jason Lee in My Name is Earl) get his chickens back from the coyotes with the help of Peakot, his magic hen.

Peakot doesn’t look much like a magic hen, but a rubber chicken. Peakot can reach controls that Dale can’t, thus she is magic. In the process of moving Peakot around, it can be found that she is much more like a rubber chicken. She bounces off things and spits out a few feather as well. Dale and Peakot travel through a map of different puzzle adventures, trials and errors.  So, watch out for coyotes and rolling fuzzy animals and have a good ole time. Check out the game here!

A couple months ago, Adobe blew our minds with a video sneak peek at their new feature in Photoshop CS5, Content-Aware Fill (or as I like to call it, God Mode). Content-Aware Fill gives the user the ability to seemingly remove anything out of a photo, and Photoshop would magically fill in the gap.

CS5 finally released and needless to say, Content-Aware Fill was the very first tool I wanted to try. I scanned quickly through my library of images and pulled out a photo that I took last year. I love the photo, but there’s a few things I was eager to take out.

In the original version above there is an annoying speaker on the right and a microphone cable going across the side of his shirt. This is incredibly annoying and it draws attention away from the photo. I selected the speaker first with the lasso tool, hit delete, selected OK on the Content-Aware Fill menu, and sat back while the progress bar raced across the screen. What I had wanted was a black area to the right, making it look like nothing was there. Well, you can see what happened instead:

I tried Content-Aware Fill in several other places that yielded similar, unusable results as you can see. I did, however, think that it was at least a good start on retouching where the cable went through his shirt. It seems like Photoshop relies on information from both sides of what you’re trying to remove, so obstructions on the edges seem to leave you out of luck.

Finally, below is an edit done in about 5 minutes on CS5, but using all the tools I’m already familiar with from CS4 such as the clone tool, patch tool, etc.

Content-Aware Fill will have its uses, but it’s not the wonder tool that Adobe made it out to be, but this could be a very powerful tool in the future after Adobe refines it a bit.

You contact Lucas Carter by sending him an email to lucas.m.carter@gmail.com.

One weekend project I had recently completed was connecting a family member’s computer to a television in another room. While this sounds dead easy at first, there were some problems with the particular setup that I was dealing with. First and foremost, this is a standard-def television that has limited connections and the PC doesn’t have S-Video, so it’s not as easy as just slapping on an S-Video cable and calling it a day. Also, the setup that I use must be simple. While I’m technically capable, said family member is not. So, I can’t do anything too complex. Join me after the break for a quick tutorial on getting your computer connected to a TV, despite there being several blocks in the road.

While there were a few setbacks, one thing I was granted with was that the quality didn’t need to be crystal. So long as a picture is there, the family member is happy. Thus, I was able to accomplish the task relatively cheaply and easily. Sadly though, if you want crystal-clear picture and sound, you’re better off purchasing a HDTV.

Setting out, you’ll need only a couple of parts:

- VGA to TV converter
- Extra VGA cable
- RCA cable
- 3.5mm to RCA converter/splitter

The setup is quick and easy. You’ll need to first disconnect the VGA cable from your computer monitor and plug it into the VGA to TV converter, leaving the other end plugged into the computer. Connect the extra VGA cable to your computer monitor and then the other end to the converter. This way you can use your TV and monitor both.

Next, add the Yellow RCA cable to the converter and power it up. Take the other end of the Yellow RCA cable and plug it into your TV. Change input and check for a signal. Everything with video should now be set.

For audio, plug the 3.5mm splitter into your PC, one end of the split connects to your computer speakers. The other goes to the 3.5mm to RCA white/red converter. Connect the white/red RCA cables into the RCA converter, and the other end into your TV. Check for sound.

Congrats, both video and audio should now be working. You’re well on your way to setting up an HTPC. Some future recommendations would be to utilize a remote or wireless keyboard/mouse, and connect your PC to the internet (most likely it already is) to stream movies, music, television shows, etc. If you’re experiencing any problems, please let me know in the comments and I will do my best to respond!

Jakob Griffith writes for the popular hacking blog HackADay.com and also stops by Tech Olive every now and then to help out and write DIY and how-to articles. You can visit his personal development blog at kobaj.net.

Some confusion has been going round about Blizzard’s policies on hacked accounts on World of Warcraft, namely the new ‘care package’ offer that they have introduced. If a player’s account gets hacked and they lose all their items, normally that player would put in for an account restore. This entails Blizzard going and finding out exactly what was lost and then bringing the character back into a pre-hacking state. This new care package — which is being offered to players as an alternative to getting a full restore — takes a significantly shorter amount of time to execute and helps get the players back into the game faster. Here’s some quick advice: If you don’t want to get your account hacked, then get a Blizzard authenticator or if you own an iPod Touch then download the Blizzard authenticator app. They’re very easy to use and make your account 100% safe.

via [Inc Gamers]

With the release of their latest patch, Blizzard has finally unveiled the next wing of Ice Crown Citadel, The Plagueworks.

The Plagueworks contains the most twisted experiments ever produced by the Scourge. In this wing players will face two new forms of abomination in Festergut and Rotface, who currently protect their devious creator, Professor Putricide.

This still isn’t the full story of the huge raid dungeon that is Ice Crown Citadel, but Blizzard is leaking it out over a long period of time to keep players interested. Are you as excited as we are?

Via [Inc Gamers]

It would appear that China’s General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) and the Ministry of Culture may have once again changed their minds about whether NetEase can still host World of Warcraft. For the uninformed, NetEase had been accused of operating its license for World of Warcraft illegally and, when confronted, they were told to stop charging for new WoW accounts and NetEase’s application to allow players to play The Burning Crusade expansion was also halted. The case will go one of two ways; the sanctions can stop short of completely shutting down NetEase in China opening opportunities for them to resume running the game, or they could be banned from all operations resulting in Blizzard being forced to find another company to operate their servers in China. Stick with us for the news as this story unfolds.

via [Game Politics]

A man by the name of Alfred Hightower was on the run from the cops and hiding out in Canada, avoiding drug charges. He was practically untraceable, nobody could find him. It seemed that Hightower was gone for good until the police, knowing about his WoW addiction, went straight to the source and Blizzard happily offered up the offender’s account information, which included his active IP address. Using this, he was tracked down and caught. Great bit of police work there, but this also serves as a cautionary tale; Blizzard can’t be trusted!

Via [Big Download]