Sourceforge Bundles Malware with Legit Downloads

Last Sunday night I uploaded my professional/personal website, gabrielohhmedia.com to A Small Orange, my webhost. Go check it out. Of course uploading the site did not come without some hiccups. I wasn’t expecting that one of them would be finding a quality FTP client.

My friend Tecate Valentino is looking for a copy of Photoshop for his Mac. Being the advocate for free and open source software that I am, I suggested downloading and installing The GIMP. Well, today I decided to read up on the latest GIMP news and after nonchalantly browsing through the GIMP’s homepage news section, I  found a bit of news that disturbed me enough to type up a fresh blog post.

The GIMP reports in a blog post, GIMP Windows Installers Move From Sourceforge to FTP.GIMP.org, dated 11-05-13, details the latest horrors. Sourceforge was once a popular place to find and safely download FLOSS. I was really disappointed to find out that SourceForge now uses a special installer that bundles spyware, malware, and crimeware with your download. Shame shame shame.

Download here, download there.

Looking for an FTP client on my Windows 7 system, I immediately searched for FileZilla, a 5-star free and open-source FTP client. In a rush to install FileZilla and upload my site, I came across the bundles of crapware SourceForge was trying to push with my download. Thankfully I caught it and hopefully the unwanted wares did not install. I will have to double-check when I get home.

Thinking back on my most recent downloads from Sourceforge,  I downloaded and installed Miro Video Converter to encode some .webm and .mp4 video for HTML5 video on my website. The download link in Miro’s website took me to Sourceforge where I was able to find the Miro installer after bobbing and weaving the ads with green arrows indicating, “download here!” This time, the Sourceforge installer did not prompt me to install the third party malware such as PC Optimizer and Live Help. When the download finished, I noticed I had at least 4 unwanted applications on my desktop which I immediately and hopefully permanently uninstalled.

Making matters worse, the developers of FileZilla and Miro Video Converter are aware of Sourceforge’s installer changes because they are reported to be on the take. It is a shame when good software such as FileZilla is being used to push junk on the unsuspecting user. If you want my advice, be wary when downloading software, even once trusting locations such as Sourceforge. When forced to go to Sourceforge and the likes, watch the download options to prevent the dreaded Ask toolbar or PC Optimizer spyware.

New Career Moves and Trying Not to Go All-In

Viewfinder

For the past six months, I have been working hard on making some new moves. I had to put the whole graphic design and web development work to the side for the past two weeks because I have been preparing for an oral panel interview exam with a department under the State of California. Nearly three months after I was notified that my application had been accepted, I finally received the notice that my interview has been scheduled. It's set for next week.

My first edit station

The interview is an attempt to gauge my level of skills related to the particulate class for which I am applying for. Although the work I do directly relates to this class, I have been studying hard to cover every aspect of my career, which I have worked in for the past 7+ years. My goal is to have an answer for every question or scenario they pose. Which makes me wonder, why do I need to study so hard for a position related to a career which I have been working in for so many years?

Betacam SP

The fact is my current position does not offer the kinds of creative opportunities and chances to apply different creative skills that would allow for developing greater experience. Despite the lack of opportunities in this company, I still sought out skill developing jobs both with this company and elsewhere. I worked on various productions locally and even created local spots, PSAs, and paid programming for clients that aired on stations within the network I currently work for. As soon as my website is published, I will have some examples of my work available to watch.

Waveform monitor

Another problem is the fact that my current employer has been surviving quarter-to-quarter ever since I got on-board. The company was bankrupt just two years after I started my current position. Really, the first real job I get after college and the company goes bankrupt! The bankruptcy was not so surprising given the current state of the media economy. What was surprising was that the judge in the bankruptcy case allowed the company to dismiss over 1 billion in debt.

Setting the backfocus

It’s real discouraging to know that companies can squander billions and pay nothing in return. After emerging from bankruptcy, the CEO began to describe the company with terms such as, “a brand new company.” In reality, the company was the same-old just with less debt. If the judge in the bankruptcy case were smart, this person would have dismissed the debt with the stipulation that the current heads of the company step down. They already ran the ship aground the first time, why give them a chance to do it again?

Currently, I am looking at being laid-off in a few weeks or months or so, no one really knows for sure. Ever since hearing the news about the layoffs this past September, I have found a significant amount of irony in the whole thing… So much so that it is too much to mention here in the blog but maybe later I can put together some examples.

A new venture

This leads me to why I am studying so hard. If I can ace my interview and I am offered a position, does that mean I go all-in and drop the graphic design and web development work? Not a chance. I still think that my best opportunity for expanding my career and creating a livelihood is doing it myself, or in a team of like-minding folks. So, I am hoping to get on-board with the state, if only to buy some more time to continue fusing together my new skills.

Watch For Your Cable Bill to Increase, The Simpsons Come to FXX

Driving Home the Money on FXX

So The Simpsons are coming to FXX this Fall. According to Deadline, FXX acquired the broadcast rights to The Simpsons from parent company, 21^st Century Fox. The off-network acquisition must have been like the young teenage son asking the dad if he could drive the Mustang, or rather, the family sedan on Friday night. With the exception that this deal is expected to reap up to 1 billion for 21^st Century Fox, driving the family car never paid off so well.

The Simpsons and Always Sunny on FXX

The deal marks the first time the show will be featured on a cable network. Since the show’s inception and throughout its 20+ years on-air, the show has always been on broadcast. FXX has also acquired VOD rights to the show, so this will also become the first time viewers at home can watch The Simpsons online, VOD, and/or a mobile device. In addition, Deadline reports that FX Networks plans to launch FXNOW, an app where the network plans to feature on-demand episodes of The Simpsons. The broadcast and VOD rights makes The Simpsons a multi-pronged earner for FXX.

The deal brings relevance to FXX which currently airs movies and Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Which up until now, may have been the only reason to tune-in. Increasingly, it seems that Fox Networks, like all the networks, is simply trying to build out its cache of cable nets in an effort to simply hike up the re-transmission fees from the cable and satellite companies.

In the end, this hurts the consumer because Comcast and the likes have no choice but to pass the buck. Seriously, they could not fit Always Sunny and The Simpsons on FX alone? They had to create an additional cable channel network? At least we have Ali G coming back or is that on FX?

CBS to Bring Thursday Night Football to Broadcast in 2014

CBS and Thursday Night Football, eight games in 2014

As a fan of NFL football and a thrifty consumer, I am glad to read the news today that CBS will be broadcasting eight Thursday Night Football games for the 2014 season. The games will be also air simultaneously on the NFL Network, as they have been  in the past, according to Fierce Cable.

This is a win-win both for the fan and the NFL because this means fans will not have to shell out the extra bucks just to pay for a bundle of cable channels just to watch Thursday Night Football (TNF) or go to the local sportsbar to watch their favorite team play on Thursday night. According to Zap2it, ABC also bid for the broadcast rights to eight TNF games. I think this is something that fans have been waiting for and demanding ever since the creation of TNF.

The NFL will see ratings increase for TNF which have been dismal for the NFL Network. Besides the games, I can’t imagine the casual fan tuning in to the network for much more so it is bizarre to even keep the network on-air. Its almost similar to Oprah starting the OWN network. Like football, she fairs better on broadcast.

Now if only we can get access to Monday Night Football on broadcast rather than ESPN. That is unlikely to happen due to the fact that ratings for Monday Night Football on ESPN seem to be doing very well. The highest rated TNF game was the Kansas City-Philadelphia game on September 19th, 2013 which averaged 9.4 million viewers, according to Zap2it. In comparison, the final Monday Night Football game of the 2013 regular season between the Atlanta Falcons-San Francisco 49ers on Decemeber 23rd averaged 14.1 million viewers, according to Zap2it.

According to Fierce Cable, CBS is contracted to produce eight TNF games for the 2014 season. This leaves the remainder of the games to broadcast elsewhere which will probably be the NFL Network. There were 14 TNF games during the most recent 2013 season, including the Chargers-Raiders game which aired late on the Sunday night of October, 6th, 2013. The upcoming 2014 season schedule will be announced in April.

How to Create a Retro Postcard Design in Gimp 2.8

An awesome tutorial on creating postcards with The GIMP. This one is from JosephsPlace at YouTube. When I first attempted this, I got lost in the middle of the tutorial and starting working on this postcard project on my own. Here is the result of my first attempt, a postcard from my hometown in Old Roseville, CA:

First attempt.

The author of the tutorial mentions Photoshop users have access to an easy wave making tool. In GIMP, we have to use the path tool to create a text along path or use the newer cage transform tool, which is what I did.

This tutorial is also beneficial due to the extra techniques the author mentions that can really change the way you do graphics. Little things such as changing the font size of the first letter so that is is roughly 10-15% larger then the rest of the proceeding text. Also the links to the font used was a good look by the author, I have used them now in many projects.

Second attempt.

I did find some flaws in my second go-around, while making the postcard for Locke, CA. During my first attempt, I painstakingly cleaned up the edges to remove the aliasing that occurs when you create the 3-D background. The second time around, I was able to follow the tutorial to the end and found that my edges showed bad aliasing which is hard to fix. You have to go around the entire edge with a small, maybe 1-pixel size eraser brush and remove the edges. Unless there is a better way that I am unaware of. Here is the result of my second go:

Some other useful techniques I found in my second go was the black radial gradient the author uses to bring out the text, along with the softlight radial gradient used to create a light source. Very cool. If you are interested, check out JosephsPlace tutorial on YouTube or the embedded video below:

GIMP Tutorial - Use Channel Mask & Threshold for Complex Selections by V...

GIMP Tutorial - Use Channel Mask & Threshold for Complex Selections by V...

Minnie the furry Lhasa Apso/Mix with simulated depth-of-field.

I use a lot of GIMP tutorials found all over the web for various projects. One of my go-to instructors is VscorpianC, be sure to check out her YouTube channel. I do a lot of graphic work as a volunteer at the local animal shelter, and often times I want to use a photo of a dog that has a crummy background, such as the one of Minnie, the 9-year old Lhasa Apso/Mix available for adoption, in the picture to the right.


To work with the photo I need to lasso the animal in GIMP and then either replace the background with a nice looking graphic or use a technique I learned from another tutorial found online called simulating depth-of-field (DOF), thanks to the GIMP Guru. This technique is easy enough to perform on a picture of a smooth-haired chihuahua or pitty, but on a Lhasa Apso... yeah all that fur makes lassoing the outline of the dog a real pain!

Using the color threshold and paintbrush to create a channel mask.

Luckily, I found VscorpianC's tutorial on using a channel mask threshold for complex selections. Using an image of a tiger with whiskers poking out against the background, VscorpianC clearly informs how to use GIMP's channels and color threshold to create a channel mask.

Layer mask.

After creating the channel mask, VscorpianC explains that you can add a layer mask and use the channel selection mask copy as a selection. From there you can replace the background if that is all you want to do. Or, create a simulated DOF, such as I did. Check out GIMP Guru's tutorial on simulated DOF.

Minnie in space. Photo by NASA, ESA. Acknowledgement: Josh Lake.

You Must Be Patient With True Detective and Branding Ideas

I haven't been very good at updating this whole blog thing as of late. With all the great TV shows on-air... True Detective has got to be the most interesting snooze on-air right now, and with Shameless back, well my Sunday nights are booked.

For the past several weeks, I have been working on marketing myself, coding my own website in CSS3 and HTML5. But I have been having some trouble branding myself. What do you think a good name for my business should be? I have it narrowed down to anything with my initials really. Here is a logo I built:

Logo with transparent initials.

The logo is transparent through the initials to show off anything in the background. Here is an example of the logo with a background image:

Kind of like the bat signal?

The good news is I finished my course at ed2go.com on Introduction to CSS3 and HTML5. I am looking forward to my next course, Intermediate CSS3 and HTML5 starting in mid-February.

As for my branding, I am having trouble coming up with a name. Here are some quick mockups I created in GIMP's logo creation feature. I have tried "gabriel ohh designs:"

Alien glow example.

Here is "g-ohh designs:"

Glowing hot example.

Here is "gohh designs:"

Neon example.

I am not really sold on either, just trying to throw ideas out until I find something that sticks.

Back to True Detective, the story moves at a snail's pace. Back when I was in Film Studies, I learned to call a slow movie, "patient." Well you have to be patient with True Detective. The next time I dress up for an interview, or court appearance, I am taking a cue from Rust's wardrobe. Gotta love the sleazy style, makes you want to read Nietzsche and Camus again. Also, the opening credits to the show have got to be the best I have seen on television. Check them out: