Yay for Picasa!

Ok, it's official: I love Google! First of all, they are fighting comment spam. Second of all, they have released a new version of Picasa for free (edit: a newer article was posted here)! Apparently they acquired the company last year and have been improving the software. What's so great about it? Well first of all it's free! It's a very lite program and yet it's so fast! You can do all the basic editing stuff you want to do plus a little more and all without shelling out for Adobe Photoshop, which is still of course the standard for high end editing. For people like you and me though, this program is where it's at. Here's what the main screen looks like:



As you can see, the interface is very uncluttered and looks clean. This program can make you photo CDs and DVDs, you can use it to directly send pictures through Gmail, you can send pictures directly to sites that can mail you prints, you can use those same sites to share with family, you can organize your pictures into albums, you can see your pictures in several ways (including a timeline format), you can upload the pictures to your blog easily, and so much more. And it's all very user-friendly. Not to mention that the program can scan your computer automatically for pictures when you install it (or just the folders you want it to) and that can run in the background as you do other stuff. It will even continuous update itself as you add new pictures to your hard drive. I recommend the free download. If you're not convinced, check out PC Magazine's glowing review.

There are a couple of movie news items today. If anyone still cares, the Fantastic Four trailer is now up. It's nothing terribly exciting so don't get your hopes up. Secondly, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg spoke about War of the Worlds on Yahoo! Movies! You can watch it here. If you don't know what that movie is, you're a loser and should at least watch this.



Today was the second day of classes and I think it went rather well. I went to M 340L first, Matrices and Matrix Calculations, with Dan Knopf. I'm excited about that class because he seems like a great guy and a great teacher. The class is supposed to teach us the concepts and techniques of linear algebra, and it's going to be my first dive into mathematical abstraction. Sounds like something I may be able to use someday. And my other new class was CS 315 with Glenn Downing. It sounds like it'll be intensive, but that's what makes it so fun. He gives us tests for our assignments that we dont know the correct output for but if we get any of those wrong we get a 0 on the assignment! Plus we gotta make our own tests and use JUnit and Javadoc and stuff, so I think I'll enjoy the class thoroughly.

Now all that's left is the Midweek Music Meme:

What song drives you absolutely batty, to the point that you nearly feel compelled to physically stop someone from singing it?
I've heard some pretty bad songs, but "Pieces of Me" by Ashlee Simpson has to be the worst. Either that or "La La". I hope she gets humiliated out of the music industry eventually!

Comment with a song you hate if you'd like!