Warning - Lloyds TSB Phishing emails

Watch out for a very poor phishing email which purports to come from Lloyds TSB Bank.
This one I received this evening.

PERSONAL AND BUSINESS ACCOUNTS

Dear Valued Customer,

We have recently noticed that someone has made " 3 " suspicious attempts
to log into your online account from this (IP) address " 241.238.141.88 "
Therefore our security commitment forces us to block your account
temporarily until you verify your identity on our systems.

There is a link which says will take you to the bank site but really it takes you to a hidden .se site. (in Sweden?)

I don't bank with Lloyds which immediately made me suspicious and the wording is so poor it shouldn't really fool anyone. The IP address given doesn't exist but has been referred to many times in similar phishing emails.

Baby Snail + Monty the Pillow

When I lifted the lid of the recycle wheelie bin I saw the smallest snail I had ever seen. Obviously snail eggs must hatch out to become tiny snails but I am sure this is the first time I have seen one anywhere near this size.



Not my thumb but my little finger near the snail which measured about 10mm full stretch.





Soundtrack - MIDI file played through Animoog app on the iPad


Penny and Monty the Moose becomes Penny and Monty the pillow:
She often uses Freddy the Fox or Monty the Moose as a head rest.
Penny is sporting her reflective collar ready for dark early morning walkies.




Have a great weekend observing the wild and domestic life around you.

And the Winners Are .....

Three people correctly identified last Monday's Guess What macro photo so my congratulations and a virtual  gold star goes to Adrian, ImaBurdie, and Jan for spotting it was part of a fir / pine cone.

iPhone + mini microscope

 


Nothing new this week as nothing suitable has caught my eye yet.

For those in the know - how do I get text to flow round a picture? The gold star part of my posts always looks so untidy. I write in plain text, not html. Aha - Solved - I should have searched YouTube in the first place. Once the graphic is in place in the Blogger editor just click on it to bring up a pop-up to choose how it and the text goes. The same pop-up allows captions to be added to graphics.

Trial of Dynamic Photo-HDR

I was checking to see whether there was an update to the ReDynaMix plug-in I use in Photoshop when I spotted a stand alone product from the same company. Dynamic Photo-HDR from Media Chance.  At $54 it is far from cheap but I do like their other product and what really caught my eye was that it was able to perform an HRD like process on movie files as well as still photos. They say this is an experimental addition to the program. With photos it can work on a single one like ReDynaMix or with multiple photos with diferent exposures as you would expect for genuine HRD processing.

There is a fully working trial version (the only extra in the trial is to put a small watermark on the output files) so I downloaded and installed that. For video processing I also had to download a package of free video codecs. That was a bit unnerving as the first thing it wanted to do was uninstall a codec I had already. As it had its own copy in the package I let it do that. Then it gave many reports of errors in the registry. These seemed to related to the stuff it had uninstalled so I followed its recommendation of removing those references from the registry. That took a while as each was reported seperately.

Once that was finished and before anything else I made a quick check that video playing was still working OK. It was so I could start breathing again!

Last night I tried a few short video files in Dynamic Photo-HDR and was reasonably impressed with the way it improved the dynamic range and some detail in murky video files. That could be useful for dull weather nature videos. The interface is pretty easy to use and there is an instant view of the changes though I would have liked the window to have been larger. Once satisfied with the changes saving is a slow process - the company acknowledge this and do warn that increasing the dynamic range on a video can increase the effect of grain.

 


On to the results:

Still photo HDR:

One of three photos taken with different exposures
 

Resultant tone mapped HDR using all three exposures
( the program allows for much tweaking and variation)


Video HDR

This is a reworking of a video I took some time ago.




The original:



This is not a program for making video. Either clips can be HDR processed and later assembled together in a program like  Corel Video Studio or Video Pad or the clips assembled first and the resulting video then HDR processed.

All in all, given a bit more testing, I think I shall be investing in a copy of Dynamic Photo-HDR as I am used to the interface - very similar to ReDynaMix - and it is easy to use when manipulating photos or videos. The only gripe I have so far is that video files cannot be dragged and dropped on to the program whereas photos can.


Apple Maps:
Can't resist linking to this brilliant video:



Apple should be ashamed of themselves and I'm sure Steve Jobs would be turning in his grave to see such useless software being produced in what should be a top end product.

Friday at the Flicks - Penny

Just a couple of videos of the hairy monster this week.
According to the information from the greyhound rescue centre Penny came from tomatoes help with aching, well worn joints so she got to taste the first tomato to ripen this year. Although she loves tinned tomatoes, well to be honest I haven't found anything she has refused to eat yet, I had no idea how she would react to one straight off the bush.  After a long sniff and a couple of tentative licks Penny tucked in:



The sound track was made using a few short files from my old eJay CDs


A few days ago I decided to give the Eyenimal video camera another outing. This time I tucked the clip in to the waist band of my trousers to see what the result would be like. Just a few sections from a 15min video as we walked round the block.



My reference to 'breeding again' refers to Clinton having got himself yet another old caravan to 'do up'. He does a fine job with them, often completely rebuilding the inside and making sure they are weather proof and road worthy.

Apple iOS6 Maps:
Having seen some of the awful mess in the new Apple maps which replaces Google Maps in iOS6 I will not be bothering to upgrade my iPhone or iPad. What is the fuss about? If you want to see some comparisons between the two have a look on HERE. A farm labelled as an airfield, melted roads and bridges, fuzzy pictures, towns and cities missing or moved location. In my opinion definitely not fit for purpose and puts Apple to shame. Google mappers must be laughing their socks off at such a shoddy attempt to replace them.

Have a great weekend whatever you are doing, or not doing as the case may be.

Waiting for Breakfast

A Sparrowhawk sitting on an old outdoor chair, less than 6 feet (2 metres) away from the bird feeders, trying to blend in with the fence and patiently waiting for any small bird to visit.







This time the ruse was unsuccessful.

Little Lost Dragon

One minute I am complaining that there haven't been many Dragonflies around the garden this year then one decides to come to visit me. This Common Hawker flew in to the conservatory on Sunday and attached itself to the greenhouse shading I use to cut down the amount of direct sunlight through the roof. As it was hanging upside down I got a view I don't see very often.

A Common Hawker