Cover that eye! Cover that frozen eye!

I've been taking recommendations for the photo guide, particularly photo management and processing software — for when you've got a hundred two-megabyte five-megapixel images to put up, and you don't have that much web space and no-one cares about the full resolution anyway. And you still have to fix the red eye and so forth.

I was told Google Picasa was shockingly usable and technophobe-friendly, and there's a Linux version, which has a one-click install for Ubuntu. So I gave it a go.

Favourite feature: The red eye repair interface is as simple as it could possibly get and seems to actually work really well. Editing in general is fantastically easy; it's just the thing for the amateur photographer who really can't be bothered turning themselves into a Photoshop jockey. Also, the browsing interface is remarkably accessible and much less of a pain in the arse than using Konqueror (which is in turn much less of a pain in the arse than Windows Explorer, even in XP).

Bad point: Don't use it to download pics directly from the camera — it may not preserve Exif information (all the shooting data about the image). This is stupid, annoying and a dealbreaker for me; everything else does it fine and I don't see why Picasa can't. So I'll be sticking to digiKam for that one.

I hope the digiKam developers get Picasa, use it lots and work out how to make editing as ridiculously easy on digiKam.

Anyone else used Picasa?

London Tube terrorist plot foiled by eagle-eyed patriots

LONDON (UNN) — Two hundred and fifty officers of the British Transport Police were called to Dagenham Tube Station today to deal with two terrorist subjects who had been spotted being other than bluish-white or sunburnt brick red in a public place. One had also been sighted in possession of facial hair.

"I've always been suspicious of people with a darker skin colour than me," said Brenda Busybody, 76 (IQ), "but now my life-long prejudice has stopped a major terrorist plot. After the explosions in Bombay, I knew that Dagenham was sure to be next. Is this going to be in the Daily Mail? I've always thought those people would wreck our house prices."

One of the men had been spotted reading a newspaper written in some Johnny Foreigner gibberish, and the other had been spotted with an inherently suspicious and possibly explosive device for recording photographic images.

"It's very difficult for terrorist organisations to get information about what lies outside train windows," said a spokesman for London Transport, "and customers should always be on the lookout for people who might be described as 'foreign' or otherwise 'shifty' and acting suspiciously — for example, looking out of the window, or perhaps exhibiting any sign of life whatsoever. We are doing our bit by ensuring that tube train windows are always filthy and that the trains are crowded and probably not running anyway."

"It is up to all of us to fight back against the terrorist threat," said top comedian Tony Blair. "Not that I advocate any form of racism towards any British citizen."

The bullet-riddled fragments of the corpses of the two terrorist suspects out to destroy the British way of life have been remanded in custody and are likely to be charged with a breach of the peace.

BBC Weather indicated that the summer atmospheric idiocy count was at a record high.

Sources

• Serious Liar "Met police to be charged with 'disrupting traffic' in death of Menezes". New York Times, July 17, 2006
• Albert Hoffman "Datura, coca and psilocybin pollen index". BBC, July 17, 2006

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From Uncyclopedia UnNews, written to commemorate cookwitch being harassed on the train by some fuckwit. Based on a couple of paragraphs by steer.