The monkeys are back in their cage, all the paint seems to have dried, and at long last, everything is in its right place. Hard to believe, but it’s only been a few short months since I last revamped the site. Not satisfied with the previous set up, I made the decision last week to re-tool; six days of CSS voodoo and HTML magic later, I’ve got something to show for it.

Welcome to the 134.5th revision of The Horrible Fanfare.

In what is either an affirmation of my inflated ego, or a very smart career move, I’ve placed some links to my recent work on the newly-minted splash page. Everything links to an appropriate section, where you can find more detailed and abundant listings, which will be kept updated as often as possible. The same goes for photos, where the old gallery system has made its triumphant return.

This isn’t a particularly huge update, but more of a pleasant face-lift. Just act as if The Fanfare’s gotten some botox, minus all the facial freezing and awkward social reactions. All the things you know and love are the same, just organized a little better, and easier on the eyes. Like a digital Harrison Ford. Or something.

Finally, the 134.5th revision means that I’ll be hosting every episode of the Not So Horrible Podcast locally again, which is good news for both you, and us. Not only will things (hopefully) load a little bit faster, but iTunes support is finally on its way too. Exciting times indeed!

So, take a look around, see what’s new, and most importantly, enjoy!

Somehow, by some stroke of ethereal assistance, I’ve reached 100 posts. It’s been over a year and a half since I launched this site, from its humble Blogger beginnings, and it’s been a blast. In reality, it’s probably been far more than that – those who remember the old Blogger site might have noticed a whole ton of posts missing. Many were purged in The Great Wordpress Migration of 2008, but alas, I still see this as a milestone nonetheless. I’ve had a great time running things, and here’s hoping I churn out another hundred or more!

And remember, kids – keep your stick on the ice.

Adobe Photoshop – when used right – can be an extremely powerful photo-editing tool. It’s the only photo manipulation app, after all, that I can use to superimpose myself on top of mythical creatures, or to pretend that I’ve met various celebrities all far cooler than myself. But when placed in the hands of an inexperienced user, horrible things can happen. Hands disappear, lighting turns harsh, and levels go awry. People can die.

But in all seriousness, the fact that Photoshop has become so prevalent means that almost anyone can produce a photoshop – and more often than not, with less than pleasing results.

Case in point: The front cover of this year’s City of Toronto’s FUN Guide! As the National Post aptly pointed out, the cover of this year’s parks and recreation guide is not what it seems. Apparently city employees felt it necessary to do a little photo manipulating of their own, replacing the perfectly acceptable stock photo Latino patriarch with an African-Canadian male.

Say what?

While there’s already quite a bit of discussion going on in the National Post’s comments section, what I find most interesting is how exactly Post’s graphic designer was able to uncover this in the first place. I mean, from looking at the image, it’s clear that the cover is an incredibly blatant shop – the man’s expression is far too creepy for the rest of the family’s joy, his forehead is very poorly lit, and those fingers floating beside his neck? Clearly dismembered.

But recognizing that something is a Photoshop doesn’t magically grant one the ability to see through layers of manipulation. No, for that the Post consulted the omniscient knowledge of online search engine TinEye, an advanced image recognition tool that “detects visual enhancements to standard art.”

So where exactly does all of TinEye’s magic smoke come from? According to the search engine’s website, every image has something amounting to a fingerprint – a unique identifier different from other images.

Well, almost unique, anyhow. Apparently, modifying an image in certain ways – a la the City of Toronto – still retains much of the image’s original fingerprint, if not all of it. TinEye will scan a user-submitted photo, and compare its fingerprint against others in the database. In this case, the image matched.

So what exactly is this piece of software good for? If you count the defeat of photoshop-claiming trolls across the internet as a use, then you’ve already got one. But for news organizations and journalists like those at the Post, this sort of software could be invaluable. Imagine being able to quickly and easily confirm a manipulation like this without a doubt – making fakes much less of a reality.

Of course, the only caveat is that the original photo has to have been used already on the internet is some capacity, as was the case with Toronto’s FUN Guide. But as long as the image exists in some form – even cropped, or with adjusted levels – then you can bet it has an online history just waiting to be uncovered.

If you don’t already know of Archive.org, I’d suggest you get yourself acquainted. The site essentially serves as the internet’s equivelant of archivial storage, with a goal to catalog most, if not all of the Internet’s vast amounts of information. An impossible goal? Definitely. But it’s still a valiant one nonetheless, and the amount of information the site has gathered over the years is staggering.

Chances are, you’ve already use the Wayback machine in some way or another. As you can imagine, constantly trawling the internet for data reveals a great number of revisions for certain articles, sites or portals. The Wayback machine takes all of these revisions and organizes them neatly, by date, into a virtual timeline allowing users to see exactly how a site may have looked at any given date. In case you’re too young to remember – or in some cases, would rather forget – the Archive has some pretty interesting artifacts from the nineties, and oftentimes with looks we wouldn’t necessarily expect.

But while gathering textual information is all fine and good, what really struck me was the size of their video archive. What many people don’t realise is that, for many older films, and even certain recent releases, the copyright info on particular pieces of media has expired. Without any active copyright license, the film becomes free to share, distribute and watch, without fear of such lovely organizations as the MPAA. A few of the sections more notable selections…

• Attack of the Killer Mushrooms - A masterpiece of Japanese cinema
• The Last Man on Earth – The *original* I am Legend
• Being a Teen in the 1950’s - Awesome and inadvertently funny videos on being a teen in an era past
• Charlie Chaplin – Lots of Charlie. This one in particular is his 23rd film.

And that’s just a small selection of what the site has to offer. Check it out, and tell me if you find anything interesting!

Behold! The Horrible Fanfare lives again, completely retooled, redesigned, and hopefully, reinvigorated for the Summer months. After a few weeks of coding, skinning, testing and frustration, the site has returned in what will hopefully be the last revision for a while. As fun as it is designing something yourself, it’s far too much of a tedious process for me to make a habit of this every few months; this is revision two, and it’s here to stay.

Now that I’ve indulged my inner web designer, I can get back to what really matters – writing. Expect regular updates every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. There may even be the occasional in between post, if I feel so inclined. Oh, and something else, which I’ll be announcing very soon! But what’s important here is that the site is back.

So, for the technologically inclined amongst you, what’s new, you say?

• Sidebar! Easy access to posts, categories, and search.
• Twitter feed integration. For all those thoughts which never quite make it to post form.
• Garamond is gone. But not really. I’ve simply converted the main Garamond-text logo into a transparent PNG, which means that the small percentage of users without the font go unaffected.
• Cross-browser compatibility. Almost. Everything but Internet Explorer 7 and lower renders the site properly. But the good news? IE8 *finally* renders things the way it should. Rejoice, interwebs.
• Fixed layout. That’s right, things don’t move. But it means that there’s always consistency, and less headaches for me.
• Better portfolio. The photo + writing portfolio sections are vastly improved, which makes navigation much, much easier.
• Facebook Connect. You don’t have to sign up to comment. Click the Facebook Connect button below any post, and instantly use your Facebook account to comment. It even diplays your image beside the comment, which is a lovely touch. And no, I won’t flood your wall with a Horrible Fanfare application. Promise.

And that’s it. It may or may not seem like a lot, but it was definitely a lot of fun to put together. Now go explore, squash some bugs, and tell me what you think! The Horrible Fanfare returns to write again!