In reality, this technique is most useful for boring touch-ups - getting rid of “love handles” or “lunch-lady arms”, emphasising muscles or otherwise giving a photo that magazine look.

However, as is my tradition, I’m going to demonstrate this technique using an attractive female celebrity.  In an effort to cash in on the Internet’s obsession with boobs, I will be giving the lovely Ms. Jennifer Garner some imaginary breast implants.  Please save any comments about my misogyny until the end of class.

Let’s get to it!

Step 1. Prepare your model:

Choose a picture of a person you want to change.  Almost any picture will do, but some are going to be easier than others.  Try to pick one where the attribute you want to change stands out on it’s own (for example, if a person’s arm is across their chest, it will be difficult to change the chest without effecting the arm, and vice versa).

For this tutorial, I will be using this picture of Jennifer Garner:

Purely for educational purposes, we’re going to increase her bust size.

To prepare the image for editing, you really don’t need to do anything.  I, however, like to duplicate the original image onto a new layer so that if anything goes wrong you can easily go back to the original.

Step 2. Liquify!

This is the fun bit!  Select the “Liquify” tool (Filter>Liquify…):

Choose a brush size.  Your best bet is to just experiment with different brush sizes to find which works best for the alteration you’re doing.  I’ve found that if you are making something bigger it works best to have a brush that covers most of the area.  This gives a slightly more uniform change.

Step 3. Stretch, Sculpt and Sexify:

Simply click and drag around the areas that you want to make bigger or smaller.  I find it’s best to use a series of small changes, rather than trying to stretch the skin too far in one go, which can look obviously stretched.

And that’s it!  You’ve just earned your degree in digital plastic surgery.

This is what my final image looked like with a slight breast enlargement:

The change may not be immediately apparent (which is a good thing), but you can definitely see the difference when compared side-by-side:

So there you go.  The liquify tool is incredibly useful, and is used on most of the photos in magazines and ads that you see every day.

Now, if you want to berate me for propagating the big-boob/perfect body myth or demeaning women, or if you simply want to express your adoration for the lovely Ms. Garner (pre- or post-manipulation), or if you have anything else to say, please do so in the comments!

The song, of course, is The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme) from Star Wars. The instrument is a 3.5″ floppy drive. Why? Because there apparently isn’t enough nerdity on the Internet.

– [via Neatorama]

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For those of you not as rabid a TV fan as I, let me explain. Dollhouse is the next TV project from Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly) and stars Eliza Dushku (who is also executive producer) and Tahmoh Penikett (of Battlestar Galactica).

As is perhaps apparent, I’m a huge fan of everything Whedon, and am immensely excited for this show. Unfortunately, it won’t begin airing until early 2009 on Fox in the US, and who-knows-when here on Channel Ten (who have apparently picked it up).

Regardless of the wait (and the near-inevitable Internet piracy that will have to occur to actually see it), the trailer and this short “sneak peek” of the pilot have me embarrassingly excited.

MySpace is a disgrace. To make matters worse, all of the 13 year olds have begun the emo-diaspora and are making their way over to Facebook which was once the exclusive play-pen of the Undergraduate classes of society. Bringing with them, not just teen angst and, like, shit grammar. Like. But (see, I started the sentence improperly. Like, totally ROFL-copter) also the same flashy, gaudy on-screen shit that MySpace became so notorious for. It’s almost like all of the programmers and developers eking out a living in Estonia or some other newly established country in Eastern Europe have realised there is an as-yet undervalued market for all things flashy and gaudy amongst users of Facebook and have focussed their attention on giving everyone virtual kittens and virtual emoticons. Indeed! Virtual emoticons… apparently because they aren’t used in real-time, they’re not real, and thus, are virtual.

Now, I do use Facebook. First of all, for poker. I’m bloody crap at it, but I can’t just can’t stop. Plus, seeing as it’s betting the online equivalent of matchsticks, there’s no harm in it. Secondly, I use Facebook as a diary and let people dictate to me when and where I should turn up with a bottle of grog and say “Happy birthday!” or “I’m sorry for your loss!”. It is also amusing to see just how small a social circle we, the bourgeoisie, move around in. For example, Courtney Tight, a friend of mine from Uni, went to a 21st birthday party at the weekend which was also attended by Rowan Spitt Witt, a boy I went to school with. That interested me for all of 8 seconds, however, it was a welcome distraction from my overdue essay and the tepid Butter Chicken I had bought for lunch.

While, following enough peer pressure, I will succumb to the latest juvenile fancy (at the moment, Facebook), I like to maintain an air of dignified, out-of-touch superiority over the plebs. It’s kind of like how Bentleys don’t have Satellite Navigation yet. If your chauffeur doesn’t know where he is going then you need a new chauffeur. To this end, I refuse to use emoticons, I haven’t exchanged money for a video game since Doom 2 came out, I long for the simplicity of Windows 98 and I couldn’t be bothered to work out the difference between Windows Vista Ultimate and the other version… is it Penultimate?

That’s not to say I don’t understand it all. Back in the days of yore (as in, before your time sonny) I sent an sms to myself just to see what happened. It was 1997 and nobody knew what it was, or why you’d use it. “Sounds alot like a pager to me” or “25c? Just to say hello?” were common reactions. Now, everyone’s on the bandwagon. They’re even having sex on it. Back in my day, sex was something you coerced from someone with statements such as “I love you” or questions like “Will you marry me?”. At worst you negotiated a cash price with her boyfriend on a corner in Kings Cross. Now you just text ’slunt’ to 19 55 11 for a bevy of beautiful babes on your mobile now! ‘Now’ is invariably 2:30am and the ‘beautiful babes’ seem to look a lot like that guy from Big Brother. Or is it just because in the drunken haze you mistook ‘Up Late with HotDogs’ for ‘Girls Gone Wild’ ?

Anyway, I’m going to go and put a blanket in the dryer for 20 minutes so I’ve got something to warm myself with when I sit down to watch Lateline on the ABC.

You Know it Makes Sense.

I’m TomHB.

Take “social networking”, for example. I absolutely hate MySpace, but not for the reasons everyone else does. Others cite its hideous controls and mid-nineties-style flashing, squealing profile pages as reasons to exorcise the website from the social-consciousness. Me? I just hate the people who use it. And the inane comments they leave. And fact that one can’t possibly use it to liaise with one’s peers in private and are instead forced to broadcast to the entire world all the pointless drivel that takes place.

And don’t get me started on Facebook. No, I don’t want to spread your stupid vampire/zombie/whingeing harpy crap. And no, I don’t want to install the fucking Super Wall.

I think I’m genetically designed to not understand sites like MySpace or Facebook. I don’t want to broadcast everything I’m doing and everyone I’m associating with (that sounds… saucy) to the whole planet. I don’t like having conversations that take days to happen. I don’t like the implication that everyone I’ve ever met, however briefly, is my “friend”.

Of course these networks have their uses. Facebook has an awesome Poker game on it. MySpace provided an outlet for the awesome Sugarshock. And, if ever I decide to leave this little cave of mine and interact with others, I know where to find them. I just don’t get all the rest of it.

All that being said, I’ve found a “social network” I actually don’t mind using. This thing called Twitter is everywhere you look on the Internet, so I recently checked it out. It’s been variously described as “micro-blogging” or a kind of broadcast SMS. To put it in a way the rest of the world seems to understand - it’s like the status line under your name on Facebook, without the rest of Facebook. It’s a whole site dedicated to that single-line statement. This appeals to me.

I don’t know about everyone else (and I am fully prepared to admit that I am not like everybody else), but things often happen to me or occur to me that I wish to acknowledge in some ironic, witty or simply noteworthy way. If you’re a friend of mine, you’ve probably received an SMS or two from me along the lines of “I’ve just seen…” or “Did you know…?” or “Ever wonder…?”. You know, those things that happen in daily life that you really feel like sharing with, well anyone.

That is, in part, why I started this site those years ago. I wanted a place where I could say or show anything that occurred to me. However, in reality, these little types of thoughts usually don’t warrant an entire blog post to themselves. That’s why Twitter is useful. It is designed for little thoughts. In fact, it is exclusively for such a use, as each posting can only be 140 characters long.

Now, having used the site for a couple of days, I have noticed that this is another example of me not quite getting it the way everyone else does. A large part of the Twitter user base uses it in two other ways that I don’t think I ever will. The first, is to broadcast not the thoughts and opinions of the author, but the detailed minutiae of their lives. “I’m going to work now”, “I just ate lunch” - that kind of thing.

The other common use is to have those MySpace-style conversations where the reader can only see one side of any exchange. This just shits me to no end. “@ThoughtlessDrone Yes, I agree completely! HAHA!” means nothing to me, and I shouldn’t have to read it.

Nevertheless, I’m going to try using this Twitter thing and see how it works out. Knowing me, I’ll probably have abandoned it by next Tuesday.

You can see my most recent “tweets” (why does everything on the Internet have to have such a stupid name? But that’s a rant for another time) over on the newly-reinstated side-bar.

Or here.

At least, that’s my excuse.

The thing is, I’m still very interested in taking as many photos as I can. The problem is that I hate my camera and I don’t always have the time (or I’m just lazy). So, I may very well try to reboot the project (again), or I might try some other approach in the future. I’m not sure yet, so stay tuned.

I can just see the late-night television commercial now:

Are you lonely and hypervolemic? We’ve got hot, horny vampires waiting for your call! At just $2.99 per minute, these saucy demons are just longing to SUCK YOUR BLOOD!

Really, what has the world come to?

I don’t know much about the story, and to be honest I don’t really care. What I love about it though is that the headline could be about a vampire who was killing people and is now in prison, or it could be about a person who kills vampires (aka, a “slayer”) and is now in prison. Either way, that’s fantastic.