Thailand's new Government is facing a potential crisis with one of its leading members found guilty of election fraud. Thailand's Election Commission has ruled today that new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yongyuth Tiyapairat, was guilty of bribing officials in December's election.
The case has now been referred to the Supreme Court.
The decision has shocked the new Government, led by Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and could mean the People Power Party is dissolved.
Mr Samak has another potential headache to contend with if ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra returns as rumoured later this week. While Mr Thaksin is currently banned from politics, he is expected to be able to overrule Mr Samak. [via ABC News]
Ed. If Thaksin returns on Thursday as reported expect him to dominate the headlines for weeks to come. I have a feeling the hot season is coming.
Sierra Tangos
- My latest post is up on The FARANG Speaks 2 Much
- Pleas for help for Swedish woman living rough on the streets of Pattaya [via Pattaya City News]
- Foreign brides who plan to live in Britain must speak English [via The Times]
- Top 7 Most Undeserved Oscars [via Hecklerspray]
- Advanced Photo Affects With Photofiltre - one of the reasons Adobe Photoshop has become so popular is because of all the advanced photo affects that can be applied to images. Over the last few years I’ve seen a lot of free alternatives emerge onto the scene saving users hundreds of dollars, but many of them don’t have the effects and control that I’m looking for.
The tool that we found for you today is called PhotoFiltre, and it is completely free just like most of the software we write about. It’s far from becoming a Photoshop replacement, but I’ve found that it is extremely handy at applying effects and touching up the digital photos that you have lying around. Lets look at some of the things that it can do…
Features:
- There are over 100 filters available including ones for standard adjustments (brightness, saturation, etc…) and even artistic ones (watercolor, puzzle effect, etc…). We’ll get into these more in the next section of the article.
- You can select portions of an image with an automatic shape (rectangle, ellipse, triangle, rhombus, rounded rectangle) or with the lasso, magic wand, and polygon tools.
- Well-organized toolbars make it easy to switch between the most used tools.
- PhotoMasque lets you create advanced effects of contour and transparency on your images by using preset masks. These masks are grayscale images, where white is the transparancy color, while opacity increases as the shades of gray become darker. Black means complete opacity. There are several basic masks included.
- The Automatisation module lets you apply basic functions/corrections (conversion, image size, framing) to a group of images.
- Advanced text effects are available including rotation, shading, and bevel.
- Assemble and blend multiple images.
- Automatic photo corrections that enhance your images so that they look the best.
- Free plug-ins add even more functionality including red eye removal, animated GIF importing, page curl effect, gradients, screen capture, and much more.
The Verdict - PhotoFiltre has become a beloved application of mine over the last month simply because I do a lot of photo corrections and enhancements on a regular basis. If you want to edit your images this is a great solution, and once you throw a couple of the plug-ins into the app it will become a really powerful photo editor. [via CyberNet]
- WinFlip is a free program that brings to Windows XP the ALT-Tab 3D task-switching flipping function that’s featured on Windows Vista. It allows you to press a hotkey and flip through all open windows using a cascading, isometric visual representation.
Adding to the long list of apps that have copied all manner of bells and whistles featured in Vista, WinFlip brings to you one of the nicest ones, in my opinion, the quirky 3D application switching interface.
There are multiple programs that deliver this functionality to XP but Winflip has the distinction of very competently delivering this functionality while using very low system resources to do so. Here are some more notes on this program:
- How to start Winflip: press the keyboard shortcut (Alt-Q by default) will launch Winflip, while pressing it again will return to your normal desktop display. You can optionally click on one of the sides of the screen to invoke (this is switched off by default), or use a circular mouse gesture (an interesting function, but not my cup of tea).
- How to Flip: once inside the Winflip task switching screen you can use the arrow buttons or the mousewheel to switch apps. Each window also has a little letter labeling it (A,B,C,D,etc), and you can simply press the letter on the keyboard to jump to that window.
- Memory use: slightly over 1-meg (about 1.5). Compare this to the 15 megs that the non-3D version of Shock Aero uses.
- No install: simply unzip to your desired location. You will need to drop the exe into the startup folder to get it to start with Windows.
- Desktop window: by default the desktop is displayed as one of the windows to flip through, which I didn’t like very much, but thankfully it can be disabled.
- Options: you can change the program hotkey, use large or small display windows, pick from a range of different texture quality, etc.
- What it can and cannot do: Winflip will flip through normal windows applications and open windows; it will not recognize floating windows, desktop widgets or sticky notes, etc., even when the Windows Alt-Tab might.
The verdict: a rather nice, lightweight application that works very well. Eye candy that doesn’t slow the system down, and free, what more could one ask for? [via freewaregenius]
- You can never have too much Iga
- Hiromi at Playboy Plus
- A drunk that smelled like a brewery got on a bus one day. He sat down next to a priest. The drunk's shirt was stained, his face was full of bright red lipstick and he had a half-empty bottle of wine sticking out of his pocket. He opened his newspaper and started reading. A couple minutes later, he asked the priest, ''Father, what causes arthritis?''
''Mister, it's caused by loose living, being with cheap, wicked women, too much alcohol, and contempt for your fellow man,'' the priest replied. ''Imagine that,'' the drunk muttered. He returned to reading his paper.
The priest, thinking about what he had said, turned to the man and apologized: ''I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come on so strong. How long have you had arthritis?''
''I don't have arthritis, Father,'' the drunk said, ''but I just read in the paper that the Pope does.''
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