Signs of Our Times

This blog covers two kinds of signs: graphics (including screenshots of useful web tools) and signs of social trends. You can find them by visiting the “Featured articles” or “Categories” in the sidebar.
 

Most of the images on the site are PNG format, and the best optimization tool I’ve found is PNGOUTWin — which nearly always produces smaller PNG files than applications which use the standard PNG compression algorithm. With the default settings, it’s very easy to use. The advanced settings assume quite a bit of technical knowledge on the user’s part. Although it’s a commercial product, it doesn’t cost much, and if you host a busy website which uses lots of PNG images you can save a noticeable amount of bandwidth. There’s an Adobe Photoshop ® plugin version too.

You can find out more about it on the PNGOUTWin information page at Ardfry Imaging. Take advantage of the 30-day free trial. Two equivalent download versions are available: pngoutwin.zip or PNGOUTWin-Setup.exe. When you first launch it, you’ll be presented with a dialog box which says:

“By default, source files will be overwritten and all optional chunk data will be removed. You will now be prompted to configure these settings.”

Click OK and accept the default settings. You can always choose different options later via the “Edit > Settings” menu.

Setting the options

Output options: choose whether to overwrite PNG input images or generate new names for each output file. You can choose a different folder for the output.

Performance options: if you select “Show multiple trials dialog after folder/file operation,” an advanced settings panel pops up as soon as you select a file or folder to compress. Also, you can choose to run PNGOUTWin as a background task.

Strategy options: unless you understand how compression algorithms work, simply use the default.

Keep Chunks options:

• bKGD
• pHYs
• gAMA
• cHRM
• iCCP
• sRGB
• sBIT
• sPLT
• hIST
• tIME
• iTXt
• tEXt
• zTXt

(tRNS is always kept)

Compatibility option: only needed when PNG images are destined for systems that use an outdated version of the ZLIB decompression library — e.g. older mobile devices.

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Social issues — articles on other sites:

Consumerism vs. Environment. It’s worrying to see influential pundits pour scorn on all the evidence which shows that during this century we will face massive problems due to overpopulation, resource depletion, global warming and the biodiversity crisis. The business-as-usual brigade usually don’t even attempt to present counter-evidence.

Biodiversity: Steller’s sea cow was hunted to extinction by 1768. The extinction rate speeded up during the 19th and 20th centuries, and already we have a new crop of 21st century extinctions.