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Growing Up Geek: Jesse Hicks
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today we have our very own Contributing Editor, Jesse Hicks. I've never been one for nostalgia, but if I had to choose a Proustian element from my geeky childhood -- a singular sense-memory that evokes a whole constellation of related feelings -- I'd pick the eerie keening of a 28.8 modem. That high, quavering sound, for me, conjurs up the earliest days of my geekdom, when computers were slow, landlines were king and the internet was young. I was twelve when my family got our first computer: a 486DX that first appeared without a hard drive. My mom had found a great deal at a computer show...or so it had seemed. That missing 120MB hard drive, as you may have guessed, severely limited functionality. But once that problem was remedied, I was off and running with DOS and XTree, happily deleting essential system files. The learning process had begun.
YouTube unveils post-production suite, includes Instagram-like effects and shake reduction
Nothing says 'YouTube' like a grainy handheld shot that acts as a catalyst for nausea; sadly, this may all be set to change. The digital home of Home Videos has introduced a suite of new effects that lets you patch up your candid classics, even after you've uploaded them. What's more, the changes you make are non-destructive, so if your grand idea proves dreadful in reality, you can go back and undo all your meddling. The usual family-friendly sepia, cartoonify and vignette type fare -- courtesy of photo editing amigos Picnik -- are joined by some more practical tools such as brightness, rotate and the aforementioned sickness-solving stabilization. However, if your clip has more than 1,000 views you'll need to save it as a new one -- wouldn't want the next Numa Numa vid to get all discolored after going viral, now would you?
