USEFUL COMPUTER PROGRAMS

CMS Disposition Code Who Assigns It

Insufficient Data The FI assigns this; the SD approves this. Sometimes it is not possible to gather the data needed to decide if a case fits into any of the case disposition categories. In that case, the FI assigns the “Insufficient Data” disposition code and the SD approves it. (The status code is “Completed.”)

Description

A number of special programs may be of benefit to UFO investigators. Here’s a list of ones that we have used off and on in our investigations. • A general purpose photo editor. Photoshop Elements or the pro version are excellent. For the Macintosh, a low cost robust and feature-laden program is Lemke’s Graphic Converter. For the PC, Paint Shop Pro and other low-cost programs are available and work fine. Always insist on a copy of JPGs and TIFFs as they originally come from a digital camera. Immediately do an “Information” command to see if the EXIF data looks in order. Sometimes editing programs will alter the EXIF data in JPGs and TIFFs to tell you whether the photo has been edited. If a JPG or TIFF file does not have EXIF data, do not go any further with your analysis because the photo could very well be a hoax. • A 3D sketching program. These programs are generally expensive and hard to learn and are not worth your time. However, a simple one—as these programs go—is the free Google SketchUp. You may run into a situation in your investigations where you want to get a feeling for exactly how big an object would look if you have some reasonable knowledge of the size and distance limits of the UFO. In Google SketchUp, you can dimension things exactly and “twirl around” the UFO and observer’s position in 3-space to actually model pretty well how things probably looked. You can run this by your witness to get his or her reaction. Try this program if you are really ambitious. Find out more at sketchup.google.com. • A 2D sketching program. There are many of these for the PC and Mac. Get one that is vectorbased with some ability to combine the vector drawing with pixel-oriented images like photos. The alternative to using 3D or 2D drawing programs is to do a traditional drawing with pencil, ink, etc., and paper and then use a scanner to bring it into your computer to integrate it as an image in your report. On the Mac, we use OmniGraffle, the Pages drawing tools, and, sometimes, the old drawing tools in AppleWorks. PC people have many programs to choose from. • Google Earth. This is an invaluable free program for Mac or PC. This gives you the ability to view the terrain with named landmarks like streets, bridges, buildings, parks, etc. A 3D effect can also be created in Google Earth by tilting the land surface. Really handy is the ability to measure precise distances with a measuring tool. Amazing and invaluable for our researchers! • Starry Night Enthusiast. A stand-alone astronomy program that runs on your PC or Mac is not necessary, just a convenience. We like the Starry Night Enthusiast for a robust, mature general astronomy program. Note that you can easily get basic night sky, observational information from various Internet sites. See under Internet Resources later. • Screen capture. You need a screen capture program on your Mac or PC. On the Mac, use the simple screen capture utility, Grabber. Many times, just displaying something on your screen and capturing it with a screen capture utility is the simplest way to get a photo or document or other information into your UFO report. • Spreadsheet. The standard here is Microsoft’s Excel, of course, but there are other choices out there that may be cheaper. A new Mac program called Numbers is almost as good as Excel since you buy it for $60 on amazon.com in the iWork package (which includes Pages and Keynote, the word processor and presentation programs) and it is a bit simpler to use. Use Excel or Numbers to