A couple of weeks ago I attended the third European IABPA conference in Lisbon, Portugal. As with the last conference in Porland, Oregon, it was a busy one for me. Thanks to Lino Henriques [Policia Judiciária, Portugal] and his team for organizing it and inviting me to give workshops.

I had the opportunity to present two 2-hour workshops again at this conference and based on the feedback I received I think they went well. I still have some work to fit it in to the 2 hour slots, but I think it’s getting there. Thanks to all the participants for taking the time to attend and gave me feedback.

The talks which stood out for me – ones I hadn’t seen before – included Michael Taylor’s [Environmental Science and Research, New Zealand] demonstration of high speed video to study backspatter associated with ballistic impacts, Maurice Aalders’s [Academisch Medisch Centrum, The Netherlands] talk on using optical spectroscopic techniques to detect, recognize, and age blood, and of course Karla de Bruin’s [Netherlands Forensic Institute, The Netherlands] talk on how to improve area-of-origin calculations in BackTrack and HemoSpat.

In the first part of Karla’s talk, she showed that the results produced by BackTrack and HemoSpat are equally good [which is a good thing since they’re based on the same mathematics!]. The second part of the talk on stain selection, though, was more interesting. I think her work on stain selection is very important as it has never been studied in depth – the textbooks are all vague on what constitutes good “size, shape, and location” – and it seems to be taught differently depending on who’s doing the teaching. I look forward to seeing her paper on this.

As usual it was great to see old friends and make new ones. Glad to see a couple of students there – one from the UK and one from Poland. Their enthusiasm showed and they added a bit of life to it. I had some interesting dinners and talks over drinks with the ladies from Scotland – who I hear are organizing a whiskey tour followed by a bit of conference – and with some of the Dutch, French, Swedish, Danish, and Swiss participants. How do you tell if green wine is corked, anyways?

Thanks to everyone and I look forward to seeing you in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA in October 2010, or Nantes, France in 2012!

Last week I attended the IABPA conference in Portland, Oregon and it was quite a busy one for me. The organizers and hosts from the Oregon State Police – Pam Bordner, Nici Vance, John Amish, Dan Alessi, and others [I know I missed some…] did a great job.

I had the opportunity to present two 2-hour workshops on HemoSpat and I think they went quite well. It was the first time I’d presented them, so I ended up having too much material and was a bit rushed, but overall I think the attendees got a good feel for the software. I’ll know better for next time how to set things up time-wise. I have to thank Jason the IT guy for setting up all the computers and projector, as well as installing additional software.

The conference was also a great chance to interact with some of my clients and very valuable for direct feedback from people such as Norm Reeves [BPA Consulting], Ross Gardner [Bevel, Gardner, & Associates], Michael Maloney [Bevel, Gardner, & Associates], Silke Brodbeck [Blutspureninstitut], Ken Jones [Portland Police Bureau], Ray Kusumi [Washington State Patrol], E. Toomer, and K. Griffey.

Some of the talk highlights for me were the exchanges about the Phil Spector case by Lynne Herold [L.A. County Sheriff’s Department], Stuart James [James and Associates Forensic Consultants, Inc.], and Jim Pex [Pex Forensic Consulting, Inc.], the case presentation by Mark Reynolds [Western Australia Police] on the Andrew Mallard case, Paul Kish’s [Forensic Consultant & Associates] talk about preparing for expert testimony, and Scott Hlady’s [Ontario Provincial Police] talk about conducting BPA investigations in remote communities.

All-in-all a very good conference and as usual it was great to see old friends and make new ones. I look forward to seeing everyone in Lisbon, Portugal and Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA in 2010!

FORident Software is pleased to announce the release of HemoSpat v1.3 for Mac OS X 10.5 [Intel], Windows XP, and Windows Vista. We’ve added the ability to rotate your images 90°, a window for displaying some EXIF information – such as when the photo was taken, the resolution, and whether the flash fired or not – from your original image file, and improved the quick stain entry window.

There are several other changes and fixes as well. For a complete list of changes, please see the release notes.

We look forward to hearing any feedback from you!

With the impeding arrival of both Mac OS 10.6 and Windows 7, we have decided to begin phasing out support for Mac OS X 10.4 and Windows 2000. So, as of version 1.3 of HemoSpat – to be released Q4 this year – Mac OS X 10.4 and Windows 2000 will not be supported. [Note: HemoSpat v1.3 may actually still run on Windows 2000, we just won’t be supporting it. It definitely will not run on Mac OS X 10.4.]

The reason for this is for each release of HemoSpat we have to test across all versions of the OSes we are supporting. Currently that includes Mac OS X 10.4 PPC, Mac OS 10.4 Intel, Mac OS 10.5 Intel, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. When we eventually add Mac OS 10.6 and Windows 7, the testing time for each release goes through the roof! Phasing out the older versions will allow us to focus our work on the main product.