ho un naso orendo(cit.) (che poi sembrerà na cosa stupida ma a volte sono proprio i difetti della mia faccia ad impedirmi di affrontare la gente faccia a faccia, appunto, il complesso dell’ “oddio adesso mi sta guardando proprio in quella parte di faccia lì perchè avrà notato proprio QUELLA COSA”), per cui piallarlo e tirarlo su è ormai un’abitudine consolidata da tempo, la prima cosa che vado a fare quando apro le mie foto. così almeno su internet posso avercelo come dico io!

[espressione beota]

[palesemente emo]

[aspirante TRVE]

[qui piango a causa del mio naso sob sob]

un giochino con le luci fatto sul povero malcapitato di turno, il mio (migliore) amico metallino T. Peccato che non me ricordo più che filtro ho usato mannaggia la puttana. cmq sempre con the gimp.

Suite au cours de mardi dernier, dans lequel nous avons appris quelques notions primaires pour jouer avec Photoshop, je voulais continuer l’exploration du logiciel par moi-même. Mais  je me suis vite retrouvée face à un mur car il y a trop de concepts que je ne comprend pas. 

J’ai donc décidé d’attendre à mardi prochain, pour la suite des explications, avant de continuer mon affiche. Je crois aussi que je vais changer de paroisse et la concevoir sur The Gimp, étant donné que la nouvelle assistante sait comment ça fonctionne.

J’ai vraiment hâte de commencer pour vrai. J’adore ce genre de travaux. Beaucoup plus que les rédactions, si vous êtes intéressés à le savoir…

un esperimento fatto al volo sulla sottoscritta, in tutto il suo splendore mattutino dopo una nottata passata a cazzeggiare su youtube, volendo sottolineare che io uso The Gimp e non Photommerda (chi sa, magari un giorno faremo pace).

I first wrote about this topic for Achariya’s In Support of Designers Posts in response to the November 5th boycotts.   Let me begin though by saying this:  I have worked in the field of hardware/software sales for 10 years and software piracy was often discussed.  And I have to admit a dirty secret – I held an illegal copy of photoshop on my computer at one point in time early on in my second life,  EEK.  A friend of mine held a copy on his personal server and gave it to me.  But every time I opened up the software and it asked me to register my product I felt DIRTY.  Seriously I did, like I was breaking some huge law or that someone would find out or that I was committing some mortal sin – PLEASE STEVE JOBS AND MICHAEL DELL FORGIVE ME -FOR I HAVE SINNED! And then the copy was lost in a computer upgrade, thank goodness.

At that point my quest for a legal copy of photoshop began but I was poor and couldn’t afford the 500.00 or so for photoshop and I was sad and lost without it LOL.  Oddly enough I was chatting to a second life designer about losing my illegal copy of photoshop and how I didn’t want to go the illegal route again.  Her response to this was kind of odd.  Basically she said “I think you are one of the few people in second life I have talked to who actually doesn’t want to get a bit torrent copy.”  (Let me stipulate here she was a student and had all sorts of legal student versions of photoshop etc in her posession, she was not a SINNER like Lizzie).  “Wow” I thought to myself, “I am not the only sinner.”  And within a few days I found THE GIMP and with my conscious clear, I returned to my beloved second life photography!  And perhaps now my confession and my software repentance will lead some other second life resident down the path to software righteousness, YAY!

I think it’s important to bring up this issue because I feel as though at times software piracy is brushed by the wayside.  At times when I bring up the subject I get the response “well that doesn’t affect SL or The Lab can’t do anything about it.”  And this may be true but does it really not affect us in second life?  I think it reflects a person’s value system in regards to the works of others and it’s often justified by such statements as “well Adobe is a corporate entity, who am I harming.”  But someone created this software and yes, it’s not a mom and pop shop anymore but it’s still theft.  So readers, content creators and whoever else might be looking at this blog at this moment, if you have a bit torrented copy of Photoshop or Maya or even Final Cut on your computer right now please consider deleting it.  Then say 12 Hail Steve’s as your penance and download The Gimp or other freely distributed software products for graphics and design such as Blender or Wings 3D.  YAY, Okay I shut up now.

Bonne nouvelle à ceux qui voulaient travailer avec The Gimp: Maryse Boyce, notre nouvelle auxilliaire d’enseignement, elle le connait!

Donc: avis à ceux qui voulaient travailler avec, vous aurez de l’aide et des conseils plus précis.

À mardi

It all started when user Crabmeat posted a picture on reddit.com :

In his kindness, he also offered a link to the original with a request to see what we, the reddit community could do with it:

User Bezzer made some much needed improvements, adding a touch of realism and old-world classiness to the photo:

But the users still felt something just wasn’t quite right… It needed to be sepia, it needed some touch-up work around the paws, the background wasn’t quite right, and that wine really needs to be sloshing as the dog is, after all, jumping.  Thus:

Behold! Dandy Dog!

Meanwhile, at the www.theshaveden.com, my friend Jim suggested some subtle changes:

Aaaarr, ye' scurvy dog!

Doesn’t that dog have panache?

He certainly does.

Then, after looking more closely at the original image, I noticed a striking resemblance to a certain Jedi master…

Here he is conducting the Boston Pops:

Woodwinds, pick up the pace, or I'm coming over there!

He had a short run in the movie industry:

You talkin' to me?

Then there was that time he took a walk on the dark side:

That is indeed, one Dandy Dog!

Doodle 239 - Chipmunk Digital Paint

Today, I thought I would attempt to paint something digitally in the Gimp.  So, I did a b/w under-painting, and then applied color over top.  Overall, it’s not too bad and I learned a lot while making it, but I definitely would have done things differently.  Maybe I’ll try this again sometime.  The only reason I chose the chipmunk is that hopefully it would be cute even if I screwed it up royally.  I’ll have to ask my dad to teach me how to paint someday.

Okey so I’m doing some experiment with taking photos in raw-format, the matter is that I’m not really convinced. First of, I’ll tell you the setup I’m using.

• Camera: nikon d300s
• Lens: nikkor 35mm 1.8f dx
• Computer: asus eee pc 901
• Operating system: ubuntu karmic koala 9.10
• Raw converting: Ufraw
• Manipulation: The Gimp

So everything works great, by great I mean works but not very fast luckily I’m patient.
Ooh, thats was not true until i figured out how i could get my pictures into my computer… I’m not sure what made it work but it was either that I used two memory cards, updated gphoto2 or that before i tries to get the photos i unmount the drives and then i do (in the terminal):

gphoto2 –get-all-files

My workflow looks like this:

• Have photo session
• Upload images to eee pc
• Sorting (=throw half of them) the pictures by looking through them (jpegs are bundled in the NEF-file)
• Opening them inside Ufraw (one by one, which is a pretty tedious process)
• Trying to find the colours and WB i like, maybe cropping them then savig them to a format that fits (jpg for web, tiff for further manipulation). Here lies the problem I’m not entirely sure I should be handling colours or if i want the camera do it, it might be because im not very good with colours.
• Then moving all pictures to a external harddrive

The screen space on the 901 is a bit small for any major manipulation but converting them and some minor manipulation it works great for (still very slow though).

the workflow in pictures:

Having a photo session

Sorting

When all is at default

What i dont get is the exposure part, is the numbers for the exposure coming from the camera or is it generated by Ufraw, if it is the camera doing this, then it does this internally when it converts to jpg? That would mean that all the pictures i take is in too low light… cause all of them is really dark when i use a exposure at zero. I need to fiddle around with it some more. The color profile(s) wasnt that hard too find i just took them from the cd that followed with the camera, one thing is that there where 10 different profiles or so, im not sure which one to use. Right now I’m using the NKD_base.icm, too find the color profiles i did a search in the installation folder on *.icm.

This photo was pretty bad exposure wise but the result is ok

Its not the best photo exposure wise but the model (Isabelle my girlfriend) is really beautiful . But here i’ve chosen a bit higher exposure then the program/camera wanted and changed the base curve a bit.

Here is the output from camera raw

Okey, so i know this isnt the best picture to show my workflow of but i have had my camera for a week and just started taking pgotos in raw.

Now i need to go to ikea i’ll be back with more photos tonight.
c’ya
Jonas

I know that this doesn’t sound like it will be the most interesting post in the world, but I assure you that this will be the most interesting post in the world. You’ll want to buy this post a Dos Equis by the time you’re finished. Every day people say between 3 and 11 phrases that have deep historical roots and meanings. It is assumed by many scholars that most of these phrases originated in one of three logical places; the Bible, Shakespeare, or was originally nautical lingo. I’m here to ‘blow the lid’ off of these false presumptions right now. Like Dan Brown or Kathleen Neville, I’m going to rewrite history in a more entertaining fashion uncover the truths that have been long buried by shadowy conspirators. So without any further hoopla (my hoopla machine is out of hoop) let’s begin…….

‘Like Finding a Needle in a haystack’

The origins of this phrase started way back in 400AD with Attila the Hun’s little brother Hypo. He started his career fighting alongside Attila and the rest of the Huns, and he was a fierce, but small boned warrior. After an unfortunate Achilles heel injury (ironic, I know) he was unable to take part in the epic battles his brother waged, and soon became addicted to Oxy-Contin. The Huns used Aetna as their insurance provider, and being Aetna, they claimed the bum heel was a pre-existing condition. Hypo was left with little option but to switch to the smack. The White Huns had already made inroads into Afghanistan, so Hypo began making monthly re-up trips while claiming to be silk trading.

Young Hypo bore a strong resemblance to Pete Doherty

Hypo soon began injecting the heroin by inventing the world’s first needle. It was copper and silver, and a bit clumsy, but it got the job done. In trying to hide his addiction from his brother (who was known to be a bit of a hot-head) Hypo hid his needle in Attila’s stables. After the great conqueror left for battle, Hypo began desperately searching through the bales of hay for the hidden needle. This task was made even more difficult by the fact that poor Hypo couldn’t stay off of the ‘shitting hole’ for more than 10 minutes. It took him 4 days of pure misery, but eventually he found his needle, put Comfortably Numb on the 8-track, and nodded out. From that day forth whenever something was difficult to locate, he’d exclaim, “That’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” and then softly chuckle at his inside joke. It caught on in their circles, and the rest is in the history books (or will be soon).

‘Bite the Bullet’

The general consensus is that ‘bite the bullet’ started off as a wartime phrase because wounded soldiers would literally have to bite down on a bullet to keep from screaming during battlefield surgeries. Not true.

King Henry The 1st of England was perpetually paranoid about being poisoned. Because of his almost obsessive compulsion for candy Pop Rocks (which were newly invented) he had to have a cache of alchemists/sorcerers/candy makers brought in from far and wide to make the deliciously explosive candy. King Henry had little trust for these foreign, mostly Asian men. So he would always have his court jester William Whittington try them first. This was fine by William because he loved the candy as well. Originally it didn’t come in tiny little pieces like it does today; it came in large, bite size nuggets which were called bullets.  

It turned out that there was an assassin in their midst after all. An Asian man had been smuggling in gunpowder from China which he then mixed with acetone peroxide to make a really, super explosive treat fit for a king. When poor William bit into the first chunk, most of his face exploded into a grisly spray of blood, bone, and brain. Think Bud Dwyer.

After the initial shock, the always jovial and lighthearted king exclaimed, “Looks like our young Bill really bit the bullet this time.” The phrase stuck and eventually became synonymous with facing a dire consequence.

Whittington already looks nervous and this was taken pre-shotgun blast to grill

Ironically William was an ancestor to Harry Whittington, the man who Dick Cheney shot in the face. The Whittington’s apparently have shitty luck when it comes to associating with men of power.

‘Pass The buck’ and ‘The Buck Stops Here’

While it is assumed that ‘pass the buck’ was a poker phrase in the 19^th century and ‘the buck stops here’ was coined by Truman, both of these premises are incorrect. The truth is much more about sexual deviance than gambling or presidential responsibility. 

After first finding out that the Skull and Bones society was in fact a gay flee club from Muammar Gaddafi via Jay, I did a little more research and found the real origin of these phrases.

The year was 1834 and S & K was beginning its third year of existence when an eager junior by the name of William ‘Buck’ Thurston was ‘tapped’ for membership*. Being a born masochist he fit right into their gay glee club games. Then things began to get out of hand. Like ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ out of hand; I mean come on, nobody wants to see all that. Anyway, Buck quickly fell into a ‘The Gimp’ type role and the boys started using young Buck as a Bones depository. As soon as one young aristocrat was finished with him another would immediately yell, “pass the Buck!”  

It was 3 long years later and Buck was near collapse when a deep, resounding voice boomed across the dungeon, “pass the Buck.” When the other boys led Buck by his choke chain to the distinguished gentleman they were astounded to see that it was the rising politician James Polk. As soon as Polk was done poking Buck, he yelled in that same strong voice, “The Buck stops here.” They let the boy go, and as you all know, Polk went on to become the 11^th president of the United States. Nobody really knows what happened to Buck, but it is rumored that he became a high school gym teacher.

*The original use of ‘tapped’ as a sexual connotation also began with the Skull and Bones.-Three for the price of one!

It is my hope that the next time you use or hear one of these phrases you will remember Hypo, William, or Buck, and you will tip your cup to these great men of history. Please let me know, if you would like me to uncover the roots of any of your favorite phrases. I’m a little busy as Kathleen Neville is writing a new book, and I’m her only researcher/fact checker, but I will try to get to your request by next week.  

dotEXE – Sebuah bocoran tentang fitur The GIMP 2.8 telah dipost oleh salah satu pengembang senior The GIMP yaitu Peter Sikking melalu blog entrynya.

Salah satu fitur yang cukup radikal ada adalah kemampuan untuk bertukar cita rasa Multi-Window ke Single-Window seperti kebanyakan program di Windows. Ya, seperti dikutip dari Post beliau:

Next, I reminded everyone that it is a fifty–fifty world: about 50% of GIMP users love the multi‐window interface of today and do not want to lose it, about 50% of GIMP users would love to move to a single‐window interface.

With the world fifty–fifty split, we will serve them with one switch in the Windows menu, switching between multi‐and single‐window mode.

Namun disamping fitur baru tersebut, GIMP 2.8 dilengkapi dengan fitur lain misalnya:

• Inspectors untuk multiple column, sehingga tak perlu lagi susah-susah membuat column,
• Beralih ke jendela editing image lain dengan bantuan history thumbnail bar,
• Overlay untuk Polaroid.

I’ve spent quite a lot of the last few weeks getting to grips with The Gimp, the free and open-source alternative to the not-free Adobe Photoshop.

Image manipulation is an important part of any multimedia journalists toolkit, whether its to generate graphics or artistic images, or just to touch up your photographs, and if you haven’t got the Gimp, you really should (unless you’re lucky enough to have Photoshop of course).

A heavily manipulated image using layers & curves for Viking FM

A shot from an audio slideshow I'm making with minor contrast edits and a light vignette effect

Short for GNU Image Manipulation Program, it is as complicated as its Adobe counterpart, at least at first appearance. But half the trick is learning what the Gimp’s important tools are. I have personally found the most important bits to grasp – at least at first – are:

• layering
• controlling curves
• creating, feathering and manipulating sections

But as the iPhone is hypervalued by its homemade apps, the Gimp’s real value lies in a vast library of tutorials and guides…produced by Joe Public. Working on both my audio slideshow and the Viking FM graphics, I’ve been able to instantly get help just by visiting Youtube.

Here are five top tutorials to help you get to know the Gimp.

01. Using curves for selective exposure correction

02. using curves to improve night shots

03. a very basic introduction to layers

04. creating vintage/vignette effects

05. and some Gimp basics

That may sound strange from someone who claims to be a free software advocate, but I say this in response to the Free Software Foundation’s recent gaffs, including motions to protest by holding up Apple store operatives by asking awkward questions,  setting up a site about ‘Windows 7 sins’ and sending letters to Fortune 500 companies telling them why proprietary software is bad. Then there’s the typical fringe groups of the Linux community who use terms such as ‘M$’, ‘Micro$uck’, Windoze, etc. – a prime example of this and further amusement is a Tuxradar article pitting Windows 7 against Linux. You’ll find the comments in that article are more controversial than the post!

But in claiming proprietary software is bad are we selling Linux and open source software from the right angle? If this is the route the community has chosen, then in my opinion free software as a proposition is never going to get past it’s 1% share. Why? Because we are essentially telling users they’re bad people for choosing one product over another without any objective criticism. This negative path of thinking can only lead to a backlash from those we campaign to convince. After all, the nearest equivalent to what we’re doing is simply telling someone they’re evil for using full-fat rather than semi-skimmed milk – you haven’t objectively stated why this is the case, simply that semi-skimmed is the better option! It’s little wonder we’re attacked so vehemently by Windows and Mac users for being short-sighted and claiming some false ‘moral high-ground’.

If we really want Linux to hit the masses, for people to use open alternatives such as OpenOffice.org, Scribus and the GIMP in production environments and for the rest of the IT industry to take these products much more seriously we MUST shed this image of a community filled with arrogant, self-righteous computer nerds. I can’t say precisely how we could do this (that’s a whole debate in itself), but we certainly aren’t doing ourselves any favours if we support the kind of antics from the FSF of late.

I believe that on an individual level, when we’re asked about open source solutions by non technical users we need to objectively weigh up the pros and cons of proprietary against open solutions in a particular user’s situation. If the open alternative is genuinely better then it deserves advocacy – and you should spend your time explaining how it will provide a much more effective solution.  If it isn’t quite up to scratch then suggest ideas to the relevant communities and help develop their products. It takes many individuals to effect change in a community, so maybe if enough individuals consider this a worthy pursuit perhaps we might help destroy the self-destructive pysche I’ve already described.

So, in summary: I believe that telling people they’re wrong won’t convince them to switch, and neither will telling them that free software will ‘release them’ from the shackles of closed-source software (because it’s the unfortunate reality that non-technical users really don’t care so long as a solution works!). But by showing them how open products could provide a more cost-effective and efficient way of solving a problem they will at least consider the open-source options and we can effect real change. If we as a community can become more objective and less fanatical, then we can finally break out of our small niche and start to mould an anti-competitive and anti-consumer industry into a hive of competitive innovation and community collaboration.

Bonsoir ( ou bonjour ) les gens.

Une grande nouvelle .

Barb’Art Concept devient notre partenaire .

Barb’Art Concept est un blog basé sur le graphisme, tout comme Raphrique-art mais il est plus orienté vers The Gimp.

Le premier tutoriel sur The Gimp. Il est de thetournmenteur, merci à lui .

Ressources :

Render

C4D

Stock

Dragon Slash tut's

Van twaalf tot achttien

About one and half years ago I wrote two Dutch articles for Van twaalf tot achttien, a magazine catering for teachers in secondary education. These articles were the first in this magazine to be published under a Creative Commons licence. This means that I can publish them on this blog and that you will be able to reuse what I have written (as long as you comply to the license agreement).

The first article is titled Vrije software in het onderwijs is een must (Free software in education is a must). It tries to explain not only the benefits of free software (yes, free as in speech, not free as in beer) but also touches on open standards and open educational resources. The article has a companion webpage which is still available here.

I have always believed that is very strange that our government subsidises many schools and teachers to create learning materials, but that these organisations and people are not required to share these materials under a free license. This has mainly to do with a lack of awareness of this problem and I am hoping that this article increases knowledge about the importance of free licensing of software and content.

Note how the designer who laid out the page wasn’t very interested in the contents of the article. His or her thought process must have gone something like: “Ah an article about software… let me find an image of a CD… yes, great Adobe Creative Suite CS2″. Really fitting for an article that talks about the Gimp!

The second article was co-written with Leen van Kaam (at the point of writing a colleague at Stoas Learning). It is titled Scenario’s voor de implementatie van een Elektronische Leeromgeving (ELO) (Scenarios for the implementation of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)) and describes a maturity model for implementing virtual learning environments in secondary education. It can be used to set goals and manage expectations in schools and should make it easier to understand why certain parts of a VLE implementation are successful and other are not.

Hope you enjoy the read!