Banners in GIMP
Filed under: 
HE GIMP is a preferred tools to many who do not do graphics for a living (a 9-5 design job) and it has some neat scripts for banner generation. Here are some examples of banners I’ve been playing around with since last night.
Archive for the ‘Art’ Category
Larry Lessig Promotes the Culture of Peer Production
One of the beautiful things about the Internet is its ability to facilitate collaboration and sharing of information, creative art, and code. Some people realised this and created a framework that results in more output and better output. This man deserves many thanks. He recently stepped down.
Why Silverlight is Evil
have not been posting or spurring much activity in my personal blog recently, but this one message is important enough for me to stress here.
Microsoft has recently announced that it would introduce a rival to Flash. It calls it “Silverlight”. I mentioned this a couple of years ago when it was called “Sparkle”. Bear in mind, however, that a lot of truths are being hidden and the intent here is to make the Web incompatible with Free operating systems. The points to remember:
- Silverlight does not support GNU/Linux.
- Silverlight is built to make the Web accessible only to proprietary platforms, even if one can view the source.
- Silverlight can be ‘extended’ at any given time. There is no industry consortium.
- Microsoft corrupts terminology by using the terms ‘Open Source’ and ‘cross platform’ inadequately. It is not the first time this do this. They used ‘cross platform’ to describe programs that work in Windows Mobile, Windows, and XBox.
Don’t be misled. Use Adobe Flash if you must. Better yet, use Open Web standards and make use of cascading style sheets, maybe even JavaScript.
Spelling Out Your Message in Maps
Got something to say? Then say it in satellite pictures.
It’s a nice idea with an implementation that delivers the output as you type.
Similar tools:
X-Face – Your Face Compacted in Binary Form
VER the weekend I expored the possiblity of adding an X-header to my outgoing messages. This particular one, known as X-Face, is a 48×48 pixel binary representation of one’s face. Here is mine:
.dYWu:H1\3ib`=T*Zoi9{>C].hHmdJ#z~":dJ5pFYAC`jJ6I~pf</F~#Sp(\[J6OgtEBO"[
@'u^%Ia#bVQhL%Cw#^nUFCIAEjS=M(B6B'>OUrp)Y"ZY}Z\Y~`g#I,JSw?7"3&Fctfk^)\]8{j[7)M
Nj%-#0a}S+*8oFlP^l,>&Y^1yhEYGz7>sv*'OuW}a9Oq}:<Ra*`;',OG@O=wj0mp'{Q|hbDm&yS-#r
m;DM)4S$!IX22Ou)-Y^lh[pu6VX8Dh0dG&Fv[54aJZeX*LAV]2w9wSR15
To view this short sequence as an actual image, use this Web-based tool. You may also create your own X-Face, which can be bound to your E-mail as a succinct header. I wonder if a fetch key can be created for X-Faces in the same way that PGP keys can be replaced by a shorter identifier. I suppose a URL can be specified in the header instead.
KDE: User-Driven Innovation
An example of less innovative KDE themes: Baghira Mac OS X lookalike
ESTERDAY I took a quick tour through some mockups and proposal made for the KDE project. I would like to present three examples, which are merely screenshots, sometimes combined with art work.
As these ideas were contributed and voted on by the community of users, no doubt KDE will remain at the forefront of functionality and user experience. It’s a case of programmers preparing and eating their own dogfood, so to speak.