Over the weekend I had the chore of converting um-teen-million tiff files to jpeg format. The tiff files that I have are old family pictures that where given to us in super high quality. Since these pictures were originally given to us on CD-ROM and since I keep those CD-ROM’s in a safe place, my hard drive copies do not need to be in such high resolution…eating up hard drive space. Especially since all that we do is view them every now and then.

In the past I have used Imagemagick to convert images from one format to another. I am comfortable with Imagemagick but it doesn’t really lend itself for someone like my wife who likes a gui. I have to admit that I like a gui most of the time too. So I did a little research and found a package for KDE called Kim. This package integrates itself into Konqueror so that when you navigate to a directory of images one can right-click on one or several images and convert them. Check out the feature list on the Kim website.

I recommend it to any Linux/KDE user out there. It’s a time saver.

Well, fresh off from tooting my own horn (come on…it doesn’t happen often), Richard and I got a nod from Phil Shapiro on his blog over at PCWorld.com. And best of all was the mention of Richard’s “photo popping fun” screencast as the author’s favorite. It’s nice to be recognized for what you love doing.
blogs.pcworld.com/communityvoices

The court has ruled that Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights. SCO lost it’s case against Novell.

Groklaw.net

Well, I was notified by WeShow.com that my lightsaber screencast was selected for a WeShow award. I’m not sure what this means exactly. It might mean that I have to share the $3 that I won with Richard. Just kidding. I would never share that kind of money with him. He’d blow it on fancy cars and fine wine anyway. No sir. I’ll be keeping this $3 for myself.

Details below:

WeShow Awards, the world’s greatest online video contest, is proud to announce your video Inkscape: Lightsabre <http://www.weshow.com/us/awards/channel/show.action?channel=29> has been selected among millions of others on the Internet as a TOP 10 video on Graphic & Photo Software on the WeShow Awards US Edition. You can check the other competitors in the Learning>Using Software>Graphic & Photo Software channel.

WeShow selects the best and most relevant videos in the whole world from across sites such as Youtube, MySpace, Metacafe, DailyMotion (among others) and categorizes them across 200 channels. WeShow has already been recognized by the media as a significant newcomer and player in the video arena, check out these recent articles at:

http://mashable.com/2007/07/12/online-video-aggregators/
http://newteevee.com/2007/07/12/where-to-find-good-video-weshow/

For more information on the awards, its rules and tips on how to promote voting for your video, visit http://www.weshow.com/us/awards/index.action .

The election has already begun and will go on till August 12. You must be quick to let your friends know you are on the run, so they can vote on your video. Results will be made public on the site and on the media on August 13.

You will be able to find an award badge to identify your video as a Top 10 at: http://www.weshow.com/us/awards/info/tips.action
You can use this badge on any site, blog or private/corporate communication.

Congratulations and good luck!

WeShow Team
weshowteam@weshow.com
www.weshow.com

P.S. Has anyone heard of WeShow? I hadn’t until today.
P.P.S. I didn’t actually win $3.

My latest Episode 030 has been uploaded to screencasters.heathenx.org. In this screencast I demonstrate how to make chrome text. I had found several ways to make things chrome and it all depended on how much time I wanted to spend on it. There are so many ways to illustrate a chrome surface. My way is not completely accurate but it looks close enough.

I have uploaded my latest screencast, Episode 029, to screencasters.heathenx.org. This episode is pretty short. I demonstrate how to make a custom color palette in Inkscape. The palette file (.gpl) is basically just a text file with (r,g,b) colors and a name for the palette. Below is an example:

GIMP Palette
Name: My Palette Name
Columns: 3
#
0 0 0 Black
255 255 255 White

Since Inkscape uses the same color palette files as the GIMP then one can copy palettes between GIMP and Inkscape just by copying and pasting the .gpl files into the “palettes” directory. Simple stuff.

Lately, I haven’t been using my Wacom tablet as much as I would like. Really it has nothing to do with the tablet itself but rather due to the graphic projects that I have been working on. Of course I could force myself to use it more often, however, for most things that I do my mouse seems more practical.

For the last couple of days though I have been using it on and off again. Not because its use benefits the things that I working on but because I don’t want to lose the “familiarity” of using a tablet. Unfortunately, the majority of my day is spent in three basic applications: Autodesk Inventor, OpenOffice Calc, and Thunderbird. Of course I use a gazillion other applications too but those three seem to be running all day long. That really gives me little opportunity for my tablet.

In the very least it looks cool sitting on my desk…right?