Taking the Gimp one step further.
Feb 11Getting back from a week in a cottage near the Dutch coast, I have an SD card with plenty of pictures waiting to be edited. Of course you are never quite satisfied with the shots you made and a “liitle editing” is never a bad thing. Whether you just want to quickly crop the image and fiddle with the contrast , or paste aunt Irma’s head onto a giraffe .. the possibilities are endless.
If you have money to burn (and own a mac or a PC) you might want to go for cool applications like Aperture or Photoshop … and then again, maybe you don’t !
So there is “The Gimp” which, in all honesty used to be a typical “old school Linux” application. A terrible user interface, poor documentation and you did get a fair chance of getting flamed whenever you asked a question on how to use it. Luckily those times have changed. The Gimp became a “native” Mac application, cleaned up its interface and is now easily one of the most powerful applications for the cross-platform photog on a budget.
Video Tutorials : In order to get started we have found some excellent video tutorials on the “basics” of using the gimp. Standard image editing and basic picture manipulations : You can find some tutorials HERE.
Pdf tutorials : The official Gimp tutorial can be found on the Gimp website. Some quick reference cards for the Gimp and its many keyboard shortcuts can be found HERE.
Podcasts : Over at “Meetthegimp.org” you can find an extended video podcast about using the Gimp. With over 150 episodes this is truly a plethora of information on using the Gimp. You can subscribe directly in iTunes.
Magazines : Why not get your very own Gimp Magazine. An interactive free and open source magazine for Gimp newbies and hardcore ninja’s. Much like Ubuntu’s Full Circle magazine this is an interactive magazine that relies on the contributions from the community. You can download the latest version here.
And of course : If you haven’t installed “The Gimp” yet .. why not get it first .. its free, open and completely cross platform compatible. Download it here.
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kw504 : Sliders Academy Part One : Installing your Ubuntu system.
Feb 02We start out a new series of Video tutorials on Knightwise.com called “Sliders Academy” where we give you step by step guides to ‘learn how to slide’. We start out with chapter one of Sliders Academy where we show you how to setup a central Ubuntu system that will serve as the nervecenter for your upcoming slider activities. In this episode we show you how to download and install Ubuntu, Partition your drive, update your system and install some alternative desktop interfaces. 30 minutes of educational edu-tainment coming right up.
Shownotes.
Download the video HERE.
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Learn Office (and open office) essentials "in pictures".
Jun 01” Darn dude ! You slow or something ? Do I NEED to draw you a Picture ? ? ? ” If the answer to the first question is Yes .. I’ll try to type more slowly. If the answer to the SECOND question is yes .. then we have a solution for you. The downside in not regularly using office applications is that you forget how to do things. But of course you can always go and read the manual. The manual ! Yes .. like you have the “dummies guide to excel” at the corner of your desk. Who has time to READ all that stuff. We all know that visual information is a lot easier to comprehend and faster to get through ?
Enter “Inpics.net” a great site with “screen by screen” howto’s on how to do things in Office, Openoffice and some web coding lingo’s too. The tutorials are horribly easy to comprehend and give you a blow-by-blow guide on helping you out. Although the latest versions of Microsoft Office are not included, its not all that bad. A subtraction is a subtraction after all.
Now we can replace RTFM* (Read the fabulous manual) with JGWTP* ( ‘Just go watch the pictures ‘ ) and visit Inpics.net
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The live cds you cannot live without : Gparted and Clonezilla.
May 26Partitioning your harddrive when you have some data on it, is like doing brain surgery on your own best friend .. with blunt scissors, blindfolded, hanging upside down .. in the subwaycar .. while playing pingpong .. well , you catch my drift. With your precious data on the drives, having to resize, move and add partitions is pretty dangerous. Of course you backed up all your data ( you ARE a ‘Wiseguy’ are you not ?) but still. A great tool that has always helped me in these precarious times is Gparted. Back in the days I had a “Copy” of Partition Magic (from Symantec) to do this. But that was because I was oblivious from the fact that Gparted existed. This free live cd (which is also a Linux app) helps you repartition any system without having to boot into the os. Get your copy here.
The other classic I remember was Symantecs Ghost !. When I had freshly installed a system I would make an image using Ghost for quick reinstalls should it be required. I even remembering re-imaging entire classrooms with Ghost, multicasting the data over the network. When I showed my skills to my colleagues at the time they thought it to be black magic ! A free (and much more powerful) “clone” of Ghost (no pun intended) is Clonezilla. A free and open source solution to do JUST that and more. Their website might make Geocities blush but, Get your copy here.
I have copies of these two disks lying around in my car and on a Usb stick along with some other essentials. Whenever you come across this one friend that needs brain surgery .. you will be happy you have them.
To help you along, Ive found some great tutorials on Youtube. The Gparted tutorial is a little dated but very well explained.
