Monthly Archives: July 2012

Random, Rants

A stunning response to a bigoted Kindle owner (pity that the first couple of responses are a bunch of asshats.)

..Being married is a joy.

The idea that some organizations would spend millions of dollars to deny loving couples that joy (along with the tangible societal benefits) is just plain mean spirited…

America was founded on the idea of freedom. What could be more supportive of freedom than letting people be free to use the word “marriage” to describe two people in love, who’ve committed to spending their lives together?

And the world receives +1 in ‘Faith in Humanity’. Now if only there were enough points to level up, grinding seems so hard these days..

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Random, Rants

What you want to say to your figurative alcoholic brother – best metaphor about analysing faults you’ve found as an expat of your home country. This may be from an American perspective, but makes me wonder about all the countries I’ve been to (not many, but plural). Reminds me that I am still yet to write my ‘compare and contrast’ piece about the UK..

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Halftone gradient
Graphic

Simple Halftones in GIMP

Playing around with the background of my ‘professional front‘, I wanted to create a neutral base for a series of rotating background images. I devised that a halftone effect would be simple but have the impact I wanted, though I’ve never tried to generate them from scratch before. Based on bktheman34’s Halftone Gradient GIMP Tutorial I discovered it isn’t too difficult.

My steps, for a black foreground to fade into white:

  1. Create a new file at the desired size with a white background, ensure that the default colour selections are set (black foreground, white background).
  2. Ensuring that black is selected as the forecolour, create your desired gradient effect; I used a radial foreground to transparent.
  3. Create a layer below the one with the gradient in the foreground colour (black)
  4. With the gradient layer active, select FILTERS > DISTORTS > NEWSPRINT, under SCREEN choose INTENSITY
  5. Set CELL SIZE to 40, OVERSAMPLE to 5, click OK
  6. Continuing with the distorted gradient layer active, select COLOURS > LEVELS..
  7. Under Output Levels, set the lower slider (which is set on the black end) all the way to the right side (the white end), click OK
  8. You now can choose to flatten the image or select the gradient layer as needed.
White Halftone Gradient

White Halftone Gradient, with the ‘foreground colour’ (black) layer set to invisible

To create a black gradient, continuing the steps:

  1. Merge the white gradient layer to the black ‘foreground’ colour layer
  2. Choose COLOURS > COLOUR TO ALPHA. Colour select ‘white’ (ffffff) in the From box and click OK
Halftone gradient

Black halftone gradient, with the ‘background colour’ set to alpha

Standard
Rants, Web

It’s almost a year since the ‘Great Harddrive Fire of 2011’ and just as long when I switched over to the darkside (WP) despite my reluctance to use PHP* and yet I still find there are more ‘procedures’ for customization. Invoking maintenance mode doesn’t appear to use the server’s built-in 503 error settings so I had to create a custom maintenance 503 page. I wonder what other wonderfully roundabout ways I can enhance my installs? :/

* If there was the incentive (ie: paid) to get the manpower to create a non PHP alternative to WordPress – a dedicated team to write a better solution and a slew of powerful optional plugins – then things might change. Until then, I too join the ranks of using ‘that strange toolbox’ and ‘bemoaning the awfulness of PHP’.

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