Aaron Hollman's Blog

Note: All work for this article was done using GIMP 2.6.6. on an Intel iMac running Mac OS X 10.5.7.

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As many of you who read this blog know, photography is a hobby of mine. While looking at photography sites to get ideas for pictures, I came across what’s known as tilt-shift photography. I’m not going to go into the specific details of it on the blog, but you can read about what it is here: Tilt-shift photography – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I like the way tilt-shift lenses can make real life pictures look miniature. There are ways to fake this effect in photoshop and with The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program), the free Photoshop-like program that can be downloaded from: GIMP – The GNU Image Manipulation Program

All of the tutorials I’ve found to fake this effect were written for Photoshop. I have found a way to do the same effect with GIMP. Without further ado, here is the how-to:

Before doing any of this with a photo, make sure you have a backup or copy of the original photo.

1. Open the picture you want to do this effect with in GIMP. (not all pictures work well)
2. Select the Quick Mask mode by pressing Shift-Q on your keyboard. (or by going to Select –> Toggle Quick Mask in the menu bar.) The screen should have put a red layer over your image.
3. Select the Blend tool from the Toolbox.  It will be the icon that fades from black to white.
4. Select your shape from the options that appear. Sometimes Linear works best if you want to keep the whole foreground (or background) in focus. Sometimes Radial works best if you want to focus on just one section of the image.
5. Go back to your picture.
6. Draw a line from where you want the focus to start, outward to where you want the blur to start. This will be a gradual transition when the blur is applied.
7. Change out of Quick Mask mode by pressing Shift-Q again. You will notice that parts of the image were selected from where you drew the line.
8. Go to Filter –> Blur –> Focus Blur in the menu bar.
9. The window that pops up gives you some options. I wish I could tell you exactly what to select here, but it is all dependent on you personal preference and the picture you are trying this effect on. I have found that 10 or 15 for the Diffusion Model and Radius works best for me.
10. Depending on the speed of your computer, this could take a few seconds to several minutes. Be patient, the results are worth it.
11. If you like the image, save it AS A DIFFERENT NAME. You don’t want to overwrite your original image. If you don’t, Control-Z a few times will get you back to your original image.

You can check out other Tilt-Shift fakes I’ve done on my photoblog:

Fake Tilt-Shift Experiment: Las Vegas « Blog Archive « Aaron’s Photoblog
Fake Tilt-Shift Experiment – Monument Valley, AZ « Blog Archive « Aaron’s Photoblog
Fake Tilt-Shift Experiment – Grand Canyon « Blog Archive « Aaron’s Photoblog

Don’t be afraid to experiment with the settings and try different things. There are so many different options to try. For example, pump up the color settings and contrast some to make the picture pop a little more.

Good luck and have fun!

aaron

Aspire One

Disclaimer:

The following instructions involve steps that could potentially corrupt and destroy any existing operating systems you may have. Use the following at your own risk. If there are any mistakes or errors in the following instructions, please let me and others know by making a comment. Although, I have endeavored to make certain as much as possible that the following is correct, I am not responsible for any damage to any machine that this is tried on. You have been warned.

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I recently bought an Acer Aspire One netbook PC that came with one fatal flaw, Microsoft Windows Vista installed by default. I had already had enough of dealing the poisoned dessert that Vista has brought to the Operating System Table so I decided right off that I was not going to use it, but I also realized that there might be a time in the future that I am going to need to be able to use Vista so I decided to install Ubuntu Linux 9.04 in addition to Windows Vista.

The first thing I needed to do, before anything else, was to make a backup of the current operating system just incase things went horribly wrong. Thankfully, I have not needed to do a restore from that backup at this time since both OSes appear to be running as well as possible. I used the backup software that came with the computer in Windows Vista. It can be found by going to Start –> All Programs –> Acer –> Acer eRecovery Management.

After the backup was complete, I proceeded to install my copy of Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix from a thumb drive. I am not going to go into the details of this install since it did not take me very long to decide that I was not going to keep it. I will detail the installation of the full version of Ubuntu 9.04.

Installation:

The first thing you need is a copy of Ubuntu 9.04 on CD and a USB CD ROM drive. You can download Ubuntu 9.04 from here: Download Ubuntu | Ubuntu.

1. Plug the CD ROM drive into your netbook’s USB slot.
2. Boot off they CD by pressing F12 (note: You may need to enable this feature in the machine’s BIOS, I did.)
3. Select your language (English) and click Forward
4. Select your time zone from the map (choose area close to where you live in your time zone) and click Forward.
5. Choose your keyboard layout. Based on your time zone location it will recommend one for you and click Forward.
6. Click ‘Specify partitions manually (advanced)’ and click Forward. (The reason for this over the ‘Install side by side…’ option is due to the fact that after I tried that the first time, Ubuntu thought I only needed 2 GB of hard drive space for the installation, this was not the case.)
7. Select the main Windows partition, it will be the larger of the two partitions if this is a new machine. DO NOT CHANGE THE SETTINGS FOR THE SMALLER PARTITION. THIS IS PROBABLY THE RESCUE PARTITION.
8. Adjust the partition size to what you want the size of the new partition to be. This is set in megabytes so adjust accordingly (ex. 80786 is equal to about 80 gigabytes)
9. Leave the other settings the way they are and press OK. Press Continue on the next screen, this will write the changes to disk. This should resize your Windows partition without removing it completely.
10. Click on the free space row on the device table and press the New partition button below.
11. Select the size you want for the root partition. I usually use the following scheme: (49% root, 49% home, 2% swap up to 2GB.)
12. Set the ‘Use as’ as Ext3 (this is the most common file format though Ext4 is becoming more prevalent)
13. Set the mount point to root (/) and press OK.
14. Click on the free space row again and press New partition again.
15. Select the size you want for your home drive, about 49% again.
16. Set the use as as the same thing you set it to for the root partition in step 12.
17. Set the mount point for home (/home) and press OK.
18. Click on the free space row again and press New partition.
19. Leave the size as is and set the ‘Use as’ to swap area.
20. Press OK.
21. Press the Forward button at the bottom right corner of the screen.
22. Fill in the information on the next page (name, login name, password, computer name, etc.) and press Forward.
23. If you wish to migrate documents and settings from your other Windows installation, this is the place to do it. (I have not used this so I can not provide any further information on it.)
24. Press the Forward button.
25. The next page is a summary of what is going to happen. Read it and make sure everything is as you want it to be. When you are certain, click the Install button. This will install Ubuntu 9.04 on the partitions we selected earlier. This will take about 15 minutes to half an hour, maybe longer depending on the speed of your machine.
26. Once it is finished, the CD ROM drive will eject asking you to remove the disk before rebooting. Once this is done the computer will reboot.
27. You will notice after the reboot that there is a new screen before the OS starts up, this is the boot loader screen where you can select which operating system to boot into. Your old Windows installation will probably be the bottom one that says Windows, the first one will be the rescue partition and probably will not boot up at all, this is a good thing since it should not be used except for recovery.
28. Your machine should boot into Ubuntu after a delay provided you have not pressed any keys. If you have, select Ubuntu from the top and press Enter. It will begin to boot into the OS.

For the machine  I installed Ubuntu on (Acer Aspire One model A0751), I needed to make some changes to the graphics to get them to work at full resolution. The instructions (these are for the netbook remix, but work on the full version also) for getting this working can be found here: AspireOne – Community Ubuntu Documentation (IMPORTANT NOTE: UPDATE YOUR OS FIRST BEFORE APPLYING THIS FIX.)

29. I don’t have experience with other models of netbooks, but I would search the Ubuntu forums for any issues that may arise. It is very well maintained and you can usually find the answers you seek there.

Customization:

Customizations are endless with Ubuntu. You can make it look almost exactly like other operating systems such as Windows XP, Windows Vista or even Mac OS X. I myself chose a mix between Ubuntu and Mac OS X. Here is a good guide to get you started: Ubuntu Customization Guide v2 « Tux Enclave.

Final Thoughts:

I still have not found a good Twitter client to use on Ubuntu, but I have not looked very hard yet. I am using Mozilla FireFox for the web browser and Mozilla ThunderBird for a mail client. I am using it for what it was designed for, accessing the internet. As I play around with it more, I may write more about what I am using it for. For now, that is it.

Good luck!

aaron

We live in an era of 24 hour news stations, the internet and mobile devices that give us information on demand. Its no wonder that occasionally all of us find our selves ‘bummed out’ from information overload.

After seeing an article on dumblittleman.com (Six Smart Ways To Beat Information Overload) earlier last week, it got me to thinking, how do I deal with information overload while working in the IT field and taking on computers and technology as a hobby. I, probably more so than the casual person, is probably more susceptible to information overload; and I have been. Let me recount to you a story.

During and shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I remember wishing for something, anything, to watch on TV or listen to on the radio other than news about the terrorist attacks. Even my fail-safe channels like MTV and QVC were broadcasting news reports of the attacks. It was too much.

Life continued like this for almost the whole week and the internet was no escape either. No matter what website I went to, there was almost alway a reference to the attacks in some way, shape or form. Even theonion.com had already satirized the events of that day.

Even as the news began to fade and life got off the shoulder and pulled back onto the road of time, normalcy, human instinct would not. I found myself watching regular programming, but during the commercials would flip channels to CNN just to see what was going on. My intended few seconds of checking out ‘what was going on’ turned into hours of overloading myself even more.

It was at this point that I finally realized that ‘I had a problem’. I don’t say this to be offensive to people who suffer from other addictions such as alcoholism or drug addiction, but mean it to be serious. My thirst for news and information was getting in the way of me living a normal life. I began catastrophizing in my mind, ‘What if this? What if that?’ It was really affecting me in a not so good way.

I tried to pull myself out of it by first blocking all of the news channels in my TV. This added just a small hurdle to my desire to find out more about the train wreck that at the time was the news. I simply entered the channel number in manually and I was back to my old habits.

Real relief began later the next year when I disconnected my cable (mostly because I was a poor college student and not because I was getting too much news) It took a little time, but I found myself feeling better and better because I was not being inundated with all of this news.

Eventually, I stopped obsessively listening to news and talk radio and began turning my attention to more escapist type programming such as entertainment shows and music. Don’t get me wrong, I not only think it is ok to be informed, but also wise. It is my hope that everyone in the world can enjoy the freedom of speech and press that we enjoy and often take for granite in America.

The story I share is only one example of information overload. It can happen while searching for regular information as well. Wikipedia, Digg, Google, Twitter, Slashdot, Facebook, MySpace are all good to a point but when they start becoming an obsession, it might be time to escape back into real life.

When I was working on the Battle of Hastings article last week (admittedly, not one of my better articles) I found myself with burning eyes and a fatigued spirit. I had been reading about the battle for several hours. I needed a break so I took one. I went on the deck, bottle of (insert favorite beverage here) in hand. The only electronic device I had was my iPod Touch which I used to listen to Pandora radio (music, not news). I proceeded to do absolutely nothing for the next hour or so and it was great.

I believe that knowledge is power but too much of it at once can fry some circuits, and we need a break from it every once in a while. Here is a list of some suggestions to help take a break from the information overload when you need it. This is by no means a complete list, but just a start:

-Take a walk (leaving technology behind)
-Exercise
-Meditate
-Nap
-Go shopping
-Go out to eat
-Go on a date
-Do house/yard work
-Watch a movie
-Play with pets
-Volunteer

I would be interested in hearing any ways you may have to deal with information overload. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

aaron

FireFox 3.5 was released last week to the pleasure of the FireFox fan masses. Here is my experience using FireFox 3.5.

Disclaimer: I am a new, yet pretty loyal user of Safari 4 and have rarely ever used FireFox so my opinions may be biased but I will try to keep a level head.

When first starting FireFox 3.5, I was greeted with a dialog box that let me know that FireFox was running in safe mode. I am not sure if this is due to the version change or the fact that the last time I quit FireFox (3.0) on my computer, it may have crashed.

The first test FireFox 3.5 passed was that it was able to render this website (aaronhollman.com) correctly. Its always good to know that a web browser your testing can display your site appropriately.

Having the tab bar enabled by default was a plus. I seem to remember having to set that manually in both Camino and Safari when I started using them for the first time.

FireFox 3.5, like Safari before it, includes the option of Private Browsing (aka porn-mode) This is a feature I believe every browser out there should have. It is a feature that is so much more useful than just surfing for porn. On public machines, it should be a requirement if you are going to be doing any online banking, site maintenance, e-mail, social-networking or working with any accounts that require a login (though I don’t recommend doing any of these on public machines)

The security features of FireFox 3.5 seem to be pretty up-to-date. They take care to protect the user while at the same time, not making them feel like an idiot. More advanced users can turn these features off, but I don’t see why they would. Even the best of us can sometimes fall prey to a well engineered social attack.

FireFox 3.5, like previous versions of FireFox has been designed for add-ons. This is a nice feature if you are the kind of user that likes to customize the way you surf the web. The more popular add-ons, like Adblock Plus, Grease Monkey, and Google Toolbar still work in version 3.5 but there have also been reports of add-ons not working in the new version of FireFox such as Better G-Mail 2 and Google Gears. (For a more detailed list, click here: Firefox add-ons: Which work in 3.5? | The Download Blog – Download.com)

Here are the results I came up with for running a couple of basic benchmark tests with FireFox 3.5. The new version achieved a 93/100 rating on the Acid3 Test. This is a significant improvement over FireFox 3.0 which managed to muster a 71/100.

FireFox 3.5 made improvements on the Celtic Kane javascript benchmark test as well. It achieved a 339ms runtime speed. This is a slight improvement over its old runtime speed of 429ms.

These tests were done on a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo  iMac running Mac OS X 10.5.7. Only one browser window was open at the time. Your results may vary.

Conclusion: It is better, but I’m sticking with Safari 4.

The Acid3 Test
Web Browser Javascript Benchmark | Celtic Kane Online

After almost a weeks worth of experience with my new BlackBerry I thought I’d jot down a few things and explain how I set it up. The first and most important thing that I should mention is that I needed my BlackBerry to be able to sync with my Mac OS X 10.5 machine. This did not go very well at first as BlackBerry Mac Support Sucks.  After finally finding The Missing Sync for BlackBerry, I was able to sync it with my Mac almost flawlessly.

I did have a few issues with The Missing Sync, they are as follows:

- I kept getting a java.lang.nullpointerexception error on the BlackBerry
- I kept getting a java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException when trying to sync with The Missing Sync.

Both of these errors were related to the call log. The error occurred on the BlackBerry when I tried to access the call log and occurred with The Missing Sync when the call log plugin tried to access the call log on the BlackBerry.

If I had a lawyer watching over my shoulder, I’m certain s/he would want me to add this disclaimer:

The following will remove all data from your phone. Don’t do this unless you know what you are doing. I am not responsible for you fracking up your phone. If you are worried, take it to your carrier dealer to have them reset it.

The solution that worked for me was to wipe the data off the BlackBerry. I did this by going to Options -> Security Options -> General Settings then bringing up the menu. In the menu, there is an option called Wipe Handheld. Once the data was erased, I was able to access the call log without the java error. I was also able to do a full sync with The Missing Sync without seeing the error pop up there. And all was good again.

I think the problem with the call log might have been related to when my phone was first activated. There were a couple of calls in the call log dated December 31, 1969 (the calls were set up calls made before the time had a chance to set itself) which is when Unix time began; it might have been choking on the date variation.

After getting that figured out, I began to set up the phone how I’d like it. Here is a list of applications and settings I decided to install on the phone:

- Facebook App that is included on the phone
- TwitterBerry, a twitter client which can be downloaded from your phones browser from http://orangatame.com/ota/twitterberry/
- E-Mail accounts that I might want to be able to access on the go, I obviously don’t want to be alerted to every little e-mail I get.

And really that is about it. I will keep you all up to day if anything major happens with my BlackBerry or I change anything else on it.

aaron

BlackBerry Mac support really sucks. I just got a new BlackBerry and, like most tech geeks, I wanted to sync the phone and do all that stuff you want to do with a smart phone (sync contacts, pictures, music, calendars, yadi-yada) but, alas, I ran into so many problems it was driving me nuts.

The first problem was that the software install disk that came with the phone did absolutely nothing. Sure, it showed up in the Finder as a Mac OS X formatted disc with an application on it. (I forget the name, I gave up on that one almost too soon) When I launched the application, a blank window showed up and nothing else. Obviously, this was not going to work.

So I hit Google with a ’sync blackberry curve 8330 mac os x 10.5′ query and was immediately rewarded for my efforts with links to download an application called PocketMac, it looked promising, so I went for it.

What a stinking pile of manure application that was! It synced once (sort of) except it corrupted my iCal calendars, and wouldn’t sync again after that. In addition to that, it also would not sync via BlueTooth even though it claimed it could. So today, I finally gave up on it and downloaded another application called ‘The Missing Sync’ for BlackBerry.

I was a little leary about this at first since it did not have very good reviews but at this point, I figured it couldn’t be any worse than the nest of dung I had so carefully laid my new BlackBerry into with PocketMac. I download it.

First impression, THANK YOU MARKSPACE! This think syncs seamlessly! The contacts and calendars all synced without any issues. And, as an added bonus, bluetooth syncing works flawlessly as well.

It is at this point I think I need to put a disclaimer. I have only used the application for a total of five minutes and have not had time to run into any other issues, but, as far as first impressions go, this is the best way to sync a BlackBerry to a Mac OS X machine. I think it will be worth the money.

aaron

BlackBerry Sync Mac – Bluetooth sync for BlackBerry and Mac with iTunes, Entourage, iCal and iPhoto