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Here you will find a collection of articles, tips, tricks and tutorials on some of my favorite topics! If you are interested in any of these topics, you may want to bookmark this website, as new content will be added regularly!

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Android	Digital Photography	the Gimp	Ubuntu
Thinking Space	The Sunny 16 Rule	Fun Banner Project	Virtual Box
	Aperture, what is it?		How to install MySQL, php5 and phpMyAdmin on Ubunt
	Shutter Priority Speed		Rip Music CDs to MP3 in Ubuntu

Here's a fun project creating a banner, using the Gimp! Such a banner may be used for a website, or a flier, or a T-shirt, or a....

First, open a new project in the Gimp, and for this project we are going to go with a 600 pixels X 100 pixels canvas. If you know the background color for your banner, it's a good time to introduce it. For this tutorial let's go with a burnt orange, like to cool Corvette I saw today.

so at this point we have a canvas that looks like this:



Next, select the text tool, then set some attributes. In this case I selected Bitstream Vera Sans Bold as the font and 42 as a font size, a color (I chose blue for this exercise). Now go ahead and type a message, preferably not something as dumb what I chose to type on my example banner. As follows:



Next, goto Layer --> Duplicate Layer, what this action will do is create a layer of the font message I just typed. Now select the text tool, then click on the banner message; this action will open the small text window and the text attributes. Now highlight the text in the text edit window, then change the color of the text to black:




Now on our canvas we see something like this:



Now, with the move tool, drag the layer with the black font down and to the right, as follows:



Now goto Layer --> Stack, then choose to lower, layer. The result as follows:



Now I bet you can see where were headed here. Now let's make the shadow look more real! Goto Filters --> Blur --> Gaussian Blur. Now I chose 5px horizontal, and 5px vertical, which gave me the following result:



Looking good so far aye!!! Now let's close this thing up! Goto Image --> Flatten Image. Now goto filters --> Decor --> Rounded Corners. I chose the following settings:



Here is the finished product:

The aperture of a camera is the opening in which light travels through when shooting images. The diameter of this opening is controlled by an iris. The larger the opening, the more light is aloud to pass through. This aperture setting is commonly referred to as the F-stop setting.


In Aperture Priority Mode the Nikon D40X internal processor will choose shutter speed automatically.

The aperture may be used to adjust the depth of field of an image. The largest aperture setting on the Nikon D40X camera is F4.8, and the smallest aperture setting is F22. The larger the aperture the lower the depth of field. Conversely, a smaller aperture will increase the depth of field.


Rotating the command dial clockwise:

• larger aperture


• decrease depth of field


• decrease F-stop value

Rotating the command dial counter clockwise:

• smaller aperture


• increase depth of field


• increase F-stop value

The following images were taken using the minimum and maximum aperture settings, respectively:

I really needed to have access to a Windows application that would not work using WINE. Using Sun''s VirtualBox I was able to install Windows and on it install the application. VirtualBox is a free program you can download, and with it you can install other operating systems in Ubuntu. I am not referring to a dual boot system, which is actually what I did for about a year while I was weening myself off of Windows. VirtualBox gives you the versatility to have both, or more, operating systems open simultaneously.

In Ubuntu you can install VirtualBox via the terminal using "sudo apt-get install virtualbox" or you can install it using the Synaptic Package Manager by doing a search for "virtualbox-ose".

Before you can install an operating system, such as Windows, you must establish a ''virtual machine''. To begin this process select ''new''. Selecting ''new'' will launch a ''New Virtual Machine Wizard''.






At this stage you assign the virtual machine a name. In this example I named it ''Vista''. Also choose the operating system type from the drop menu, then select ''next''.


At this stage you will use the slider to divide the RAM up between the host OS and the guest OS. As you can see I divided it in half.


Chances are you''ll need to create a ''virtual hard drive''. Do this by selecting ''New''.




At this stage you can either assign a fixed hard drive size, or you can choose to have it''s size expand as needed. Obviously, any hard drive space you give to the guest OS reduces available space on your host OS.


At this stage you must give your virtual hard drive a name. In this example I named it Vista. I also chose to start with a 20 GB virtual hard drive.




At this stage you should be able to select your virtual hard drive from the drop down list, then select next.




At this point you can place your Windows installation CD in the CD drive, highlight Vista, or whatever name you gave it, and select ''start''. If you have installed Windows before, you''ll find yourself in familiar territory from this point on.


As shown below, Windows Vista is running within Ubuntu.


Now you may want to also add the VirtualBox guest modules. This will allow you to have full screen resolution on your guest operating system, otherwise the default maximum is somewhat lower. With the VirtualBox guest Modules you can run Windows full resolution on one screen and Ubuntu on the other.

The best software I have found for ripping music CDs to MP3 is Sound Juicer. Sound Juicer can be found in the Synaptic Package Manager. Once it is installed you can rip to wav or ogg files. For MP3 format one must also install the following packages:

Copy and paste the following into the terminal:

• 
  sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
  

Once installed open the application: Applications --> Sound & Video --> Audio CD Extractor

Go to edit --> Preferences (as shown below)



As shown in the following image, select CD Quality, MP3 (.mp3 type)



Also notice in the 'Preferences' window you can choose a location on your hard drive for placement of the MP3 files.

Click close, insert a music CD, then select 'Extract', found on the main Sound Juicer application window.

And, that's it!! Enjoy!