Centre for Social Justice -» Community

Oct 24, 2013 - GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X. The download page is here: www.gimp.org/downloads.

Lately I've been using it (and learning as I go along) for a couple of regular tasks - to edit and resize images. The first task is to learn the basics of the - "select" tool. I then "crop" the canvas and then "scale" the image to the exact pixel size I need. Also, remember to reset the resolution to 72 pixels/in if you want to publish on the net.

The comprehensive help page is here: docs.gimp.org. A couple of hours on this website is well worth the time. Before long, you too can be an image-ninja.

Oct 17, 2013 - Open Culture

Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural and educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It's all free. It's all enriching. But it's also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free online courses, free movies, free language lessons, free ebooks and other enriching content -- it's all here.

www.openculture.com

Sep 26, 2013 - Test your CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the best way to go when designing your website. A good resource for testing and visualising your CSS is this website called "CSS3 Please." It is a very well designed, cross-browser rule generator. Bookmark it so you can test all your CSS. All the style elements are live. And remember to verify your CSS.

css3please.com

Sep 19, 2013 - Save your battery

Smartphones are full of all kinds of "smart functions" but this also means they quickly drain the battery. One easy way to extend the life of your battery's daily charge is to disable all functions that are not being used. This includes, but not limited, to:

Bluetooth, GPS, Mobile data, WiFi, Sync and Screen rotation.

When these functions are turned on, they are actively checking the realtime status of your phone and its surroundings. All this activity is powered by the device's battery. But you can turn them on and off individually as needed. Also, you can use the "Power Saving" mode if any of these functions are on, but it does not work when they are all off.

Sep 5, 2013 - Do it with Style

When formatting your text to make it look just the way you want it, it is best to use "style" commands, instead of manual fixes. For example, instead of using the space-bar to move text to a certain point, use tabs, and set the tab-stop to a precise measurement. Define your styles before you start your project by defining headers, sub-headers, bulleted lists etc. Also, use font and paragraph styles - where you can define your margins, leading, font size etc. For example, it is much better to create a style called "uppercase" (where the text is converted to uppercase) rather than to type it all in caps-lock. If you ever change your mind, it is much easier to change the style definition, than to have to re-type with caps-lock off. For the same reason, "uppercase" is a bad style name - instead use names that describe the function (e.g. "header") instead of the content of the style, which might change over time.

Aug 29, 2013 - Debugging your website (ii)

It is sometimes difficult to figure out why the code on your website isn't working, but the solution can be found with a simple technique. Try to isolate the general area where the problem is, and then insert some code to export the values of the variables. If you're debugging JavaScript, just insert the "Alert" function like this:

alert('Value of x is:' + x);

Similar function in PHP:

echo 'Value of x is:' . $x;