The Tao of Walking Ridge

As in “Say Cheese”. Cheese is a little application that can be installed into Ubuntu from the software repository. Versions are available for all Linux applications. It lets you do little snapshots like a photo booth, or video clips using your webcam. A few effects are available. I particularly like the black and white effect, which makes digital pictures much more edit friendly (I used Gimp). Valuable for checking out a webcam. Useful for taking handfuls of candid shots for one you may with to include on, say, a blog post. And just plain fun.

Life is what happens when making other plans.  As was this picture.  I was flying my KAP rig, and had the kite up around 300 feet, when I looked over at the horizon and saw the sun lighting the tops of the clouds as it set.  It looked like snow capped mountains.

When you suspend judgement, you can sometimes create a moment of inspiration effortlessly.  I took a very quick self portrait to demonstrate the color mapping tools that can be added as a plugin for Gimp, the photo editing software for Linux.  One snap with a self timer, tweak the color balance in UFRaw, then pop it into Gimp and adjust the red green and blue translation into monochromatic until the desired constrasts are achieved.  There are elements in the photo that I’d change if I were focused on creating the best portrait I could.  But as is, I liked it enough to replace the picture I was using on my Myspace page (myspace.com/zenbluesharmonica.)

If I ever get all my electronic bits fully sorted out, I’ll grab many great shots. Tonight I flew my Optio S6. This little camera does not have a timer, but will fire from an infrared remote. The sport mode works pretty well. My IR unit moved or for some reason stopped after only 4 pics, this one the only interesting one at altitude. The winds were a bit inconsistent, but with work I had the camera up to 300 feet or so. Of course, the pics stopped here, at perhaps 100 feet.

I was thumbing through the current copy of Car Kulture DeLuxe when I saw the artwork of Max Grundy. He was inspired by poster art through the ages, as am I. Described by the article as having “sick talent” I must agree. He has a unique style, and puts into practice an idea I have pondering for some time - art that works like a poster but has no lettering that is typical of the posters that inspire the art form. Max has a web site Fear is the new Beauty.  Stunning and inspring stuff.

Anyone who has email must deal with spam.  I initially tried setting up my own filters on my email, but now the spammers send emails so short, that there is little filter on.  However, it is obviously spam (the subject doesn’t match the body for example).  But when I tried Spam Assassin, I wanted the rejected emails to go to a spam folder, and using POP3, it was hard to find.
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As I continue my journey to become Windows free, FrontPage is one of the software packages that I needed to find a replacement for.  Though bloated, and imperfect, I did find that I was able to manage my websites well with it.  And for a new user, I liked the WYSIWYG editor.  I found no WYSIWYG html editors in Linux.  Among the text editors, my favorite is clearly Bluefish.  Nice and clean, snappy, with lots of flexibility and clearly designed to let the knowledgeable html author write pages fast.

I now use Bluefish to modify pages that I originally created in FrontPage.  The first time I need to so something, like say make a block of text bold, it takes me a little while.  Of course, if you remember the b /b tags and syntax you can just type it, but Bluefish as a button.  Highlight text, click button, done.

Learning how the menus are organized is the steepest part of the learning curve.  Loooking for code to instert an html link, I found it in HTML, Hyperlinked Anchor.  A nice data entry box pops up to make the entry clear and easy.

I am now enjoying my learning curve.  I already can do some things faster than FrontPage.  I have more control.  And I can see how in time I could create pages faster than FrontPage.  Combine Linux, Bluefish, and the FTP client Filezilla and you have all the tools you need to maintain a website.