Switch Colours in the GIMP

GIMP Colour SwitcherAfter my previous discovery I thought surely there should also be an easy keyboard shortcut for swapping the foreground and background colours in the GIMP, even though it doesn’t seem to be documented anywhere. There is. Just press X.

Actually I think it would be useful if this was shown in the tooltip text when you hover over the colour switching button, like it does with the other tools. If you’re curious, here is a list of 74 keyboard shortcuts for the GIMP (including this one) that you might not have known otherwise. I think keyboard shortcuts are great for editing pictures because you can change tools (and now also swap colours) without moving your cursor away from where you’re drawing!

CSS for TODO Elements

I wrote a small CSS class .todo for cases when you want to mark HTML elements on a page that you still want to work on later. Add this class to elements that aren’t ready yet, to mark them so that you won’t forget about them and ship the site unfinished. See the Gist’s description on GitHub for more information on how to use it. Here’s the code:

/* CSS for adding TODO notes on WIP pages */
div.todo { /* style the text in a bright box */
  color: red;
  font-size: large;
    background-color: yellow;
    text-align: center;
    border: 3px solid red;
    border-bottom: 1px solid red;
    margin-bottom: 0;
    padding: 1px;
}
div.todo:before { /* prepend the word TODO to the text */
    font-weight: bold;
    content: "↓ TODO: "
}
div.todo+* { /* style the following element in a bright box too */
    border: 3px solid red;
    border-top: 0;
    margin-top: 0;
}

Safe and Easy Passwords

I was reading something by a friend of mine about an easy way to remember a large number of passwords. I had some comments on it but I was writing a bit too much to fit in a comment box so I’ve moved it here instead.

The basic idea is that because it’s inadvisable to use the same password across multiple networks because, possibly amongst other things, if someone knows one of your passwords then they have access to everything you do online! So it was suggested that you pick something memorable, for instance you might be a proud supporter of Liverpool F.C., so you take the word “liverpool” and prepend the first letter of whatever service the password is for to that. For example:

Twitter: tliverpool
Facebook: fliverpool
Identica: iliverpool
Gmail: gliverpool
Jabber: jliverpool
And so on…

Now, while in principle this might be an easy way to remember passwords, there are some problems with it, so I’d like to add a bit more. Continue reading →

Installing Ubuntu

A tutorial on how to install Ubuntu on your computer is completely redundantbecause it’s really that easy. I’ve installed Windows 7 for people and I’ve installed Ubuntu, as well as several other things. Based on my observation Ubuntu’s installer is the easier of the two.This is what you have to do: Download the disk image from the Ubuntu Website, burn it to a CD, put the CD in your computer and restart the computer. Welcome to Ubuntu!

Edit: Based on some feedback there are some things I would like to add:

  • The last step of the installation is to set a good password for your account
  • There’s a countdown to the next Ubuntu release; Ubuntu Natty Narwhal
  • If you’re looking for a reason to install Ubuntu you can find some there too
  • You can download an Ubuntu install disk from their downloads page
  • You can download it in 64 or 32 bit, Intel or AMD and other stuff
  • You can download it directly or torrent it (legally of course; Ubuntu is free software)
  • You can choose between a desktop, netbook or server edition
  • There’s an alternate installer with no graphics that uses less resources

Continue reading →