Ctrl-click layer in GIMP

Published
by
jefke
on June 16, 2008
in Graphics, Software and Technology
. 0 Comments

Just the way I like buying cheap music, I like cheap software. But just the way I don’t like pirating music, I don’t like using cracked versions of expensive programs either. And the good news is: there’s no need to!

I’m pretty sure everybody with some graphical experience has seen a cracked version of Adobe Photoshop at least once in his life. And rumour has it that Photoshop condones this, because there’s no way that young kids, for example, are going to pay $500+ for a legal version. By using cracked versions, the kids learn to work with Photoshop, so that once these talented kids start working for real, they are hooked. Free promotion.

While obviously, Adobe won’t admit this, I guess there are some good reasons for them to try and hook as many people as possible. And one of them is the GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program). At least at amateur level, there’s not much one can do with Photoshop that you can’t do with GIMP. The main problem for GIMP is: it’s different from Photoshop. I think nobody will baldly claim that Photoshop is easy to learn. Everybody who hasn’t had much graphical experience before, will need a couple of hours to find out what the basic principles and possibilities of PS are. That’s because there’s an awfull lot that Photoshop can do.

If a Photoshop user starts using GIMP, he can be assured that what he wants to achieve is possible. The only problem is that when he starts looking in the menu for a certain function, chances are he can’t find it: a lot of functions are called differently, and sometimes placed in a totally different menu. GIMP is different.

The thing I missed the most, when I started using the GIMP, was ctrl-clicking a layer, for selecting all non-transparent items. I couldn’t find it, and for a while, I really thought that this was a Photoshop-only killer feature. And then, the day of relief dawned: I found it. While it’s not a shortcut, the function is easily accessible by right-clicking on a layer, and selecting “Alpha to Selection”. You can find it as well under Layers>>Transparancy>>Alpha to Selection.

By now, I’ve forgotten most Photoshopisms, and I feel using GIMP like I felt using Photoshop before. (That is: I’m sure somebody can do it, but I’ve no idea where to start myself… ;)

So if you have a crackedl version of Photoshop on your pc, and it gives you a quirky feeling, just give GIMP a try. And make sure not to give up too easily, because I can promise you: there will be times that you curse GIMP for making you feel like a beginner, looking for half an hour for something you could easily do in 2 minutes in PS. But trust me: it’s worth it…

ps: For the curious-but-conservative people: there’s a GIMP plugin that tries to mimic Photoshop behaviour and menu structures in GIMP: GIMPshop. Haven’t tried it myself, so feel free to chip in your comments.

Google Adsense ad language

Published
by
jefke
on May 22, 2008
in Internet, Technology, WordPress and adsense
. 1 Comment

When I started using Google Adsense, my ads were set in the wrong language: in stead of displaying ads in English, Google sent me ads in French. Even more: in stead of calling the whole thing “Ads by Google“, it was called “Google Annonces“. And all this happened on a site with not a single non-English word. It took me some time to find out how to change this, even though in the end it was pretty trivial. That’s why I decided to list some items you’ll want to check when the language of your ads are not the language you expected.

Google is pretty good in keeping secrets,  so I expect there are not a lot of people outside Google that know its recipe for selecting the language of ads they send you. We do know, however, that it is based on a range of different factors, and changing only one might not yield the result you were hoping for.

  • First of all, there are the -very- obvious ones: your personal settings in your Adsense account. Even though this site is hosted on a server in Seattle and  fully written in English, it still received French advertising. I think this is due to the fact that that is the closest they could get to my mother country. Mind you, the language in my account was set to English. You can’t move to another country, in order to have your ads displayed in another country, of course (or if you do, you must have a great website, can I join?) but keep it in mind anyway.
  • Then we go to the - for the less web savvy users - less obvious ones: the meta information in your sites headers. Every webpage starts with a bit of information about itself. This information is formatted in tags, that are called the meta tags. One piece of information you can share with the world, is the language used on the page. I found that my WordPress header didn’t include this information by default. You can change this by adding it to your header.php file. You can find this file in the directory of the theme you’re using (e.g. wp-content->themes->default->header.php). You can open it with any text editor, and then you want to change the line that looks like this:
    <html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” <?php language_attributes(); ?>>

    into this:

    <html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” <?php language_attributes(); ?> xml:lang=”en” lang=”en” >

    Now you let the browsers of your visitors and Google or any other robot know that the language of your webpage is English (If you want another language, you’ll have to change the “en” of course). That’s what did it for me.

  • And now we go into the really obscure parts: the things you display on your page. It seems to make sense that Google looks at the words you use, and tries to link them to a certain language. So if your website is in Spanish, then it makes sense that the ads are in Spanish, right? But if that’s what they do, then that’s only a part of the story. Apparently, the  use of non-English characters can upset the Great Googly Moogly language detector as well. So if tweaking of all the above setting doesn’t help, you might want to check on what exactly you’re displaying.
  • There’s another factor influencing the language of the ads shown on your site, but there’s not much you can do about it yourself: the locality of the visitor. A visitor’s location is obviously a strong indication of his language. So if you’re located in a Spanish speaking region, and visit an English website, you can still receive adds in Spanish. If you want to check what people in another region will see, you might try to use some kind of a proxy service. (The last time I checked www.webproxy.pro for example, its IP address returned an address in the States.)
  • If after all these great tips, you’re still receiving ads in click language, then alas, I don’t know what to do. If you do have other tips, though, do not hesitate to put them in a comment!

Cheers

MP3Fiesta doubles prices

Published
by
jefke
on May 20, 2008
in Internet and Music
. 5 Comments

Wow! Doubling your prices overnight: how many real businesses could pull this off, without losing more than half of their customers? And that’s exactly what MP3Fiesta did. I’m sure I will check out the competition again, once I’m through my current balance.

It’s not that I’m against increasing prices. I guess inflation hits everybody. But the inflation has been nowhere near 100% last year, not even in Russia I would think. And I am aware that even with their prices doubled, the songs are still dead cheap. But at least, they could have had the politeness to warn their users, they have our email adresses. I wouldn’t have cared if the price of single songs would have gone up with 1 cent (still a respectable 10%), but when you decide to double you prices, I guess there are some basic levels of customer care you provide (even though thinking about customer care would probably automatically exclude doubling prices). You let your users know that such a change is at hands.


They probably feared a rush on their servers if they told their users of their plans. And true enough, some people would try and download as much as possible before the change was implemented. But issuing the warning sufficiently early enough would have spread out the server load. And maybe they thought about people that would quickly buy everything on their wishlist, people that now are forced to finish their wishlist at a much higher price. But I don’t think it works this way: I think a lot of those people will just buy less from their wishlist (I’m sure I will!).

I am sure there are people now who think that people who download from services as MP3fiesta and friends deserve no better. Fair enough. I, myself, have always hated everything which smelled like DRM, and have avoided Itunes as the plague. And even now they start selling DRM-free songs, I still don’t think it fair when a downloaded mp3 album costs almost as much as an album you buy in your everyday cd store (and if you wait for two years, the real life album - with booklet - is probably cheaper than the downloaded version).

That’s why I like services as Magnatune. They provide a direct link between performer and audience, resulting in much cheaper music for the buyers, and much more profit for the artists. Everybody happy! (Except for the big bosses of the music industry of course, they’ll have to do with a Rolls or two less…)

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