For a website I am working on I wanted to have some nice looking round edges. The gimp has a built in way to make round edges when selecting a rectangle. Simply check the “Rounded Corners” option and you’re set. I did this and then used the Edit -> Stroke Selection action to draw my edges. The problem was that I only wanted a 1px border and, even with antialising on, it looked rather ugly. The corners are less than perfect and I want a nice, professional, smooth look for the site I am designing. I couldn’t find any good way to make my corners any smoother when using a google search, so I had to come up with my own method.

1. Use the rectangle selection tool to select the area where you want your border.

2. From the menu: Select -> Rounded Rectangle. I rounded mine by 30%.

3. From the menu: Select -> Feather. Enter a low number. For my rectangle I chose to feather by 2px.

4. Fill your rectangle with your desired border color.

5. From the menu: Select -> Feather. This time feather your selection by 0 pixels.

6. Fill your rectangle with your desired fill color (white in my case).

7. You’re done!

Doesn’t this one look so much nicer?

Everyone seems to be making a big deal out of the Project Natal announcement by Microsoft at E3. Sure its cool, but I think Sony’s new motion controller for PS3 is even cooler. Check it out!

The newest version of Ubuntu, 9.04 or Jaunty Jackalope, was released last Friday. Since I was still running 8.04 I decided it was time to update my system. Not a ton of new features in Jaunty, but I’m looking forward to the better support for multiple monitors and I’ve recently started noticing that some developers are no longer making their software for Hardy. I didn’t want to do clean install if I didn’t have to so I just did an upgrade. Here’s how:

1. Backup important files. I use SpiderOak for 2GB of free, automatic backup.
2. Goto System -> Administration -> Software Sources. Click the “Updates” tab. Change the “Show new distribution releases:” from “Long term support releases only” to “Normal releases”.
3. Run System -> Administration -> Update Manager. Click “Updgrade”. Follow the instructions from here on in.

Note that if you want to upgrade from a version older than 8.10 to 9.04 you wont be able to do it all at once. You have to updgrade in steps. So I had to updgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 and then from 8.10 to 9.04. Everything worked fine and I’m very happy with Jaunty so far. The only issue I encountered is that my wireless internet had problems under 8.10. These problems dissapeared once I upgraded to 9.04.

Download Restricted Formats
By default Ubuntu does not come equipped with the ability to playback the most popular audio/video codecs. This means that you won’t be able to listen to your mp3’s or play your DVDs. Fortunately this can be solved fairly easily by downloading the Restricted Formats package:
1. Go to Applications->Add/Remove…
2. Change the ‘Show’ option to ‘All available applications’
3. Search for ‘ubuntu-restricted-extras’ and install it by checking the box next to it and clicking ‘Apply Changes’
More info on Restricted Formats can be found here.

Download AWN Manager
Avant Window Navigator is a clone of the OS X dock for Linux. It provides easy access to your favourite applications from one convenient location. To download:
1. Open Synaptic Package Manager (System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager)
2. Search for ‘awn manager’
3. Right click the ‘awn-manager’ package and select ‘Mark for Instillation’
4. Click ‘Apply’
5. Once AWN is installed it should open automatically each time you start your computer. To launch it the first time however you will have to open it from Applications->Accessories->Avant Window Navigator. You can change your settings by going to System->Preferences->Awn manager.

Get The Gimp
The Gimp or GNU Image Manipulation Program is an open source program akin to Photoshop. Download it using Add/Remove… and searching for ‘gimp’.

Enable ALSA
For some reason Ubuntu doesn’t like multiple applications playing sound at once. Trying to do this may simply result in no sound from one program or might cause the entire application to crash. Fortunately this can be solved quite simple by going to ‘Sound Preferences’ in System->Preferences and changing all the sound devices to “ALSA – Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.”

Test and Fix Suspend/Hibernate
Ubuntu offers two methods of putting your computer to sleep for power saving purposes. Suspend saves the system state to your RAM and puts the machine into low-power mode. Hibernate saves the system state to the hard drive and shuts the computer down completely. Unfortunately both of these options do not work on many computers. Go ahead and give both a try. If you encounter problems you will want to try to use uswsusp instead. Compared to the tweaks I have mentioned so far this task is fairly involved. Rather than walking you all the way through it I am going to direct you to another blog for details. Please be aware that trying to fix this can turn out to be quite a headache and may require additional google searches. A look at the aforementioned blog is likely to fix your Hibernate function, however, and is thus worthwhile. As of yet I haven’t had any luck fixing Suspend on my own machine.

Remember the Ctrl+Alt Combos
Although Ctrl+Alt+Delete doesn’t do anything in Ubuntu there are several Ctrl+Alt combos that will come in handy.
Ctrl+Alt+(F1-F6) will take you out of the GUI into a terminal at any time. This can be useful if one program is causing your entire system to freeze up. Simply switch over to a terminal and type ‘kill (application name)‘ and then flip back to the GUI to continue whatever it is you were doing.
Ctrl+Alt+F7 will bring you back to X (the GUI).
Ctrl+Alt+Backspace will restart X. If you’re having trouble killing an unresponsive program this gives you the option to restart X, which should solve the problem much quicker than a normal restart would.

Other Important Software
Download these open-source programs by searching for them in Synaptic Package Manager:
Bluefish Editor – I’m sure there are other good code editors out there, but this one has served me well and I highly recommend it.
Freeciv – A google search for the best game for Linux yielded Freeciv as the result. It’s basically an open-source Civilizations.
Audacity – A good tool for editing audio.
Wine – A Windows emulator. Allows you to run some Windows programs in Linux (although I’m not sure why you’d want to).

For years I have been a strong advocate of Apple and it’s Macintosh operating system. The biggest reason for this is that I flat out hate Windows (and Microsoft in general). OS X seemed like the only viable alternative, and I found it to be far superior. Of course, I also knew that there was also this little, relatively unknown, OS know as Linux; but I never bothered to actually try it.
This summer I officially made the jump and installed Ubuntu Linux on a laptop a friend gave to me. And boy was I surprised. I’ve always thought of Linux as the geek’s OS, but I quickly discovered that it can give both Windows and Mac a run for their money when it comes to ease of use. If you’re interested in trying it out head on over to the Ubuntu website. Download a LiveCD or request that they mail you a free copy. Plop it in your disc drive and give Linux a test drive without ever having to actually install the OS. Once you’ve decided to permanently install it on your hard drive, stay tuned to my blog where I will soon be making a list of my favourite Ubuntu tweaks.