Alex Sleat

/home/alex

HowTo: Install & Use Resynthesizer for GIMP

Remember this Photoshop CS5 sneak peak showing off it’s latest and greatest feature Content-Aware Fill a couple months ago, well it turns out a reasonably old plug-in for GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) named Resynthesizer seems to work just as great and because it is what it is, it’s free and open-source.

Installing on Ubuntu 9.10/10.04 install:

sudo apt-get install gimp-resynthesizer

or for the Source/Windows/Fedora Core 4 versions see the download section.

Once you have it installed, it’s simple to use really just select something on your image that shouldn’t be there and right click on the selection Filters -> Map -> Resynthesize.. and up should pop an options box, these settings are pretty standard and will get rid of most things given that they aren’t too big. It’s best if you’re not getting the results you want to play around with the settings yourself to get to know them better.

Click after the break for an example with step by step guide. Continue reading HowTo: Install & Use Resynthesizer for GIMP

Installing on Ubuntu 9.10/10.04 install:

sudo apt-get install gimp-resynthesizer

or for the Source/Windows/Fedora Core 4 versions see the download section.

Click after the break for an example with step by step guide. (more…)

HowTo: Find Recently Used Commands in Linux

One of my most used commands in Linux is the history command, it lists all your recent commands. The problem with this is you might have to scroll through hundreds before you get to one of any interest, so adding grep to search through these and bring back only relative one’s is great.

Give it a try (just change searchcriteria for what you want like apt-get or tar):

history | grep searchcriteria

Manual pages:

history
grep

HowTo: Make WordPress 3.0 Default Theme (Twenty Ten) Single Column Full Width

The new Wordpress default theme, Twenty Ten, is awesome but one thing that annoys me about it was the fact it’s single column template isn’t full width but instead just removing the sidebar and centering the content. It’s really easy to change that though so here’s how I did it:

Under Appearance click Editor to open the theme editor
If it isn’t already click on “Stylesheet (style.css)” on the right hand side (somewhere near the bottom)
Now look for the following section of code (Ctrl+F will come in helpful here to find it) and change the width here from 640px to 900px then hit the Update File button:

/*
LAYOUT: One column, no sidebar
DESCRIPTION: One centered column with no sidebar
*/

.one-column #content {
	margin: 0 auto;
	width: 640px;
}

Now when you view pages which use the one column template they should fill the same amount of space that both the content and sidebar usually do.

WordPress ThreepointOHHHyeah

HowTo: Fix Can’t Click on Flash in Ubuntu (64bit)

There is a pretty quick fix for not being able to click flash on websites such as YouTube, just simply add the line below into the following file and restart your web browser and all should be fine:

sudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer

Add in the line (above the last line):

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

HowTo: Install BURG in Ubuntu Lucid (10.04)

BURG if you didn’t notice is GRUB backwards and actually stands for “Brand-new Universal loadeR from GRUB” which was probably decided a while after picking the letters.. Basically though it’s a much nicer looking alternative to the very dated looking GRUB bootloader.

Installation

Until only recently it’s seemed far too much hassle of installing something which only gets displayed for a couple of seconds at boot and isn’t seen again unless something goes wrong, but now that a PPA has been created for it (for Lucid anyway) it seems like its worth the very little bother.

First add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bean123ch/burg

Now type the following to install the loader, emulator and some themes:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install burg-pc burg-themes burg-emu

You’ll be prompted to do some configuration settings in order for it to install, for these I just hit enter for each with the default to options however make sure to double check!

Now that’s done try rebooting and you should now see a slightly different screen? If so you can get on to tweaking it to get it to look even nicer :)

Tweaking

Themes:

When on the new shiny bootloader hit the ‘T’ button to load a new popup menu which allows you to toggle between themes without the need to restart so pick a favourite (mine are Radiance and Sora Clean.)

Clean Up The Boot List:

If you’re like me and have a bunch of old kernels still cramming up your boot screen you might want to get rid of them, it’s easy enough just make sure to note down your current version and the older versions which you can see on the loader (the newest version will have the highest number). My versions were 2.6.32-22 and 2.6.32-21, so I wanted to remove the later and here’s how to do that:

Open Synaptic Package Manager (System-> Administration->Synaptic Package Manager)

search for the version you want to remove (eg mine was 2.6.32-21) right click on the checked ones and “Mark for Complete Removal”, if you are at all unsure about which version to remove it’s probably best you just leave it or ask someone to check.

Now in order to update BURG to notify changes have been made, run:

sudo update-burg

Set the BURG Screen Resolution:

Very simple to do, note down your screen resolution (you should be able to find that under System->Preferences->Monitors under Resolution) now you want to edit the following file and change the default size to the one that matches your screens.

sudo gedit /boot/burg/burg.cfg

Find the following line and replace the 640×480 with your resolution (for example I had to change mine to 1440×900)

set gfxmode=640×480

Save and close this file and you should be done.

If you want to try customising BURG more or if you’re having some problems you should check out their very useful help page:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Burg

Update:
Over at OMG! Ubuntu! they have found an even nice looking theme, so make sure to check that out: link

HowTo: Run .jar files in Ubuntu

To run a JAR file from the command line in ubuntu using the following command:

java -jar filename.jar

Otherwise it is also possible to enable double clicking to run jar files too by the following simple steps:

Find the .jar file in the File Browser (a.k.a Nautilus)
Right click the .jar file > Properties
Click on the “Open With” tab along the top
Change the bullet to be Sun Java 6 Runtime
Click Close and you’re done.

Now you should be able to just double click the file and it will run just like most other files!

Alex Sleat

HowTo: Install & Use Resynthesizer for GIMP

HowTo: Find Recently Used Commands in Linux

HowTo: Make WordPress 3.0 Default Theme (Twenty Ten) Single Column Full Width

WordPress ThreepointOHHHyeah

HowTo: Fix Can’t Click on Flash in Ubuntu (64bit)

HowTo: Install BURG in Ubuntu Lucid (10.04)

HowTo: Run .jar files in Ubuntu

About

Professional Profile

My Projects

Links

Categories

Friends

Disclaimer