Plastic Bugs

Gimpshop and CMYK

Published on 4/5/2007 in Apple, Free Stuff, Gimpshop, Hack and gimp. 27 Comments

Not sure why it took me so long, but I’ve finally added Alastair M. Robinson’s CMYK plugin to Gimpshop for OS X. It converts RGB images to CMYK color space (for printing). I’ll be updating the binary within the next few days. Just wanted to give you all a heads up. Let me know if there’s anything I’m missing. Ideally, this will be rolled into Gimpshop 2.2.14 to be current with the latest stable version of The Gimp. And, of course, you’ll find it in: Image>Mode>CMYK, where it belongs.

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter Alexandre, I’ll be looking into and hopefully adding a better version of the CMYK plugin that Yoshinori Yamakawa has written.

But it’s not ready just yet.

CMYK Support in Gimpshop:

Click for big!

And that same file, exported as a CMYK tiff from Gimpshop and opened inside of Photoshop.

Who says Gimp can’t do CMYK color separations?

TechTV Alumnus Resurfaces Online!

Published on 3/15/2007 in Free Stuff, General, The Screen Savers, cars, cartoons, comics, diy, fashion, nnn, podcast, techtv and video. 8 Comments

I guess it was only a matter of time before I, too left the confines of the TV world to join the rest of my TechTV friends back on the internet where we all belong (except for Michaela Pereira, who I watched every morning on my favorite LA morning show). I recently left my position at G4 Video Game Television (formerly TechTV) to work in New York for a new media company called Next New Networks. It’s lots of fun and how could you not love a place that has this little guy as their mascot?

You may or may not know that I started working at TechTV as an intern on Call for Help. Then, I moved over to The Screen Savers and then moved down to Los Angeles with my TechTV friends to be acquired by Comcast and G4. After a few years of that, it’s great to be working again at a place where the feel is very TechTV. The amazing people who make and host the shows are passionate about teaching, entertaining and informing their viewers about the stuff they love. We’ve already got comic books, fashion, cartoons and cars covered, with much much more on the way.

PLUS, I work a few desks away from the amazing Davidville.com guys who just launched Tumblr one of the coolest blogging platforms ever. You’ve probably used Senduit before. Yep, they built that too. Just eating lunch with them makes me feel a little bit smarter.

Two very smart and creative guys.

So, here’s the part where I ask for your help. I want an instant fan-base for these shows and I know that they’re good enough to have their own devoted legion of fans. So watch them all and definitely subscribe to the shows you like via iTunes or Democracy Player. Click the buttons, follow the links and please check back often to see our latest episodes. We’re making new ones every day.

And if you really like the shows, please link back to them on your blogs and tell your comic book, car, cartoon and fashion-loving friends.

ThreadBanger
Do-it-yourself fashion, clothing hacks, crafty stuff. Even if you don’t care about fashion, this one is lots of fun to watch. A new episode every week:

Visit the ThreadBanger.com website

Digg the podcast!

Pulp Secret
Comic book news & reviews. These guys KNOW their comics. New episodes three days a week:

Visit the Pulp Secret website

Digg the podcast!

Channel Frederator
Original cartoons. A new video every week:

Visit the Channel Frederator website

VOD Cars
Car videos. A new episode every week:

Visit the VOD Cars website

Fast Lane Daily
Car news five days a week:

Visit the Fast Lane Daily website

I’ll be updating you regularly with what new shows we’ve got coming and you’ll be the first to see them. And if you have something to say, please post in the comments. Thanks, guys! I’ve got a box full of TechTV memorabilia. If you post a button on your blog’s sidebar, I’ll send you some TechTV swag. I’ve got pens, buttons, magnets, bumper stickers, TSS t-shirts and other stuff you might like!

Here’s the code for your blog:

ThreadBanger button:

Pulp Secret button:

Channel Frederator button:

VOD Cars button:

Fast Lane Daily button:

Hello, Neglected Blog. I Need Help.

Published on 8/2/2006 in General, Hack, On the Web, helpwanted and lazyweb. 18 Comments

I’ve got a pretty good domain name and now I need an idea for it. The domain is www.wintheinternet.com and I’m not exactly sure what to do with it.

Win The Internet

I had at first thought that an internet scavenger hunt would be fun to do. You’d be scored based on what sites you visited and things you did on the internet. For example, a visit to the official website of Snakes on a Plane would definitely garner some points, as would a trip to Bea Arthur’s IMDB profile. But if you Google or Technorati yourself, you lose points. Basically, do fun things on the internet and you get points, do stupid things on the internet and lose points. I thought a Firefox plugin could do this pretty easily and your score would be updated automatically.

But then, I realized that privacy would be a HUGE issue and didn’t want anyone to get freaked out that a Firefox plugin was tracking your internet browsing.

That said, I kind of think I have to scrap that idea. I hope you guys can think of something better. I know it’s lame to ask for help, but I’m sure someone out there can think of something better to do with this URL.

Firefox Plugin Writer Needed

Published on 7/7/2006 in Firefox, General, Hack, On the Web, helpwanted and lazyweb. 7 Comments

Firefox Logo I need someone to write a very, very silly Firefox plug-in - for free. It’s going to be a little high concept and a little bit of a novelty.

I can offer a share of the revenue that the plugin generates (if any). Although I don’t want to sell the plugin, I’m pretty sure there’s a way to generate ad revenue from the main site that the extension is linked to/through.

The plugin is going to, above all, be an artistic and hobby-ish endeavor. For selfish reasons, I can’t disclose exactly what I need it to do. In essence, it will parse the text of the user’s current web page and return information, via a small CSS-styled overlay, based on not only the current page’s content but also based on the user’s previous cumulated browsing history.

This is, for better or for worse, another one of my crackpot ideas which:
1. I am not skilled enough to implement on my own
2. may generate a decent amount of sustainable web traffic
3. probably won’t garner you (or me) much fame or fortune

If you’re interested, enjoy crackpot ideas and think you’re up to the task, please post in the comments or email me at: scott[at]plasticbugs.com

Thanks!

Dear Lazyweb - A Periscope for My Macbook

Published on 6/15/2006 in Apple, Hack and lazyweb. 10 Comments

Dear Lazyweb,

Please make me a poseable periscope-like device for my Macbook. Please make it with mirrors, like the periscope you would build as a kid with a milk carton and your mother’s broken make-up mirrors. We can put the periscope over our built-in iSights and then we can move the periscope around and record/watch stuff in any direction. Get my drift?

Please let me know when this adhoc device is ready and send me pictures so I can marvel at it and maybe even build one myself. Then, make sure you tell Phillip Torrone over at Make Magazine that you built this thing. You’ll at least get some decent web traffic from a good HOWTO and Phillip might even put it in Make and you can impress your friends with it.

I may even be so bold as to predict that Phillip can whip this thing together himself in a few hours and it may appear on the Make blog sooner than later. I considered sending it just to him, but I think that a Macbook periscope race may be slightly more fun.

That is, if this thing is worth building…

Ready. Set. Go!

Thanks in advance.

-Scott

Missing Plug-ins for Gimpshop 2.2.11 OS X

Published on 5/22/2006 in Gimpshop and gimp. 30 Comments

I mistakenly omitted two plug-ins from the latest binary distribution of Gimpshop. I’ve updated Gimpshop 2.2.11 for OS X so that it now includes the missing plug-ins.

I put together a quick fix (60K) for those of you who would rather not download the entire 85 MB install again. Make sure you read the readme file.

I also omitted one thanks. I’m not sure how, but I forgot to thank Aaron Voisine, creator of the original Gimp.app. Without Aaron’s help and patience, I would not have been able to create the Gimpshop Universal Binary that I find myself using more and more each day (thanks primarily to Photoshop’s slow load time on my Intel-based Mac and the fact that I don’t have the luxury of Photoshop on my Mac at work).

What was missing?

macclipboard - Enables copy and paste between Gimpshop and your Mac system’s clipboard. Macclipboard allows you to copy and paste images from any OS X program into Gimpshop. You’ll find these copy and paste functions (Paste from Clipboard and Copy to Clipboard) at the BOTTOM OF THE EDIT MENU.

macfile - Macfile adds “Show in Finder” to the BOTTOM OF THE FILE MENU.

Sorry for the oopsie!

Gimpshop 2.2.11 Universal App and Source

Published on 5/17/2006 in General, Gimpshop, Hack, gimp, mac, os x and osx. 66 Comments

Gimpshop 2.2.11 Universal Application (85 MB) for OS X Tiger (Intel & PowerPC) and Panther.
Want to complie Gimpshop for other operating systems? Get the Gimpshop 2.2.11 source (13 MB) and start hacking.

Thanks to your generous donations - with a very special thanks to Wil Shipley and the Delicious Monster guys! - a Universal Gimpshop App for Intel-based Macs is here.

Some caveats:

1. Because of the bandwidth drain that I expect this may cause, please don’t link directly to the binary. If you post a link, please either link to this blog post, the Gimpshop page OR mirror the file on your own server. Thanks!

2. I’ve only tested it on my new Intel-based Mac (on which it was built). I would love to hear any successes or failures in the comments with Intel-based OS X machines.

3. For IntelMac Gimpshop users: Because of a byte-swapping issue with Intel-based Macs and X11, your Gimpshop.app cursors may appear a very light yellow color (instead of black) until you run this fix. Yellow cursors are no fun. This is an Intel-based Mac X11 issue, not a Gimp issue.

4. If you’re running OS X 10.4 Tiger and don’t currently have X11 installed, make sure you install X11 from your Tiger OS X Install DVD. The installer package (X11User.pkg) is located in the disc’s System folder. The version of X11 available for download from Apple’s website is not compatible (as far as I can tell) with Tiger.

Is The Internet There?

Published on 5/11/2006 in Games. 10 Comments

E3 is still occupying all my time. Won’t be able to post that Gimpshop binary until Saturday morning. Oh well.

Anyway, we were working late last night at E3 and I got silly and thought that a website called istheinternetthere.com would be really funny. Maybe it was only funny because it was late and I was really, really tired.

I told some of the other production guys and they laughed (they were even more tired than I was).

Then, I told my favorite broadcast engineer and DIY god, David the idea and he had it registered and built a page within 15 minutes - exactly as described.

Behold! Now you never have to worry if the internet’s there.

Also, not to rub it in your face or anything, but I got to tell Nintendo Executive VP, Reggie Fils-Aime that I’m a huge Nintendo fan and I let it slip that I recently bought a USB SNES controller for my Mac to play emulated games. He laughed. I hope he knows that I’m only playing the games I owned (and loved as a kid) and still love.

Reggie came on our show as a guest and I had the pleasure of producing his interview which involves pulling video clips to roll during the conversation, shaping the interview a little, preparing the guest before they appear on camera and ultimately leading the guests onto our show’s set to spend some time in front of the cameras.

Wii Controllers

Reggie showed me (and the rest of the green room) the Wii controller and the cool (and elegant!) retro pad they’ve created to play legacy Nintendo games. Reggie was extremely nice, the interview went great and the whole experience reminded me of the first time I met Mickey Mouse at Disney World.

Gimpshop Universal Binary 2.2.11…

Published on 5/10/2006 in General. 12 Comments

It’s done! One problem: I’ve been at E3 (the video game expo in LA) all week. Some of you may know that I work for videogame-centric cable TV network G4 - formerly TechTV. Sure E3’s just down the road from where I live, but it’s taking up all my time this week. I’ll try to upload the source and OS X app tonight for download. I just didn’t have time last night to get to it.

Very little is new, but it sure runs faster on Intel-based Macs!

If you’re at E3, please stop by the G4 set and say hi.

-Scott

Gimpshop: The Plan

Published on 4/25/2006 in Gimpshop and gimp. 35 Comments

Here’s all the stuff I’m planning for the next release of Gimpshop. A to-do list that I’ll try to stick to:

A Universal Binary for OS X so that Gimpshop runs natively on PowerPC and Intel architecture. This should be available within a week or two.
Translatable source code so that Gimpshop can be translated into any language by anyone who has the patience, time and language skills to do it. This is a high priority and I’ll do my best to make it happen.
More plug-ins and filters to match Photoshop’s pre-installed filters and Photoshop’s filter structure/naming conventions as closely as possible. In the coming weeks, I’ll be testing the best alternatives so that only the best and most relevant filters are in there. There will be a separate menu area for gimp-specific filters.
A simultaneous Windows XP Gimpshop release, providing that I can figure out how to build it on my own. I’ll be building the installer using a new Intel-based Mac purchased with your generous donations. I shudder to think that I’ll be running XP on it, but it’s not my Mac - It’s YOUR Mac and it’s almost here!

I’ll keep you posted. Suggestions are welcome!