http://howto.nicubunu.ro/ -Where to find how to make your own Pac-Man character
http://www.bestgimptutorials.com/browse_gimp_tutorials
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/GIMP_Tutorials_Learning_The_GIMP.htm
Gimp Tutorials Assimilated by One of My Students
May 11th, 2009 by pkolbe · No Comments · Uncategorized
Lock down the Wallpaper on XP
February 12th, 2009 by pkolbe · No Comments · Uncategorized
http://www.winxptutor.com/tweaklogon.htm
Mac Isight cam abuse
December 17th, 2008 by pkolbe · No Comments · Uncategorized
Students are driving me crazy making videos of themselves with our new macs. I’ve been on the lookout for an easy wasy to disable/enable the camera and cense@techslaves.org over at techslaves has provided it. It’s also a neat example of applescript if you’re interested in learning it:
iSight Disabler Version 3, Leopard Support
Btw, I suggest saving the script on the desktop of a user who has administrator privileges so you can easily enable/disable the camera whenever you want.
Tags: osx
Cloning multiple computers with open source software
November 3rd, 2008 by pkolbe · No Comments · Uncategorized
I’m using the clonezilla server that comes bundled with the drbl-live cd. This is good for cloning (in mass) windows XP and or Linux machines. (Prolly win2k, and some bsd’s too, but I don’t know about vista.) For my purposes I’ve put an image I created with a clonezilla live cd on a usb drive. I connect the usb drive (which happens to be formated with ntfs) to a laptop which I booted with the drbl-live cd. I go to the command line and call:
$ sudo fdisk -l
That will tell you what hard drives/partitions are available so you can mount them. This is *not* the easy way to do this; I’m just doing it b/c I enjoy the practice. For me, that command revealed:
/dev/sdb1 is the device name I need to mount the usb drive.
I then called:
$sudo mount -t ntfs-3g -o rw,uid=1000,umask=0222 /dev/sdb1 /home/partimag
The command that the drbl-live cd ran was:
$ /opt/drbl/sbin/drbl-ocs -b -g auto -x hn1 PC -y0 poweroff –time-to-wait 300 -l en_US startdisk multicast_restore folderNameOfClonezillaImageInTheDirectory-home-partimag hda
Edubuntu, LTSP for Ubuntu
October 31st, 2008 by pkolbe · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
I work for the New York City Department of Education and run an Edubuntu server. I’m currently using a Dell Poweredge server with a P4 2.8ghz cpu and 3gb of ram. Half of my trafic comes through gigabit switches. The clients are HP D530′s with 3ghz P4′s and 512mb Ram. They’re *much* more powerful than necessary, but they were donated and they’re very small.
The NYCDOE provides a few network challenges.
1) TCP/IP traffic requires a proxy setting. Resolving this is easiest achieved by calling:
$ export http_proxy=http://filtr.nycboe.org:8002
unrelated:
A really good ltsp link: ltsp.org
Tags: ltsp
Windows & Mac Mozilla Firefox Scripts Part 2
August 5th, 2008 by pkolbe · No Comments · Uncategorized
You’ll need to copy those user.js files into a place where firefox will look for default settings when it sets up a new user. In Windows we copy this file into C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\
These settings will not affect any pre-existing firefox profiles (users who have logged in and used firefox will not have their pre-existing settings altered).
submitted by Peter
Windows & Mac Mozilla Firefox Scripts
February 12th, 2008 by pkolbe · No Comments · Uncategorized
The user.js preference files for Firefox for Windows and Mac are not the same, one being that the Mac script is quite different from the Windows script.
Windows Firefox script:
user_pref("security.warn_entering_secure", false);
user_pref("security.warn_leaving_secure", false);
user_pref("security.warn_submit_insecure", false);
user_pref("security.warn_viewing_mixed", false);
user_pref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "http://proxy.nycboe.org//proxy.pac");
user_pref("network.proxy.type", 2);
Mac Firefox script (Mac Firefox doesn’t have a user.js file, so you have to create one):
user_pref("security.warn_entering_secure", false);
user_pref("security.warn_leaving_secure", false);
user_pref("security.warn_submit_insecure", false);
user_pref("security.warn_viewing_mixed", false);
user_pref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "http://proxy.nycboe.org/proxy.pac");
user_pref("network.proxy.type", 2);
Posted by Sammy
edited by peter
Instructions for setting up KompoZer
January 14th, 2008 by pkolbe · No Comments · Web Design
Select EDIT — Publishing Site Settings…
For BHSEC, write in:
For the first time you set this up, select “Save password”. However, if you’re not on your own computer with your own username and password, after you’re done with Kompozer don’t forget to go back and uncheck the box. You don’t anyone else being able to access the site.
After all of this is set up, under Site Manager you should be able to see the name of the site you entered, with a plus in front of it.
Once you click on that plus sign, Kompozer should take all of one second to access into your site, after which you should be able to see all of the directories and files of your site under the site name.
Also, the proxy needs to be setup. Select TOOLS — OPTIONS — ADVANCED.
In the Connection box, click on Connection Settings, then fill in the following:
Posted by Joana
Web Basics 101 -WYSIWYGs and Editors
October 19th, 2007 by pkolbe · No Comments · Web Design
Dreamweaver is your classic WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get). A WYSIWYG user does not need to know how code works because s/he can simply use the program’s interface (buttons and tools) to do all the formatting. A WYSIWYG is like making web pages with MS Word. In an editor, you work only with the code. The best way to teach web design is with an editor, but as your code gets more complicated a WYSIWYG is more efficient. Bhsec owns a few copies of Dreamweaver. All the macs in the music department have it, the yearbook pc in the CTO has it, and so does my computer. As you can see, it’s somewhat hard to come by in Bhsec. For this reason, I install kompoZer for many of the staff who need to do webdesign. KompoZer is open source and works on osx/win/linux.
General points to remember:
- Don’t reveal email addresses. This is a sure way to get lots of spam.
- Watch your relative links. IOW, <link href=”../bhsec_stylesheet.css”> will only work if this css file *really* is in the directory above the current one. (Double dots mean the directory above.) You could also use static links (ie http://www.bard.edu/bhsec/yadayada/bhsec_stylesheet.css”) but this is generally poor practice because if any folder name is changed, in the path above the file, all the static links will break.
- Make use of our pre-defined format styles found in our css file so that the look and feel will be consistent across the bhsec website. In kompoZer, switch to the Html Tags view (tab at the bottom) to enable the css pulldown on the top left.
- Think about how to make it easier for the faculty to change the the content of their webpages without having to deal with code. For example use inc files for the content (just one idea). But also maybe make a form (in php) to edit their content.
Web Basics 101 -FTP and Backups
October 18th, 2007 by pkolbe · No Comments · Web Design
The first “web basic” I want to impart is to make backups of all your work! For this you’ll need an FTP client.
FireFTP is, IMHO, the simplest ftp client. It works on osx/win/linux. It’s opensource (“free as in beer and free as in speech”). It’s a firefox addon, so you’ll need firefox. Go ahead and bookmark it so you can easily find it. On the top left look for a new toolbar with: Manage Accounts>New…
Ok> then select “Connect”. Notice it changes to “Disconnect”. The left hand side is the filesystem of the computer you’re working on right now, the right hand side is the remote server you’re editing. You don’t need the left hand side (you can drag/drop from outside firefox) but I recommend you use an ftp client so you can easily keep backups while you edit web pages… and the left hand side makes copying entire folders much easier.
I recommend you first make a backup of the entire site. It won’t take long, websites are often very small in size.
Next, I recommend that before you edit any file, you make a copy and name it something like filename.html-bkup01. Then, each time you edit the file again, increase the number eg bkup02.
Occasionally I need an sftp client, which fireftp isn’t, and I use filezilla. On OSX I hear you can use fugu or cyberDuck.
