Make A Facebook Avatar

How to get your own custom "Facebook"esque avatar with Gimp (most likely would work with Photoshop too).

Step One:

Find a picture you want. A picture with a sharp contrast between the subject and the background works best. Also choose something that is recognizable. for me I am going to use this picture of Yoda.

Step Two:

Open up Gimp and then open your picture. if you want to do any cropping do it now.

Step Three:

Use the "Scissors Select Tool" And select the outline of your subject. Be careful. Don't cut off too much, it will be a pain to fix later. (hint: start on one side then work your way around, use Shift to go from one side to the other and get a straight line)






Step Three: Press enter to select that area then cut it with Ctrl-x. Choose the backgound color (below) and then take the brush or pencil and paint the entire screen. (If you can't seem to get out uf the "shadow" of the subject press Ctrl-a to select everything.)




Step Four: Paste the subject with Ctrl-v; be sure not to select everything this time.



Step Five: Center the picture with the move tool.


Step Six: Use either the brush or pencil and paint the subject white. if you still have it selected you can easily just scribble everywhere. It will be a little harder if you don't.


Step Seven: When you have filled it in take the pencil tool, zoom in, and carefully remove any abnormalities you don't want.



And there you go, you are done. Save the picture and upload it to Facebook or other site and use it as your avatar. Just so you can see I have my Finished version on here.

Apple's latest releases

Earlier today Apple released the next generation of their iPods' and the Apple TV. M0st of these are improvements, but there are a few "features" that are not the best Apple can do. BUT there are two products that I have absolutely no complaints about because they are innovative, updated, and just plain Awesome.

BASHED: iPod Nano and iPod shuffle
First off is the iPod Nano. The iPod Nano's new design is "revolutionary" umm... no. It may be smaller and lighter, but it is not revolutionary. Many think the new Nano will be hard to use, I'm with them. with my iPods I like physical controls so I can close my eyes and pause, play, skip, and control the volume. this new design leaves no room to pause and play with physical controls unless you have a pair of Apple Approved headphones with control and mike built in. Another "iffy" feature of the new Nano is it's size. iPod Classics are already easy enough to loose, now imagine and iPod less than 1/4 of that size. you could drop that in your room and not find it for another month or two.
No Physical controls! Really Small (on the verge of too small)! NO VIDEO PLAYBACK
Of course that's supposedly solved with the clip, but even shuffles with the clip are lost really easily (not to mention easy to pick pocket.) The absolute final difficulty I have with the new iPod Nano is: WHERE DID THE VIDEO PLAYBACK GO! Seriously Apple you declare how awesome the 3rd gen iPod Nano is because it has video playback and then a few generations later you remove it. It has a touch screen but no video playback now it's just a shuffle with a screen.

The next update to Apple's product lines that I find inadequate, the shuffle. There is only one reason why, Apple tries to make it seem as each new generation is a whole heck of a lot better than the last, but for the shuffle all that changes is the size and shape. Consumer deception so I hate the "All new" shuffle for no other reason than that.

AMAZAING!!!!: iPod Touch and Apple TV

The iPod Touch has also been updated, and as most people suspected it has a camera, but what people didn't expect was that it has been updated to almost the exact same specs as the iPhone (just no 3G, EDGE, or Calling) this includes Retina Display, FaceTime, Camera with HD recording, A4 Proccessor, and new Accelometer + Gyroscope. With all these features, I would consider this a upgrade worthy of your money.

Finally there's the Apple TV. This is the latest upgrade in a system that hasn't been upgraded for years. this time they shrunk it down to a little smaller than 4x4 inches. Not only is it tinier, it's more powerful, built to compete with the supposed Google TV, it has HDMI out and Netflix support. Plus it has of course synchronisation with your iTunes library and with the iTunes online store so if you wanted to you could rent movies and watch them on your TV. I am happy that Apple finally decided to update their Apple TV line.

What should I write about...

As my new first post I'm not really sure about what I should talk about... Should I talk about iPod touch jailbreaking stuffs? or mebbe something I know a little more about like Wii hacking. or... maybe I should just talk about new advances in technology that interest me and may interest you.

Every once in a while I might go on a tangent about what I'm doing in life, like right now I'm trying to learn three different languages, Python, Perl, and C++. Once I have those done (in like 5 years XD) I'll move onto computer hardware stuff, most probably building my own computer (gonna have the best specs I can afford for 1500$ if I have that money). Anyways that's most likely the tangent I'll be on, stuff like that.

I'm getting bored of writing right now so see ya later XD