The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is an application with feature comparable to Adobe’s Photoshop and able to both read and write its PSD file format. It allows you to create original professional digital artwork, process digital photographs and convert and fix many types of bitmap images. The GIMP supports layers, works well with digitizers like WACOM’s popular pen tablets and offers an enormous number of tools and filters. Continue reading The GIMP
Author: Jaap van der Velde
I live and breathe software, love games and spent many a vacation touring Europe on my motorcycle. Currently diving, riding, hopefully flying and gaining perspective around Oz.
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox started out as the stable, lightweight, extensible answer to the two main web browsers at the time. The somewhat buggy Internet Explorer, which was seriously lacking in features, and Opera which was suffering from troublesome bloat, incorporating many functions unneeded and unwanted for many web browser users. Continue reading Mozilla Firefox
Inkscape
Inkscape is the perfect tool to quickly create vector based images and natively saving them in the SVG file format, or exporting them in a variety of bitmap formats. Not quite as full-featured as professional applications like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Paint, it is perfect for simpler jobs and will fit the bill for most users looking to create nicely scalable graphics, logos and text art. Continue reading Inkscape
Audacity
Audacity allows you to quickly and simply edit audio files, like podcasts or system sounds. It has all the basic filters and controls you need, including excellent noise reduction. It supports multiple tracks, reads and writes all popular audio file formats and is easily configured for recording your own sound fragments or podcasts. Continue reading Audacity
XAMPP
XAMMP is a very user-friendly packaging of one of the most popular web servers out there: Apache. It comes in a neat little installable package with the popular MySQL database server, PHP for scripting your web pages, FileZilla FTP server and several other useful servers and applications which are all ready to go after installation. Perfect for personal use or use in a small business, easy to setup and maintain and with support for many languages. Continue reading XAMPP
The Golden Compass
The Golden Compass (2007) [rate 2]
A bit of a disappointment for me. Although I like the story – in the book – far better than the overly hyped Harry Potter, this movie doesn’t deliver as the Harry Potter movies did for the Potter fans. Apart from the usual gripes like not everything from the book being in the movie, I feel this movie goes wrong in some other ways that are far more detrimental. Continue reading The Golden Compass
I am Legend
I am Legend (2007) [rate 2.5]
I like how movies are picking up more and more on the wealth of visual storytelling that comics have to offer. With recent successes like Sin City (2005) and 300 (2006) and perhaps slightly less successful offerings like V for Vendetta (2005) (which was not all bad in my opinion), the genre is building a nice position for itself. I am Legend adds a nice piece to that line, though I think it could have been a lot better. Continue reading I am Legend
Thank you for Smoking
Thank You for Smoking (2005) [rate 4]
This movie is about as good as it could have been and the only reason it’s short of the 5/5 mark are some details. Although it may be intentional, it seems strange not to have anyone smoke in a movie about Big Tobacco and it’s (evil?) marketing techniques. If it’s intentional, I would have expected the creators of Thank You for Smoking to play a little more with the idea. The only suggestion of smoking in the entire movie is the blueish tint of the air in some locations. The main character smokes, but this only becomes clear because of him grabbing a pack of cigs that happens to be empty when he does (in anotherwise great scene). Continue reading Thank you for Smoking