There are a few features different from Photoshop, so it wasn't 100% trivial to do, but I did manage to emulate it pretty well. I may write a similar tutorial for Paint.NET users to follow. Take a look:
# up somesubdir
# Find a directory below this that matches the word provided
# (locate-based)
function down() {
dir=""
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
dir=.
fi
dir=$(locate -n 1 -r $PWD.*/$1$)
cd "$dir";
}
# cdd someglobaldir
# quickly change to a directory anywhere that matches the word you typed.
# best if your locatedb is in good shape
function cdd() {
dir=""
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
dir=.
fi
dir=$(locate -n 1 -r $1$)
cd "$dir";
}
Other variations that I tried:
]]>
# Not breadth-first, so less fun sometimes
function down2()
{
dir=""
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
dir=.
fi
dir=$(find . -type d -iname $1 | head -n 1)
cd "$dir";
}
# Breadth-first, but really slow
function down3()
{
# create a list of all directories in the current folder
dirlist=( $(find . -maxdepth 1 -type d) )
dirlist=( ${dirlist[@]:1} ) # exclude .
# loop through the list
while [ $dirlist ]
do
# check the head of the list to see if it matches needle
val=${dirlist[0]}
found=`expr match "$val" ".*$1.*"`
if [ $found -gt 0 ]; then
# change dirs, we found the first match
cd "$val";
break # done
else
# not found!
# scan that new directory for subdirs
appendlist=( $(find $val -maxdepth 1 -type d) )
appendlist=( ${appendlist[@]:1} ) # exclude .
# add those subdirs to the tail of the dirlist
dirlist=( ${dirlist[@]:1} ${appendlist[@]} )
# rinse, repeat
fi
done
}
Feel free to vote for it, because the top submissions get an iPhone.
Tools used:
I must have spent 15-20 hours on that video, primarily on sound effects. While working on this, I discovered that sound effects are very essential, but if they're good no one will really notice them. I.e., making something look and feel natural is a lot harder than it looks and isn't appreciated unless there are no sound effects.
If you notice, Helen's voice is distorted in a way as to make it sound as if she's coming through a digital line. My voice is distorted to reflect the environment I'm in, there are environment sounds like splashes and vehicles, etc. This all required a lot of work, but you can barely 'notice' it while watching the video. You just expect these things to be present.
Second Life is a great tool for creating the stage and environment. Inside its interface, I used existing Second Life places (e.g. the Midgar Final Fantasy Island) and dynamically created iPhone look-alikes (see if you can spot it). I also adapted an in-game laptop to display a fake webpage, and created a weird/fake server rack on the fly. I only scratched the surface, but you really can create just about any environment you imagine. This can be very helpful for fun videos.
I can't harp on Sony Vegas enough-- that tool is wonderful. I happen to have the $50 home version of the tool, but it's possible to get effect and codec plugins from the professional version and they work there, too. (The primary limitation being 3-4 video tracks, and 3-4 audio tracks, which I've always worked around. Professional versions allow unlimited tracks, I believe.) With Vegas, I was able to create overlays, manage sound effects, apply video rendering effects, pan/zoom, etc. If you enjoy video editing, I highly recommend it. I studied video editing in school for a few years (winning best editor awards, even), and I'm in awe of how far digital editing has come. I'm ten times more productive with this software than with a top-of-the-line editing deck from 8-10 years ago.
]]>
There are a few features different from Photoshop, so it wasn't 100% trivial to do, but I did manage to emulate it pretty well. I may write a similar tutorial for Paint.NET users to follow. Take a look:
(Thanks to digg for the link.)
]]>That covers most of the things I've seen thus far. I've been to a couple of sessions, but neither of them seem very impressive compared to the keynotes and the overall cool atmosphere. More soon!
]]>... To want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperence. Apart from which this kind of obsession with the liberal arts turns people into pedantic, irritating, tactless, self-satisfied bores, not learning what they need simply because they spend their time learning things they will never need. The scholar Didymus wrote four thousand works: I should feel sorry for him if he had merely read so many useless works. In these works he discusses such questions as Homer's origin, who was Aeneas' real mother, whether Anacreon's manner of life was that of a lecher or that of a drunkard, whether Sappho slept with anyone who asked her, and other things that would be better unlearned if one actually knew them! Don't you go and tell me now that life is long enough for this sort of thing! When you come to writers in our own school, for that matter, I'll show you plenty of works which could do with some ruthless pruning. It costs a person an enormous amount of time (and other people's ears an enormous amount of boredom) before he earns such compliments as 'What a learned person!' Let's be content with the much less fashionable label, 'What a good man!' ... [b]*[/b] What about thinking how much time you lose through constantly being taken up with official matters, private matters or ordinary everyday matters, through sleep, through ill health? [...]
* 15 lines (§§39 to 40, on further examples of worthless learning) are omitted.
I don't imagine the irony was lost on the translator.
]]>PureText is basically equivalent to opening Notepad, doing a PASTE, followed by a SELECT-ALL, and then a COPY. The benefit of PureText is performing all these actions with a single Hot-Key and having the result pasted into the current window automatically.
Basically, this describes what I do about 5-30 times a day. I grab something formatted and want to paste it into another document or email, but I rarely want to keep the formatting. Before this tool, I copied the text to the clipboard, then I hit this arcane sequence of keys: WindowsKey-N (my Notepad hotkey), Ctrl-V, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Alt-F, x. Now that I've bound this tool to WindowsKey-Q, I've shortened 6 keystrokes (with slight delays) to 1 immediate keystroke.
It may seem silly, but it's worth it for me.
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