Internet standards, including HTML, CSS, and Flash, are based on a gamma of 2.2, making colors partway between black & white appear darker and higher contrast than 1.8 gamma makes them appear.

Clearly this is a problem, as referenced by Ron, even Apple recommends you change your default gamma from 1.8 to 2.2, where they also link to some further reading.

If images are delivered with the lower gamma information embedded, web browsers on macs tend to* (not all see note below) display them incorrectly if it’s not reading the color profile properly.

As a webdesigner / web developer / photographer, this might worry you. You’ll want it too look the same to everyone or at least the majority (95%+ of the world uses windows). The easiest way I found to fix this in my work flow, using Ubuntu Linux was with pngcrush, a cross-platform application that allows you to not only reduce image filesize loseless, but allows you to remove information that can cause confusion with the way images appear in mac web browsers.

All I had to do to install it on Ubuntu was:

sudo apt-get install pngcrush

Then I wrote the following command to strip all gAMA, cHTM, iCCP and sRGB information from all png files within a directory and move them to a folder called “crushed”

pngcrush -d crushed -rem gAMA -rem cHRM -rem iCCP -rem sRGB *.png

*It’s important to point out that this does not effect OSX 10.6+ (snow leopard and beyond). Further reading on why apple chose 1.8 gamma as the default can be found here.

sudo apt-get install feh

feh is is lightweight image viewer that you can call from the command line. It can recursively view files with the following command for example:

feh -r *.jpg

You can navigate through the images with your arrow keys or space bar and backspace. Use the window close button or press esc to quit.

That’s all good and fun and I’ll probably use it from time to time but it’s not what really got me excited about this tool. It has an option for a “list” of image attributes as the screenshot below shows.

By typing for example

feh -l *.jpg

I would list all attributes for jpgs within a specified directory. In my screenshot, I had a text file multiple image extensions, so I did a subshell with an ‘ls’ command piped to ‘grep -v’ which negates whatever pattern that follows it. To rephrase, the command inside $() is run first and that list which has all files minus those ending in ‘.txt’ is called by the ‘feh -l’ command.

I find this very helpful for when I’m slicing images for web pages. When I’m typing out css for example:

#my_image {
  display:block;
  height:25px;
  width:120px;
  background:transparent url('img/my_image.png') 0 0 no-repeat;
}

it’s very handy to have the image dimensions. The nice thing about this raw dimension output is that I can script it further to generate CSS like above.

There are many other tricks this command can do, just type ‘man feh’ to learn more.

By the way, I’ve started using gThumb as my default image viewer, it’s still lightweight and quite powerful. It’s essentially the same as eog with some minor differences and a few major enhancements

sudo apt-get install gthumb

Looking to get the most power out of this application, I headed over to this messy repository that is the official plugin registry. Doing a quick breeze through to see if anything caught my eye, it quickly did with this page about Liquid Rescaling. The picture was enough to catch my attention but the video below dropped my jaw.

Looking to learn more, I went to the official page to learn more. On the download page, I found out that it’s included in the Ubuntu repsitories:

sudo apt-get install gimp-plugin-registry

After installing, I went to the help >> plugin browser in gimp and found that it was under the ‘layer’ file menu. I gave it a shot and It really is magic!

Panoramic Sunsets are so much nicer, aren’t they? :-P

Step one, original picture:

Step two, mark the area I’d like preserved:

Step three, magic:

Quoting the change log:

Almost a year of hard work, 3000 single changes, new developers and players, a few tourneys and lots of matches have passed since the last release.

Today the Alientrap team is proud to bring you a new and improved Nexuiz! Still trying to achieve this fine balance between fun and a challenge, you will notice lots of small additions that will make playing even more fun.

Some larger changes like the new guns and particle effects will make you want to dive into the great and friendly Nexuiz community, while the large additions including the race game mode, some new maps and improved netcode will take away lots of hours of your free time.

Do you dare to take a look and see for yourself what a totally free and open source game can be?

New features include:

• Completely redone HUD and user adjustable scoreboard
• Totally rewritten Client/Server communication to cut the bandwidth usage in half
• New gamemode “Race”. Try to get from start to end of a level as fast as possible. Available as free-for-all and team variant. Further allows to play with or without a qualification period.
• Added several new weapons (on-hand Grappling Hook, Port-O-Launch, T.A.G. Seeker, Heavy Laser Assault Cannon, Rifle)
• Map editor NetRadiant included
• Improved all effects for eye candy and tweakability
• All maps recompiled with external lightmaps which allow for much crisper shadows
• Added maps desertfactory (DM, TDM, MinstaGib), racetrack (Race) and made aggressor support Key Hunt
• New player sounds, announcer sounds/voices, textures, crosshairs, weapon models, effects and menu skins
• Added support for video capture to OggTheora
• Integrated the Havoc mod into the menu! Havoc servers use quite different physics and weapons, give it a try!
• Fixed a crash with ATI drivers on shutdown or vid_restart
• Fixed several problems with lagging gameplay/crashes/wrong display of effects
• Improved bots (teamworking, bunnyhopping, swimming, better way finding, support for ladders, less CPU usage, faster map loading)
• Better visual display of carried items (Strength, Shield, flags and keys)
• Better parental guidance support with cl_gentle and cl_nogibs
• Lots of tourney-related features (timeout/in, spectator-slots, allready, warmup mode, lockteams, unlockteams, movetoteam_red/blue/…, nospectators, records, cointoss)
• Added some effects customization options like cl_casings, cl_weaponpriority
• Many more map entities allowing for more dynamic maps
• Restructured and improved menu: demos menu and multiple campaigns are back, also added an advanced menu containing ALL settings of the game

For a more complete list of changes see: https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=672474&group_id=81584

As usual, you can download the newest release from our download page.

If you are providing a mirror of the release, please notify us so we can add it to the official mirror list. For any comments, suggestions or questions, please refer to our forum or the FAQ.

Because of many major changes there is NO PATCH available.
To make sure nothing breaks, you should use a new directory to unzip Nexuiz 2.5!

If you use 2.5 and see a server with no gametype it’s an 2.4.2 server, don’t play on those. :)

Alientrap is also currently looking for new coders, modelers, mappers and people experienced with creating sound effects. If you feel like helping improve Nexuiz or Zymotic please contact the team via forum or IRC.

You can Download Nexuiz Here. To run Nexuiz, extract the files anywhere on your computer and run the executable. Try GLX first and if you experience problems, you hardware maybe better suited for the SDL version. The main difference between the two is the software libraries they are compiled for.

If you’d like to spread the word, it’s a good idea to share the Nexuiz 2.5 release on your facebook account. You can digg it here: http://digg.com/pc_games/Nexuiz_2_5_is_released

Here’s a sneak peak:

I’ve been busy with some design work the past few days, finishing up a few more entrecards and working close with clients to get a design that properly represents their business:

The ninjaz have been making some headway and we’re testing out a new host for ~5 game servers which will run NANL configs on. I go back to school in less than a week.

To give you an idea of the quality of my work, here are two cards I’ve designed for forum goers who took advantage of my free offer. There are 2 spots left… if you’re interested, act fast. Otherwise, it’ll cost you 400 Credits.

Congratulations to the rest of the winners and too readers uninterested in Entrecard, I have some more how-tos and lifehacks on the way!

I you’d like a check check out My Entrecard Page.

Happy New Years 2008!

Today I designed some graphics for him to use in the movie.

It should be out in a few weeks. I’ll be sure to post information about it here for those interested.