Finally get Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux co-existing, then I load up my external USB hard-drive that I had used to back up all my old data on.

Oh look, it’s completely corrupted and unreadable and has to be reformatted. Well, technically it’s readable but it’s reading as 500 gigs of nonsense text files (an interesting reading since the drive is only 40 gigs).

Double Sigh. Hopefully my cousin didn’t like those pictures of her high school graduation too much… 

Somehow Windows XP completely destroyed all the partition tables when I installed it yesterday. All my partitions now read as one big unallocated space. It mangled them so much, that lucky me, I now get to install it again from scratch. Yay!

Posting at 3 AM because I was getting around to a long overdue reformat of my old PC. Had to nuke the whole thing so the virii and malware had nowhere to hide.

Planning to use the laptop mostly as a linux box, but for obvious reasons I still wanted a Windows XP partition. A clean fresh install of Windows XP + Service Pack 2 + All Windows Updates now takes up about 7 gigs. I know hard-drive space is no big deal these days, but I still think 7 gigs is pretty insane. With Vista coming on a DVD, I have to imagine the size is gonna just keep ballooning.

But far more annoying than that is the number of restarts. I’ve had to restart the computer about 10 times to install all this crap. 

To balance out my intense hatred of the GIMP’s god awful interface, here’s a little review of Inkscape, the open source, multi-platform, vector graphics program.

The question a graphics professional would probably ask (read: not me) is Does this do everything Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand do? The answer is a complete and obvious no. There are a many basic features missing (for instance, being able to make strokes inside and outside of a path rather than directly on it), and effects and blends are not ready in this version. Most of these features are missing not because the developers are uninterested but because the program is based on the open SVG standard, which I believe was originally developed for web graphics and has failed to keep up with developer’s needs. They stick by it because it’s an open xml standard, which means you can do cool things like literally changing or tweaking an image just by opening it in a text editor, but on the whole the SVG standard isn’t quite robust enough for real professional work.

However, that doesn’t mean this isn’t a really impressive and cool piece of software. The interface is definitely not perfect (it’s obsessed with dialog boxes), but this is nothing like the GIMP. This is an interface that makes basic sense, and all that’s required is putting in the small amount of time needed to get acclimated. In fact, because it lacks the 8 billion features of Illustrator, I actually find it easier to do basic things in Inkscape simply because I’m not lost staring at Illustrator’s 500 different tools and options. There are a few simple tutorials included, and while they’re nothing to set the world on fire, the program easily passed the "oooh" test. In other words, you can start playing with the shape tools after reading one tutorial and achieve something cool enough that you go "ooooh, that’s cool!"

The export options are overly limited, but they’re improving with each version. That’s another thing. This is version 0.44. Now I’m not one who puts too much stock in terms like beta (afterall, Firefox and most google programs claim to be in beta or in versions below 1.0 for years). But the developers are really putting a lot of work into this program and every version contains clear and obvious improvements in performance and features. If the difference between version 0.43 and 0.44 is indicative of anything, this could be a really impressive and polished program by the time it reaches 1.0.

Summary: 

This is really cool little program and it’s available for pretty much every major operating system. I don’t have a ton of use for it because I’m artistically inept, but it was good enough for me to make the goofy little masthead at the top of this site, so if you have some free time, perhaps download a copy for your OS of choice and give it a try. I recommend the shapes tutorial because the stuff with Stars and Spirals is really fun.

I’ve been using linux a lot lately. My old windows laptop got a horrible virus and it so disgusted me that I ended up installing Ubuntu on it, which is easily the best linux I’ve ever used.

I intend to recap my experiences on the blog a little bit, but I just wanted to mention that the GIMP, the free open source alternative to photoshop, is a real piece of crap. Usually I’m pleasantly surprised by open source software. Usually there are rough edges and ways in which it all sucks, but then there’s also cool new innovative features or the program will at least do 50% of what I need it to (see OpenOffice, which basically does everything Word 97 does, which is more than most people need).

But I think the Gimp is really amazingly awful. I’d heard so much about it, how it was such an impressive feat, but it has the worst interface I’ve ever encountered. Absolutely nothing works the way you expect it to. It’s awkward and confusing and contradicts itself in every way possible. There’s not a single task, not one solitary task, that isn’t a complete bitch and a struggle. Every single menu and window does something or has some option that makes no sense and does the complete opposite of what you want. It’s almost like the program reads your mind and then automatically reshuffles all the menus to make sure you can’t get anything done.

The awful interface would be bad enough, but I expected it to at least have basic features. You can’t change brush sizes. Seriously. Every brush is only its own size, you can’t change it. You have to make a new brush that’s the correct size whenever you want to do something like that. There are a million other features missing (I’m talking major stuff like decent selection tools, not tiny photoshop-specific luxuries).

I just wanted to get this bitching out of the way since other than this and one or two other things, my experience with Ubuntu/Linux has been very positive and I’ve found a lot of really cool, really neat free programs. Gimp, however, is not one of those programs, and Adobe certainly has nothing to fear from it.