Random Renegade Bits » Problems

Solved: GIMP Script-Fu Console Image ID

epb — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 02:09:59 +0000

Problem: In experimenting with GIMP’s Script-Fu console, I could not figure out what values to feed in to scriptfu-rounded-corners (you know, to see what would happen) for image and drawable. It was surprisingly simple though.

Solution:

Image ID: The image ID to use is displayed in the image window’s titlebar. For example in “DianeLatest.jpg-4.0” the 4 is the image id. The zero after the dot is the view id. (Might be useful to know, but I don’t know where you’d use it.)

Drawable: For simplicity’s sake when I was testing I just took the active drawable for the image, which you can get from (car (gimp-image-get-active-drawable [IMAGEID]) where the [IMAGEID] is replaced by the number you have for the image.

Example: (script-fu-round-corners 1 (car (gimp-image-get-active-drawable 1)) 30 1 6 6 20 1 0)

This adds uses script-fu to add rounded corners, a drop-shadow, and a background layer to the active drawable (usually a layer) of image #1. [Details: Corners have a radius of 30, shadow is offset 6 pixels to the right and 6 pixels down. Shadow is blurred by 20 pixels.] (The color of the background layer appears to be taken from the currently active background color.)

Notes:

The procedure browser shows a run-mode parameter for script-fu functions. Don’t provide it, GIMP does that for you.
The (car …) function is required because the drawable parameter is expecting a number, but scheme functions return lists, so car is used to grab the first item from the list produced by gimp-image-get-active-drawable.
More specific to rounding corners this way: If you just want to round the corners of an image and have a transparent background, make sure there’s an alpha channel on the layer. You can tell because it’s layer-name will be in bold if it does not have one.

Here’s the result of the command I used as an example:

Now I remember why I hate HP’s website

epb — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:36:56 +0000

Not entering a valid part number is not a crime.

So I go off to search for a part (specifically a replacement battery for a laptop) but I don’t have the thing with me since it’s not mine, I’ve just been tasked with finding a replacement. (So, no stickers for me!) As a last ditch effort before contacting the owner, I go googling and grab a random part number and decide to try to plug it into the part search and hope that it happens to match with HP’s all-knowing database, knowing full well it would probably say something like “Invalid Part Number” or something. Plug in: SFB-HPDV7_56157 and I’m met with a much more condescending message:

A potentially dangerous input was detected from the client browser. This incident is reported to Support team. Please click ‘Home’ link to continue.

Really? It’s always such a pain to use HP’s website to find… umm… anything, but this is a first I have to admit. I wasn’t aware that dashes and underscores could be dangerous. Couldn’t be polite and just say “that part number isn’t valid.”

That out of the way, why do manufacturers go through such lengths to avoid parting us from our money? If I cannot, with ease, find a replacement part from you, I will not be able to buy it from you. For those who don’t know, with HP, to find anything you need both the product number and serial number to even begin your search. (Alternatively run their HP support assistant program on the laptop itself.)

Convert Outlook .msg files to .eml files with Perl

epb — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:35:50 +0000

Ran across a problem where I had a bunch of emails in Outlook’s msg format that could not be read (due to lack of Outlook) on someone’s computer. Did some digging and found msgconvert.pl. Did the job handily with only a few quirks.

Snag it at http://www.matijs.net/software/msgconv/

Bad sectors on your hard drive? Don’t throw it out yet.

epb — Sat, 22 May 2010 03:57:07 +0000

This week I was working on a computer that was having problems with it’s hard drive. I could get it to start once, and then it would fail to start up again. As you can imagine, the drive had some bad sectors, but the people I was fixing this for could not afford another $60 expense to replace the drive. So I had to try to find a way to fix the computer without replacing the drive.

And that’s when I learned this: Before you throw out a drive with bad sectors, try to run the manufacturers test and repair utilities on the hard drive. Western Digital has its Digital Lifeguard software and I’m sure Seagate has a similar tool. If you can attempt a repair with it, try the repair option. If the repair fails, then you will likely need to get a new hard drive unfortunately. Hopefully this will help you wring another couple of months out of your drive. (Who knows, it may work for years after you do so.)