While working on the deviantART version of my little tutorial I thought I should try optimising it, because it actually got a little big, a PNG of 750×2443 px. A really handy tool named pngcrush helped me save some traffic there. It may not be that important in days where bandwith is everywhere and for no money, but if you think about a badly compressed image and how annoying it is, to watch it load, you may actually consider taking a look at this. (Oh and of course if you’re doing stuff for mobile devices too). Every second an image or an entire layout loads longer could mean the loss of a customer or reader, keep that in mind.
As you can see, the use is extremely simple (for more advanced functions check the man page) and the file size is decreased a fair amount of KB.
Comparsion:
original file: sitr.png, size: 960KB
pngcrushed file: sitr_small.png, size: 880KB
8.5% further compression
I also noticed a lot heavier compression at the preview image for the little JavaScript clock.
Download:
Linux: through your packet manager (Debian likes: apt-get install pngcrush)
(This is me, still wearing the make-up from the shooting today, had to put a little goth element in it )
Today I slept over a little and we were doing HTML basics, so I skipped my class and went straight to my photoshoot for my first assignment in my design class. I’m very thankful that Xenia gave me a hand and took the photos for me. Afterwards of course the post-work, melting the photographies together using layer masks and adding the elements for the rest of the cover. I’m getting along with Photoshop pretty well, but it’s a little hard to get along with the keybindings, that differ a lot from the GIMP.
Click the image to see them full-size on deviantART:
In their known loud and powerful manner Disturbed has released a single with an extremely touching video for the song Another Way To Die. The video was directed by Robert Schober. The album Asylum has been released 4 days ago and according to MTV it’s selling perfectly.
Both song and video give attention to global warning and how we treat the world we live in, an important message, that Disturbed is not the first to deliver, but that is packed into this song wonderfully.
Disturbed – Another Way To Die:
The time bomb is ticking
and no one is listening
Our future is fading
Is there any hope we’ll survive?
Still, we ravage the world that we love
And the millions cry out to be saved
Our endless maniacal appetite
Left us with another way to die
Today we started using Photoshop and doing some simple tasks with it. It wasn’t that hard, but a little disturbing that my books have not arrived yet. Most people around had their troubles making the Mac do what they wanted it too pretty humorous. Wel also got our first assignment today, and I’m totally excited about realising it Really have to jump into the Adobe stuff to at least be able to do what I so far learned in Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, Blender and various more. I’ll install Gimp, just in case something is bugging me too much. So far “how to do $keyword in Photoshop CS5″ is my favourite google query. The woman (actually it’s not to bring the gender up for discussion, just to give further details) teaching us in Design is really kind, she’s just very busy and I guess I came up with some very deep or tricky questions today, but she’s helping anyways. It’s her first year, so I hope I soon can assist helping the people not really into this right now.
I also got my tablet working with some drivers that actually shouldn’t be used with it. I use a Trust TB-6300 and got these drivers for a “Slimline Design Tablet for Mac”. Well, who am I to care, it works
The first day at NoMA actually was pretty nice. We all introduced ourselves and had some formal stuff organized.
We’re three groups of ca 20 students each. There’s two groups with danish student and an international group. We were told what we had to learn in the first semester and that we should complain or work on other skills if we already knew the topics. At 12:00 the ones who had ordered the MacBooks fetched them and signed the paper. One of the teachers sounded a lot like an Apple fan boy, describing this moment as life-changing. I was very close to telling, that I see it as a tool and it for me it is the lesser of two evils. I’ve just flapped it open and I am writing this in the main building.
I guess I’ll have plenty to do the next days, diving into the Adobe Creative Suite CS5 before we take off for camping with all of us on Thursday and Friday. I’m really looking forward to the lessons, because we were already told, that we would get heavier tasks if we were ahead on something. Awesome! Now everybody laugh at me, I bought a MacBook Pro, specs: 15” core i5, 2,4 ghz/4gb/320gb/hdg/geforce
It really is the LESSER of two evils, because I have not planned to go back to Windows after all these years, but the Creative Suite, which is industries standard, wont really run on Linux (thanks Adobe, you really really lazy, greedy people). I guess I’ll be happier on a Unix-like System, than on Redmonds ball of garbage It’s performing well so far, but I’m still looking for a Chromium build for MacOS and get used to the (ridiculous) key bindings
)
pretty humorous. Wel also got our first assignment today, and I’m totally excited about realising it 
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