If you enjoy doing volunteer work, like I do, you might be interested in a new web site designed to make it easy for volunteers to find organizations that can use help. The site is: http://www.allforgood.org
It is being managed and supported by Google.
Ten years ago today, I entered the world of online gaming for the first time, with my purchase of Everquest. I decided to go back and take another look at the game to see how it looks today.
One application I use is the GIMP. It’s a graphics editing program.
As a semi-professional photographer, I’m well aware that the free, Open Source GIMP application lags far behind Adobe Photoshop. The two biggest problems with GIMP are its lack of color management and support of only 8 bits per channel of color. Many complain about the user interface as well, though I’ve actually found GIMP to be just as usable once you get to know it.
While GIMP has serious shortcomings, I will say that I know professional photographers who do not use a color managed workflow and who shoot in JPG instead of RAW, and thus only get 8 bit color out of the camera. In addition, if your eventual output is the web, you’re going to drop down to 8 bit color anyway. So, clearly, it is possible to use GIMP to serve some useful purposes even as a professional.
One way to enhance your GIMP workflow is to add a set of over one hundred additional effects to it in a package called GIMP FX Foundry. Download the file and place it in the same directory as your other scripts and you’re good to go.
If you are getting an error like the one below in your ASP.Net application when trying to open an Excel or Access file, you may need to reset IIS.
System.Data.OleDb.OleDbException: Unspecified error
at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnectionInternal..ctor(OleDbConnectionString constr, OleDbConnection connection) at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnectionFactory.CreateConnection(DbConnectionOptions options, Object poolGroupProviderInfo, DbConnectionPool pool, DbConnection owningObject) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.CreateNonPooledConnection(DbConnection owningConnection, DbConnectionPoolGroup poolGroup) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory) at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection.Open() at
To reset IIS:
My situation was that I had code that had previously worked, but it just stopped working one day with the error mentioned above.
Hope this helps.
Previously, I have written about eyeOS which is an open source cloud computing platform. I’ve been using it for close to a year. It has some nice features, but it has been frustrating that is doesn’t have full support for my preferred web browser (Opera).
