Nothing To Lose

Q. What does this PHP code represent?

<?php

$array = array(’hope’,'hope’,'hope’,'hope’,'hope’,'hope’,'hope’,'hope’,'hope’,'hope’);

?>

Ans: Its array (a ray) of hope

When you start using GIMP first question comes to your mind is how do i create a circle, ellipse etc in GIMP.

There is no default tool to do the same, but we can achive the same using the stroke path option.

Follow the steps and have fun.

1. Select the “Ellipse Select Tool” from the tool box and create a selection ellipse or circle, (using shift and control you can get different effects)	Circle Selection
2. From “Edit” menu select “Stroke Selection“. Next form the dialouge box select “Stroke With Paint Brush” and click on Stroke.	Stroke Type Selection
3. Your Circle is ready.	Stroked Selection

You can have different looking circles if you decide to use different Brush

Circle Stroked with calligraphy brush

Circle stroked with X brush

Cricle stroked with Square Brush

Enjoy!!!!!

Had been working with wordpress (2.8.1) lately for some web development work. Now there were some section of the site which are sub pages of some parent page again which are sub pages of some category.

lets say you have we have a scenario like this
Products is the main category. Then it has two sub categories say Laptops and Desktops
And Laptops has sub categories 14 inches, 17 inches
Desktops have sub categories Home, Office, Game Station.

When the user browses to a page say Game Station you want to display on the title bar:

Website Name » Products
Website Name » Products » Desktops
Website Name » Products » Desktops » Game Station
or
Website Name » Products » Laptops
etc
I will assume that you already know how to have pages arranged in categories and subcategories in wordpress.

What we need is to do is use few available inbuilt functions of wordpress

1. get_post_ancestors() Read more..

this one get the ancestor of the given page/post id

2. the_ID() Read More..

this get you the current post id

3. get_post() Read More

gets the info of a given post id. Returns an object.

4. the_title()

returns the name of current page.

So here is the code.

Open the header.php (from the selected theme)

and add the following between the <title> and </title>

<title> Website Name: &raquo
<?php
$postsarray = (get_post_ancestors(the_ID()));
krsort($postsarray);
foreach($postsarray as $key=>$postid)
{
$post_ids = get_post($postid);
$title = $post_ids->post_title;
echo “$title &raquo “;
}
the_title();
?>
</title>

This will generate the title with the page and parent categories automatically.

Here is what is happening.

You can directly write you website name i.e hard code it, line

$postsarray = (get_post_ancestors(the_ID()));

get_post_ancestors() returns an indexed array containing the list of all the parent categories. Say if the current page is ‘Game Station’ then my array $postarray will be link (0=>’127′, 1=>’140′). We have used the function the_ID() inside the get_post_ancestors() so that the page id is automatically given accordingly to the current page. Note that the array contains the post id and not the name.

krsort($postsarray);

Since the array is from top category to lower we reverse sort it on the keys.

foreach($postsarray as $postid)
{
$post_ids = get_post($postid);
$title = $post_ids->post_title;
echo “$title &raquo “;
}

The foreach loop picks every post id which we give to a function get_post(), which returns a object. Here the object is in $post_ids. The object contains loads of info about the post, but we are only interested in the title. So $post_ids->post_title; returns the name of the currently created objects. We store this in $tilte;

echo “$title &raquo “;

This line get the categories displayed. Of course parent first.

the_title();

It is used here since the above functionality only returns the ancestors, so to display the name of the current page we use the_title() function.

If you want to display the name of you blog name instead of you website. replace ‘Website Name’ with <?php bloginfo(’name’) ?>
Well that is it for now.

It has been a long time since I have posted a GIMP tutorial. So here is one more Which provide a Old rubber stamp effect in some very simple steps. So here we go.

Start with a blank canvas with white background. Write some text which you want to work as your ’stamp’ Use some font which is bold. Also select the text color which will act as your ink color.	Stamp Text
Add a transparency layer above the text layer. Press Ctrl+L to invoke the layer dialog box, and add a layer using transparency option. Draw a selection around the text you have just written.	rectangular selection on the transparent layer
Goto edit stroke selection — use a line thickness around 5 to 6 px.	stamp text with rectangular boundary
Working on the same layer use the contiguous selection tool and click the rectangle to select that area only.	Selected outer border
Goto Filter — noise — pick. In its dialog box increase the randomize to around 25% and repeat to around 40.	outer boundry has be distorted
Now switch to the layer the stamp text (press ctrl+l and then click on the text layer), select the text using contiguous selection (with shift selected) click on all the alphabets of you stamp text. Alternatively you can use select by color tool also.	text selected
repeat the pick filter as above, but decrease the randomize to 10% and repeat to only 20. merge the layers if required.	finally Old stamp
Rotate the image if required. I have kept a white background, if you want to use this image to be superimposed on other pages etc.. make sure you work on two transparency layers for text and box, and then remove the the white background layer.	Final old stamp.. Stamped
Adding Vinay’s suggestion here, idea is to show that the stamp was pressed unevenly. To do that same, take the final image, select Gradient Fill tool, set the options: Opacity to around 50%, Mode to color erase, Gradient Foreground to Transparent, Shape to Linear. Then just click and drag the effect from one of the corners to other end (diagonally). This will cover the image with some white, giving some side of the ink to be faded. The effect looks like the ink is unevenly placed.	Stamp with uneven ink effect