Guus Bosman.nl | Guus Bosman.nl

Scripting in Paint Shop Pro

Sun, 03/22/2009 - 4:51pm

Year overview logo's. This weekend I automated part of the process to create a logo for our year overviews.

To create a logo for a year overviews, I manually merge the 12 selected pictures for each year and create a single paint shop pro file of them. Then, I add the text "Year Overview" and the year to them, and of course I want every year overview to have exactly the same logo (with different pictures). Positioning the text, making sure the fonts and colors match, and getting the drop shadow the same is not trivial -- especially since there is typically at least a one year gap between the creation time of these images.

I played with the scripting tools in Paint Shop Pro and it's really quite powerful -- it has scripting engine based on Python and has some pretty cool features such as getting user input (I ask the user for which year this overview is, for example). (Download the script).

Automating this took me a while but now I have 3 very consistent logo's for 2006, 2007 and 2008, and in future years it will be much less daunting to create a new logo to match the previous' years. Now if only writing the text was as easy as that!

Read more about Scripting in Paint Shop Pro
Log in to post comments

Great Human Race 2009

Sat, 03/21/2009 - 2:11pm

Great Human Race 2009. This morning I ran my first race of the season, a 5k in Durham called the Great Human Race. It's a charity run to raise funds for local charities, and there was a very friendly atmosphere.

Next week is my first big race, the Raleigh Rocks half marathon, so this was a nice way to get back in the rhythm. My result was 24:55, about a minute faster than my previous best. So even though I'm getting old I can still keep up!

For the first time in a week the weather was nice. The endless rain has stopped and while it was cold at 8.00 am, when the race started the sun had come out and it was perfect running weather. The race was well organized. It has a clear emphasis on the charity element. There were no mile markers but at mile 2 a volunteer called out the intermediate times, which was very helpful (mine was 17:44).

Unknown herb

Thu, 03/19/2009 - 8:36pm

Unknown plant. A few months ago I planted various herbs. Sadly, most of them died, but two plants survived.

Last weekend I tried one of the basil plants, and I took a bite from its leaves.

Well, it turned out that it wasn't basil. Now I'm not sure what plant it is.

Cross country running

Thu, 03/12/2009 - 10:09pm

I never knew what exactly "cross country running" is. Well, tonight I ran a cross country course, and I know now what it is. It was the start of the March series, a weekly run organized by NCRC at the Cary Academy, not too far from my work.

Cross country is "a sport in which runners compete to complete a course over open or rough terrain. The courses used at these events may include grass, mud, woodlands, and water". There was no water in the course we ran, but it was nice varied 5k course with a few small hills and nice trails through the woods behind the Academy. My time was about 27 minutes, based on people finishing just in front of me (I need to get watch battery replaced).

These runs are fun to do, with a friendly group of people. There were about 40 runners tonight.

'Sir'

Wed, 03/11/2009 - 7:22pm

Twice in the past week a student called me 'sir'. The first time it happened, when a girl was asking how to find the Page Auditorium, I shrugged it off as a one-off incident -- perhaps she was just an overly polite person.

Last night when I went for a run I had to evade a guy who was painting graffiti under a bridge, and he said: 'oh, I'm sorry sir', without any irony.

Am I getting old?

Time for spring

Tue, 03/10/2009 - 10:03pm

Cold weather a week ago. This is a picture of the weather a week ago: we had two days of very cold weather, ice and snow. Barely a week later, it was over 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26 degrees Celsius).

On Sunday I went for a long run but I had to give up at one point because I just wasn't adjusted to the hot weather yet. A nice problem to have -- I love these temperatures. Supposedly next weekend it's getting a bit colder again, but I think that the winter is over. Daylight Savings Time is in effect now also, so the time difference with Europe is an hour less now.

Dutch shopping on St. Maarten

Wed, 03/04/2009 - 10:20pm

Bitterballen. St. Maarten provided a wonderful mixtures of French food, tropical beaches and Dutch grocery shopping.

The island was not "as Dutch" as Curacao was -- the island felt more American, and more French obviously, but there was certainly plenty of Dutch influence and the grocery stores had a lot of Dutch brands and Indonesian condiments such as ketjap and seroendeng.

A wonderful shopping experience!

Read more about Dutch shopping on St. Maarten
1 comment
Log in to post comments

Tickets for A Prairie Home Companion

Tue, 03/03/2009 - 10:05pm

Yesterday I bought two tickets for A Prairie Home Companion, a live radio show that will be in Durham in May.

I started listening to A Prairie Home Companion when we moved to North Carolina and got a car -- on Sundays I'd tune in to the show. It's a wonderful, mellow and friendly show and I'm looking forward to see them in action.