The GIMP (The GNU Image Image Manipulation Program) is an open source image editor.  It’s almost a free version of Adobe’s Photoshop.  While it may look different, The GIMP is just as powerful as the expensive Photoshop.

GIMP Guru has a lot of excellent tutorials for The GIMP, but the one I have found the most helpful is Removing Red Eye with The GIMP.

You can also watch the video after the jump.

Not all of these are mine (in fact, only one is mine). But still a sweet picture!

I got to an interesting article from Slashdot yesterday about light pollution and the . The article can be read straight from The New Yorker.

It may seem strange that this last observation could have surprised anyone, but in Galileo’s time people assumed that the Milky Way must be some kind of continuous substance. It truly resembled a streak of spilled liquid—our word “galaxy” comes from the Greek for milk—and it was so bright that it cast shadows on the ground (as did Jupiter and Venus). Today, by contrast, most Americans are unable to see the Milky Way in the sky above the place where they live, and those who can see it are sometimes baffled by its name.

I think that a childhood of Boy Scouting, camping, and hunting has led me to be fascinated by the night sky. I have often laid out under the night sky and watched for shooting stars. The darkest I think I have even seen the sky was in the fall of 2004 on a class trip to Sapelo Island, a barrier island off the Georgia coast.

If you happen to be close to Athens, I think the best place to skywatch is off of Georgia Route 15, between Watkinsville and Greensboro.

Yep, that is 2 sets of UGA student tickets (mine and those of my amazing girlfriend). I’m so ready for the 2007 Georgia football season to kick off this weekend against Oklahoma State.

[Editor's Note: This is actually the first of a little series I am working on about the free and open-source software that I use. I am hoping to spread the word about these excellent programs, and enlighten everyone on the open-source movement. To start you off, head over to the Free Software Foundation page and read this explanation of the term 'free software'. After that, catch the rest of this series here.]

I recently changed my Gallery 2 installation over to a different theme (I had been using the default white theme for about 2 months). Gallery 2 is a feature-packed photo album program that is easy to use and configure (and it is open source and free as in speech). In fact, Lifehacker wrote about Gallery2 recently and the ease of installing it.
I have been using Gallery2 for 2 months now, and it is amazing software. It plugs into Wordpress easily (look in the center at the bottom of this page to see the plugin at work), and performs about 8 million other impressive feats.

Anyways, I changed the theme from the default white-and-orange look over to a new amazing look made by Pedro Gilberto (called PGtheme, look here). I am still working out the kinks and giving it the look I like. I have yet to change the left sidebar, which still contains the default information about Pedro [changed now], and I haven’t changed the ‘PedroGilberto.net’ site logo yet (although the link does lead to my install). I am trying to stay on task with finals coming up, but after studying for a while I like to work with something a little more interesting, like customizing Gallery2.

I wholeheartedly recommend Gallery2 if you want an online photo album (and want to customize it and host it yourself). Pedro’s theme is absolutely amazing. I keep finding neat little features, like the one I just noticed: the theme automatically disables the right-click to protect your images (e.g. someone can’t right-click and do a ‘Save As’).

Gallery2 is distributed under a GNU GPL (General Public License). This means that Gallery2 can be run on any number of computers, you are free to adapt Gallery2 (edit the source code), you can publish your changes (but you must distribute it under the GNU GPL terms), and best of all, it is free!