Bonjour! I’m back once more and the topic for tonight is graphics and art. The recommended program of the week is a great open-source application for kids named Tux Paint. Tux Paint gets its handle from Tux, the famous Linux penguin, who appears throughout the program as a kind of on-screen guide. In spite of the name and the use of the cuddly Linux mascot, Tux Paint is not exclusively a Linux program, and in fact it runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows (all versions from 95 through Vista!). Everything is designed from the ground up for ease of use. The graphics are relatively low-resolution 640x480, which is just about the right for kid-sized hands pushing a mouse with less than pixel perfection. There are the usual paint tools, various brushes, a bright palette, and some cool special effects that can be applied. My favorite feature is the rubber stamps, which are images that can be pasted anywhere on the screen. The default stamp set features Tux the penguin in various poses, but you can replace Tux with your own images. There’s a lot of coolness here and it’s free, with the one caution being that it’s not quite as slick as a commercial program. My 7- year-old nephew promptly figured out how to use the rubber stamps and quickly crafted a short story starring Tux. Give it a go, or better yet have your kids test drive it and let me know what you think! You can read the Wikipedia article about Tux Paint here.
The results of last week’s blog tag are in. Max and Ben expressed an interest in continuing the chain, Claire declined politely, AlvinZ is closing his blog (bummer), and Disaster Gurl hasn’t responded yet.
This week’s picture was created using POV-Ray for Windows.
Click on the picture to get a full-sized view
The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.
Right click on a loop name to download it.
----- Bass 1 ----- Bass 2 ----- Bass 3 -----
----- Drums 1 ----- Drums 2 ----- Drums 3 ----- Drums 4 -----
----- Synth 1 ----- Synth 2 -----
The website of the week is a gallery of artworks by a guy called Wizard. It’s amazing stuff and he uses one of my favorite art programs, Project Dogwaffle.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
