darkness

So I told some people I’d write here what I got. I don’t mean to brag, but people are interested so I figured I’d make a single point of reference. Also I asked for some stuff I wasn’t sure I’d like or not, so I’ll be able to inform people how I like the toys I thought I might like.

I’m only going to hit some of the highlights of what I got. It’s not necessary to rattle off the whole list. I’ll preface it by saying I appreciate and enjoy every present I got, and thank you to all who gave them to me.

My booty this year included:

• New satchel. This one is from Eddie Bauer. I can’t find a link to it online, and I don’t even remember what it was called. It’s black, nylon or polyester or something like that (i.e., not leather). It has a zippered pocket on the front and back and two on top. Inside the front pockets are some compartments. There is an internal zipped pocket in one of the larger compartments. This is a much bigger satchel than my previous bag IMHO, though others think it won’t be a problem. A chief concern of mine is the large bottom with feet on it. It’s got some sort of rigid support in it to keep it mostly spread out. The zippers are also causing some problems, getting caught and not zipping and such. I think I’ve worked around that. I’ll have to think on this bag more. I’m going to the mall later today so I might have to consider other Eddie Bauer bags then. (Their web site has one or two promising-looking ones.)

• CDs. I asked for a bunch of CDs from CD Baby and I think I got them all. Here’s the run-down:

  • Kleckley Sweet, Minivan Killed the Station Wagon

  • The Dinnermints, Love Letters to Our Future Selves

  • Full Blown Kirk, Zero Day

  • Jabberpony, So Far

  • Outloud Dreamer, Drink the Sky

  • Gary Jules, Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets

  • Merrick, Drive Around a Lot Hard and Fast Driving Club

  • Moonraker, Nada Brahma

  • Stars of Stage and Screen, Dying to Meet You

  • 100 Watt Smile, 100 Watt Smile

  • Bird York, Bird York

  So far I think Moonraker, Merrick, and The Dinnermints are definite favorites. Bird York’s voice sounds like Fiona Apple. I’d link all those on CD Baby, but that’d be a big pain for me. Go there yourself.

• Gerber Multi-Plier 600 Deluxe. This is way cool. You can fling the pliers out easily with a flick of the wrist (after practicing for a few minutes, at least). No wrapping of the knuckles when closing them either, which was a pain with my Leatherman. Nice tools on it too, and a black nylon belt pouch with room for the tool set (screwdriver bits and a magnetic adapter). The only thing I’m a tad worried about is the longevity of the Velcro. We’ll see.

• Spyderco Endura Lightweight. This is also cool. It’s a sharp blade (I already cut myself with it) and it’s fun to flick open and closed. I know I shouldn’t be doing that, but… it’s still fun. The belt clip is stiff and hard to attach to my pocket sometimes, but I’ll get used to it.

• Garmin MapSource Metroguide. This is the US maps for my GPS. I thought I’d have to unlock specific regions and/or GPS units, but that’s apparently not the case. With this I can plot routes and waypoints on my desktop and send them from my GPS, as well as transferring from my GPS to my computer. Primarily I wanted this to load the detailed maps on to my GPS though. I also got a window mount with suction cup for using my GPS in the car, but I haven’t tested this yet (I have to clean off my windows first).

• A drill. It’s a Black & Decker drill. It looks pretty nice. I needed a drill (luckily I was able to borrow one this past weekend).

• “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” T-shirt from ThinkGeek. Remember, me == dork.

I think that sums it up well enough. I left out a bunch of stuff. I think I mostly rattled off the stuff I can see.

I happened upon Photoshop 7, so to play with my new-found toy I decided to do something I had been meaning to do for a while: make a spray to use while playing TFC.

I started out with the first page from Google, titled “Half-Life Color Logos”. This page was a good place to start, and it has some good references at the bottom. Interesting facts: Half-Life sprays are bitmaps; ideal size is basically 128×64, though apparently 256×32 will work too (according to this page); they’re 8-bit color; the last color in the index table has to be RGB(0,0,255), which signals transparency when the image is rendered in the game. The Color Logo Bible has some other good tips, and some real explicit instructions — though not for Photoshop. They also mention a tool (which is probably better than what’s on the first page) called Wally. I can attest that its Half-Life logo creation wizard is way easy.

I decided to make a picture of a cow, kind of coming out of an elliptical frame. You can see the end result in some in-game shots of me going spray-happy. I found a picture of a cow using Google Images. I cropped the picture down to just the part I wanted to use, but didn’t do any resizing. Then I added in the frame with layers, etc., and generally got the picture looking the way I wanted the end result to look. I did all this without changing the color mode in the image nor the size.

After I had the image complete and ready to be made in to a spray, I saved it to a PSD file so I could always come back and modify it in the original size/color, with layers, etc. Then I selected Image->Image Size. I had previously switched my default measurement mode to pixels, so it showed me the width and height in pixels. I chose the smallest of the two dimensions and changed that dimension to 64, which is the smallest of 128×64. In my case, I changed the width to 64. The height was then less than 128. I guess that, for some images, this could land you with a dimension still larger than 128. Keep changing dimensions to 64 or less until you’ve got it within a 128×64 (or 64×128) size. Don’t worry if it’s less than 128×64 in either or both dimensions: we’ll fix that next. Note that in the Image Size dialog height and width are automatically kept proportional (assuming your “Constrain Proportions” check box is checked by default like mine). When done, hit OK.

Next you have to put it into a 128×64 (or 64×128) size. Select Image->Canvas Size. Whereas Image Size might stretch or shrink the actual picture, Canvas Size just changes the size of the image, without regard for expanding or shrinking the actual image. Set the canvas size to a variation of 128×64 and click OK. You’ll notice your image stays centered, the blank part around it just grows.

At this point you’ve got your image at the right size. Now you need to convert it to indexed color. Note that my image had a transparent background which I wanted to keep. You can’t exactly save it as a “transparent color”, though; I don’t even think the Windows Bitmap format supports that. However… Photoshop will gladly save a bitmap with a transparent color, apparently, at least in indexed color mode. Which is where we’re going. (Actually, I think it adds an alpha channel to the image. Whatever.) Just for the record, if you actually have the color RGB(0,0,255) anywhere in your image, you’re going to need to change that to anything else. RGB(0,0,254) if you’d like. It doesn’t matter. (I think there’s a way to easily replace a color in an image with Photoshop, just poke around.) Go to Image->Mode->Indexed Color. If it asks if you want to flatten layers, say yes. Indexed color images can’t have layers. For palette select “Local (Adaptive)”. I haven’t experimented with this setting, actually, but I’ve heard it works the best. Make sure it says 256 for “Colors”. Change “Forced” to “None”. “Transparency” should be checked, even if your image uses no transparency. I didn’t touch the other options; they were left at their defaults. Click OK. Hopefully your image doesn’t look vastly different.

Now the tricky part which I couldn’t get without the Color Logo Bible (above): making sure that last cell in the color map is RGB(0,0,255). Go to Image->Mode->Color Table. You’ll see the colors Adobe found in your image. That last cell will be the white and grey checkered transparency pattern. Select this cell and change the colors to RGB(0,0,255). Voila, the transparency in your image is changed to blue. Neat, huh?

At this point save out to a BMP file and make note of where you saved it. Now open up Wally (to install it, BTW, I just extracted to a directory and dragged a shortcut to wally.exe in to my Sierra folder) and go to Wizard->HL Color Decal. Select your Half-Life folder, the proper game (tfc in my case), then select “File on hard drive” and point to your BMP file. Click OK and it kicks you back to the main window of Wally. At this point you have to hit save (either on the tool bar or in the file menu, presumably) and it’ll write our your pldecal.wad (I think that’s what it is named) in the proper directory and you’re ready to go.

Also for the record, impulse 201 is the command to actually spray in Half-Life (or TFC at least).

I note that you can apparently make animated logos, though they end up being very small because the size of the bitmaps (frames of the animation) must add up to more than about 12KB IIRC.

It’s 0500 and I’m tired. I’m going to go to bed now, but I promise I’ll write about Christmas and my fight with Nautilus tomorrow. Since I know you’re all twiddling about, waiting for the next exciting chapter in my life. Yeah.