If you read through part of my previous tutorial on creating light curtains in GiMP, you may be stuck on getting the flame plugin to work properly. Here’s a brief article on what you’ll need to do.

No doubt you’ve seen the Windows Vista and Windows 7 backdrops. Chances are, you’ve also wanted a fast (and cheap) way of putting something together that looks pretty similar to the originals. Plus, it makes for a great way to break up a rather blank looking background!

As it turns out, there’s a really easy way to do it. Best of all? It’s cheap. Here’s a sample that I made using the GiMP–a free, open source image manipulation program–and it looks pretty sweet:

This will be the first installment in a two part series of setuptools-related tutorials. In this tutorial, I explore in detail important aspects of setuptools, setup.py directives, and tips and tricks to getting started. In the next tutorial, I will provide step-by-step instructions on creating a simple project from the ground-up and demonstrate how setuptools can be used to make packaging and installing it a breeze. The second part will essentially be a hands-on rehash of the information covered here, so you may wish to read this post in detail before diving in to the next part.