In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to turn this:

Into this:

You’ll see (and hopefully try) the same technique I used on the background stencil images for my blog. Admittedly, this tutorial doesn’t create something exactly like the images I have, because I’ve aimed to show you how you can create text that appears water-stained or scratched and worn. The techniques are almost identical; however, you’ll want to avoid applying the scratched effect if you’re aiming for a water-stained appearance.

Difficulty: Intermediate

Read more…

I’ve been busy! As a result, I haven’t a lot of links to share this week.

However, I did run into a pretty amazing German group. They really like bagpipes–my favorite! Check out some of their performances, specifically Kalifenzorn, Caput Draconis, and Chaos.

Programming

I’ve got another link fresh from the TurboGears mailing list on metaclasses in Python and how to avoid the non-strict error.

Carlos Oliveira, PhD, has a really great series on “how to become a better programmer in 30 days.” It’s a very worthwhile read for anyone, no matter your skill level.

Updates May 28th:
This sort of worries me, but there’s a group of people re-implementing PHP in JavaScript. I wish I were kidding.

I run Gentoo on my desktop. It lives on a separate drive, and I use it from time to time whenever I have Linux-related work to do. Recently, though, the install has been feeling its age and certain things have required extensive changes to the base system (specifically new versions of device-mapper).

This post is a warning to anyone wishing to switch to baselayout-2:

MAKE SURE YOUR SYSTEM IS UPDATED BEFORE MIGRATING! Read more…