How to: Make an animated GIF from a video
by Dave Johnson
February
22
2009
Making an animated gif is not as hard as it looks to do this you’re going to need a few things. The first thing you’re going to need is Photoshop. In my tutorial I’ll be using Photoshop CS4. Next you’re going to need a video of some sort and you’re going to need QuickTime player for testing purposes. Also some Photoshop knoledge would be helpful.
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1. You’re going to need to find out if your video will play in QuickTime. Why you ask? Well Photoshop uses QuickTime as its video player if your video won’t play in QuickTime then you may need a codec for it or the file might be a proprietary format (i.e., avi, wmp). In that case you will most likely need to convert the video to a .mov. I’ll explain how to do that in a later post. (more…)
Belarc Advisor
by Dave Johnson
November
14
2008
Do you often wounder what hardware your computer has in it? Do you have your windows CD key just in case you have to reinstall it? For you computer geeks, do you often wounder what bios your running or if you have all you windows updates installed? Well I found Belarc Advisor. It’s a free program you can download and it can tell you almost anything that you want to know about your computer. The first time I used it I was shocked the first time I saw the report. Belarc Advisor knew more about my computer then I did.
Individually you can find most of the information in different places on your PC, but Belarc Advisor scans your computer and throws it all into on report. The report will tell you what bios version you have, what hardware you have installed including your motherboard, hard drives, some software with CD keys, and what windows updates you have installed.
So if you want an all in one status report of your computer, I suggest you check out Belarc Advisor. for all you mac lovers out there, you’re out of luck Belarc Advisor only runs on windows.
John’s Background Switcher
by Dave Johnson
November
10
2008
Alright time to talk tech. A few weeks ago I found a nifty little program called John’s Background Switcher At first I thought it would be another junky thing installed on my computer. This little program has so many useful features. John’s Background Switcher will automatically change your background in minutes, hours, or days, but the best thing that John’s Background Switcher has going for it is the integration of using photos from Flickr, Smugmug, Picasa, and many others. The feature I’m using right now is the folder option. I have a folder with 10 or so images in it and every hour John’s Background Switcher will change it for me.
Pros:
- You can pick from Flickr, Picasa, Sumgmug, or a file on your computer.
- You won’t ever have to go in and change your back ground again.
- Stays out of the way and is not a system hog.
Cons:
- Well if you chose to go with a picture website then some of them don’t let you select a specific user.
- Using a search term like “mountain biking” can bring up pictures of people you don’t know. This would make it kind of weird to work on your computer and see a background of a bunch of people you don’t know.
- The settings aren’t that easy to understand. Sometimes I don’t know what a selected option is going to do.
If you spend alot of time on your computer then you know how boring backgrounds can get. This will keep you fresh with something new to look at everyday and won’t take time out of your day to go out and find pictures. So if you ever get bored of your background Check out John’s Background Switcher, and spice up your desktop.