Martin Geisler Online

I’ve put up a tutorial on PHP. It’s not quite finished, but I hope that you’ll be able to use what is already there.

I plan to expand it later — please mail me if you find anything that needs to be explained, corrections etc…

I’ve just finished reading The Halloween Documents, found at OpenSource.Org. Although they are almost two years old, I haven’t read them before now — what a mistake. They provides a deep insight into the (sinister) way Microsoft thinks.

They are also somewhat funny, because by describing all the virtues of Linux, they have a really hard time of defending Windows. I found the story “Halloween IV: When Software Things Were Rotten“ to be very funny, you really ought to read it!

I’m upgrading my computer to a 800 MHz AMD Athlon. This fine processor will run on an Asus A7V motherboard equipped with 256 MB PC133 RAM.

I know… it’s going to be a monster machine :-) And it gets even better when my new 21″ monitor arrives… It will be perfect for Photo-Paint 9, which takes up a lot of system resources. But it will also give GIMPS an extra boost.

I’ve just got home after 13 hours at work… This means that I’m rather tired and should be sleeping in my bed instead of posting news on my homepage.

The answer to the above question is mostly yes and a little bit no. Let me explain.

I like Photo-Paint 9 very much. Although I’ve learned to use The Gimp, I’ve never felt truly comfortably when using it. That would probably have been different if I’ve had been using Adobe Photoshop, which have been used heavily in the development of GymNet and StudenterNet (both Danish sites). I must say that I’m impressed with the number of cool effect there are in Photoshop — it’s amazing what you can make with these filters and effects.

But lets get back to Photo-Paint 9. When I first started it under Linux I instantly felt at home. Everything was just right. This is due to the fact that Corel have managed to keep the Windows-look when they ported Photo-Paint 9 to Linux. It’s kind of a funny experience — you have a program where everything except the windowborder looks like it does under Windows.

The program also works in exactly the same way — the tools are the same, the menus are the same, the whole thing about layers, masks and so on are the same. I think Corel has done a really good job of making sure that the user can get straight to work — you don’t have to start learning who to use the program, you just use it.

With all these nice words about Photo-Paint 9 — what’s the catch? Simple: system resources. When Corel ported Photo-Paint 9 they kind of cheated. Instead of rewriting all the code for Linux, they use Wine as an emulator. This means that they can ship their code more quickly, but it also means that I use about 50% of CPU when I move the mouse in Photo-Paint 9! That’s probably partly because Photo-Paint 9 have these fine cursors that resembles the current tool — but there is no way you can justify using 225MHz to move the mouse!

So, to sum it all up: The good news is that Photo-Paint 9 now runs under Linux and that it is a wonderful, full-featured program. The bad news is that it need a lot of power. I had a chance of trying it on a 700MHz Pentium III, and that was much better. But still, it’s good to be home :-)