Category: Web tips and tricks

I’ve been working with some web images, and decided to have a little fun to learn how to use Gimp and InkScape better.  So I took a picture of my cat after she jumped into a tiny cardboard box.   Somehow she defied the laws of physics getting into that thing. After ‘photoshopping’ her several different backgrounds she really defied the laws of physics (and nature).  I used Gimp to remove the background of the photo, then superimposed her in interesting places! Here is the original image:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After taking the image, I opened it in GIMP and started removing the background.  To do this, grab the magic wand tool and select an object in the background that you want to disappear, then choose “Layer | transparency | add alpha channel”.  Hit delete after each selection to remove it.   Keep working until all the background is gone, then clean up by selecting the background with the box tool or lasso tool and hitting ‘delete’ on the keyboard.   You should end up with only the object you want, and a checkerboard background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the fun begins.   Select an image from the internet that you want to use for your background and copy it.  (In Chrome, just right click and choose ‘copy image’).  Then open Gimp, and select file | create | from clipboard.   This builds a new Gimp canvas that matches the image you copied earlier.

Now go to your image with no background (in my case, the cat in a box) and select it with the Rectangle select tool and copy it.  Now go to your background image and paste it in.   You may have to resize your image to match, do this by going to the menu and choosing layer | scale layer…

Below are some fun images I created.  It’s a great exercise in creativity and fun!  Some of the images I used the ‘eraser’ tool to cut off parts of the bottom of the box to get a better perspective. I also copied and pasted a few nearby parts of the image to make it look a little better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had to flip Smokey horizontally to get the right look on this one..  🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and finally, a little fun with Bo Pelini and his love for cats….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have fun with it!

 

IP Chicken (www.ipchicken.com) is a website that will display the IP address of your computer, tablet or phone. While it is very popular, there are actually several useful websites out there that show you your IP address. This can come in handy when you are behind a firewall or router, and need to know the outside, NAT’d IP address. Just browse to the site (www.ipweasel.com, www.ipkitten.com or www.ipchicken.com–pick your animal, there are lots out there) and up pops your ip address and browser information. Did you ever wonder how that works and if you  could ever build a cool website like that!??  Well, it’s a basic PHP script that pulls the information from your client when you are using your browser.

 

Here’s an example:

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sweet, huh?
You can put some very simple code in your html site (or in this case WordPress) that makes your visitors IP address and information show on the page or post.
I used a WordPress plugin called “Shortcut Exec PHP” to allow the code to run in a post. You can also display it in a wordpress widget, but it requires an additional plugin.
Put the following code in your post:

Here is a txt version for copying and pasting

Of course, you will want to tweak the code, add some relevant content  and make the site look somewhat interesting, but its a good start.  IP Chicken has owned the IP address finding market for a long time, and now that even Google will tell you your IP address (just type “ip address” in your search bar) the site may be losing some of it’s popularity.  Even so it would be hard to compete with the name-brand, but it’s a fun nerdy project anyway!

sources: www.ipchicken.com