Steve’s Software Trek

My daughter Anna got a book in December - How to Draw Fairies. I like to draw, so I studied it and began drawing a fairy using Inkscape. Drawing scalable vector art that can be filled is different than sketching. After I got the sketching finished, I had to redraw most of it to make it fillable so that I could add colors.

I presented my handiwork to Anna. She told me that Tinkerbell’s wings were more blue, she needed a ribbon in her hair, and she had tassles or balls on her shoes. I guess I missed a few critical details. So back to the drawing board I went.

I had hoped to add this little gem to Tux Paint, but I am not sure that I can since Tinkerbell is a Disney trademark image.

I was interested in creating a favicon.ico file in Ubuntu Linux for a new website that I helped create. I recalled having used KIconEdit to do it before. I installed KIconEdit and used that to create the icon. However, KIconEdit did not have any options to save as favicon.ico. I turned to the internet for help.

Most of the information gleened by Google search said to save the file as a 16×16 pixel PNG file, and use one of the icon command line tools to convert it to the favicon.ico format. So I looked in apt-get cache to see if any icon tools were available.

$ apt-cache search favicon
icoutils - Create and extract MS Windows icons and cursors

Yeah! That looked promising. So I install icoutils using apt-get.

$ sudo apt-get install icoutils

Wow! That was easy! Now how do I use this tool? Well, man pages usually help.

$ man icoutils
No manual entry for icoutils

Bummer! Well, maybe the package will give me some clues.

$ apt-cache show icoutils
Package: icoutils
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: graphics
Installed-Size: 172
Maintainer: Colin Watson
Architecture: i386
Version: 0.25.0-1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.4-1), libpng12-0 (>= 1.2.8rel), zlib1g (>= 1:1.2.1), perl, libwww-perl
Suggests: libterm-readline-gnu-perl | libterm-readline-perl-perl
Description: Create and extract MS Windows icons and cursors
Icoutils is a set of programs that deal with MS Windows icons and cursors. Resources such as icons and cursors can be extracted from MS Windows executable and library files with "wrestool". Conversion of these files to and from PNG images is done with "icotool". "extresso" automates these tasks with the help of special resource scripts.
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This package can be used to create "favicon.ico" files for web sites.

Aha! I could potentially use icotool to convert the PNG icon to a favicon. icotool had both a man page and a --help option. I used icotool on the command line to convert my PNG file.

$ icotool -o favicon.ico -c favicon.png

I also used The GIMP image tool to convert a JPEG scan of my daughter Mary Elizabeth’s footprints to a PNG. I opened the image, scaled it to 16×16 pixels, and saved it as favicon.png. I used icotool to convert the PNG file to a favicon.ico file. I uploaded the favicon.ico file to her memorial website anencephaly.net.

I helped create an Autism support group website several months ago. I needed some Autism related clipart and tried to find some of the colorful jigsaw puzzle pieces that are often found on Autism related sites and accessories. I didn’t find any that were suitable or in the public domain and decided to create my own. I found a single puzzle piece on the OpenClipart website. The OpenClipart website has lots of public domain clipart in SVG format.

Using Inkscape, a free and open source graphics illustration application, I fit four single puzzle pieces together and colored them. Then I fit those four pieces together until I had a small mat of puzzle pieces. I tried to match the color scheme with an Autism ribbon that I had seen. I exported the small mat into PNG format. I used the GIMP, a free and open source image manipulation tool, to add several of these together. I ended up with an autism puzzle background that I could create shapes or words in using the GIMP and masks.

I never did use the words on the website. I did use the small four puzzle piece on the website. The Autism puzzle piece also seems to be a popular search term for that site.