I'm afraid I won't be able to post here (or on my tumblelog) very often for a while, as we don't have internet access at the moment. I'll post immediately when we do. :(

My New Tumblelog!

Why didn't anyone tell me about this before? lol

Tumblr is a neat little blogging service that lets you do much more than just blog. It allows you to add subscriptions to your other accounts (think Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, other blogging counts, etc, etc), allowing you to have a very active blog very easily.

http://ntg.tumblr.com/

Why YOU should get on StumbleUpon! \:D/

How to make Web 2.0 Style Logos with Only Freeware Tools

What You Will Need:

The Font Thing

Inkscape

Gimp

A few Web 2.0 style fonts

Reflection.js

Step One – The Fonts

There are many websites offering free fonts. Below are just a few:

1001Fonts.com

PixelFonts

9800FreeFonts

fonts.com

SearchFreeFonts.com

Fontica

Fonts500

dafont.com

better fonts

1001FreeFonts

urbanfonts

If those sites just aren’t cutting it, a simple Google search will reveal many, many more.

Step Two – Choosing Your Font

Screenshot

After you've downloaded an undefined number of good web 2.0 fonts, you need a good way to figure out just which one you're going to use. Don't use Word or the Windows font folder for this! You'll be there all day. Download the small, simple utility "The Font Thing" (link above) for easy, painless font browsing.

Step Three – The Color

Screenshot

Once you've chosen your font(s), go fire up Inkscape, zoom into 100%, choose the "text" tool, type out your name, press the color settings button, and add a nice gradient, with dark on the bottom and a lighter shade on the top. Don't be afraid. Experiment with the color and lightness, with the text size and wording, with caps or no caps (or a combination), and with even the font.

Step Four – Export as PNG

Screenshot

First, select all your text by dragging a box around it. Than, go to the "File" menu, and press "Export Bitmap…." Choose your destination folder, make sure it's set to export "selection," and press "export." Only press it once, lol.

Step Five – The Nice Shiny Look

Screenshot

Now that you have your beveled text png'd, browse over to it and open it using the Gimp. Use the Circle Selection tool to get a nice rounded selection about one third to half way from the bottom of your logo. Once you have achieved a desired selection, press the "adjust hue and saturation" button, click on your text inside the selection, and click to the left of the lightness slider three times so that the lightness slider "jumps" to the left three times. The box with the up/down arrows beside the slider should say "-30." Press "Ok." For those of you who do not have this button set to appear in the main Gimp window, you can access it via "tools > color tools > hue saturation" in the "tools" menu of your editing window.

What we've got so far

Step Six – The Nice Shiny Table Look

What we've got so far is ok, but we want to make it look really snazzy. Head on over and download the "reflection.js" javascript and install it on your website as detailed in it's readme file. After inserting your picture into your website, give it the class="reflect" attribute, and, tada!, you've got a pretty nice web 2.0 logo if I do say so myself, all without paying a cent. To download my finished product, please click here.

Finished Product

So I logged into the internet this morning only to find in my StumbleUpon inbox, to my great surprise, a message from a friendly fellow stumbler informing me that she had just submitted my personal website to the StumbleUpon database. Wow! I'm going to have to post more in my blog with such nice people browsing the StumbleUpon universes! So, there you have it. Thank "TheJunky'sWife" for doing her part to breath some life back into this blog. :)

*hurriedly goes off to prepare some more posts*