New Tee-Shirts for LUG Members?

Design 1It has been a while since we released any new "Cool Gear". I decided to work with some images from one of my favorite Flash animation videos. If you have ever been to a BozemanLUG or a BillingsLUG meeting in the past 5 years, you'll probably be familiar with it since we often play it at meetings: Switch to Linux.

A Little History

I'm not exactly sure when Chris Hill first created ubergeek.tv but he posted the "Switch to Linux" video in 2003. What is this switch to Linux stuff? Well, at the time Apple was running a bunch of "Switcher" ads. Of course Apple was doing back then what they do today with iPhone and iPod ads... they spend tens of millions of dollars for media buys and run their ads over and over until you just want to scream. Thank goodness for TiVo and other DVRs that let you skip the commercials! I believe if we did the same with Linux oriented stuff, we'd get just as much market saturation as Apple is, but that's another topic.

Anyway, Chris created the "Switch to Linux" video as a sort of parody of the Apple Switcher ads. Of course, since that was 7 or more years ago, the young folks of today have no idea what it's about. Chris has a number of entertaining creations at his website so be sure to check them out if you haven't already.

Design 2Chris Said Yes

I emailed Chris Hill and asked him if he would consider allowing me to use images from his flash animation for some tee-shirts for our LUGs. He agreed and said I didn't even need to include a blurb giving him credit... although now that I think about it, I should add it anyway. I'm attaching the images to this post for anyone who wants to alter them.

How They Were Made

Basically, I was on a computer with a fairly high resolution (1680x1050) and I had my browser window maximized. Then I used ksnapshot to take some screenshots while the video was playing. Then I cropped the images and did some cleanup and combining of multiple images (for those images that pan across the screen during the video) with GIMP. Then I imported the images into Inkscape (v 0.48 which includes the ability to embed the bitmaps) and did some additional editing until I had the final result... which I saved as both an .svg file and a .png file.

I tried using the "Path -> Trace Bitmap..." feature in Inkscape but decided that I liked the bitmaps better than the vector traces. One thing I don't like about bitmap traces in Inkscape is that they end up being a group of layered objects, each a different color. They look fairly good but I have yet to figure out a way to merge the layers together and sometimes I accidentally ungroup the object which tends to make a mess.

Get Some!

Anyone who has the desire can take the images that are attached and use them, or capture their own... and then make their own tee-shirts, etc. Or if you don't want to put in any effort and just want to order a tee-shirt, you can do so here:
http://www.cafepress.com/kidtrans/2122498.