A Very Cool Midevil Castle Smashing Game

The game is Sieger and the object of the game is to smash castles to kill the guys inside, but on some of the levels there are guys with a (!) over their head and if you hurt them you will lose and have to start the level over again. It's a very fun game and takes a bit of strategy to achive a gold medal in all of the levels. If your bored try your best at some Sieger. You can also make your own levels and play levels that others have created too. It's a great game that you can keep on playing for a long time and it will always be fun and interesting.



http://cache.armorgames.com/files/games/sieger-6833.swf

Illusions

I came across this site just the other day and thought it was very cool and also interesting as for most illusions on the page there is an explanation on how it works. Below is an illusion from the site.

http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/rotate-e.html

This Image appears to move when you move either farther or closer from it.

20 Tree Houses That Will Blow Your Mind

This site i found has a collection of a bunch of tree houses that could be lived in just like a normal home but up it a tree. Some of these spectacular houses have bridges that go from tree to tree with small buildings in each tree.

http://dornob.com/20-tree-house-pictures-play-club-plans-to-big-kid-houses/

Geeky Computer Quizzes

You can test you computer skills with these quizzes found Here. Most of them are pretty easy but some can be a bit more challenging than the others though it will just depend on what you know better than others. Hope you can have fun taking some of these quizzes.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-quiz.htm

Measuring How Far Your Mouse Moves

Have you ever wondered how far you actually move your mouse in a day? There is a small program that can measure the distance that your mouse travels and it's called Mousotron and can be downloaded from here: http://www.blacksunsoftware.com/mousotron.html.

Once you have it installed and running it should look like something similar to the image below.

Mousotron main window
(you can click on the image to see a larger view)

As with many other programs you can tweak some settings. To do this you can click on the Setup button to bring up the setup window.

Setup button

Once you are in the setup window the General tab should be selected. You can change any of these settings to what you wish to use. The only setting that I have changed was the digits from 7 to 6 so that i could see the whole window on my screen.

Setup with general tab selected

Now if you move on over to the Displayed Items tab you will be able to see all of the options that you can change. What this tab does is makes it so you can customize what items are shown on the main Mousotron window. I have left all of the items checked but you can take off the items that you don't want to view.

Displayed items tab

The two other tabs don't really change any settings they just can log your mouse distance and all of the other options you have chosen to use. You can also send out a report of your results to their website. Another cool thing about this program is that when it is minimized it will the go into the system tray it can still log things and stay out of your working space when it's not needed.

Mousotron in the system tray

Well those are the main uses of this program. There really isn't a huge need to know how far you move your mouse in a day but it can be a fun task to just see how far you actually do move your mouse on a daily basis. So now go out and have fun logging your mouse distance with Mousotron.

You can also join in on the fun over at http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/measuring-mouse-distance-traveled?replies=33.

Making Bloody Letters In GIMP

Since it is getting to be around the time of Halloween you may want add some creepy text to some of you pictures or maybe just want to make something cool for Halloween. So lets get started on this project.

Just as before you will need to have GIMP installed to understand this tutorial you can get a free copy of it here: http://www.gimp.org/

OK now you will need to start up GIMP. You will then need to navigate to File > New. A window will pop up to create the size of your new image I chose 800X400 pixels but you can choose according to what you want to make.

Create New Image Window

Now you should have you new image open. Now to start off we are going to simply select the Text Tool from the GIMP menu it's the one with a big A. Then you just click on any part of the image and just type what you want. I just typed GIMP for this tutorial but you can type something else and it will work just as good and if you use all capitals it seems to look and work better.

These are the letter settings that I used


This is how mine looks like so far

Now that we have the letters done we are going round the corners of the image. To do this we are going to add a Gaussian Blur. You will need to navigate to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur. A little window will come up with the settings for the Gaussian Blur tool. Just copy the settings from the image below. Then hit OK.

You should set your Gaussian Blur to 20 pixels


Image after the Gaussian Blur

Now to you need to goto the layers tab on the GIMP window and right click on the layer with your letters and select Merge Down. Now to get the rounding effect on the letters you need to navigate to Colors > Threshold. You will then want to move the slider until your letters look rounded and bigger.

The Threshold tool is used to round the sharp corners of the image

The image after the Threshold tool is applied

It is now time to get started on making these letter look more bloody. You will now need to click on the Brush Tool it is the one that looks like a little paint brush from the GIMP window. Now you will need to draw lines coming down from the letters to give the effect of the blood dripping down. You will then need to change the size of your brush to fit you image it will depend on how large your letters are. To make strait lines you will need to make a dot where you want the line to start then hold in the Shift Key and then draw the line to the point where you want it to stop. Your image should look somewhat like the one below.

Image shows how the lines create the blood dripping effect

To make it look more like blood dripping we are just going to make our brush a little larger. Then just add dots to the ends of the lines and in the corners where the lines start.

Shows the dots on the ends of the lines and in the corners of the letters

Now that the dots are done you will have to go back to the Gaussian Blur Tool (Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur). Just use the same settings as before it should come up with the last settings used or if it doesn't put in 20 pixels.

Gaussian Blur Tool set to 20 pixels


Image after Gaussian Blur applied

You will now need to go back to the Threshold Tool again by going to Colors > Threshold. Instead of like before when you made the letters larger and rounded the edges. You will now want to make them really skinny to give them a really nice blood effect.

Moving the slider on the Threshold Tool to the left will give you the desired effect


This is the effect you will want to get

After you have that done you will want to duplicate the background layer. To do this all you have to do is right click on the background layer then select Duplicate Layer it is toward the top. You should now have 2 identical layers. You will want to take out the white of your top layer now and the tool that you need to use is the Color Tool. Then you just click in the white space to select the white and hit the delete key to get rid of the white space. Now create a duplicate layer of the top layer by just right clicking on the layer and selecting Duplicate Layer. Now with the new top layer you are going to use the Color Tool again but select the black letters. Then you will need to click on the foreground color and choose a red that looks the most like blood (usually a darker one works best). Then you just need to drag and drop the color onto your image.

The image after you add in the red

You will now want to select your bottom background layer again. Now you have to navigate to Colors > Invert. Now you are going to go back to the Gaussian Blur Tool again Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur. This time you will want to set it higher like around 36 or so.

Your image should look close to this depending on
how much Gaussian Blur you used

You will now be making a Bump Map this will give you a the finished blood look that you have been waiting for. You will need to select the top layer again. Then you will need to navigate to Filters > Light and Shadow > Lighting Effects. This will open a window and you will need to goto the Bump Map tab. Then put a tick in the Enable Bump Mapping and the Bump Map Image should be the bottom on the list from the drop down menu. Now you need to goto the Light tab. You will need to change the Light Type to Directional for both light 1 and light 2. Then click OK and it will just take a little while to load the Filter onto the image.

The finished image

Then you are done making your bloody letters. If you want to play around with some of the settings you can get a ton of different looks or you could try to do different colors for the blood. Just remember to have fun with it and try to do different things with it to get the effect that you desire.