Robert Sinclaire » How To…

How to make a Ninja mask out of a T-shirt

Robert — Sun, 06 May 2007 15:06:27 +0000

Have you ever been sitting at your desk thinking to yourself, “Man, I wish I brought my Ninja mask to work today.” Yeah, me too. Well thanks to the teachings of Ninja master Vern Reid, there is a quick and easy way to create your very own Ninja mask using an ordinary T-shirt. MacGyver would have been proud.

Behold!

Recipe: Sweet Potato Casserole

Robert — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 14:09:34 +0000

A recipe? On skyecade online? What will people think?!

Yeah, I was surprised I was posting this myself, but I feel it is my duty to the human race. A friend of mine gave me this recipe because MLL told her how much I love sweet potatoes. By the way, I also really like casseroles. What a coincidence? This recipe is really easy to make and it’s sooooo gooood. But be warned! It’s about as healthy as shooting heroin into your veins. Actually, heroin may be slightly better for you. Did I mention this is sooooo gooood though?

Ingredients

The Filling:

3 cups sweet potatoes (peeled, steamed, and mashed)
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs, beat them like there’s no tomorrow
1/2 cup butter (1 stick — ouch)

The Crust:

1 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup flower
1 cup chopped pecans (I prefer them crushed)
1/3 cup butter (melted)

Directions

Combine all the ingredients for the crust into a medium sized bowl and put aside.
Combine all the ingredients for the sweet potato filling into a large bowl in the order listed. Mix thoroughly.
Pour sweet potato mixture into a greased baking dish. (I used Pam)
Sprinkle the crust mixture evenly over the sweet potato filling.
Bake for 30 minutes on 350 degrees. Allow to set for at least 30 minutes.

Eat it warm, eat i cold, some people even melt marshmallows on top of it (in case it wasn’t unhealthy enough). Bon Appetit!

Join two Ventrilo servers simultaneously

Robert — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 21:05:19 +0000

A friend of mine showed me this simple little trick that allows you to login to two Ventrilo servers simultaneously. I thought this could come in handy from time to time. Here’s what to do.

***click on the pictures to enlarge***

First, locate your Ventrilo short cut.

Next, right click on the shortcut and choose properties.

You will see a dialog box show up like the one below.

Add the switch -m after the last quote as shown below. Click Apply and then click OK to close the dialog box.

You can now launch multiple instances of Ventrilo by clicking on the shortcut as many times as you wish.

The last step is to make sure you bind a Hotkey (push to talk key) for each instance of Ventrilo that is open. See the two images below.

and

Voila, you can now hang out on two (or more) Ventrilo servers at the same time.

You’re probably not going to want to do this a lot because it can get kind of crazy trying to keep track of who’s saying what and from where. It’s definitely a nice little addition to anyone’s bag of tricks though.

Speaking of Ventrilo, Zen Geeks just launched its very own Ventrilo server. It’s a members only server, but membership is free so it’s essentially a public server. Stop by the forums for more information.

Show hidden files in OS X

Robert — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 22:31:46 +0000

I’m blogging about this so I don’t forget how to do it, but some of you may find it useful too.

I needed to edit my .htaccess file from my web server, but when I downloaded it to my desktop (OS X), the file magically disappeared. So I downloaded it again. This time it asked me if I wanted to overwrite the existing .htaccess file on my desktop. That’s when it hit me, .htaccess is a hidden file. Duh!

I did a quick scan in Finder for a “Show Hidden Files” option, but I had no luck. Google here we come. And this is what I found.

In a terminal, type the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE killall Finder

To revert back to the way it was, repeat the above step, but this time replace the TRUE value with a FALSE value. Voila! Nice and easy.

Photoshop :: Converting color to black and white

Robert — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 02:45:03 +0000

This is probably my most used Photoshop technique. I’ve always been a huge fan of black & white photography. In Photoshop, the two most common ways of converting to black & white are by converting the image to grayscale or by completely desaturing the image. These two methods unfortunately lack contrast and tonal control. The following technique will give you control over both.

With your image loaded into Photoshop create a new adjustment layer. Click on Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation. Then just click OK, and then OK again. We’ll come back to this layer again later.

We are now going to repeat most of step one. Click on Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation. Click OK once. Grab the slider for Saturation and drag it all the way to the left (-100) to completely desaturate the image.

Now we need to change the blend mode of first Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Using the Layers palette, target the first Hue/Saturation adjustment layer (Hue/Saturation 1) you created by clicking on the layer. This will select the layer. Change the blending mode for the layer from Normal to Color by using the drop down menu on the top of the Layers palette. By the way, if you can’t find your Layers palette simply click on Windows > Layers.

Now double-click on the Hue/Saturation 1 thumbnail to open the adjustment dialog box.

Move the Hue slider to adjust the grayscale values of the image. Move the Saturation slider to control the finer details of the image. In short, move the Hue slider for major changes and the Saturation slider for minor changes.

For even more detail you can adjust individual colors. On the top of the adjustment dialog box click the drop down menu and choose a color to manipulate it. For example, you would choose blue to adjust the color of the sky. Adjusting the blue color channel shouldn’t have an effect on skin tones or hair color of people in the photograph. Unless of course you’re a smurf. Likewise, adjusting the green channel will effect the tones and contrast of grass and trees but shouldn’t have an effect on the sky.

And there you have it. Pretty easy huh? What’s great about this technique is the flexibility and control it gives you over the photograph. There are other, even more complex and sophisticated ways of converting color to black & white, but this is a good starting place. Give it a whirl.

Photoshop :: Straightening the horizon

Robert — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 17:52:35 +0000

One of my first lessons in photography was “keep the horizon straight“. Unfortunately this is not always as easy as it sounds. But never fear, Photoshop is here. Here is a quick and easy fix I learned for straightening the horizon in your photos. I believe it will work for all the latest versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

First load your crooked picture into Photoshop. (duh!)

Select the Measure Tool. This can be found under the eyedropper tool in the toolbox.

Select a point on the horizon and then, while holding down the mouse key, drag the cursor across the image to the other side of the horizon. This line will obviously be slanted since your horizon is slanted. By the way, the horizon can be anything. In my case it was the top edge of a wall.

On the top menu bar go to Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary.

You will see the rotate canvas dialog box appear with a number already filled in. This is the correct number. Click O.K.

You will see that the image is rotated and the horizon is now level. The last step is to select the Crop Tool and crop the image to trim away the white edges.

And that’s that. Stay tuned for more exciting Photoshop tips right here on skyecade online. However, I don’t think you can actually stay tuned to a website. How about, check back for more exciting and useful Photoshop tips right here on skyecade online!! Yeah, that’s nice.

I’ll post’m as I learn’m.