Gnome-Screenshot & Beryl Screenshot Plugin

Taking screenshots in the Gnome desktop environment is as simple as pressing [Print Screen] key. If like me you use a Mac Mini USB keyboard (which doesn’t have such a key) you could mess around with keyboard mapping.

Alternatively within Gnome there is a screenshot app called “gnome-screenshot” found in Application > Accessories > Take Screenshot. I’ve placed a copy of this app on the lower panel (the camera icon) and assigned a 10 second delay to the launch properties. This gives me time to prepare for taking screenshots, especially useful for taking a shot of the 3D cube within Beryl.

If you use the XGL/Beryl environment there is a neat screenshot plugin which allows you to take a screenshot of a specific area through the combination of pressing the [Super] key & left clicking your mouse whilst high-lighting the area. You may need to edit the plugin properties within the Beryl Setting Manager to set your desired directory path such as /home/username/Desktop.

Here is an example of the selected area (minus mouse cursor) I choose to take a screenshot of within the Beryl environment.

After releasing the [Super] key and mouse button the screenshot of the area you selected should now be automatically saved in the directory you assigned.

Bubble Bursting Beautified Desktop

A few days ago a friend of a friend was chatting to me about the “new” desktop environment and effects in the forthcoming release of Windows Vista. He was so enthused and excited by what he had seen in the beta release that I sat and listened.

Not wanting to burst his bubble I waited, during which my internal dialouge was impatiently running amock, and slowly a smug grin was gradually creeping across my face Once he’d finished, and with no immediate response from myself I booted up my Ubuntu Dapper installation running XGL & Beryl.

Needless to say he was blown away with what he saw and one could clearly hear his bubble burst, and then some! My silence was broken with the response “It’s all very well an having a beautified desktop, the question is does the underlying operating system have any substance to it?”.

Despite my efforts to explain the ethos, ethics and benefits of using Open Source he wasn’t prepared to deviate from his Microsoft centric life. More fool him and the other millions of hoards prepared to believe the marketing hype spun to line the corporate pockets, just to keep their operating systems up to date.

HAL9000 Desktop

Here’s a series of screenshots I’ve taken in sequence of how I recreated a recursive like effect on the cube faces of my current XGL & Beryl desktop. The process is quite simple;

1. take a screenshot of your desktop with your preferred background image.
2. apply this image to the top & bottom faces of the cube.
3. rotate the cube to desired position, and take another screenshot.
4. goto 2 and repeat.

The original image I started off with is that of the character Dave Bowman inside the central core of the HAL9000 computer, from the sci-fi classic “2001: A Space Odyssey”.