Photoshop is a pretty well-known piece of software. Indeed its become so well known in the field of manipulating images its transitioned into the catch-all verb to describe the act of artificially changing a photograph. Not so well known, but to all intents and purposes just as powerful as Photoshop is GIMP. GIMP stands for (The) Gnu Image Manipulation Program and one of the best features that place it streaks ahead of Photoshop is the price. It's free.

The power packed into this freely downloadable piece of software is phenomenal. You name it, GIMP can do it. Ok so introductions over, one of the things I get asked about regularly is whether GIMP can create curved text. The answer, you've guessed it is of course yes. Let's take a look at how it's achieved.

 Let's say you have a logo which looks something like this image here on the left. Your friend, who happens to be a Dentist is looking for some help with his website branding and, let's face it, toothy the tooth does look a little isolated over there. So your friend asks if you could help him place some text around the logo to give it some punch. 

The brief is that the words "Toothsome Teeth" need to curve around the top with "Dental Services" on the bottom.

So where do you even begin? Ill explain in the rest of the post.

If like me, you manage one or more Joomla websites, you will no doubt be aware of the sorry lack of user friendly documentation and the appalling lack of a powerful native log facility. This seems to me to be an enormous oversight on the part of the developers however it is possible with a little jiggery pokery to get the information you need. 

I noticed recently that there were enormous amounts (1500 per day) of failed login attempts at the default backend URL (site.com/administrator/). This is to be expected of any installation like this however one cannot help but feel uneasy at the incessant minute by minute brute force dictionary attacks rolling by in the log. If your passwords are secure then you'll almost certainly be fine. If your administrator username is anything but admin, you'll be even better. Still I wasn't satisfied and I decided to call in the big guns.

As the worlds journey through the second industrial (Internet) revolution carries on apace, todays businesses face an emerging challenge. Unless your company has its own "in-house" network professionals it is likely that the demands the Internet places on your business, whilst clearly a massive opportunity are also the source of what can seem like spiralling overhead costs in terms of personnel and knowledge.

Back in the mists of history during the first industrial revolution, the electric light bulb was causing a stir. The new technology was clearly a fantastic opportunity for business of the time to increase productivity and improve working conditions. It was basically a new fangled technology which could enable businesses to "work smarter".  Now where have we heard that before?

The first electricity installation companies were small bands of highly educated and highly paid technical afficionados who were evangelists of the technology rather than being more akin to the matter of fact electricians of today. The technolgy has nowadays moved from invention to commodity to utility and that process probably took 10 to 20 years to fully complete. There are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between that revolution and this one.

Heres one cast iron fact. Businesses today need networks. Whether it is to connect their towering office blocks in each corner of the world into one great corporate network or just to connect their office computers to their printer and the internet to read their emails, they all need their networks. We have tried to think of one single business that wouldnt put itself at a disadvantage in todays world by ignoring everything related to the internet such as emails and websites and we have failed. From the sole trader window cleaner to the corporate giant, all of them now need their networks.

 The technology is now moving into the realms of utility rather than being "a great new invention". Nowadays your average Granny in Scotland is just as likely to switch on the laptop as they are to switch on their central heating. Ok thats a dubious fact I'll concede but you get the picture. The world has changed forever and the Scottish business community as well as the residential community now need their networks. The technology is now thought of more like a central heating boiler than the hubble telescope to the average consumer. They just want it to work.

Todays networks now need plumbers. Todays Scottish businesses now need network plumbers and not the techie evangelist types of the last 10-20 years. They need matter of fact network tradespeople who they can call upon to get things working properly when they arent. They dont need an inhouse plumbing enthusiast who does plumbing for a hobby and thinks theyre a bit handy with a pipe bender and they certainly dont need a plumbing department full of plumbers in their overalls ready to fix a boiler at a moments notice. 

Ok weve stretched the plumbing analogy a little too far here but I believe the point is made. When it comes to network plumbing and you need the system to just work. When you need a no nonsense expert in the trade to advise you on the best systems for your requirements or just to make your existing systems do the job that you need them to do for you, day in-day out, give us a call at Rustyice Solutions. The network plumbers.