galileo woud have loved this

A recent shot of Jupiter:

"This new Hubble Space Telescope view of Jupiter, taken on June 27, 2019, reveals the giant planet's trademark Great Red Spot, and a more intense color palette in the clouds swirling in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere than seen in previous years. The colors, and their changes, provide important clues to ongoing processes in Jupiter's atmosphere. The new image was taken in visible light as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy program, or OPAL. The program provides yearly Hubble global views of the outer planets to look for changes in their storms, winds and clouds. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed Jupiter when the planet was 400 million miles from Earth, when Jupiter was near "opposition" or almost directly opposite the Sun in the sky."

Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley)

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-new-portrait-of-jupiter

for simply converting and resizing

It's been about five years since I first mentioned ImageMagick (see: "resize an avatar"). Lately, I've kinda "rediscovered" it, and I've found its tools to be quite convenient for resizing images and for converting images to different formats. I haven't actually done much with ImageMagick besides those types of easy conversions, but there are many, many other things this software can do.

The magick and convert commands require the imagemagick package, as they are part of the ImageMagick suite of tools. For simple procedures like the ones being discussed here, either magick or convert will work. However, note the following about the convert command, from man imagemagick:

convert
 
Backwards compatiblity [sic] for ImageMagick version 6 "convert". Essentually [sic] an alias to a restrictive form of the "magick" command, which should be used instead.

FWIW, imagemagick is currently at version 6.9.7.4 in Debian Stable and in Ubuntu 18.04, and it's at version 7.0.8.12 in Arch. In any case, I think it's ok to use either one of the two commands. [Edit: Looks like the magick command can be used in the imagemagick version 7.0+ found in the Arch repos, but it doesn't exist in the 6.9 version found in the Stable repos; with that version, the convert command must be used.]




converting and resizing

To convert from jpg to png, run magick [oldfilename] [newfilename], making sure to change the file extension from .jpg to .png. For example:

$ magick /home/user1/image.jpg /home/user1/image.png

Here's an example of resizing an image to 1366x768 and also converting it from jpg to png, using magick:

$ magick /home/user1/image.jpg -resize 1366x768! /home/user1/image.png

(The "!" forces the conversion to the specified dimensions, ignoring aspect ratio.)

Doing the same thing using convert:

$ convert /home/user1/image.jpg -resize 1366x768! /home/user1/image.png


For more info, see man imagemagick, man magick, man convert, convert -help, etc.

Also see:
https://www.lifewire.com/convert-linux-command-unix-command-4097060
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

overwhelmed by plastic

June 5 is marked by the United Nations as World Environment Day, a day set aside since 1974 to promote “worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment.” This year’s theme is “beat plastic pollution.”

-- from: World Environment Day 2018: ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’
   The Atlantic, June 5, 2018

Stunning photos. What are we doing to our world??

from the continent

Some photos I took while visiting the "Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design" exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum.

Info, from the Albuquerque Journal website: African edge: Exhibit showcases 200 works of contemporary design from across continent

another nice image viewer

nomacs is a free, open source image viewer that can be used in Linux, as well as in Windows, macOS, and FreeBSD, according to the nomacs website.

I found version 3.4 available in the Debian Stable repos; the Arch Linux repos have version 3.8, which I think is the current version.

jump!

What a fun, summertime photo! Found this one at annarbor.com. This is from Saturday at the Parkridge Community Center Summerfest in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

the hoop

Nothing like shootin' the pill down at the neighborhood basketball court. Feelin' it?

Santa Fe Mountains

Views from the Santa Fe Mountains above Santa Fe, New Mexico, part of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southern-most subrange of the Rocky Mountains, on an overcast August day. Photos taken during my mom's (MALsPa's Ma, as she called herself once!) recent visit to New Mexico.





And up near at Ski Santa Fe, Santa Fe's ski area, a cool mountain stream and a little view of the forest.







"Sangre de Cristo" is Spanish for "Blood of Christ." For more about the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangre_de_Cristo_Mountains.