Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

When we show up, we win.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

No one could have predicted…

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Tech Question

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    Unabogie

    When you select the square marquee tool, choose style->fixed size, then input 350×315. The deselect all and select again.

  2. 2.

    jayboat

    When you click on the crop tool, the boxes to set width and height appear in the header bar at the top of the screen.

  3. 3.

    Botsplainer

    John, while I have your attention, could you please FP the Balko piece? Its important to spread that far and wide.

    Thanks.

  4. 4.

    Trollhattan

    One way: Select your crop tool then type the pixel dimensions into the x and y boxes in the top toolbar.

    You can record this as an action and make the process a single step.

  5. 5.

    SectionH

    You can try this: open the photos you want to crop, select the crop tool, enter the dimensions you want, then go to File>Automate>Crop and Straighten Photos. There’s also more settings (under the gear symbol) you could play with.

  6. 6.

    ThresherK

    Hey, another tech question, while every BJer who knows something about tech is thinking of it: I’m looking for a small (7-9 inch) Android tablet with Verizon or AT&T service. Any suggestions?

    (Normal use will not be heavy for HD video or gaming of any sort to speak of. If there’s a Windows 8 tablet one really wants to push, I will listen. And AT&T / Verizon are recommended for my living and stomping grounds.)

    (Hey, if this is some total foxpaw, remove as needed.)

  7. 7.

    raven

    When you “save for web” you can set the image dimensions. This will also reduce the file size like a mofo.

  9. 9.

    Dcrefugee

    @ThresherK: IMHO, the best 7-inch tablet right now is Google’s Nexus 7 (second-generation). Comes with/without cell and in 16- or 32-Gb versions. You might be able to get a refurb for +/-$200, but brand-new isn’t that much more. If refurb/used, be sure to get a second-generation unit, which is faster and sleeker-looking…

    HTH…

  13. 13.

    RobNI YNY1957

    I have had the Google, Samsung and LG tablets from Verizon that range from 7 to about 7.5 inches. The Google version did not have access to my telephone account, and had no slot for extra storage. The Samsung had a slot for a 64 gig chip on which I carried hundreds of books and magazines and hours of audio. To my annoyance, it had a proprietary USB port. However, the battery failed, and I replaced it with the LG, and transferred the chip. The LG is a recent generation, and I like it a lot more than the prior two. Good battery life, beautiful display, standard micro USB port.

  14. 14.

    James Barnett

    @Dcrefugee: +1 on the nexus, but with the following caveat. If you ever want to participate in Amazon’s kindle lending library (or borrow kindle books from your friends) you must have an actual Kindle device. A friend of mine has the latest Kindle Fire HD and rates it “fine”. I’m actually considering getting a used one as a second tablet just so I can lend it to people for this purpose.

  15. 15.

    Schlemizel

    @James Barnett:
    It pisses me off royally that my local library has only 2 options for ebooks, browser(so you have to be online) or kindle. I don’t want to buy another POS to read books in! If I were clever I would write an android app to display kindle, but it must not be easy as I have not seen it yet

  17. 17.

    Trollhattan

    O/T so the gun-fondling border-terrorizing militias nearly racked up a harvest of a field biologist group out studying bats.

    A group of heavily-armed militia surrounded and confronted a group of people near the U.S.-Mexico border who they thought were illegal migrants or smugglers, but who turned out to be a group of conservationists conducting a wildlife population survey.

    According to Tucson News Now, the standoff took place on the night of Aug. 23 in Gardner Canyon area near Sonoita, Arizona, where members of a small group of biologists were counting bats.

    Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada told TNN that the militia men — who are civilian volunteers and not actual federal border patrol agents — were riding ATVs, wearing camouflage and brandishing weapons when they came upon the group of scientists.

    “Obviously, they mistook them for smugglers or illegal entrants,” said Estrada. “They were armed. They put a spotlight on them.”

    The group of conservationists filed a formal complaint with the sheriff’s department about the confrontation, which very well could have ended in violence.

    Estrada said that one of the border militia apologized to the angry and frightened scientists, but they “weren’t having any of it.”

    “Of course, they weren’t very receptive about the apology. They actually told them that’s something you should not be doing. There’s danger out there. There’s other groups of people in campsites,” he explained.

    rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/04/gun-toting-border-militia-terrifies-smugglers-who-turn-out-to-be-bat-coun…

    Imagine for a moment that instead of this goober group it had been Hannity and Rih Perry with their machine guns.

  20. 20.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Anytime I read “tool” and Cole’s name in the same post I get nervous, even if it’s just a cropping tool. Sure we want to encourage this?

  21. 21.

    Schlemizel

    @Mnemosyne:
    I went looking & never found that! THANKS!!!

    @Felonius Monk:
    I have a chromebook so PC app was not helpful but thanks.

    Oh wait stupid damn thing is loading on my phone when I want it on my chromebook! damn I hate trying to read on that tiny screen (yes, I am old/have trifocals!)

  25. 25.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Mnemosyne: “I was using the cropping tool on a picture of myself and it slipped and accidentally cropped off most of my good shoulder and that made me wince and trip over the cat right into a wheelbarrow that was in the house for some reason and all of us rolled out into the front yard just as…”

    Etc etc.

    The Human Rube Goldberg Machine, as I call him.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    And here I was just going for the simple act of accidentally cutting off his hand with the mouse cord or burning a hole in his palm with a cordless mouse. Obviously I don’t have enough imagination. ;-)

  30. 30.

    gorram

    Now that a score of people have explained how to create a cropped focus out of your image in that size, I’ll add that CTRL+ALT+I will bring up dimensions of the photo that you can modify while preserving height-width ratios, just in case cropping to that specific dimension would leave anything out.

  31. 31.

    DaddyJ

    John, here’s an ubergeek solution to use when you have a *lot* of headshots to crop, and they all need to be cropped as consistently as possible: create a New document with your desired dimensions (350 x 315 in your case). Then use File > Place to place each of the pix you want to crop in that new file. I think you can Place multiple pix at once this way. They will come in as layers. Using Transform you can then move/scale each layer for the best fit for your canvas. Finally, use the File > Scripts > Export layers to files… batch command to export those pix in a batch.

    One nice aspect of this approach is that your originals stay untouched: a Placed image is a “SmartObject” in the PSD file: a sort of alias to the original.

  32. 32.

    schrodinger's cat

    I have Photoshop CS6 but I hardly ever use it. Can someone recommend a book or resource to get most of Photoshop. The amount of options it has is rather overwhelming for a first time user like me.
    Thanks!

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Personally, I can’t learn stuff like that from books, so I would see if your local community college offers intro classes. If you’d rather do classes from the comfort of your own home, there’s Lynda.com, but they’d probably be more expensive.

    I can’t remember, do you work for a university? If so, check and see if they offer employee access to Lynda.com. A lot of companies are offering that now.

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