The Gimp Group: Messages by GaryJames

What would you like to learn or get help with? Reply here and we will see if we can help or perhaps learn something new together. ~gJ

"This group is dedicated to learning and using all of the features in the Gimp software program. Feel free to ask questions here and to display some of your Gimp projects. You can also test out your Gimp projects by posting them at the Post Testing Site. We all learn by doing and sharing. ~gJ

All of the above is from our opening statement and group description. It has been nearly nine months since this group was created and I am totally satisfied with everything I have absorbed in my quest to learn, use and share Gimp. There is not a day that goes by that I am not using Gimp and there are very few days that I am not learning something new from all of the tutorials and forums available online. Lately I have been getting into the advance items of Gimp and I have decided not to spend the energy and time to share that here. The participation and sharing by members here has been very discouraging and the lack of feedback does not inspire me. When I find some tutorials that will help the novice and semi-novice user I will share it here. I am still hoping to have new members who may be more open to creating a dialog here and sharing questions and answers with the group.

I am so happy with my decision to create a menu here, many times I recall a procedure that was done and posted here that I need and it is great to be able to search the menu and use the information.

I know everyone who has joined here had good intentions about learning and using Gimp but for what ever reasons that quest never got pass joining the group. Winter is just ahead of us, I urge you to use this time that you are confined to your homes due to winter to once again begin your quest for knowledge. ~gJ

I am not talking about all electric heaters, I am talking about those with prices in the hundred of dollars. You know the ones I am talking about, you see ads for them everyday on television and in your local newspaper and shopping guides. I refrained from putting an image here because I do not want to be sued by the shysters.

First, a bit of background about me. I have spent the all of my 38 years of work life either in the electronics field or in heating and air condition as either a service technician, broadcast engineer or service manager.

Can a electric heater save you money? Yes, if you use one to heat an individual room (this is called zoning) and turn down your central heating system thermostat, it certainly can save you money. I do this every winter. When my wife goes to work I find that the majority of my time is spent in my office. I heat this area with an oil filled electric heater, the type that looks like an old style radiator with the fins. The rest of the house is allowed to drop in temperature which reduces the amount of heat exchanged from indoors to outdoors. This reduction in the rate of heat exchange is what saves you money. Many customers would ask me why reducing your house temperature can save you money if you just have to heat it up again when you come home or wake up in the morning. It saves money because you have reduced the lost of heat by lowering the rate of heat exchange. In the winter your house is losing heat all of the time, you have reduced the amount of heat lost thus requiring less energy to reheat it.

Now back to the scam. I paid less than $30 for my electric oil filled space heater and it puts out the same amount of heat as the units costing hundreds of dollars. It has no moving parts or expensive heating elements to replace. Inferred heating elements are expensive and may need to be replaced. It is safe for toddlers, there are no open flames or hot burning elements. If you doubt that then just look at one. See the paint on the fins after twenty years of use, still looks good doesn't it. If it does not get so hot as to burn off paint or discolor the fins then it is not going to burn your skins by simply touching it. The oil filled unit has no fan so there is no waste of energy, it is 100% efficient. The scam units use the standard household voltage of 110 volts, so does my oil filled unit. The scam unit will put out about 5000 BTUs of heat, so will my oil filled unit. The scam units say they do not reduce humidity nor consume oxygen. That is also true with the oil filled heating units. In other words a $30-$40 dollar oil filled electric heating unit does everything that the scam unit costing hundreds of dollars does.

The scam units make claims of heating larger areas than they are capable of heating. The typical home central unit produces between 60,000 to 80,000 BTUs of usable heat. An electric space heater or the scam unit both produce about 5000 BTUs or between 1/12 to 1/16 of the heat of a central unit. Do the math, they will heat an average size room only in winter conditions in the north, they will do better down south where you can heat a house with a candle because of the higher ambient temperatures.

The sad thing for me is to see a national radio news anchor and a nationally known home fixer upper man both endorse these scam units. These were men I trusted before but not anymore. Also the major hardware stores are selling these devices while printing all of the scam lies in their advertisements.

Bottom line, you can save money by heating your house in zones (a zone should be closed off to the rest of the house and is an average size room) rather than the whole house. This can be done with space heaters. The oil filled electric space heater can do this safely and with a very low investment. The scam units will not do any better of a job and will steal money from your pocket with the initial investment.
~gJ
PS: I know the length of this article is more than we like to see on a front page post but I think that it is important that my fellow members of EONS know the truth about this scam.

The download for this script is located here.

Author's instructions:The preview image should give an idea of the outcome. Sets up the image for saving as an animation (user just needs to change the image mode to Indexed if it isn't already and then save as .gif). The script takes 2 layers - a background layer and an object layer above it. Only the object layer is rotated.

User can specify whether to do a 360 and 180 rotation and set the delay of the first frame (and frame 19 for 360 rotation). Menu option will appear under Filters > Animation.

To install save the download file as a .SCM file to your scripts folder. By default on Windows that would be:C:\Program Files\Gimp-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\scripts