and I gave him instructions on how he could use one of our ghost images, and change the wallpaper to one showing his project. This was easy enough to do when he was just turning out a few refurbished computers, but he asked me if I could help him set up versions of our major images with his wallpaper. At the same time he told me he really liked our HelpingTulsa name, and he wished he had named his organization HelpingSuperior, because he had plans of setting up additional Computer Refurbishing projects in other cities in his area.
I told him he might have to file a DBA (Doing Business As) for each name with his state government, but that he should be able to operate refurbishing projects in nearby cities and call them whatever he wanted. Since he liked the HelpingXxxxx names, and since he wanted his wallpaper in our ghost images, I asked him to come up with a list of the other cities he planned to setup operations in, and I went ahead and created logos for each of them, and used those logos to set up wallpaper for each one.
To setup logos for each city I started with an Adobe Illustrator file I called _work.ai (the underscore in the name is so it appears at the top of all files in the folder), and I would load that file, modify the city name, save it as cityname.ai in case it was needed later, and export cityname.jpg and cityname.gif (with the transparent and anti-aliasing options turned on). He gave me a list of 11 different city names, some of which seemed a bit ambitious, but it only took about an hour to go through and set up logos for all eleven cities, with a little help from my Graphics Guru, Paula Sanders.
I then set up a _work.psd file for a 800x600 image with a blue background and yellow foreground, with the words "Computer Donated By City Name" spaced to allow the graphic to be inserted. Copies of both files are available in this Zip File.
In about another hour I opened _work.psd, opened a gif file, selected the magic wand tool, used it to select the transparent background in one place, and then holding the shift key down selected the transparent background in the other two places it occurred in the image, clicked on Select, Inverse in the menu bar, did a Ctrl C to copy the logo image, closed the GIF (saying no, don't save changes), did a Ctrl V to paste the image, selected the move tool, and moved the graphic to its proper place in the corner. I double clicked the layer "Computer donated by...", and ighlighted the city name and typed in the new city name. If it took two lines I highlighted all of the text and changed to 30 point. I then clicked on Layer, Flatten Layer in the menu bar, and did a File, Save As, selected BMP File Type, and typed in the city name to save its wallpaper. I then closed that image, and looped back to the start of this paragraph, to process the other 10 city names.
Larry indicated they were planning on working with the YMCA for the refurbishing project in Grand Island, and I told him they might like it if we removed the "Trail of Tears" Indian on a horse image we used in their logo, and replace it with the logo for the YMCA.
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They are planning on doing the same thing in Kearney and Hastings.
Here are the wallpaper files I created for him, and I will be loading all of them into the copies of our three ghost images.
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Two of the cities are special cases. The Pawnee Nation one is in Pawnee, Oklahoma, which is much closer to Tulsa than it is to Superior, Nebraska, but Larry is trying to get them to work with HelpingTulsa on a refurbishing project in Pawnee, OK. And he knows someone in Tallahassee, FL that he thinks could get something going out there.
But the other cities are ones where he hopes to get something going based on his work in Superior, NE, and I thought it would be interesting to see how they were geographically distributed.
This a map generated by the TIGER Mapping Service maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau. You can use http://www.nwbuildnet.com/nwbn/mapservice.html to determine the exact longitude/latitude for a city, and then you can build a webpage like http://helpingtulsa.org/howto/tms.htm which contains the longitude, comma, latitude, colon, symbol, colon, and name of each symbol you want included.
#tms-marker -98.06774,40.02239:redstar:Superior -98.39005,40.58925:redpin:Hastings -98.94623,40.50623:blupin:Kearney -98.36585,40.92183:grnpin:Grand Island -100.77180,41.13295:orgdot10:North Platte -103.66160,41.86722:orgdot10:Scottsbluff -102.55841,43.02777:purdot10:Pine Ridge -100.83883,43.23538:purdot10:Rosebud -96.68817,40.81640:redball:Lincoln -96.01174,41.26390:blueball:Omaha
http://tiger.census.gov/instruct.html has the instructions you need to set up your tms-marker file, including the symbols you can specify:
smalldot (default if none
specified), 
bigdot,
home
redstar,
bluestar,
cross
interstate-1,
ushwy-1,
statehwy-1
interstate-3,
ushwy-3,
statehwy-3
redpin
grnpin
blupin,
orgpin,
purpin,
magpin,
brnpin
lgrpin,
cynpin,
grypin,
whtpin,
redball
grnball,
blueball,
reddot10
grndot10,
bludot10,
orgdot10,
purdot10,
magdot10,
brndot10,
lgrdot10,
cyndot10,
grydot10,
whtdot10
reddot7
grndot7,
bludot7,
orgdot7,
purdot7,
magdot7,
brndot7,
lgrdot7,
cyndot7,
grydot7,
whtdot7
reddot5
grndot5,
bludot5,
orgdot5,
purdot5,
magdot5,
brndot5,
lgrdot5,
cyndot5,
grydot5,
whtdot5
red5
green5,
blue5,
purple5,
brown5,
black5
red4
green4,
blue4,
purple4,
brown4,
black4
red3
green3,
blue3,
purple3,
brown3,
black3
After uploading the tms-marker file to http://helpingtulsa.org/howto/tms.htm I invoked this link to generate the map. It takes a LONG TIME to generate.
The URL is long, but let us take a look at part of it:
http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapsurfer?act=in&infact=2&map.x=211&map.y=180
&lat=41.628885&lon=-99.83667
&wid=19.125&ht=5.25
&iht=359&iwd=422&&tlevel=-&tvar=-&tmeth=i&mlat=&mlon=&msym=bigdot&mlabel=
&murl=http://helpingtulsa.org/howto/tms.htm&conf=mapnew.con
&lat=41.628885&lon=-99.83667 specifies the latitude and longitude of the center of the map. If you will take a look at the tms-marker file
you will see that the smallest latitude is 40.02239 and the largest is 43.23538. The average is 41.628885. The largest longitude is 103.66160, the smalest is 96.01174. The average is 99.83667. This means that the center of the map is the center of the area covered by the cities involved.#tms-marker -98.06774,40.02239:redstar:Superior -98.39005,40.58925:redpin:Hastings -98.94623,40.50623:blupin:Kearney -98.36585,40.92183:grnpin:Grand Island -100.77180,41.13295:orgdot10:North Platte -103.66160,41.86722:orgdot10:Scottsbluff -102.55841,43.02777:purdot10:Pine Ridge -100.83883,43.23538:purdot10:Rosebud -96.68817,40.81640:redball:Lincoln -96.01174,41.26390:blueball:Omaha
I actually saved my map from the mapsurfer interface, but I could have clicked on the Download GIF image and gotten a map without the mapsurfer interface.
It uses this link
