Great book for learning to use GIMP

I've been using GIMP for a couple of years now, but very blindly, and because of that to perform only very rudimentary tasks like cropping pictures. So when I discovered the book/manual, Grokking the GIMP recently, I was very excited. Particularly since I found the book very well-written, and very enjoyable to read.

And... the book can be read for free online. Don't you just love free stuff?

I've written a review (with info on where to find the book online) and published it on hubpages:
A Novice's Review: Grokking the GIMP by Carey Bunks

Free software for resizing images for Facebook albums, blogs, websites, etc.

Recently, I was given a whole set of very large picture files for use in a powerpoint project. And I knew I should really resize them to a more suitable size, which had me searching for a good free software which will automatically resize all the pictures at one go.

What I ultimately decided on was Irfanview. There is a plethora of free software to resize pictures on the net, but what convinced me was the CNET editors' review which stated that it was a "longtime favourite" among their staff.
I downloaded it, and it worked like a charm for resizing the of pictures to the size I needed. I also used it to convert another batch of pictures to grayscale. I had to adjust a few pictures for contrast/brightness, but generally the results were quite good.

I can see myself using this quite a lot to resize photos taken with my digital camera before uploading to my Facebook albums. It usually takes quite a while for the pictures to finish uploading since I don't usually resize them, but with it being so easy to resize them as a batch...

Note: You can find "Batch conversion/rename" under the File menu.