Better Wikimedia Commons uploads

Having some more pics to upload to Wikimedia Commons, but not many enough to use a dedicated tool, I went today to the web interface and was blown away by the simplified upload wizard, is very nice to use and also allows for multiple uploads. Good work, guys! Yeah, there is still something lacking: a geotagging tool (well, there was no link to the manual instructions page, so my laziness won and I skipped this step), but I liked it enough to share a screencast with the world:

No party for you. Tradition cancelled.

As heart-breaking as it is to cancel a years old tradition (we started the tradition of gathering the community for a face-to face meeting in the very release day with Fedora 8 and continued it release after release, no matter what), this time there will be no Fedora 15 release party in Bucharest.

While there may be a couple of good to have features and a number of controversial ones, which some will love and some will hate, there is the abomination overshadowing everything. so overal there is nothing to celebrate. By the contrary.

As there must be a news item on the local community website, there will be one, a short Twitter-like status update mentioning the release availability and linking to the >spins website (when it will be ready), not the main download page, so people will get something usable.

Fedora at Agora's Open Source / Free Software conference

I asked if, as disgruntled as I am, I still go and talk about Fedora at a local FOSS conference and the feedback convinced me to go. As the local Fedora community is extremely weak these days, I wasn't able to summon a team (we were on hostile grounds, with Microsoft as the main sponsor of the event), so I joined Ceata.

I delivered my talk (slides available), which was about the local Fedora community, maybe a bit more optimistic than it should have been and, as I couldn't resist other way, a small sting at the conference's main sponsor (not included in the slides).

Overall, it was a nice experience: strengthening the team (Ceata), fun time, making contacts and delivering a message. A good day.


PS: I recorded on video my presentation, but being dumb enough I lost it... have no idea on which hard drive was saved :(

The kite is flying high and free

Is about a year since we launched Fii Liber, a magazine about freedom in arts and technology. For this we gathered as much of the contributors were available (unfortunately some missed) and a couple of contributors-to-be:

Since the project uses a kite as its logo, we got hold of a couple of kites, rainbow colored, to be as close to the logo as possible and got them fly. It was a fortunate window of good weather and a small blue sky, in an otherwise rainy and gloomy day, just enough for us to make a stand and have some fun.

Then we continued inside with some pizza, beer, pie and cake, Also, all the contributors present received a diploma from Alina, our project leader (and Alina got hers too from Tibi, Ceata's leader).

Doesn't this sound like a fun project to be part of it? If you care about Free software, Free arts and freedom in general, why won't you join us?


PS: yeah, there was also a downside, despite my efforts to de-emphasize that, the team noticed my anniversary being on the same day so made a big fuss of it, letting it somehow eclipse the main event. Thank you guys and girls!

Color choosers

I am a long time fan of Agave, but if Agave is the vi of the color pickers... there has to be an Emacs of it. And it is gpick, which as opposed to the lean Agave, provides a lot of additional functionality. Needed, unneeded functionality? I guess this is about the users, some will like one, some will like the other.

But gpicker is available in no Fedora repository so far and many won't bother with a manual build (then what would be the purpose of the distro?), so is not that easy for a Fedora user to play with it. Or it is? A former Fedora contributor, now in SUSE land, provided a F14 package (in a handy repo), so the curios has access to the toy (the SUSE build system seems useful after all).

Stop to the installing woes

A couple of weeks ago at a city photo walk with friends, I saw this "Windows install" add on a street trash can, found it funny enough for a photo, but was lazy enough to kneel in the dirt for a proper shoot.

I was decided not to post such a crappy picture until I saw yesterday a funnier ad which made a good set with the can above, this one is from the tram station near my home and the interesting line says "Installing Windows (XP, Vista, 7), Linux and Mac + Drivers - 9€". Duh! the crafty kid in the neighbors is doing Linux too :D This means for a mere equivalent of 9€ (that is 35 RON) I can escape all my installing woes?

I do not feel trollish enough to call the number and ask for a Gentoo install... or ask for a desktop on a PC with totally unsupported hardware >:) Hint someone bored enough?

PS: now I shrug for not kneeling in front of the trash can, a better pic could have been used for a demotivational poster in my collection, one about Windows being just the right OS to be installed on a trash can... and maybe GNOME 3 being so bad and not deserving even that :D