Fun with weather

Holidays starting in 3, 2, 1... you don't want me blowing kisses, so a helpful Santa helper will help:

KTHXBAI

Oh, the irony! Take better care of your avatar...

I had the laugh of the day (of the week?) when bmbogdan showed me this:

I found it very funny and ironic when you take your current avatar/hackergotchi, delete the Fedora logo from his T-shirt, submit the SVG as Public Domain to the Open Clip Art Library for everyone to use it freely and it ends as an illustration to an article about photo managers in Ubuntu. That's sharing! Lets all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya".

Note: the guy has NOT a happy face, maybe because of the GIMP removal? (he definitely looks like a pro)

Those shoes are quite big: Blug*OS*Con 2009

This week-end happened a very ambitious project: the first edition of Blug*OS*Con, București Linux users group Open Source Conference, which proved to be some very large to fill by such a new project.

Obviously, I participated on behalf of the local Fedora community with a short presentation about Fedora in general and Fedora 12 in particular, which was somewhat rushed, as I find very hard to covert this topic in only 15 minutes (I have a raw video of my presentation, trying to upload it somewhere). With the people from SbLUG missing I was invited to also cover a track about graphics, but ultimately the schedule slipped with delays and it was skipped, so I got home earlier.

It was probably not the best idea to keep the conference is such a large room, if you don't gather many people, better keep it in a smaller space. And I am not sure the booths in the hall were a good idea either, they had very little content and traffic. Of course, the bad weather didn't help, cold and snow keeping people in their house in such a unwelcoming Sunday.

Of course I used the opportunity to take as many photos as I could (some are nice) but I also played with video recording, making a very amateurish videocast covering the first half of the event.

December RLUG meet

As this is the plan to create a monthly tradition with Întălnirile RLUG (RLUG meets) we had yesterday the December edition and it was, in my opinion, de best so far (well, being the second edition, that wasn't hard...)

We had a long track with Lucian talking about openSUSE, then after a break, a session of lightning talks (5 minutes long): Ovidiu sharing his experience about deploying Linux (Ubuntu) to non-technical users in his company, Adrian talking about improving Apache security with various modules, dserban presenting about Reverse VNC, cmatei speaking about kexec and me demoing some nifty graphic tablet uses in Fedora. At the end, rpetre informed us about a better way to buy O'Reilly books.

Of course I took a lot of photos:

Taking advantage of my new toy I also recorded the presentation as video, but for the moment we are sitting on the raw footage and debating what to do (I argue about putting it online as-is/roughly edited, everybody else is opting for heavily edited, cut and polished versions), which tools to use (that's hard) and who to do the job. Well, I have no shame and don't care about damaging my public image, so a video with my talk is already up.

ffmpeg2theora

Playing with my new video camera toy, I try to transcode all the clips from h.264/AAC .MOV to Theora using ffmpeg2theora with its default settings, however I find the size of the resulting file unpredictable: my first clip was filmed inside and was very short, so after the transcode the file size shrinked from ~24MB to 3MB. Excited by this, I tried the same transcoding with a large clip, filmed outside but much to my disappointment, the result was an expansion from ~421MB to ~570MB. Finally, a video of the fish tank shrinked from ~118MB to ~62MB. I can't see any pattern here, what I am supposed to to when uploading the next clip to something like YouTube? (I want the shortest upload time)

Christmas lights 2009

I was disappointed by the city lights for the holidays this year: is the first time when they reuse the lights for the previous years and they are fewer (naturally, since they are fragile and some broke), but after Sin posted a set of noisy photos (huge ISO, handheld camera), here are a few of my last weekend:

Camera firmware upgrade

I found compelling the image quality/camera price when I saw Mo recent awesome 5 Fun things in Fedora 12 video and considering some opportunities to record useful stuff in the near future, is spite of the lackluster editing FLOSS tools, I bought one too. Yay! me haz a new toy! (a Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera)

Well, the firmware in the camera was quite old (1.03, versus the current 1.06), so I proceeded to a firmware upgrade. Here is the story:

First, go to the manufacturer's website. It will identify the operating system (sort of, Unix, instead of Linux) and lie about not having any update for you:

If the site lies to me, then I can lie to it too, so I pretend I am using Windows XP. Suddenly, a download is available, grab it:

The download is an .exe, but you don't need to use Wine, Nautilus is clever about that, detects a ZIP self-extractor and open it with File Roller. Copy the files on the memory card:

Then read the steps intended for Windows:

Put the card containing the firmware update files back in the camera and fire it up. When asked, confirm the update:

Now all is well, the device is up to date with the internal software:

Delete the files form the card, they are not needed any more and go on with your life, it was another happy day far from Windows. Find something interesting to film... more than you just goofing around with your new tow.

Alegeri 2009

Note: for those reading this post about internal Romanian politics in a FLOSS aggregator, please forgive me and skip it. I write such type of stuff less then once in a year (hopefully) and is not worth a special feed.

Am refuzat sa ma duc la vot in primul tur al alegerilor prezidentiale de anul asta, convins fiind ca orice candidat as vota, voi regreta mai tirziu. De asemenea, am incercat sa ignor pe cit am putut fenomenul mediatic generat de alegeri (ei bine, mergind pe strada sau asteptind RATB-ul nu m-am putut abtine sa nu studiez din punct de vedere tehnic, al fotografului, imaginile de pe afise, dar cam asta a fost tot).

Si cu toate astea am ajuns sa fiu agasat (mai comuti din cind in cind televizorul pe un canal se stiri pentru ca acolo e afisata ora exacta si e mai rapid decit un Alt+Tab dintr-un joc care se incarca cam greu) de campania furibunda impotriva unuia dintre candidati, campanie care ii are de multe ori campioni pe niste indivizi pe care nu numai ca nu dau doi bani, dar ii consider nocivi. Si vazind atita disperare din partea mafiotilor si comunistilor pentru a il schimba, mi-am zis ca omul ala s-ar putea sa faca ceva bine daca ii deranjeaza atit de mult. Cred ca in turul doi ma duc la vot, pentru a alege raul cel mai mic.

Am mai auzit din partea unor oameni obisnuiti argumentul pentru care voteaza intr-un anume fel: vor mai putine scandaluri si mai multa liniste. Eu cred ca e de preferam prea mult scandal fata de prea multa liniste: arata ca exista libertate, iar libertatea mi se pare esentiala. Imi amintesc foarte cauza pentru care am trecut prin ce am trecut in anii '90 si pentru care sintem acum la coada lumii civilizate, in 1990 am ales (nu eu, ca nu aveam drept de vot) pe cineva al carui slogan era "un presedinte pentru linistea noastra".

Update: citat dintr-un spam primit de la candidatul comunist (prin intermediul unei firme americane):

Dupa cum afirma si Presedintele nostru de Onoare, domnul Ion Iliescu, imi doresc ca acest mandat sa fie unul al linistii, al impacarii tuturor oamenilor din tara noastra, a adevaratului consens care sa-i uneasca pe Romani in normalitate.

1990 este all over again! Scary.