Wiki Loves Monuments in 3, 2, 1...

We are just one day away from the start of what will be the biggest photo competition ever: Wiki Loves Monuments will open on September 1st and will stay open until September 30, during this whole month you are invited to take photos of historical monuments from your country and upload them to Wikimedia Commons (technically, the upload has to happen this month, the photos can be taken before). And it is no joke, while the 2011 edition is a steps away from being declared the largest competition ever (stay tuned) with about 168,000 pictures from 18 countries, now 36 countries announced participation, most likely we will beat our own record.

There are also good incentives to participate beyond the greater good of enriching Wikipedia with data about your country's culture and history, there are prizes: first on the national level, where they vary from country to country, and then international prizes which have at the top a photo trip (and Wikimania 2013 attendance) to Hong Kong.

From my part, I am again a member of the organizing team in Romania. I have no specific goals in this endeavour, I want it just to be fun and fair and also get some quality pictures in Wikipedia, the jury focus will be more on usefulness of the images, more than the art side. As numbers, the only one I have in mind is my personal contribution: I want to upload myself at least 200 pictures to the campaign (being an organizer and jury member, they won't run for any prize). I would also be thrilled to see some of my photographer friends from the community getting involved in this contest yes, it will happen also in India, in North America, in South America... almost everywhere).

Let the fun begin!

IRC session on CC licenses and sharing

Kushal invited me to give an IRC talk to the Linux Users' Group of Durgapur (don't be thrown back about their website, is recovering after an "incident") on Creative Commons licenses, sharing, free culture and free art. It happened yesterday evening on #dgplug, taking until late in the night - I suspect some of the audience felt asleep, they were not as interactive as I hoped. They had only very brief knowledge about software licensing (considering it was a LUG) and even briefer on cultural licenses, so I had to start with the basics. For the curious, the full session log is available at my website (it should appear also on dgplug's website - update: here).

Mountain wallpapers

As I said yesterday I was a little back with posting wallpaper stuff, today I get up do date, so won't stress people with them again at least for a few days (still, don't promise it will take longer than a week, things may happen)

As a couple of the pics above featured cows, is probably an interesting idea with something more abstract, even if not mountains-related, a detail from a spherical water fountain.

Summer wallpapers

I was busy lately with some photography projects (including a couple of photo exibitions and a new edition for Wiki Loves Monuments) so I am late with one of the tasks I try to follow: publishing some Free wallpapers from sceneries I encountered: