MemoriSolitaire

I just got a nice holidays present: learned about MemoriSolitaire, "a solitaire card game where you use your memory to gain advantage", which is the first known use of my playing cards.

Free fonts

The latest Fedora Reloaded Podcast features an interview with Andy Fitzsimon, well known for his work on Inkscape and OCAL.
Andy is working on a Free font (probably to be released under LGPL) for the Fedora Project. The font is intended to be used on documentation, posters, flyers etc.

At the end an the interview, the Libre Graphics Meeting is mentioned - Andy will give there a demonstration on using Inkscape and GIMP.

go4it

go4it is a magazine with very little content: advertising for gadgets and pictures of babes holding those gadgets.

Today it was the first time for me reading this magazine (if we can call "reading" my two minutes look at it) and I don't like it:

• no real content, only advertising for expensive gadgets with a lot of hype (better search yourself online);


• the babes wear to many clothes for my taste (better search yourself online).

Then why blog about it? This number have something interesting, and I do not talk about the girl, the famous (for Romanians) Abramburica (she is so-so, nice body, common face, bad actress). The real event: they have a comparison of OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2003.

Their conclusion: the best tool is the one you are used with, OOo has a formidable price but is slow and resource hungry (true).
And the second conclusion: it does not matter much, because soon we all will be using Writely.

It looks like they did their job, the article list the address of our Native-Lang Project and mention the work on localization as an advantage.

Can I be allowed to hope for a future edition with a centerfold of a better babe clothed in OOo CDs? Anyway, I will not buy it, but receiving it for free, will browse for a couple of minutes.

Xmas poll

I promised a follow-up, so here is it.

So i made a few greeting cards, just in time for this year's Xmas. But the hard part is now to find myself which one i like better (or put in other words, which one suck less).

1. 


2. 


3. 


4. 


5. 

Feedback?

Counting users

Bryce talks about the classic subject of Importance of Cross Platform OSS Applications, i will not argue for or against, just make one small nitpick:

our measurements showed more Windows-based Inkscape users than Linux ones

We all know the measurement method of counting SourceForge downloads is flawed: Inkscape is included in all major Linux distros and any sane user will prefer to use the native packages provided by his distro instead of Autopackage or static RPMs.

So yes, i agree probably there are more Inkscape users on Windows than on Linux, but the ratio is not the one illustrated by sf.net downloads. We, as any other OSS project, just don't have a reliable way to count the users - see the 100 M downloads of Firefox or 50 M downloads of OpenOffice.org.

Xmas is coming

Yup, Xmas is coming and it looks like Open Clip Art Library will skip yet another release.

But I'm bored and what to do? Of course, some Xmas themed Pin-ups!

The first one was made a couple of days ago:

The second, made today, is more polished and have a size just right for our calendar contest:


And I have at least a couple of different ideas, watch this space :p

Inkscape Calendar

We have a sort of competition hosted at deviantART: the purpose is to get a calendar with images made with Inkscape.
Come and join the contest, is not that hard to win, as a year have 12 months so we will need 12 "winners".

Unfortunately, the time available is short, as we want to promote the calendar as a gift for the upcoming holidays, so the ending date is Monday 12.

R.I.P. - MyLINUX magazine

My picture just got published in a magazine - MyLINUX, so I purchased this morning one to show it to my mom :p

I had a surprise opening it: an announcement saying the magazine will be published in the future only in PDF format on the CD-ROM of their other magazines (MyComputer, PCGames and CDForum). So practically, the magazine is dead.

I wonder if it was bad karma for them to publish my picture in the magazine or a Linux magazine is not a viable business in Romania.

On a more serious note, I think I have some ideas on why the magazine failed after only 7 editions:

• the company making it is not big, probably is hard to push that many magazines


• the paper based media is dying being replaced by online venues and this is more visible on IT magazines


• maybe I am well informed and in touch with the Linux world, but this particular magazine failed to offer to me significant value


• in a country where a copy of Windows costs very little above the price of a blank CD (at the corner of the street, of course), desktop Linux is a niche product for end-users

note: It looks like my blog posts are pretty negative lately, maybe I should write about more optimistic things, like the incredibly cool idea of a SVG game

Shame on you OSDL

OSDL has published the results of their Linux desktop survey.

As you can see from this Evince screenshot, the published PDF was made using Microsoft Word, probably on Microsoft Windows undinf the Microsoft DOC format.
Shame on you OSDL! Have you heard the phrease "eat your own doog food"? So much for the Desktop Linux from them.

PS: at least they could have hired some competent workers able to obfuscate the massive use of Microsoft products at the Linux development headquarters.

Update: It was pointed to me the PDF metadata contain more info - the document was made on OS X, but this is not much better.

Update to update:If you ask, the document was made inside OSDL, not by external contractor.

Another update: Do you remember how much fun we have when learning about a Microsoft employee using Firefox?

OCAL in impasse?

Open Source games sucks. People argue this is because Open Source people are mostly developers, not artists and because artists are not very much into free sharing of their work.

I think the Open Clip Art Library proves this wrong: we showed is possible to get in less than two years over 10.000 images from several hundreds of people, producing something which is included in many FOSS and commercial projects. But we were not able to get enough developers doing a half-decent CMS for the website.

The upcoming release look like a bad milestone: over 10% of the submitted SVG files were damaged by the upload scripts. A bug reported a few days ago prevent uploading of zip archives (this stopped Gerald from submitting his set of 1400 images). All of this happens after we skipped a release because of security problems on our website. And we still don't have a plan on implementing features promised over than one year ago.

I wonder how many contributors or possible contributors were lost because of our broken website and what is our real potential, double, triple, more?

I have not made many new images from the last release (something around 80 files) but because of the brokenness, don't feel very motivated to create more or even submit them. Yes, I am a bit disappointed for the moment.

Me from Middle Earth

Numenorean


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

Ass, erm... donkey

I guess I just let myself carried by a joke made by Joshua Wulf:

Demand OpenDocument: Tell Microsoft You Want It

An online petition for Microsoft to support OpenDocument was launched today by the OpenDocument Fellowship. Microsoft has stated that the company will support the OpenDocument format in MS Office if there is customer demand. This petition will demonstrate that customer demand already exists.

The OpenDocument Fellowship, a volunteer organisation with members around the world, calls on everyone who uses MS Office, or who has an interest in open standards, to sign the petition at http://opendocumentfellowship.org/petition.

The petition, available in several languages, states:
"I request that Microsoft fully support the OASIS (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) OpenDocument Format for Office Applications in its MS Office product. This should include the ability to read, edit and write OpenDocument files reliably, according to the format specification."

OpenDocument (short for OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications) is:

• An open, XML-based file format.


• An open standard from the OASIS standards group.


• The default file format for OpenOffice.org 2.0, KOffice 1.4, StarOffice 8, IBM Workplace and other applications.


• The required office format for internal archives of the US State of Massachusetts.


• A format that fulfills the European Union's criteria on open standards.

"OpenDocument is important because it keeps your data accessible and promotes competition," said Jason Faulkner, press contact for OpenDocument Fellowship. "People want their information to be free, and competition is good for customers. OpenDocument brings open architecture to your data in the same way that the IBM PC brought open architecture to computer hardware. The competition encouraged by that has seen ever-improved performance and decreasing prices of computer hardware."

OpenDocument is designed not just to handle all office type files but also to integrate with the Internet. Users whose data is stored in OpenDocument format will never again face the problem of not being able to access data because the application that created it is no longer supported.

Open standards already enable users of different computer systems (both hardware and software) to access the Internet and communicate with each other. ODF enables users of different computer systems and software to freely exchange and use files. Vote for ODF!

For more information, see the Fellowship's website, http://opendocumentfellowship.org

LOAD - Photo

MyLINUX has published on their website a picture from LOAD with me giving the presentation about OpenOffice.org 2.0

LOAD

Linux Open Alternative Days is a business oriented conference and I was invited to keep a presentation on OpenOffice.org. Obviously, the subject was the classic "What is new in OOo 2.o" with a touch on the Romanian Native Language Project.

My slides are in Romanian language and available here.

And a picture of the conference room:

What can I say more? I was a nasty boy, and interrupted two respectable people from their presentations:

• Victor Spigelman - IBM WW Linux and Infrastructure Sales Executive was saying that the city of Munich decided to migrate to Linux despite the price reduction made by Microsoft because of religion, in his vision the migration was dictated by a religious attitude toward Linux - I pointed out the reason was because of long-term costs


• Claudiu Borsan, Novell SEE, Country Manager Romania was saying that Linux is not necessary free, and it cost money (he was talking in Romanian but used the English word free), and did it twice, so I had to interrupt him and point that Linux is Free but not necessarily gratis

Also, it was a pleasure to know Andrei Pascal from ITtraining and Mircea Buzlea from MyLINUX

Borked Colours

Have a look of this:

It seems the Photoshop-fu is weak in the person who made it, he managed to alter my cake and transform the chocolate is some disgusting chemicals:

Also the blue colour of "Office.org" is bad: it should be the same as the horizontal bar (R6, G52, B140).

In my experience this is caused by colour setting in Photoshop: next time use GIMP, dude!

Tango Project

I am trying to understand what is this Tango Desktop Project, beside the claim of "exists to create a consistent user experience for free and Open Source software with graphical user interfaces".
The Icon Theme Guidelines look like a fork of the GNOME HIG but using instead a very bright look for icons, it reminds me of KDE.
Beside the talk about all Open Source GUI applications, of GNOME, KDE and Mozilla, the people behind it are exclusively GNOME people from Novell.
Maybe I am mistaken, but it looks to me pretty much as a HIG fork, as adopting it by GNOME would obsolete its own guidelines.

Stuck in Corel land

I need some OpenOffice.org business cards, as I will keep next week a presentation at a Linux conference. So designed a nice one in Inkscape and experimented with some export options.

The next step was to search for a print shop to make them.

Print Shop 1, a little pricey, varying from .25 to .50 RON (about 0.07 - 0.14 EUR) each, depending on the amount of colour used. It was like this:
- What file formats do you accept?
- Any Corel up to version 12
- Anything else? EPS? PDF?
- We don't work with EPS, PDF yes, if you do the entire A4 paper, but we will not be able to edit it or adjust colours.
- OK, I will not need adjustments, but you will accept bitmaps?
- Sure, but we will not be able to edit it or adjust colours.
- Fair enough, what dpi?
- Anything more than 72 dpi
- OK, will do 600 dpi

Print Shop 2, a seriously cheaper one: .18 EUR
- What file formats do you accept?
- Corel
- Anything else? EPS? PDF?
- No, only Corel
- F*ck you very much

I don't have much time to search for other options, so I guess will go with Print Shop 1.

Another step will be do design a t-shirt (with OCAL to wear at the same conference) and to find a shop where to print it. I expect it to be more trouble some, as I want to use a non rectangular shape and maybe some gradients (at a second thought, maybe without gradients). I suspect here PNG is the only option.

All this experience reminded me of another one, about one year ago, when I had to do a brochure for my job. Then the print guy (our company is a regular customer of him) was a little more enlightened: he used both Illustrator and Corel (with a preference for Corel) and, as a big surprise for me, was a OpenOffice.org user, preferring it to MSO because "it work better with tables". But from our discuss I learned he never heard of PNG before. SVG, W3C? Obviously, he knew even less about those. (Is possible to know less than nothing about something?)

Politics

Take this with a grain of salt, as the test is taylored for people in US:

You are a Social Liberal (73% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (26% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Open Source games

So if both Alan and Bryce talk about Open Source/Linux games, can I stop myself trowing two cents on the debate?

In my opinion, the main problem is the barrier to entry. It is too high.
And the second problem is the desire to make games comparable with the latest commercial production. And too many 3D shooters.

What I would like to have in Linux is a tool comparable with RPG Maker 2000 with a free license. This would allow easy creation of fun and simple games and if the game creation tool is free is also possible the games will be free (a lot of games made with RPG Maker 2000 are freeware).

From a few minutes of looking at RM2K my conclusion is that it represent a wonderful tool. I have one single complaint: the controls are very dumb, in the style of game consoles, this is wrong, a PC game should be controlled like a PC game, with mouse and keyboard not with cursor keys and A, S, D. Also, the menus system and all dialogs are very dumb, console style, implemented.

Inkscape in the press: MyLINUX

This morning in my way to the office noticed a new edition of the MyLINUX magazine featuring Inkscape on the front cover (they contacted us some weeks ago requesting screenshots):

  

What to say about it? The article is full of praises from an enthusiastic author, mostly for the keyboard shortcuts and the integrated documentation.
Of course, it contains a lot of sample images, including my old RPG map example.

Resemblance

Vote ending

I expected a larger number of replies, but the result (after over 24 hours), with a score of 5:1 is:

As you may suspect now, an invitation to an Inkscape "Bug Party" will follow shorty.

Damn rain!

This morning, on the way to work I had the sensation I'm trapped inside an old platform game:

Basically I had to jump from stone to stone, avoinding to drop in the water. The main difference: no sharks in the water :D

The ending was also a surprise: right in the front of the building entry, a big puddle, impossible to cross:
 
Well, life as usual in Bucharest when it rain...

Vote

Let's do a quick vote, what do you like more:
1.
2.

3. none of the above, both of them suck!