Red Hat Magazine: GIMP 2.4 preview

Red Hat Magazine published a preview of the GIMP 2.4 new features I think are the most important, among them: improved selector and crop tools, healing, red eye removal, perspective clone, SIOX extractor.

The truth is, I had in my mind a different schedule and the article was intended to be published earlier and be followed by various tutorials and screencasts, but in the end all went for the good: my article got delayed but also the final GIMP 2.4 release got delayed.
However considering the freeze, most likely Fedora 8 will ship with RC3 and the final release (which for the most part should be identical) will be pushed as an update.
Enjoy Fedora 8 and Enjoy GIMP 2.4!

Distro deathmatch: Werewolf versus Gibbon (poll and cartoon)

Here is an imagination exercise: picture in your mind an arena and inside it, facing each other, a werewolf and a gibbon.

Who would win? The mighty and fierce lycanthrope or the weak and lame monkey?
Add your vote below and, if you feel like, explain your vote in the comments section.

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Who would win in a deathmatch: Werewolf versus Gibbon

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Spins, multimedia, Knoppix

We had recently a very long thread on the marketing list and, inevitably, at some point someone claimed the most important feature of Fedora and the reasoun use it is livna with its multimedia codecs (this is somewhat like Goodwin's law, if a thread is long enough, it have to get to the multimedia problem).
Personally, I am content with livna and consider it easy enough but here is some anecdotal evidence showing how some people leave Fedora due to its lack of multimedia abilities right out of the box and backing the argument about livna to some degree:

I recently meet an old buddy of me, cdriga, from OpenOffice.org, with whom I have not talked in a long while. He was a long time RHL and Fedora user, I even used to supply him with install CDs back when he had a flaky internet connection (around RHL 9, IIRC).
From topic to topic he told me "I am a Debian user now, by the way of Knoppix". My reaction: "WTF, is Knoppix still alive? Wasn't it killed already by Ubuntu/Kubuntu?" and his reply: "is very cool, you can install the live CD on your hard drive and you have alll the multimedia codecs right from the start, I installed it even for some relatives and they like it".

At this point I told him a few things about Fedora's latest developments with live media and spins, but this can't beat multimedia working out of the box! Maybe a couple of years ago, when, before a career change, he used to do a lot more programming, I could have lured him with the developer spin featuring the latest Eclipse on top of Iced Tea (and close the circle, as he talked me into using Eclipse).

However, do not listen to my anecdotal experience, better read cdriga's own words about his Linux history (I read it and my first reaction was like "Yuck! XMMS... I remember anow all the reasons I erased Knoppix from my mind.")

Counting werewolves

I like werewolves as a release name, it kick ass. Totally. I voted for this name. It has a lot of potential. The only bad thing is that such an awesome name will last only for a release cycle (6 months).

So, obviously, when I saw Máirín's cool Werewolf countdown I couldn't stop myself and did one on my own taste and style (only the graphic, it has no working countdown so far):

And there are a lot more ideas to come, watch this space...

What if Linux users would cease their love affair with Mozilla?

Reading a piece like this, even if after the strong reaction from the community the author tries to minimize the damage, apologize and call it a mistake, you just can't stop wondering about how the Mozilla Corporation treats the Linux users like second class citizens.

This make me think at the following hypothetical scenario: what if Linux users would cease their love affair with Mozilla? They would remove the Firefox buttons and banners from the websites they control, stop setting/recommending Firefox as corporate policy in their work places and stop pushing Firefox to end users, friends and family, at home? Or even worse from a Mozilla point of view, start promoting an alternative instead?
The good news is that we have this alternative, WebKit is almost there, cross-platform, free, fast, under active development and with decent web standards support, it is the best toll to keep Mozilla under control.

Yes, we Linux users are a small minority of the Mozilla users base, or a small minority of the general desktop users base (this may change soon, but I'll talk about that another time) but we control or influence a larger part of their Windows users so I don't think this minority, or its possible revolt, are negligible.

GPL for Heretic and Hexen? That would be a good thing

About 10 years ago I had a group of friends (or should I cal them gaming-buddies? anything, but not acknowledge they were my coworkers) who preferred Heretic for network play (in the detriment of Doom or Quake), so I had a lot of fun with it. As a consequence, I will always have a bit of nostalgia about it and enjoy a run of the game.

As we can see from the Doom example, GPL is a real chance for such a game to get new life injected into it, so I pretty much agree with the open letter to Raven Software and Activision for a license change to GPL and signed the petition. Not last, that would be awesome also for the Linux gamers.

A home for my GIMP screencasts: Romanian video sharing sites

Lately, I was in a GIMP screencasts creation frenzy (with ups and downs, struggles and achievements), the next step is to publish them somewhere.
It may be OK to put a few movies on your website, but when you have multiple 20MB files to host, you think twice (maybe three time if the site peaked at around 10.000 visitors a day recently with the help of a social bookmarking service) so the obvious solution is to use a video sharing site, with a compromise on video quality and file formats (Flash).

Of course, you have to use YouTube, that is the place where the most users will look for videos, but I think I identified a very good niche: Romanian video sharing sites, my co-nationals, with the most used ones being Trilulilu and Neogen (Trilulilu seems more popular but Neogen worked better for me - more about that later). Those sites are extremely poor in tutorials, FOSS stuff, GIMP or Inkscape stuff, they look like a virgin land for such type of content so I can get the first mover advantage.

But now to the ugly part: those sites are defective by design, they have the upload forms made with Flash (the upload pages, like other parts of the site are identical to the last word with each other, from what I understand Neogen shamelessly copied Trilulilu) but even worse, the Flash uploader from Trilulilu does not work under Linux, it report upload done but nothing happens (the one from Neogen is bad, but not that bad).

I did an effort, uploaded content to both, and indeed, on Trilulilu you get more eyeballs but the site is the worse from a Linux user point of view.

A conclusion? Recently Google started localized versions of YouTube for some language, when they will get a Romanian version those bad sites will get a much needed kick in the pants (still, they will survive, as the sites are a haven for stolen content copyright infringement porn questionable content - being outside of the RIAA/MPAA/whatever radar).

Animax

I don't get the Animax policy, they suck so many ways (schedule, website, program, translation, reruns, technical problems, etc.) like they are trying as much as possible to drive viewers to p2p downloads. The latest straw was to remove the original (Japanese) sound and Romanian subtitles with Romanian dubbing. People are up in arms to the forum protesting.

This is a text book example of corporate (Animax is owned by Sony) idiocy, applying the "one size fits all" principle. They don't get it: the Romanian public prefer the original soundtrack with subtitles, not dubbing. We (with no effect) petitioned Cartoon Network years ago when they did the same.

And it is not like Animax is for kindergarden kids, watching cartoons Saturday morning, its daily shows starts in the evening, at 20:00 (8:00 pm).

So I'll say it again, clear, loudly and in Romanian: Nu vrem programe dublate in limba romana, dati-ne subtitrarile inapoi!

Red Hat Magazine: How to touch-up portraits with GIMP

Red Hat Magazine published this week-end my How to touch-up portraits with GIMP, it is a tutorial about photo enhancement I wrote as promotion for both GIMP 2.4 and Fedora 8, which will include the new GIMP.

You can learn how to improve a poor and boring photo to something more exciting:

Update: now the tutorial is also available in English on my own site and with a romanian translation.

More struggles in Theora land, agravated by my own stupidity

I had this itch about GIMP screencasts in Ogg Theora, like the last week frustration was not enough. This time I got a "clever" idea for the credits screen: make a PNG with the license info and just show it inside GIMP and stop the recording only after that.

So far, so good. But, as usual, my own stupidity in my worst enemy: I made a typo on the text, "Creative Commons Attribution Sahre Alike" and noticed it only after I recorded all the screencasts. At such stage, of course I will not record them again, so I needed a solution to split the video and take out the last few seconds.

Back in Divx/AVI/mencoder land, the solution would be like this:

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy long_video.avi -endpos HH:MM:SS -o short_video.avi

Where HH:MM:SS is the time where I want it to be cut (is possible to define also -startpos, to cut from the start).

But I didn't want to transcode twice, so I searched for an Ogg Theora only solution, the best I found so far was (it still need re-encoding):

ffmpeg2theora -e SS -v 9 -S 0 -o short_video.ogg long_video.ogg

Where SS is the time in seconds (i could use also -s for start time), -v 9 a high video quality and -S 0 a sharp image.

With all my efforts, the quality of the image is visibly poorer (and as a plus, the file size smaller), is a bad idea to re-encode, but my stupidity is so big...

For now, the videos are uploaded only on YouTube (some of them are quite big and I don't want that much traffic on my own server), so the conversion to Flash lowered the quality a lot more compared with my own stupidity.

OpenOffice.org in limba romana (translations)

I usually don't do this, but here is an bilingual post:

Localizarea in limba romana a OpenOffice.org a pornit acum vreo doi ani cu mare entuziasm si chiar un maraton in cursul caruia intr-o singura zi s-au tradus circa 15% din stringuri. Din pacate interesul a scazut foarte repede, contributiile pe masura, activitatea s-a impotmolit.

Sarind peste acest istoric mohorit, iata o geana de lumina: un nou coordonator al echipei de localizare, Alexandru Szasz (cunoscut si pentru localizarea Fedora in limba romana), o noua interfata, entuziasm innoit, energii in crestere, se pare ca lucrurile se urnesc din nou (planurile lui Alexandru sint ambitioase, isi propune traducerea interfetei grafice pina in februarie).

Cei care doresc sa contribuie sint asteptati la www.alexxed.com/traduceri/main.php, unde intr-o interfata web se poate lucra in stil wiki, fara login sau alte bariere: intrati in "Open Office 2.x", alegeti termeni netradusi si completati cu propria versiune. Mai multe amanunte in anuntul initial sau direct pe lista de mail a proiectului (dev AT ro.openoffice.org).

---

The Romanian localization of OpenOffice.org started with greath enthusiasm a couple of years ago, even with a translation marathon when in a single day about 15% of the strings got translated. Unfortunately, the interest slowed down shortly along with contributions, the activity stalled.

Fast forwarding over thsi gloomy history, here is a hope of light: a new localization team coordinator, Alexandru Szasz (known also for the Romanian Fedora localization), a new interfata, renewed enthusiasm, growing energies, it look like the things start again (Alexandru's plans are ambitious, he propose the GUI translation until February).

Those wanting to contribute are welcomed at www.alexxed.com/traduceri/main.php, where in a web interface they can work wiki-style, with no login or other barriers: enter in "Open Office 2.x", find some untranslated words and add your own version. More details are avaialble on the initial announcement or directly on the project mailing list (dev AT ro.openoffice.org).

Frustrated with Ogg Theora

I have this basic task: a screencast in Ogg Theora and a still PNG image, which I want to add at the end, for 5-10 seconds, like a credits screen (displaying the CC license, author name).

I create a PNG with the same resolution with the screencast and using ffmpeg and ffmpeg2theora from that PNG I do a short (6 seconds) clip in Ogg Theora.

Now the ugly part: join the two clips... I use the old tried and true method from avi (divx), some results after a Google search say it should work also with Ogg:

cat part1.ogg part2.ogg > full_video.ogg

It doesn't work: in both Totem and Mplayer the playback is aborted (with an error) right after the end of the first part (it does work OK with VLC).

Then I remember what I do after joining avi files:

mencoder -forceidx -oac copy -ovc copy full_video.ogg -o full_video_good.ogg

The result is a broken 5KB empty file.

I look for help and get a receipe:

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy part1.ogg part2.ogg -o full_video_good.ogg

It doesn't work either, a result similar with what I get with "-forceidx".

The sad thing is, if I use divx encoded AVIs, all is good: the join work perfectly (either with cat and forceidx or with one step mencoder) but it is suboptimal: transcode from theora to divx > join the avis > transcode back to theora, two transcoding options and a huge quality loss.

I see two losing options: drop Ogg Theora and do everything as DivX AVI or drop the screencast at all. Frustrating. And don't get me started about the lack of a nice GUI for all this process... (PiTiVi)

GIMP is user firendly

You know how everybody loves to hate GIMP and its user interface, this is why I am surprised to see such a reaction: I posted on YouTube a short screencast about the new Healing Tool in GIMP 2.4 and got an enhusiastic comment from someone

I've just converted to GIMP and love it more than Photoshop. I feel like I have more control.

Is not the usual reply you get from Photoshop users!

A big FY to the Post Office

A couple of days ago I received at home the PIN from Google AdSense, by snail mail, to enable the payments. Not sure if I should or should be not surprised, the envelope arrived already opened, even if it was marked "Important Account Information Enclosed". What angered me is not that I received it open, but hot brutally it was opened: in one place someone tried to scratch the adhesive tape and it another just broke the paper.

I don't know who to blame, the Romanian or the US Post, but frankly I don't care: the FY is for everyone involved.

If I was security conscious enough, I know I should contact Google and report the incident, but the money are not enough to worth the effort (of course, they are enough so I received the PIN) and I do not really understand understand the consequences (is not like someone got my credit card PIN) and I'm still protected by my password.

However, I am somewhat amused thinking at the dumbfuck at the Post Office who saw the envelope from Google with "Important Account Information Enclosed" on it, broke it expecting something big and found some information he does not know to use (probably not able even to link my name and Gmail account with a simple Google query).

When religion is schools is too much?

Forced religion in public schools is an old pet peeve of mine, but sometime it is just too much, and I have to join other Romanian bloggers and protest: this is too much. The linked article is written in Romanian, but it contain explicit pictures (scroll down a bit).

This is supposed to be a "religion laboratory", a special class room where some students spend a large part of their time. And this is in a public school, paid from my money.

Lycanthropy

Werewolves are kick ass mythical creatures.
I still believe vampires are cooler (maybe we will have on as an option for F9), but werewolves are good enough.

It is a tram, it is a tank?

I saw it some days ago but only today I had my phone handy and was in a close distance (but being in movement, I had only a single shot opportunity, the result is acceptable).
Well, it is a tram painted in the army green, complete with the army symbol. WTF?

It is a tram, it is a tank?
(on the streets of Bucharest)
I guess it is some weird marketing campaign, but it had no visible advertising on it.

Creative Commons licenses and the Romanian web

Lately I started to publish my tutorials in the Romanian language too, in addition to the original English version and I observed an annoying thing: people take the content and re-publish it on their own sites (which is fine, this is why I use CC-BY-SA) but they tend to not follow the license: do not attribute the source, do not link back and do not share alike, even more, in those conditions they hot link images back from my site (this give me the unexpected advantage of easily tracking them).

I contacted those people, outlined the license and politely requested credit and share alike. Usually they reply nicely and comply, even if I have to further explain what are the requirements of the license.

My conclusion is that the Romanian public is generally not informed properly about licenses and Creative Commons, so an information campaign is needed to raise awareness, so here is a short introduction about the main Creative Commons licenses, written on a Romanian language blog.

To further this effort, I guess I could try to translate the full text of the licenses in the Romanian language, but I don't think this is the best thing as (1) is not wise to have an engineer translating legal stuff and (2) a localized version of the license (as CC has for various regions) will need input about the local law from a local lawyer.

The IT Crowd and Linux

Quote from an interview with Graham Linehan, creator of The IT Crowd (emphasis mine):

I always try and come up with ideas that have what I call 'penetration'; they involve computers in some way, but in such a way that everybody will know what I'm talking about. So I'd write something about Facebook, which people are very aware of now, but not My Space, which was more of a culty thing. I'd write about the German cannibal because it made the news, but I hardly ever do gags about geeky things like Linux because to hasn't penetrated into the mainstream.

More Fedora userbars

In an earlier post I showed a Fedora signature bar (userbar) for forums and almost forgot about it, until a recent comment on another post reminded me about the topic, userbars are appropriate not only users, but also contributors (developers, ambassadors):

F8 "Infinity" web banners and buttons

I like simple things and I like the texture from the "Infinity" background so I did a few very simple preliminary web graphics with an "Infinity" feel, they will probably serve as a base for some better graphics to come:

• plain and simple banner:
  


• with the "Infinite Boundaries" initial concept from "Infinity":
  


• with the traditional "infinity+freedom+voice" message:
  


• buttons:
  

AMD/ATI

My PC at home is in a serious need for a major upgrade for quite some time and after hearing the good AMD news about Linux drivers, when the time will come I will almost certainly break my tradition of using Nvidia cards and go for an AMD/ATI card along with (here the tradition will remain unchanged) an AMD CPU.
This may even change my position about laptops.

Fun with glass and shadows in Inkscape

A couple of days ago I was playing with my own variations of Martin's GDM mockup, with glassy surfaces (transparency and shadows), which is all the rage these days.

So playing with those I had to use a simple but less known masking trick, which gave me the idea to develop it in an Inkscape tutorial about glassy surfaces .

A usual, a Romanian translation is available too.

GIMP 2.4 RC1 in F7

After my lame bribery attempt last week for a yummable GIMP 2.4 RC1 for Fedora 7 I got some feedback and tried even the Rawhide rpm, which installed (only with gutenprint as a required update) but refused to work ("gimp: symbol lookup error: gimp: undefined symbol: g_once_init_enter_impl").

Fortunately, I found a working F7 rpm and I am happy. The package was not a result of my request, so my bribe remains unclaimed, but I still give a big Thank you! to the packager.

SIOX: foreground image extraction with Inkscape and GIMP

A couple of years ago when the SIOX (Simple Interactive Object Extraction) surfaced the web, a lot of enthusiasm and expectations were created. Now with released or almost released applications using it, we can have an objective look at it and draw practical conclusions, not only talk about the demos which may be (at least partly) doctored.

With fast release cycles (about two releases a year) Inkscape was the first to have a working SIOX implementation in a release, back in Inkscape 0.44.
Inkscape is a vector drawing application, so it had to implement the algorithm in its specific way, namely as a part of the tracing tool, which convert from raster to vector, so the result is not pixel-perfect, but it does not even tries that.
Another downside is that Inkscape will use only the starting photo and one single path defining the region of interest (without a mark for the sure foreground), so the result is far from perfect and the tool is not really interactive.

The receipt is simple: import the photo, draw a freehand shape covering it, select both and run a trace by colors:

GIMP got the tool even earlier in its development branch, but only the soon-to-be-released stable GIMP 2.4 will put it in the hands of the larger audience.
Here are a lot of options: brush sizes, feather edges, smoothing and you can mark both the sure background and the sure foreground, but after the SIOX job is done, it still needed to adjust a little using classic selection tools.

The receipt is more complex: open the photo and use the foreground extraction tool, it will offer a lasso-like tool to mark the region of interest around the subject and then a brush to sample the foreground. You can change the brush size and/or zoom in and out and even an eraser to unselect foreground. When ready, press Enter to get the subject selected, but you still have to use the real lasso selection to adjust it more:


I think I have some solid experience with both application, so my conclusion is obviously biased: SIOX may look like a timesaver for some operations, but in the end you will still need a loot of additional work to improve its results, you will not save that much time, so for me it is mostly a nice gimmick.
As particular applications, Inkscape is really lacking a way to define the sure foreground so it will give satisfactory results only for selected images but with GIMP you can zoom in and use smaller brushes (like in the good old Quick Mask way) and select anything you want.
Maybe if you want vectorization for complex images is better to extract the foreground in GIMP and trace in Inkscape the already extracted foreground.