Software Free

Saturday, in our trip to Cluj, after the presentation and the party ended we still had a few hours to spend, so we went to the Botanical Garden.

Close-up to a cactus

As the entrance, we had to pay a small tax, 4 RON (a little over 1 EUR) but to be allowed to take photos, an additional tax of 20 RON (or five times the entrance ticket) was needed. Figuring there is no way the tax is worth the amount of pictures we can take, we went tu put our cameras (4 of us had cameras) in the backpack.

As announced, a group of Romanian Fedora contributors went Saturday at an event organized in Cluj-Napoca by Grupul pentru Software Liber. Now it is the time for a [heavy] illustrated report of the event (even more photos [*] can be found in our photo gallery):

So, we leaved Bucharest Friday, with the night train:

I could rant about a "John Doe" life: over a year of not having a valid ID card, living an almost underground life, mostly normal but with only a few minor annoyances (like having the bank accounts blocked, being unable to travel outside of the country or, if that matters, being unable to vote - it doesn't matter, we can't escape the communist mafia).

I could write, for those who know me closely and may jump to some wrong conclusions, about my beard: even if it is not visible, I still have a beard inside, nothing changed, I am the same.

Instead my choice was to write about photo framing, this may be useful for a wider audience.

Is not hard to imagine cool stuff we can do with photos of people, see gregdek's idea about hackergotchi stickers, the old call for photos by Mo to promote spins, or a couple of ideas from me (Anaconda slides or fp.o front page banners), you know, things which could "emphasize the human nature of Fedora and the people behind the project" (he, he).

But we have a big blocker: lack of such photos... photos of Fedora contributors and enthusiasts which we allow us to use their photos (the approval part is very important).

So here is an idea: next week Fedora 9 release parties will gather all around the world a lot of right people in the right mood, so get your cameras, get approval from the subjects and let the photos flood. I am sure we can find crafty way to put them to good use.

Resynthesizer is a very cool GIMP plugin I have been playing with for a few days. It can be used for some "magic" effects: create seamless backgrounds, transfer textures from one image to another and remove objects from images.

The plugin is not installed by default, but is available on the website, with binaries for various OSes. In Fedora we have it already packaged, only a yum away: yum install gimp-resynthesizer.

I like its "remove objects" feature, which of course is far from perfect and works best on selected images, but is the kind of effect you see on movies: a few clicks and poof! instant coolness (in the same league with SIOX).

So open your photo with GIMP and draw a free selection (with the Lasso tool) around it:

More than blogging the PayPerPost clientle have to be some of the classiest ones on the net

There are some things in life which go in cycles and such a cycle, a short one, is the cycle I started a couple of weeks ago with an Inkscape tutorial, continued with another and it ends now back on track with some GIMPing, after which I will take a break from tutorials. What I'll do next? Upload some old clipart on OCAL? Do some Fedora graphics? Something else? Nothing? We'll see.

On my way from home to work I saw this gem:

A flyer saying "Laptop stolen from car, reward offered". To be of any use, I think it should have said something about the reward, which must be above the [black] market value of that laptop. Can you imagine the thief contacting the owner with an innocent face: "I found this laptop in a thrash can in the park" ?

To make the gem complete, the flyer is glued on a phone booth with the inscription "displaying forbidden".