Older blog entries for bolsh (starting at number 44)

And the art contests keep on coming...

The GIMP 2.2 will be released in a few days and we are looking for a splash screen for the 2.2 release.

There have been a few very nice propositions thanks to jimmac's splash screen template, but we are now looking for the definitive 2.2 splash screen.

The lucky winner will be chosen next week by a number of people yet to be identified, and sent to a location to be specified today (we're working on it...). The winner will get a yet-to-be-printed t-shirt or perhaps some other goodie worth killing over.

As you can tell, this is perhaps the best organised contest ever.

GUADEC logo competition

The GUADEC logo competition closes in a few hours, and it has been a massive success! At my latest count, there were over 90 logo submissions, from around 30 different designers. Several people submitted 7 or 8 entries (or even more) and a huge amount of thought and work obviously went into the submissions.

Now the hard work begins - the Stuttgart organisers are going to have a tough job trimming those 90 submissions down to a shortlist of around 5, from which the winner will be picked.

Leslie Proctor had the wonderful idea of organising a logo gallery at GUADEC, where each of the logos submitted will be on display to show the depth of creative talent and energy in the GNOME community. To all the designers who have submitted entries for the competition (and if you haven't you still have a few hours), all I can say is "chapeau", as they say in France.

Luis: I think you're right - we really need to start networking LUGs together.

There should be a centralised repository of local GNOME groups. The format for each group should be simple, with the name of the group and country/region (perhaps with a little map logo), a contact name, address and e-mail, with a link to the local webpage.

GNOME-va, Vatican

Karol Wojtyla
the_boss@vatican.gov
1, St. Paul's Place
Vatican City

http://www.gnome.va

I'm sure there are others, but I know of user groups for GNOME in France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Brasil, India and Venezuela. It would be great to have all of their knowledge and experience shared.

I've started a page in the wiki for this, but I think it should be linked prominently on the main gnome.org website, and from foundation.gnome.org (when it's sufficiently developed to do so). It would be cool if the user groups set up a scratch space in that hierarchy for upcoming events and the like, but that's sugar on the cake - the important thing is to get a list of groups and contacts. For the moment I added GNOME-fr (with general contact info, but nothing pointing to a particular person).

Looks like a GNOME-Hispano person saw the link to UserGroups on the front page before I managed to finish too :)

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Brian: It always gets my wick a bit when gun-loving Americans roll out this hoary old NRA-fed chestnut.

The key word in your phrase there is "responsible" - of course a gun isn't responsible for its actions. If you change that to "is a major factor in.." it stays true for guns, but becomes patently ridiculous for your exam example. With fewer guns, fewer murderous people would have a tool available to them that makes their job easy.

Put another way, there would be an awful lot fewer high-rise buildings in the world if there were no industrial cranes or scaffolding. Cranes and scaffolding aren't responsible for high-rise buildings, but without them things become a lot more difficult.

I will be giving a 2 hour practical introduction to the GIMP in Lyon, France, at the Bibliothèque La Gryffe, 5 rue Sébastien Gryffe, Lyon 7e from 15h to 17h this coming Saturday.

I will cover basic topics like color correction and the use of layers and channels, with a very definite practical side. I will work through a number of examples, and if there are enough computers, everyone will have the chance to repeat the tasks themselves.

If you're around Lyon and are interested, please bring your laptop if you have one, since the library in question does not have any computing facilities.

Oh, and it'll all be in French ;-)

Murray: One of the things I actually like about ClearCase is their branching (as long as it doesn't go any more levels than trunk + TEMP branch) - I find it really cool to be able to develop on a branch for a couple of weeks while I continue to see what's happenning on the trunk by updating regularly.

Basically, every time I update I do a merge from the trunk without actually having to merge from the trunk (well, unless I have a conflicting file). Which means that when I get to the end of the branch, I have a tiny merge to do before retiring the branch, rather than a biggish one.

Granted, it's a small thing to like, outweighed by a big bunch of stuff not to like, but at least there's that.

Rich: Being the parent of an almost-3-year-old, I'm currently learning the joys of early speech myself these days (bilingual speech at that, which is a whole 'nuther kettle of fish).

The field concerned is called "Language Acquisition", and aparrently Noam Chomsky is the field's main mover and shaker. The interesting thing about children's speach is that instinctively, kids figure out the important words in a sentence - and not just the important words, but the important parts of them. So suffixes, prefixes, conjunctions, and helper versbs all get left behind and all you get are action verbs, nouns and names. "Thomas go plouf" is a particular favourite of ours right now that we're trying to talk him out of (it's bath related).

Changed my mind... just submitted my candidacy for the foundation board. I noticed that the meetings are typically at 20/21h UTC, which works out at 21/22h here, and that suits me fine.

I'm really excited about working on the board although I'm sure it'll be hard work (and of course I need to get elected first).

The main thing I would like to see is the foundation acting as a central conduit for all of the regional projects that are cropping up, from Bangalore to Chile and Brasil, right through France, Germany and Spain. Those local organisations offer something the foundation doesn't, geographical proximity and local knowledge, and the foundation can be a central point for all of those organisations to communicate and present their news to a global audience.

GNOME Foundation Board elections

So far I count 6 nominations, and most of the outgoing board haven't declared. I considered presenting myself for election seriously, but I will soon be changing jobs, and won't be available for board meetings at 6pm on a weekday, which means I basically wouldn't be able to do the job.

I am wondering why there are so few people interested in the board, though. Perhaps people just feel that it's a sucky job that they don't want to do...

France's Iron Man

I'm not a triathlon fan unlike some other GNOMErs, but you have to admire the dedication and athleticism (and stubbornness) of people who swim 5km, cycle 180km and run 42km (a full marathon) in the Iron Man triathlon every year.

One of the competitors in this year's triathlon will be Frenchman Xavier Le Floch, who finished last year's race in 14th position, 25 minutes behind the winner. What is extraordinary about this is that 4 months prior to the race, Xavier was involved in a plane accident, and had 2 vertebrae in his neck broken. Normally, such an injury requires 6 months of heavy physiotherapy. Xavier was back training for the Iron Man after 6 weeks.

This year, he's back, and in the best form of his life. And he expects to win, even if he is not the favourite. Yet another inspirational example of Living Strong.