Don’t Say Geek! Say Syntux!

I’m really in love with those tiny tools that can do the magic to you when you are really depressed looking for a miracle to get your task done.

I work as action photographer in my free time and yesterday I had to edit 200 shot in a very short time, first I downloaded the RAWs into my computer and then started to delete the ruined ones and then I needed a way to convert all of my CR2 files into JPG; after bit of googling I found that there is a living application out there called DCRAW that let you decode all of your RAW files and then you can pass your decoded data into a tiny application called CJPEG that can compress the image file into JPEG image file and so I did

This is the magic of command line tools in GNU/Linux, I was able to get all of my RAWs decoded and converted into JPEG in about two hours which includes googling for for the way to batch edit photos and convert RAWs to JPEG.

If you are into Photography then you would understand how many hours I have saved to get this task done.

Later I wanted to add a border and my signature to all of these photos plus I needed to resize them for web usage so I used Phatch.

Phatch is a simple to use cross-platform graphical Photo Batch Processor and Exif Renamer with a nice graphical user interface. Phatch handles all popular image formats and can duplicate (sub)folder hierarchies. Phatch can batch resize, rotate, apply shadows, perspective, rounded corners, … and do much more actions in minutes instead of hours or days if you do it manually.

I can certainly confirm that phatchs saved lots of my time, in return I’ll start translating it into Arabic language out of respect and to give something back to the developers and the community.

Photo editing under Linux isn’t that user friendly yet, but I’m pretty sure it will definitely be user friendly when Phatch get stabilised and gets more features.

NOTE: This example was tested with dcraw v8.80 and cjpeg 6b. cjpeg is available under libjpeg-progs package.

Tags: action photographer, arabic language, batch processor, command line tools, cross platform, dcraw c, decoded data, folder hierarchies, gnu linux, googling, graphical user interface, image file, image formats, raw files, raws, renamer, rounded corners, tiny application, tiny tools, web usage, dcraw c, folder hierarchies, graphical user interface, action photographer, command line tools, decoded data, batch processor, tiny application, tiny tools, raws, gnu linux, raw files, community photo, web usage, rounded corners, googling, image formats, renamer, stabilised, arabic language

Saturday 29th of December was one of the days that I would never forgot, We worked really hard to prepare for the festival and we got it done in less than three weeks.

The event was a great success, we installed GNU/Linux on about 30 boxes, distributed about 300 DVD and 100 CD mainly Ubuntu 7.10 and Fedora 8 but OpenSuse 10.3 has its dose too (I can tell that people liked it even more than Fedora)

The goals of festival were met, we wanted to turn luggers on and to get new fresh blood and we succeeds in getting 120 new lug members and the old ones working on new year resolutions now which is great step forward for us.

People were amused by the topics of Free Software, Open Source, starting from the philosophy ending with the available technologies, They were asking Are you doing this for free? we thought you’re going to sell us something and the answer was Of course, we are selling you your freedom

Now we are planning to setup another installation festival within four months, hopefully we will find a sponsor so we can achieve a larger class of people.

Kudos to JoLug members who helped to make this event one memorable event, hopefully we will have more good news to share soon.

leave you with some photos of the installation festival.

Tags: available technologies, boxes, fedora, festival, four months, free software, freedom, fresh blood, gnu linux, google, installation, jolug, kudos, memorable event, new lug, new year, new year resolutions, opensuse, philosophy, picasaweb, software open source, type application, ubuntu, x shockwave flash, new year resolutions, x shockwave flash, new lug, google, picasaweb, software open source, gnu linux, available technologies, memorable event, fresh blood, type application, fedora, kudos, four months, new year, opensuse, boxes, philosophy, free software, freedom

Why burn a disk when you could mount it? and who wants to remember such command to mount an ISO image

not to mention the long list of mount parameters.

Well, I do want to remember such command but I don’t mind having an easy cool tool to mount ISO images.

Gnome ISO Mounter (Gmount-ISO) is a tool that ease for Desktop users the CD Image files (ISO) mounting/unmounting .

Gnome ISO Mounter (Gmount-ISO) package is available under Ubuntu 7.10 repository

and can be easily obtained with aptitude.

Wish you a very happy mounting

Tags: images cd, optional section, iso images, cd images, desktop users, image iso, cachan, gtk2, cd image, iso image, aptitude, image files, glade, gnome, python, foo, repository, parameters, pygtk, developers

Adobe’s Flex Builder is coming to Linux

Tags: adobe, linux

Would you hate it if you knew that someone listening to your phone calls in the name of national security and war against terror ? do you think that they have time to listen to your girl friend flirting to you ?

I’m all with free software and open sourcing every single bit of software on this living earth and make it free too; but yet this doesn’t mean I will say that every single closed source application is evil nor be aware of X or Y closed source application unless I have a point that I can prove.

I do not mind my calls to be monitored as long as they do it under the name of security, I don’t want them to say Only if we were monitoring those bloody VOIP calls that shit wouldn’t happen if it’s for security then please go ahead, I don’t mind it, break my privacy please.

on the contrary I can’t really understand why they’re assuming that terrorists would coordinate their operations through Skype ? how about normal cell phones which is harder to trace especially when anyone can buy it with a fake ID?

I do love Ekiga and I respect Open Wengo but the matter fact I have single contact in my Ekiga account and never been able to register with Open Wengo.

On the other hand Gizmo has a competent voice quality and pricing and actually I do use it more than Skype for calling land and cell phones especially because it Gizmo is actually smoother than Skype on Nokia N800.

Skype is the most popular Internet telephony application with the largest network compared to Gizmo and Wengo and the cheapest one too and I can’t see any reason why one should stop using it especially when there is no better or same quality and pricing alternative to it and by the way you don’t use Skype just for internet telephony but text messaging too and I’d say (Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ) IM era has gone and I chat with almost all of my friends using Skype IM.

Maybe I should make it clear that I’m not defending Skype here as much as defending a good application, network and telephony pricing and be sure I’d do the funky chicken dance and upload it to youtube if we got a better open source alternative to Skype.

Tags: open wengo, internet telephony application, living earth, matter fact, war against terror, application network, nokia n800, source application, skype, voice quality, fake id, gizmo, girl friend, text messaging, national security, contrary, voip, terrorists, cell phones, nokia