Author: Kostas Antonakoglou

Drawing arrows with GIMP

Today I desperately needed to draw arrows in a picture to point parts of an Arduino stack with an Ethernet and Xbee shield.

So, I took the picture of the stack, increased the contrast and made other adjustments to perfect the pictures, and I was ready to place the arrows. Arrows? How? OK, I googled and found this http://registry.gimp.org/node/20269

You just have to download the .scm file. If you are a Linux user (obviously I use Fedora), go to your Home Folder and press Control+H to unhide the hidden folders. Next, go to the “.gimp-2.6” (1st: Yes there is a full stop, 2nd: 2.6 is the name of the folder right now according to GIMP’s current version). Inside this folder find the folder “scripts” and place there the .scm file. Now, open GIMP (or re-open if already running), go to Tools and you are good to go 🙂

(Tip: To draw an arrow you must use the path tool at the toolbox. Just click one time to point the start of the arrow and a second time to point the end. You will just make a straight line that will be used as a path)

In Greek : Στον σύνδεσμο που υπάρχει παραπάνω μπορείτε να κατεβάσετε το .scm αρχείο που θα σας επιτρέψει να σχεδιάζετε βέλη με το GIMP αυτόματα. Για να λειτουργήσει το αυτό το script πηγαίνουμε στο Home Folder, πατάμε Control+H για να αποκαλυφθούν οι κρυφοί φάκελοι και στη συνέχεια πηγαίνουμε στον φάκελο “.gimp-2.6″ (1ον ναι υπάρχει τελεία, 2ον το όνομα προέρχεται από την τωρινή έκδοση”). Μέσα σε αυτόν τον φάκελο υπάρχει ο φάκελος “scripts” όπου και τοποθετούμε το .scm αρχείο. Ανοίγωντας το GIMP τώρα μπορούμε να δούμε στο Tools το Arrow 🙂

(Συμβουλή: Για να φτιάξετε το arrow πρέπει να σχηματίσεται ένα μονοπάτι με το path tool. Αν απλά κάνετε ένα κλικ για την αρχή και άλλο ένα για το τέλος του βέλους εκεί που επιθυμείτε είστε έτοιμοι να φτιάξετε το βέλος με το Arrow που βρίσκεται στα Tools)

GFOSS Conference 2010

Yesterday ended the GFOSS Conference 2010 that took place in Athens at NTUA (National Technical University of Athens). It was an event that started on Friday, but yesterday was special because of the workshop I was organising this week together with Anastasis (anast)! The subject was (in translation) “Fedora Project : Remix and Spin it! The Fedora operating system you own (and not only that)”. Furthermore, we also had booth presence on both days with the usual swag 🙂

The workshop lasted 1 hour ( the schedule said 2 hours) but I think something more than that would be boring. Some setbacks occurred previously that day and affected the workshop a little bit. First, I tried to create an iso image using a kicksart file I made that unfortunately needed a bit of time to be created due to yesterday’s bad signal of the wifi where the booth of Fedora was (damn near fields), so I didn’t make it in time for the “Takis OS” Live CD I wanted to create. Second, I didn’t expect my laptop to fail me when I tried to plug in the dvi cable. I count it as a setback but, ok I overcame it thanks to the laptop of Anastasis 🙂

I think it was around 15 people that joined the workshop (thanks to everybody). I tried to pass the knowledge of what is a remix, a spin, their differences (and similarities), guidelines, processes, kickstart files, livecd-tools, cobbler…but not to the extent of getting down with too much coding, configurations and setting many arameters. In a few words I tried to show the way for a simple creation of a Remix from the kickstart file until the creation of a LiveCD and told a few words about the magic things cobbler can do. Anastasis talked about Geo Spin and Security Lab spin. I couldn’t miss the chance to talk about Fedora Electronic Lab too. Also, I am happy that Nikos (comzeradd) and Pantelis (pant) joined us as well!

click for more photos

Openfest 2010 @ ΤΕΙ Πειραιά (the recap)

Μετά από πολύ καιρό λοιπόν, επιστρέφω στον κειμενογράφο του wordpress. Αυτό το post θα το αφιερώσω όμως αποκλειστικά στο event της προηγούμενης εβδομάδας, στο Openfest 2010 που διεξήχθει στο ΤΕΙ Πειραιά και διοργανώθηκε από το τμήμα Ηλεκτρονικών Υπολογιστικών Συστημάτων του ΤΕΙ (αξίζει ένα μεγάλο μπράβο σε όλους τους). Ως γνωστόν είμαι φοιτητής του τμήματος Ηλεκτρονικής αυτού του ιδρύματος και έτσι δεν θα μπορούσα να λείψω. Ένιωσα επίσης και το χρέος να κάνω μια παρουσίαση, φυσικά για το Fedora!

Έτσι και έγινε. Μια εβδομάδα περίπου πριν το event και είχαμε ήδη αρχίσει να ετοιμαζαστε. Εκτυπώσεις, σχεδιασμός για αφίσες, εγγραφές cd, ποτήρια Fedora κτλ. Σε όλη αυτή τη διαδικασία, από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος του Openfest, βοήθησαν οι συνήθεις ύποπτοι του Fedora (που δεν είναι μόνο όσοι αναφέρονται στο wiki).  Είχα και την χαρά να φιλοξενήσω τον Σαλονικιό μας τον Χρήστο Μπαχαράκη (cmpahar) για κάμποσες μέρες  ( μας λύπεις ρε! 😀 ).

Εν συντομία, είχαμε το καλύτερο booth του event. Απλά και αντικειμενικότατα παρακαλώ 🙂 . Η παρουσίαση έχω την εντύπωση ότι δεν πήγε άσχημα. Μπορούσα και καλύτερα αλλά θα με δω στο video που θα ανέβει στο openfest.teipir.gr και θα σας πω. Επί τη ευκαιρία, να διορθώσω μια γκάφα μου : το F13 βγαίνει με βάση το πρόγραμμα 11 Μαΐου (και όχι 11 Απριλίου). Έπρεπε να κάνω το fail μου και εγώ δεν άντεξα . Ακολουθεί φωτογραφικό υλικό, ετοιμαστείτε 😛

Ελληνική Ομάδα Fedora
El Fedorato (click για να θαυμάσετε περισσότερες)

Να ευχαριστήσω θερμά και από εδώ τον Πιέρρο και την Θάλεια, τον Αναστάση και την Εβελίνα, τον Χρήστο, τον Παντελή (15 χρονών και ορεξάτος ορεξάτος) και όλους όσους συμμετείχαν.

Κάτι άσχετο,να σας ενημερώσω πως πέρα από το identi.ca γράφω και στο twitter . Kάτι σχετικό, θα ακολουθήσει και post εις την αγγλικήν με το video της παρουσίασης γιατί ακόμη δεν έχει βγει. Ευχαριστώ.

Free Culture Forum @ Barcelona 29/10-1/11

YEAH!!! At last an open source event and it’s a big one, the Free Culture Forum . I can’t wait to go! It will concern mainly freedom of knowledge, digital rights etc. I also want to attend the participation of Richard Stallman through videoconference. I missed the Software Freedom Day here in Barcelona, I will not miss this one!

Athens Digital Week 2009

OK. Today’s post will also have some Greek as it concerns a big technology festival in Athens, Athens Digital Week, at which I participated last year with Fedora. Actually I think it was the first time I participated somewhere as a Fedora Ambassador. It also has an open source section thus  last year we had Max Spevack‘s talk!

Ζηλεύω πάρα πολύ τα παιδιά που θα συμμετάσχουν καθώς είναι μια πολύ ωραία εμπειρία. Δεν μπορώ να ξεχάσω πόσο ωραία ήταν πέρσυ, με την συμμέτοχή του Fedora στο φεστιβάλ. Μιλάγαμε συνεχώς στον κόσμο, πχ η φωνή του Πιέρρου έκλεισε (μάλλον είμαι φτιαγμένος για να μιλάω πολύ) αλλά η κούραση που νιώθαμε στο τέλος ήταν γλυκιά, ήταν από κάτι που θέλαμε  να κάνουμε και όσο το κάναμε νιώθαμε την ανταμοιβή.

Πλέον ως πιο εμπειρος Ambassador θα μπορούσα να βοηθήσω ακόμη πιο πολύ αλλα δυστυχώς είναι λίγο δύσκολο από την Barcelona. Ψάχνω απεγνοσμένα για κάποιο event εδώ, ώστε να βοηθήσω. Είναι δύσκολο να οργανώσω κάτι ο ίδιος διότι δεν γνωρίζω Καταλανικά αλλά και τα Ισπανικά μου δεν θα βοηθούσαν σε κάτι που απαιτεί συνεχή ομιλία.

At the previous paragraph I mention that I would be interested to help as much as I can (I have brought some Fedora and Fedora Electronic lab leaflets with me) in organizing an event here in Barcelona. I don’t speak catalan and my castellano are not the best, but I would love to participate (and also speak in English, not all people in Barcelona are locals).

And something out of topic, here are some pictures from the peaceful-interesting-beautiful Valencia :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/constanton/sets/72157622449169847/

Education for everyone!

Have I ever told you that I love the internet? I have already told you about academicearth.org , but I just discovered something that is really worth being on your bookmarks. Youtube EDU : http://www.youtube.com/education?b=1 . I found it from openculture.com (for the latter you should subscribe to RSS).

Youtube is full of channels of universities (200 colleges and universities ->40.000 videos)

Not exactly what I expected to see…(2)

Almost a month here in Barcelona (in 4 days to be precise!)…Anyway, I will be quick. In a previous post there is an picture of a fire extinguisher called “UNIX”. On this post, let me show you my new find!Yes, another fire extinguisher…I think someone is doing this to me on purpose!
29092009971Yeah, it says “FIREFOX”…it’s cooler than Unix as it’s open source…but I like them both (?). Anyway. If I find a third one, I’ll let you all know. A friend of mine told me that I should find matchboxes with names like “Apple” or “MS” etc (yes this illustrates an obvious point). I don’t want to find anything of these, they just come to me! Hahaha…

Use your Nokia cellphone for presentations

Today I didn’t have many things to do (“You have to do the laundry” sais the little angel on my right shoulder, “Yeah…Whatever” says the little devil on my left) so I checked out what Google has to offer me (as a Fedora user) now that I am at the mercy of the internet. I checked out Picasa, Google Reader, Google Desktop and amora (not a google app). I am sure you are familiar with the 3 first ones. But the last one may not ring you any bell…If you own a Nokia cellphone actually, you should know it (and yes, I allow you to check the link before you finish reading this post 🙂 ). I own a Nokia N82, and amora offers me the means to controll my computer via my mobile’s keyboard (mostly for presentations though).

To install amora I also had to install Python for S60 first (for N82 I found this one and works fine). It’s so cool! I tried it with OOo Impress and works great! 🙂  I can’t wait to use it!

To install any google application on fedora you have to follow this guide : first configure the rpm key and then configure yum .

By the way I couldn’t launch picasa because I have to intsall the 32-bit openssl package! damn…Not in the mood to fix it 😛

Google Reader works fine (also Google Reader notifier) . ActualIy, I was using the RSS plugin for Evolution, which is not bad, but now I don’t have to wait for all the feeds to get updated to read my mail properly.

Google Desktop? I don’t think I will ever use it as Firefox is open as long as my notebook is switched on.

edit : amora is simply hosted inside google-code (I didn’t make that clear enough). It was implemented by Adenilson Cavalcanti a developer from “Instituto Nokia de Tecnologia” (Nokia Institute of Technology – Brazil).(thanks to Ademar)

Not exactly what I expected to see…

21092009895

Not much to say about it…I saw it here at FIB (Facultat de Informatica de Barcelona) at the UPC. OK! It’s a faculty of Informatics…not so unexpected maybe!!! I hope they will upgrade to Linux! hahaha

(Imagine a scene with a trapped person inside the building using the fire extinguisher (yes the UNIX one) to brake a window(s)…quite cool picture eh? hahaha)

My 1st ERASMUS post…about time.

It has been 13 days I am  here in Barcelona and I have already attended the sessions of the orientation week at the UPC. Well, Barcelona…It ‘s really an amazing city. I can’t wait to meet and get to know better with even more people at the university (or even not only there) .The weather the first 9 days has been more than great. Now, autumn tries to make us notice its presence with some rain every now and then.

I have met lots of people from Italy, people from France, even greek and cypriot students…great guys all of them. I believe I will also make more contact with locals soon. I try to improve my castellano, but now I also see the need to learn català ( I will take courses actually)! I believe it will be most confusing, but I am sure that castellano will be sufficient enough for the school. I will also apply for classes of català at the university. I have 3 courses in english and 2 in català. I have attended one lesson for each course, I must admit that when the professor is talking in català I understand very few words, so I have to pay attention to the blackboard and the slides.

The quality and quantity of the infrastructure here at the UPC is more than I could imagine. It’s a paradise.

And now…for something that I am really happy about. I am officially a member of FC Barcelona 🙂 and I have acquired 3 tickets for matches with Atletico Madrid, Mallorca and Villareal !!!

Anyway my photoset is here (it will be updated from time to time) :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/constanton/sets/72157622385493308/