Create a .gif with The Gimp

This is requested by my dearly beloved mom, so I’ll keep it simple and mom-friendly.

The things you’ll need:

  • A Computer
  • The Gimp (Windows & Linux compatible)
  • Some pictures/images (preferably of the same size)
  • A (very basic) knowledge of what a .gif is
    A .gif is actually a little slideshow of images.
  • 5 minutes time
    or 10, depending on how fast you can switch between open windows.

Get started:

  1. Open up The Gimp
    I suppose I don’t have to explain how to do this?
  2. Open up the folder where the images are that you want to be inside the animated image


  3. Drag’n’drop the first image into the big empty Gimp window (the image you want to be displayed first in your ‘presentation’)
    If the order of the images don’t matter, just select all the images and drag’n’drop em all at once.

    • Press, and hold down, the button on the mouse or other pointing device, to “grab” the object,
    • “Drag” the object/cursor/pointing device to the desired location,
    • “Drop” the object by releasing the button.
  4. Drag’n’drop the second image into the big empty Gimp window (the image you want to be displayed as second in your ‘presentation’)
  5. Drag’n’drop the third image into the big empty  Gimp window (the image you want to be displayed as third in your ‘presentation’)
  6. Drag’n’drop the fourth image …. ok, you’ll get it now!
    Continue doing this till you’ve dragged all your images in to that window.
    You can check how many and which images are already in there in the Layer window.
    Open it by clicking ctrl+l or going to file\dialogs\layers.

  7. Click “File” in the top menu
  8. Click “Save As”


  9. Choose a location where to save the final .gif file
  10. choose a filename that ends with “.gif ” (eg. “ChoopDaWhoop.gif”, without the quotes ofc.)


  11. Select “Save as Animation”


  12. Fill in the comment, or just un-check it. (probably no-one will ever read it)


  13. Select “Loop Forever”

  14. Choose a delay value (this will set the time before switching to another image)
    Check out the image at point 13
  15. Click save
  16. Profit!

Sintel trailer released.

So, if you haven’t heard of Sintel before, this is nothing too soon.
Sintel is a project just like Big Buck Bunny, that’s completely made with Free and Open Source software.
It’s more or less a promotion movie for Blender, that’s also why the Blender Foundation is sponsoring the project.
For those that don’t know Blender, should check it out.
It’s a Free and open source 3D content creation suite.
For all those people that are still thinking that still think that huge and task specific applications are only available for huge price’s and delivered by closed private company’s, this is your turning point.
In less than 2 months the full Sintel Video will be released… I can hardly wait.
It’s also fun to check the video’s on the BlenderFoudation youtube profile, it’s full of interesting reactions and insights.

Also be sure to check out their custom server rack:

Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Release Party Ghent is under construction

It’s official! There will be a Release Party for the Ubunu 10.04 (codename Lucid Lynx) in Ghent.

I’ve just send out the news to the mailing list of Ubuntu-be and the Whitespace to confirm that i’ll organise the release party for the upcoming LTS version of Ubuntu.
The event will take place Thursday the 13th of May in the Whitespace.
I’m still looking for people whom have some knowledge of something Ubuntu-related and have the guts to give a lightningtalk or a demo.
At the moment of writing, I’ve had 1 confirmation from a guy with Balls! Mandel.
He did a talk about desktopcouch at fosdem this year, and will bring an improved version of that to the Release party.
If you have questions, let me know.
I’m available at the #Ubuntu-be channel on freenode, or just PM me (mimor) or use the comment section below.

The sent mail in English:

Hello to all.
>
> I organize a RP on the 13th of May in honor of the Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid)
> release.
> This is indeed a Thursday 🙂 but that’s an official holiday and lot’s of
> the people don’t have to work on Friday.
> What time it’ll take place is yet to be decided.
>
> The RP will take place in the Whitespace (Blekerijstraat 75, Gent,
> Belgium)
> For people wondering what the Whitespace is: http://0x20.be
>
> The space has: power, network, internet, drinks, snacks, beamer, couches
> and I hope we can repair the coffee-machine by then.
> People whom want something else, mention it.
>
> The program is still under construction.
> This moment, my receipt looks like this:
>
> Around 13h we’ll serve a light meet & greet to loosen up the nerves.
> Next, we’ll stimulate the senses wit a series of lightning talks
> accompanied by a spicy serving of freshly cut tips.
> As the Spécial-du-chéf, you can enjoy some trial-and-error-sauce topped
> hands-on sessions.
>
> This part is for sure, but the rest is still work in progress!
>
> This is the rest:
>
> – design of Posters, flyers and web-banners
> – do you know someone, or want to present something yourself? Go for it
> & let me know.
> – spread the word! To your friends, colleagues, your student-club, etc..
> – the pleasure to have YOU with us!
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Morraye

Or in Dutch:

>
> Hallo iedereen.
>
> Ik organiseer Donderdag, 13 Mei 2010 een RP voor Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid).
> Dit is inderdaad een donderdag 🙂 Maar het is een feestdag en vrijdag is
> voor velen dus een brug-dag.
> Van hoe laat tot hoe laat is nog te beslissen.
>
> De RP gaat door in de Whitespace (Blekerijstraat 75, Gent, Belgium)
> Voor wie wil weten wat dit is: http://0x20.be
>
> Locatie heeft: stroomvoorziening, netwerk, internet, (fris-) drank,
> versnaperingen, beamer, zetels en hopelijk kunnen we tegen dan ook de
> koffiezet herstellen.
> Wie nog iets anders wil, laat het gerust weten 😉
>
> Het programma in nog in ontwikkeling.
> Op dit moment zit m’n recept er zo uit:
>
> Rond 13h serveren we een luchtige meet & greet om de zenuwen wat los te
> weken. Hierna prikkelen we de zintuigen met een reeks van pittige
> lightningtalks vergezeld van een portie vers gesneden tips.
> Als spécial du chéf, kunnen de fijnproevers genieten van enkele hands-on
> sessies overgoten met een sausje trial & error.
>
> Dit stuk is zeker, de rest is work in progress!
>
> Hier dus de rest:
>
> – ontwerp Poster & flyer en/of web-banners?
> – ken je iemand, of wil je zelf iets presenteren. Go for it & let me
> know.
> – Spread the word! In je vriendenkring, op het werk, in je
> studentenclub, etc…
> – het genoegen dat JIJ er ook bent!
>
> Mvg,
>
> Mike Morraye

Sorting images according to their width and height

I wrote a script to sort images according to their width and height.
I found myself in need of such a thing after my previous post on how to download 4chan images automatically.
I used this script a few times to get all the wallpapers on the /wg/ board.

After a few GB of images, nautilus starts to get a headache when opening the containing folder.
So I needed to split it up in different folders.
So here’s the script that does it.

There still seems to be a problem with character escaping when the filename contains a ” – ” in it’s title.
But I’m too tired to figure it out now.

Whitespace opening soon in Ghent!

Just got read this mail on the Ubuntu-be mailinglist and thought it would be a nice idea to post it here too 🙂

A bit off topic for this list, but there are a lot of ubuntu/fos-users
in the space,
so I assumed this can be interesting for ubuntu users.

Whitespace would like to invite you to its opening weekend 19-21 March.

When: From Friday 19th of March to Sunday the 21st.

Where: Blekerijstraat 75, Gent, Belgium

Whitespace is the first hackerspace in Ghent and will be opening its doors
for the first time on the weekend of 19-21 March. The space is ready for
launch, but far from finished: we’ve got a roof, multiple walls,  and some
cat5 and now we need more people to have fun with.

Don’t know what a “hackerspace” is? Check http://hackerspaces.org 😉

We hope to see you drop by.

The (dynamic) agenda[0]:
————————————

Friday:
20:00: Opening drink, see the space, meet the locals, fun hacker partygames.

Saturday:
14:00 : OpenWRT presentation: a big os for small devices.
15:00 : Flashing for fun & profit:
1 Bring your compatible wireless router[1]
2 Flash it! (don’t worry we’ll walk you trough).
3 …
4 Profit!
17:00 : Everything you always wanted to know about IPv6 but were afraid to ask.
18:00 : Open recipe burgers (with secret sauce).
21:00 : Evening entertainment: Powerpoint karaoke hosted by fs111.
After that : something involving liquids.

Sunday:
12:00 Hungry-Hacker is hungry. Breakfast.
15:00 lightning talks:
Such diverse subjects as: Google summer of code, The talk too trollish to
mention, How to get  yourself a lot of work that you didn’t plan by being
creative, Something about something, Awesome talk will be awesome, …
(open stage, schedule will be on the wiki, add your lightning talk there)

Registration:
Is not necessary but it would be nice to give us an idea on how many of you
to expect so we have enough chairs and secret sauce.
Please add your name: http://www.doodle.com/bg5x7xrbcg5z9h8q
Feel free to invite your friends.

[0] Keep an eye on http://0x20.be/ for the latest agenda updates,
and maybe follow the bird on http://twitter.com/HSGhent
[1] http://wiki.openwrt.org/oldwiki/tableofhardware


ubuntu-be mailing list / mailto:ubuntu-be@lists.ubuntu.com

It’s there:

Grotere kaart weergeven

My toughts on Hamburg Mannheimer

For the english, I’m sorry this text is in Dutch. You can use Google translate if you’re interested.

Verduidelijking: De gegevens in deze post zijn niet allemaal afkomstig van betrouwbare bronnen.
Ga niet af op deze gegevens maar ga deze na bij iemand die meer thuis is in deze materie dan ikzelf.
Een medewerker van uw financiële instelling, makelaar en of een exclusief tussenpersoon van Hamburg Mannheimer
zal u op een betrouwbaardere manier kunnen informeren.

Waar het allemaal over gaat (volgens de vertegenwoordigers van MHI):
Q: Wil je nog centjes hebben als je op je 65 thuis zit?
A: Ja

Q: Met de huidige crisis, vergrijzing, sociale onzekerheden etc…, is
er een kans dat je niet veel of niets krijgt. Heb je dit liever of wil
je graag véél meer centjes hebben?
A: Ja meneer/mevrouw, ik wil graag véél meer centjes, net zoals
iedereen. Hoe meer hoe liever.

Q: Wat kan je doen om hiervoor te zorgen?
A: Pensioensparen, ge ziet het tegenwoordig overal.

Q: En hoeveel interesten krijgt ge daar op?
A: Kweet et niet goed, ik denk 2 of 3% ofzo, maar het is fiscaal
aftrekbaar!

Q: Ik ga u informeren over een product die u 9% + het fiscaal voordeel
kan bieden. Zou je dit tof vinden.
A: Meer centen krijgen, zal wel zijn.

HM-medewerker: Wij nemen je centen, en steken dit bij een bank waar je
anders zelf niet in kan investeren omdat je daar niet rijk genoeg voor
bent, en halen daar enorme winst uit!
A: Hoe gaat dat dan?

HM-medewerker: dmv fondsen en beleggen en van die bank-zaken, net zoals
grootbanken, maar dan veel beter. Wij/zij hebben geen last gehad van de
crisis. Ze zijn namelijk super!

A: Waaw!

HM-medewerke: Wij geven je 9% op je centen!
Laat me even berekenen voor jouw leeftijd, op hoeveel jij kan opzij
zetten etc… en ik geef je een enorm bedrag, tot 3x wat je bij de
gewone bank krijgt. ** hocus pocus **

A: Dat is weer Waaw!
Nog enkele vraagjes:
– Wat zijn de instapkosten?
– Kan ik de algemen voorwaarden krijgen?
– Heeft u een blanco voorbeeldcontract (eg: offerte)?
– Wat zijn de algemene kosten?
– Wat kost het als ik wil overstappen van fonds?
– kan je me een voorbeeld geven van iemand die dit reeds gedaan heeft?
Succesverhalen zijn altijd leuk om horen.

HM-medewerker:
– Officiële documenten kan ik je niet geven (om onbekende reden)
– Van die instapkosten kan ik je niets vertellen, dat weten ze in
Brussel wel.
– Overstappen? waarom zou je dat willen doen? Neen ik heb daar geen idee
van
– iemand die dit reeds gedaan heeft? Sorry ik doe dit zelf nog maar 2
jaar en de mensen die bij ons aangesloten zijn hoor ik niet meer.

Dan denk je (ik althans):

Ach, het zal wel niet zo slecht zijn als het gevoel dat ik er nu over
heb zeker?
Ga ik eens het inernet raadplegen.
Zeer interessant.
Overal is er info te vinden over hun product, maar op hun eigen site’s
is er nergens concrete sprake van kosten, instapkosten, voorwaarden,
zekerheid en andere dingen die ik ZEKER wil weten voor ik mijn centen
aan iemand geef.

Dus ben ik hierbij vereerd dat ik je kan informatie kan verschaffen die
de HM-medewerker niet kon geven.

Continue reading My toughts on Hamburg Mannheimer

Download 4chan images automatically with this simple script

I like to spice up my desktop with various wallpapers and have to say, that /wg/ on 4chan has been a great provider.
But keeping track of all the images, shifting forth and back and forth again between the 10 pages has been taking too much effort.
So the solution to avoid spilling too much time lurking on that imageboard, I just wrote a bash script. (Sorry Windows users)

Be careful, as this script might run a while before it finishes.
You can modify the script as you like.
You might want to remove the user-agent string or the -nd option or ad a -x for that last wget call, etc…

I’ll post later on how I actually remove the duplicated images 😉
A hint for people eager to know: fdupes

fdupes -r -f . > duplicates && echo ./duplicates > duplicates && rm `cat duplicates`

This would actually throw errors when there are spaces in the filenames.

So it was a long, verry long night.
The spirit driving me was like this:

But in the end, it felt more like:

How does your website sound?

Just discovered this awesome single service website: cordeorgan.com.

The website turns any website into ‘music’ on a rather brilliant way.
The codeorgan takes all characters in the <body>…</body> part of webpages, drops all non-musical scale characters.
It then applies an algorithm to the number of found resembling characters and uses the output to choose the hight of particular tones, the synthesizer effects an the drum loop.

How to change the DNS servers in Ubuntu

You might want to change the DNS server if your ISP’s servers can sometimes be slow or outdated.

sudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf

and change or add the lines:

nameserver your_DNS1
nameserver your_DNS2

You can add as many lines like these, but two should be enough.
Test the used domain name servers careful!

#dns-nameserver 192.168.0.1
#dns-nameservers 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.2
#dns-search somedomain.org
#dns-domain 192.168.0.1

Edit: Serge’s comment (the first one) made me search a little bit.
After searching google it wasn’t totally clear if the DNS should be configured in resolv.cof or /etc/network/interfaces, so I took the GUI for a spin.
I’ve set up the DNS trough the GUI and checked the changes inside both locations.
The DNS servers I addes, became listed inside the /etc/resolv.conf file.
So after all, I was right.
But as the configuration file starts with the line #Generated by NetworkManager, I was wondering if these settings would get overwritten by the NetworkManager.
So I wiped all configured interfaces from my computer and let the NetworkManager try its evil.
It worked like a charm and just added the line ‘domain morraye.local’ to the file, without erasing my dns settings.
This was tested on Ubuntu 9.04 and Ubuntu 9.10.

You might also want to play with these settings in your resolv.conf file

# dns-domain 208.67.222.222
# dns-nameserver 208.67.222.222
# dns-nameservers 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220
# dns-search wikipedia.org

Note: When you’re behind a router, you should change the dns server at your router (unless it uses pass-trough DNS lookups)