creative blog

The third pre release of Inkscape is out and if everything goes well then it is the last one and the final version 0.45 will be out this weekend.

If there is anyone who has the translation left on his harddrive and had not committed it as a patch yet, please do so!

Anyway, as a co-coordinator of translations for this release, I would like to thank all translators for their work on this release and for making 27 significantly translated languages available.

The patch Jimmac linked after my announcement on #tango has been included in the current trunk of Inkscape and will be available in Inkscape 0.46! All hail Johan for his Gradient Goodness!

Update: a screenshot

The Friday of 12th January was not officially marked as the “Tango Friday” but there was one request on the tango-artists mailing list that attracted my attention. Steven Garrity sent there a request for an icon for Meld application. Meld describes itself as visual diff and merge tool and judging from screenshots, it looks really like a helpful application for developers. To be honest, at the first moment I wanted to make an icon of Vulcan mind meld process but that is not much following GNOME HIG, so I did “only” a tangoified version of the current logo in their SVN (thanks go also to Lapo Calamandrei and other Tango artists for comments).

Lately I had less then a little time to blog about things that happened. Now it is not different tho. Actually, I am working on one website for a client and development of two another sites is going to start soon. Not speaking about other office jobs. So there are no new illustrations or paintings I can post probably until the end of February; I only can swear that I practise and hopefully I will post some updates of Oscar and his Friends at that time.

Gajim 0.11 - New default icon theme

Among the news I would like the world to know are, on the first place, new icons and logo for GAJIM Jabber client. Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to finish the set and also to developers for their support and that they included it as a new default set. The set is based on the logo proposal I posted some time ago and contains updated icons for other jabber transports and a new set of emoticons in two sizes too. If you want to see it in action, go and grab and test the new version!

Listed on graphics planet

I just want to say Hi to the graphicsplanet.org because I did not say it when I started to be syndicated there. So, Hello planet!

Inkscape 0.45 - 3, 2, 1, hunt!

Inkscape is also one of tasks that keep me a bit busy these days. The new version’s freeze stage is nearing, bugs are being hunted and reviewed, and with luck also solved, so we need everyone’s hand! If you have some time and skills, please help us to sort out and review bugs, we want to hit 300 points before the strings’ freeze. (I’ve got 6 points already )

Actual screenshot

Actual screenshot reflects my actual mood (if anyone knows author of the image I used, tell me, I will give him a credit!). Other parts of the desktop are using Gillouche theme for GTK and for Metacity too. You can see asome icons of a new theme for Gajim there too.

P.S. I’ve got a new battery for my IBM R51 Laptop! 9 cells, 74000mAh, 4:45 hours of working time!

It is Christmas morning in Europe! Merry Christmas and happy new year to all good people of our little blue planet

Veselé Vánoce a mnoho úspěchů všem čtenářům mého blogu a dobrým lidem naší malé modré planety

Yesterday, it was a wonderfull Tango friday! Lots of people came to #tango and danced around icons with us. I would like to shout glory to all knights who participated on this quest and created new icons for applications reported bellow Sir Andreas’ blogpost. We all together fought like lions and enjoyed the whole day.

You can see all new icons we created yesterday at special Tango Fridays’ page. Now these icons are going to be sent to relevant people who care about packages/applications and we can only hope they will be accepted

At the end, a nice suggestion has been made by hbons, to make Tango friday each first friday of the month. As he trully said, it would speed up things rapidly

Andreas started that, Jimmac joined and declared war on fuzzyness too, and it looks like there will be a huge amount of work to do with all those fuzzy icons so, I am the another knight in this quest! For a start, I have already done two icons that I wanted to give some Tango love to, Labyrinth (mind mapping tool, and Gajim (Jabber client). Both are sent to developers now, but feel free to comment them.

Tento týden se nasktýtá úžasná příležitost pozorovat hned dva velmi zajímavé “úkazy” na podzimní obloze. Už v brzkých nočních hodinách lze na noční obloze pozorovat velmi jasnou kometu SWAN (nedávno se zjasnila na 4,7 magnitudy) mezi souhvězdími Herkula a Severní koruny. Za příznivých meteorologických podmínek ji lze pozorovat pouhým zrakem(bočním viděním jako velkou mlhavou skvrnku) nebo běžným triedrem. Tato dvě souhvězdí se nacházejí na západní části oblohy, přbližně 30˚ nad obzorem (viz mapka na astronomie.cz). Včera po astronomickém kurzu jsme se na ni šli podívat a můžu potvrdit, že i když minulý týden byla jasná a byl to zážitek na několik let dopředu, tento týden je ještě jasnější a zážitek je o to silnější

Druhým jasným objektem na brzké noční obloze, který lze pozorovat bez jakýchkoliv pomůcek, je přelet mezinárodní vesmírné stanice ISS Alpha. Jesltiže kometa je na nočním nebi vidět až do jejího západu někdy kolem půlnoci, ISS je dnes viditelná pouze po dobu šesti minut, než se rychlostí 8km/s zase ztratí za obzorem (naši modrou planetu obletí za 90 minut). Na pozadí hvězdné oblohy ji budete moci pozorovat jako jasný bod pohybující se ze západu na východo-severo-východ a záleží jen na vás kde se nacházíte a jakými souhvězdími tedy bude procházet. Včera se nad Ostravskou hvězdárnou objevila v 19:15 a jediné co mi chybělo ke štěstí byl dalekohled, kterým bych si ji přiblížil.

• Dnešní přelet bude pro Hlučín začínat v 18:00:02 na západo-jiho-západě nad souhvězdím Pastýře a bude pokračovat na východo-severo-východ přes Labuť, Andromedu až do Trojůhelníku(který jsem svýma slepýma očima nebyl včera schopný najít ), ve kterém se ztratí po celkové době viditelnosti asi 8 minut. Měla by mít magnitudu přibližně -0.7. Přehledovou mapku oblohy se zakreslenou dráhou si lze prohlédnout na heavens-above.com.
• Pro Kvasice, kde se budu dnes nacházet já, nastane přelet až v 19:37, s magnitudou 0.2 a trváním pouze 2 minuty (mapka). Jasnější přelet bude vidět až v pátek, 26. 10. 2006 v 18:23, ale ten si najděte už sami

Všechny časy jsou GMT+2

Pokud se na ISS chcete také podívat, doporučuji stránky http://www.heavens-above.com, kde po zadání vaší pozice(lze vyhledat i podle blízkého města, pokud neznáte přesně souřadnice) lze zjistit doby a místa přeletu nejrůznějších družic naší planety, včetně zmíněné ISS, nebo komunikačních dužit Iridium, které se vyznačují krátkým a rychlým zjasněním a opětovným rychlým poklesem jasnosti jak hážou prasátka na modrou planetu. (včera jsme o půl osmé měli šanci také jednu pozorovat, a poté i další dvě, které ani heavens-above.com nenahlásilo )

There is an extraordinary chance to observe two interesting objects on autumn sky this week. Since the early night hours is the SWAN comet observable (this comet has raised its magnitude to 4,7 in past few days) between constellations of Hercules and Corona Borealis With clear sky, the comet is observable by a naked eye as misty cloud below cca 30˚ above the horizon (see the map at astronomie.cz). We were watching it after the astronomy lesson yesterday and I can confirm that it is brighter than last week. And if that was an nice experience for several next years, it was even better and stronger experience yesterday

The second bright object on early night sky which can be observer with naked eye is the international space station ISS Alpha. While the comet is observable until its dawn around the midnight, the ISS is observable only for a few minutes and then it disappears behind the shadow of our planet (it moves by the speed of 8km/s and the flight around the planet takes 90 minutes). You will be able to see it on the background of starry sky as a bright moving point flying from the west to east-north-east. Which constellations it will pass depends only on your position above/below the predicted track. Yesterday, the ISS appeared over observatory in Ostrava at 19:15 and the only thing I missed to be absolutely happy were binoculars to zoom in.

If you want to watch ISS too, I recommend you http://www.heavens-above.com site, where you can get actual data and predictions for future passes. The only thing you have to do is to set in what(or near of what) city you are and weekly prediction is yours . ISS usually passes from west through the Hercules, Cygnus and Andromeda to Triangle constellation (this week in Central Europe).

Besides ISS also passes of another satellites can be predicted, e.g. communication satellites Iridium which flashes the light down to the earth when they are in proper position to sun. It then looks like there was a moving star that raises and reduces its brightness in short time and then disappears totally. Yesterday we observed three but only one was predicted by heavens-above.com.

I am back in the astronomy world After a year, an astronomy course takes place on Hvězdárna a planetárium Johana Palisy in Ostrava again. And this time I will finish it succesfully, I promise!

For the beginning, I’ve created two astronomy related wallpapers, one is a bit modified photography of Cassiopea constellation(with a nice story which I will write about after some time) and the second one is digitally drawn illustration of a comet and a star in the Milky way. I hope someone will enjoy these wallpapers as well as I enjoy astronomy lessons

Update: one new comet done to test how does tutorials from deviantart.com about creation of planet work in GIMP