Fading Memories

To spam or not to spam...

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:09:00 +0100

I'm keeping my promise to write a weekly update on what has happened in Krita. There's usually a lot to write about, and I'm trying to add some generally interesting things, some personal, some artistic, so it's not just a commit digest, but a little bit more.

But I'm wondering how to syndicate it -- Planet KDE is meant for personal blogs, and this isn't personal. I'm not sure about the other planets my blog is syndicated. And I've had complaints that having a pointer to the new issue on my blog is a bit spammy, and I think I agree with that. So I'm intentionally not linking to Krita.org this time :-) (But it's a good read!)

Does anybody have any bright ideas?

Update: I just learned that if I can teach krita.org to put the Last Week in Krita articles in an rss feed that's unique for what I post, i.e, personal, but from krita.org, I'm fine. I bet our webmaster can figure out how to do that, right Kubuntiac :-)

It is customary

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:56:00 +0100

To make allusions to Douglas Adams' work when leaving a company, so I won't. I'm just going to post a couple of pictures I made with my n900...

This is the river Amstel, for which Amsterdam is known. As you can see, it's frozen over...

And this the Hyves office building, seen through the snow.

And these are Tommy and Markus, who together with Tjerk took me out for dinner in a steakhouse. Good food, good company!

I've been working for KO for two days now, after having taken a really nice one-day vacation which ended up with a visit to Ma Brown's Restaurant. That restaurant tends to be closed when Irina and I want to go there, but last Wednesday it was open at last. A warm fire, excellent food, good service... Perfect closing to a day of gadding about both Hollands. (Note to self: Sing Kee in The Hague isn't nearly as good as it used to be, bij Tholen in Haarlem has the best coffee I've had for ages.)

So, the third day, which happened to be a Saturday, I finished my todo list and then went out to buy a proper office chair, the kitchen chair I had been using at my desk up til now being rather bad for my back:

Now I need to find a replacement for the nine hours a week on the train, minimum, that was my designated Krita hacking time. And let's see whether the sculpture classes I can finally get to in time will actually go through. It's been more than 25 years since I last did anything like that...

Oh, and Hyves is still looking for good developers!

News about Krita

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:18:00 +0100

I've just published the next installment of Last Week in Krita. Lots of cool and fun stuff has happened! We are slowly getting the 2.2 feature plan implemented.

A new manual for Krita

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:16:00 +0100

An application isn't complete without good documentation. Those fine folks at Linux Format docked a lot of points from Gimp when they reviewed their new release because the manual wasn't updated yet... Krita 1.6 had a pretty fine manual for a free software application, but given that Krita 2.2 is going to be so much better than 1.6, the manual should be ace, too. And almost nothing from the 1.6 manual is still usable, there have been so many changes.

We have to rewrite, and make it even better this time. There is no way I can do this on my and code, it's got to be a collaborative effort. And there should be video tutorials, as well, as part of the manual. So... Enter userbase.kde.org. It's the perfect central place for efforts of this kind. I've started an outline for a new Krita manual, a manual with more than just a description of every menu option and dialog, but one that focusses on concepts, getting things done.

Also: the first Last Week in krita of 2010 is out!

Working at Hyves?

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:57:00 +0100

About a year and a half ago I started working at Hyves. Hyves is the largest social networking website in the Netherlands -- comparable to facebook, but much more popular in the Netherlands. My task was to build a Qt-based desktop application for Hyves. There are two components: chat and photo uploading. Most of it is free software, so this link goes to the source download!

Together with Arend (who used to work on Krdc) and Girish and Roopesh we have built a really cool application. It's a combination of Qt and Javascript running inside webkit, xmpp, photo manipulation using filters and svg, geotagging -- lots and lots of cool stuff. Windows, Linux, OSX, source releases... Working on the Hyves Desktop has taught me a lot of new techniques.

But it's time for me to move on: KO GmbH is getting busy, and my first love has always been KOffice and Krita.

And that leaves a gap in the Desktop team.

So, if you are interested in living in Amsterdam, working with smart people who get things done, on a Qt app that's mostly free software -- mail me!. I've always found Hyves a very good employer, and there is still plenty of exciting work to be done on the desktop application.

Krita Hackathon

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:08:00 +0100

So today I booked two bed&breakfasts to handle the overflow of Krita hackers for the coming Krita sprint last weekend of February. We'll be seven, maybe eight developers and Peter Sikking. A weekend like this is usually more discussion, getting together and building a shared vision than hacking, but Cyrille, Sven and Lukas will stay on following the actual sprint for a whole week of what I suspect will be very intensive hacking.

Of course, an occasion like this should be marked by having its own t-shirt. The last dedicated Krita sprint was in 2005, and back then we had t-shirts designed by Nuno:

I gave the last surviving shirt to Cyrille during the Oslo KOffice sprint.

So... Is there anyone who wants to set the vestimentary tone for the 2010 sprint?

Last Year in Krita: 2009

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:52:00 +0100

I missed the last two edition of Last Week in Krita, but my 2009 retrospective is up on krita.org. Summary: it's been a great year, and 2010 promises to be even better! But better read the whole thing...

Wow!

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:36:00 +0100

Thanks to our latest donor, Silvio Grosso, we're at four thousand euros now on Pledgie: Help raise Krita to the next level -- which together with the donations people have made into my bank account directly, means that, even after Paypal has taken its cut, Lukas will be able to work on Krita for another month in the summer!

Here's a screenshot of Krita showing off a feature Silvio asked for that we never really highlighted before: using flake shapes, it's easy to add vector arrows to screenshots, to point out important items. In this case, the default color setting for a new image, which is what I'm working on currently:

Deep-felt thanks go to the more than 160 people who cared enough about Krita that they made this donation drive such an unbelievable success! It is a big vote of confidence and I am determined that we'll prove ourselves worth of it.

Wow -- what a great community!

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:16:00 +0100

The Krita fund raising campaign went live on Monday. Tuesday night, Jos Poortvliet published his interview with me and Lukáš. Today it's Thursday night, and not only have we very nearly reached the campaign goals, we're now at €2,343.00, but I've also bursted out of my Paypal account! So from now on, new donations will go to Cyrille Berger's paypal account, until I've unblocked mine. Our ace webmaster, Kubuntiac has been telling me he warned me this had happened to others, but I simply hadn't expected so many people -- 89 already -- to care enough about Krita that they wanted to help us!

A great, big thank you! to you all!

I can only say that I'm totally floored and apart from the paypal issue, and, deo volente, it's now certain that Lukáš will be able to start doing what you all have decided is so very much worth doing: Make Krita fast!

Week 48 in Krita

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:52:00 +0100

As I promised, we're having weekly updates on what has happened in Krita on Krita.org, and last week's update has just been published: Week 48: Relative Quiet.

But don't let the title scare you from clicking on the link! It was still a way cool week for us! Quiet for Krita still means lots of development.