Here are the steps to quickly connect your phone to the internet.

Connect your phone via USB cable. On a Sony Ericsson, the phone will prompt you how you want to use your phone. Choose “Phone Mode”.

Click on the Network Manager icon in the system tray and select “New Mobile Broadband connection…”

Choose the country where your provider is in.

Choose your service provider. This will be the name of your cellphone carrier. In my case, I chose Smart.

Next is to select your plan. This option varies depending on your carrier. For Smart though, you just choose Default.

Last step is to just verify if your details are correct and click on Apply.

That’s it! In a few moments, your phone should connect your computer to the Internet and a notification will display showing that you are connected.

Editing Project Victory with Blender

After 9 months in the making, Project Victory is finally completed! It tooks us 6 months to shoot, spread over 2 countries in 6 different locations, and 3 months of post-processing the images building the three collages and getting everyone’s approval, editing and re-editing the video, implementing new ideas, and having fun all the way.

You can watch the video over at the Project Victory website.

Project Victory was a photo project that my batchmates did over the last couple of months, and we recorded most of everything that happened along the way. It was created with a mix of open-source and closed-source software in Ubuntu, using BibblePro for RAW conversion, GIMP for some graphics and editing, and Blender for the 3D scenes and the video sequence editing. Read more at the Project Victory website.

Enter the airport-friendly bags for the modern photographer. There were several brands that I was choosing from: Pelican 1514, Lowepro ProRoller Mini, ThinkTank Airport Security and a cheap Nikon rolling backpack that I found in one of the stores, among others. All of these choices offered two things I was looking for:

1. Easy to lug around; can’t get any easier than wheels
2. I can bring at as carry-on luggage
3. Price vs. quality and features

I was choosing between the cheapest of them all, the Nikon rolling case with backpack straps, or the more expensive ProRoller Mini. I ended up slightly more expensive but better bag than both of them. The Lowepro Rolling Computrekker AW has inline-skate wheels, backstraps for when you can’t roll it, a laptop pouch, CF card pockets, a rain cover, and lots of padded compartments. And it only cost me Y30K in Yodobashi.

Well, I just came back from a shoot in Kyoto, and had put the bag to the test. It rolled all the way from my house to the trains and on to the bus to Kyoto, all the way to each train platform I passed through. And when I was up in the slopes of Kurama and Fushimi Inari, I carried it backpack-mode.

On wheels, it rolled smooth as silk and saved me from future backpains. Though my shoulders ached till the next day, it was because it was a long trek through Kurama and Fushimi Inari. The contoured shoulder and back pads really helped as I am sure I’d have a much more tiring experience with my previous Lowepro Toploader 75. Then again, the Toploader wasn’t meant for travelling heavy at these kinds of distances.

Click on the image with the numbers to the left to see what got packed for my Kyoto trip.

Special thanks goes to RBM for persuading me to spring Y2,000 yen more for this rather than getting myself a ProRoller Mini. It’s a good bag in its own right, but it would have been a nightmare bringing it up the mountains!

In less than 2 months, I’ll be riding on a plane again. Feels good to know I won’t be sweating my pants off lugging overweight luggage this time around or having to wrap my lens and other gear around several layers of socks and towels.

Social Bookmarks:

Breaking Barriers

Do you tire of reformatting your computer so that it can be set up with the prescribed environment determined by your superior or client? How about the hassle of making sure that there is a backup copy of your past project? Is quality assurance testing a pain because you have to reset your environment over and over again?

Well I did tire of that hassle. And I also tired of having to run my computer on a specific OS, just because that was what the task prescribed. So I went out and used a few proven tools to remedy the situation, which will be what this guide will be all about.

Installing VMWare Player

Virtual machines is the name of the game, and is the key to this modern workspace. Software that enables you to run virtual machines, such as VMWare’s VMPlayer or VMServer or Innotek’s (now Sun’s) Virtualbox, have been around for quite some time now. However, aside from system administrators, many people don’t know about them. And even less know how to use them to their utmost potential.

We will be installing VMWare’s VMPlayer for this tutorial. If you choose to install VMWare Server or Sun’s Virtualbox, that’s ok as well, although set up will be a bit different.

1. First, head on over to http://www.vmware.com/player and download the latest version of VMWare Player.
2. After you have downloaded the tarball (for Linux), extract it to a directory. It will create a directory called vmware-player-distrib.
3. Open a terminal and go inside the vmware-player-distrib directory. From there, type sudo ./vmware-install.pl
4. The guided installer will then proceed to ask you a few questions about your hardware. For most cases, pressing Enter for all of the questions should suffice.

After that, you will now have a VMWare Player launcher in the Applications menu under System Tools. But that won’t do us much good until we have a virtual machine ready for use.

To create a virtual machine for VMWare Player, you can either use a virtual machine created with VMWare Server, you can download a preconfigured virtual appliance from the VMWare website (I suggest you take a look, there are a lot of appliances for a lot of different needs, and it’ll eliminate the need for the next steps), or use a handy litte utility at EasyVMX. WIth EasyVMX, you can configure a Virtual Machine, set the size and number of hard drives, number of CPUs to use, network cards, floppies, CD-ROMs, practically everything you need.

Once you’re at the EasyVMX website, there are 3 flavors of their Virtual Machine Creator: the regular EasyVMX, the SuperSimple, and the EasyVMX v2.0.

For those who just want this part done quickly and painlessly, choose the Super Simple creator and choose around 15GB or more for the disk space for WinXP (Obviously, you’ll need more for Vista).

For those would like to customize a little, EasyVMX v2.0 will offer the most choices, but for most ends and needs, the regular one would suffice.

Depending on your computer’s memory, change the Memory Size to something greater than 192 (minimum for Windows XP) as long as you will leave around 256MB for your host. (Ex.: PC memory = 1024MB; 1024 – 256 = at most 768 for guest VM). One good reason to use a GNU/Linux distribution as a host is that 256MB is plenty and will give a decent performance while your XP VM might still be thirsty for more memory with 256MB of RAM.

Set the hard drive to around 20GB. Add additional drives if you prefer. Again, thankfully your GNU/Linux host uses less than 5GB for the OS, giving you plenty of room.
Note: When you create a virtual drive, it doesn’t immediately occupy 20GB on your disk. Rather, as your VM uses more and more of the disk space, so does the virtual drive occupies more space on your host.

Keep all other settings at default. If you have an ISO image of the OS that you want to install, be sure to check on the ISO checkbox under CD-ROM.

Click on the Create Virtual Machine button and you will be given a zip file for download containing the configuration file as well as your virtual disk(s). Extract that to a directory and start up your VMWare Player.

Important: EasyVMX will only create the virtual disk and configuration file for your VM. You will still need a LEGAL copy of your intended OS. Also, Be sure to choose the correct number of CPUs. Less than the actual number of CPUs and your VM won’t be able to take advantage of your mult-core processor. Anymore and it just won’t work.

Installing A Virtual OS

If you have an ISO of the OS you’re planning to install, put a copy of it into the directory containing your VM configuration file. Assuming you had checked the ISO checkbox in EasyVMX, when you start this virtual machine, it should boot up from this ISO. Otherwise, place the OS’s disc into your CD drive.

1. From Applications > System Tools, click on VMWare Player
2. When the VMWare Player window appears, click Open An Existing Virtual Machine
3. Navigate to the directory where you extracted your virtual machine
4. It will now start up. If you have put the OS disc into your CD drive, it should now boot up from there.
5. Install the OS as you would on a normal computer. Ubuntu Installation, Windows Installation

Enabling Networking

After starting up your VMWare Player, you’ll notice a few buttons at the top of the window. These buttons can be toggled on off to activate/deactivate peripherals and USB devices. The Ethernet button allows you to choose from 3 different configurations when you right-click on it, Bridged, NAT, and Host-only.

Choose bridged and restart your virtual machine for good measure. You can skip to the next section if you don’t need a brief explanation about the three ethernet configurations.

Important: In a restricted static IP setting, such as in an office, be sure to get an IP address for your VM from your system administrator, since your host OS and EACH guest VM will need a unique IP address each.

Host-only is used if you want your virtual machine to be able to see your guest machine ONLY. Imagine this as like connecting both your host OS and guest VM to the same switch, but not connected to the rest of the network or DSL modem. It won’t have access to other machines on your network, nor the internet for that matter.

NAT stands for Network Address Translation. Similar to Host-only, your virtual machine will be connected to a virtual switch, but this the switch is connected to the rest of the network. In a NAT networking, your host OS sits on the network, acting like a router, while your guest VM sits on a separate network behind this router (your host OS).

Bridge on the other hand is completely different. With bridged networking, both the host OS and the guest VM sits on the same network each with their own IP addresses. Other computers can access the VM directly and vice-versa. Internet access is also direct.

For more info on VMWare’s networking setup, visit this article on VM Weekly.

Sharing Files and Folders

Need to share files between your host and guest? Two simple choices: create a shared folder in your guest VM or create a shared folder o your host OS. It really depends on your preference. Setting up a directory on your host means no matter which VM you’re using, you’ll still have only one share. On the other hand, a localized specific shared folder per VM means the contents of the shared folder will most likely be related to the VM in question; no mix-up of files from different VMs. It’s all up to how you manage them.

If you are using Ubuntu to share a folder, follow these steps:

1. Right click on the folder to share and click Sharing Options
2. Check the box labeled “Share this folder”. If you do not have sharing services installed yet, it will ask for your permission to do it for you.
3. Once that’s done you can select either SMB (Windows share) or NFS (Unix share). Choose SMB so your Windows VM can access it.
4. Check the box labeled “Allow other people to write in this folder” because you are sharing it to exchange files.
5. Check the box labeled “Guest access” so you won’t need to create a user account anymore.
6. When that’s done, click “Create Share”

Extra tip: to connect to a shared folder from Ubuntu, open an address bar in Nautilus or on the Desktop by pressing Ctrl-L and then typing smb://hostNameOrIPAddress

Backing-Up Everything

Now we’ve finished setting up the dirty work, we can now start to reap the benefits of this setup.

Ok, let’s say that we have set up a Windows XP guest VM and we’ve already set up all of the basics like the IP address, registering your Windows copy, installing anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, email clients, and MS Office (sure is a lot of basic setup for a Windows box, huh?).

We’ll want to make this our “starting point”, so that everytime we need a new environment, we can use this initial state and we won’t have to go through all those tedious setup and concentrate on setting up your project-specific workspace.  How do you do it? It’s quite simple.

1. Shutdown your guest VM
2. Go to the folder where all your virtual machine’s files are stored
3. Copy that folder, and name it something appropriate, like WinXP_base.

Need to create a backup? Again it’s quite simple. Just follow the three steps above.

Need to restore from a backup? Again, simple. Copy or your backup and open it up in VMPlayer.

Starting a new project? Again, the 3 steps.

You get the point.

Extra Tip: When making VM copies for your different projects, it would be very useful to change the Display Names of each VM. That way, they won’t all appear as “WinXP” in the VMPlayer. To do this, open up the .vmx file found in the folder of your VM, and change the value of displayName

Using Terminal Server Client (TSC)

Most of the time, I control my VMs via the Terminal Server Client instead of directly with the VMPlayer. I do this for a few important reasons:

• Sometimes, I want my VM to be just a small window. Other times I want it full screen. Using TSC allows me to quickly change between display sizes (or display color-depth) without changing the actual display settings on the VM.
• It performs faster in my experience.
• Keyboard and mouse input are locked to a VMPlayer session, and you have to press Ctrl-Alt together to give back control to your host; With TSC, you simply move your mouse in and out of the window.

You have to turn on Remote Desktop in your guest desktop. Also, it won’t work if you don’t set a user password.

Workspace Separation

By keeping non-project-related programs running in your host OS not only means less distraction (specially when viewing full-screen), it also means not disconnecting your IM client while you’re restarting because your Windows is starting to bog down. A restart no longer means a trip to the pantry to get some coffee, you still get to do something else on your host OS, be it researching for a technical paper or preparing slides for a presentation.

Extra tip: As an added “boss button”, when you’re using your VM at full screen, no one would notice that it’s a VM. If your boss ever figured out that you were browsing blogs at another workspace, this’ll probably take them longer to figure out.

Pros and Cons

Naturally, there are advantages and disadvantages to this kind of setup. But in my case, the pros outweigh the cons.

The downside to all these multi-OS multi-tasking is, you will need a pretty decent computer to do this kind of setup if you do not want impact on your output. In particular, since you’ll be running at least 2 systems at the same time (1 host + 1 guest), you will need ample amount of memory for both. The number or size of your virtual machines is also dependent on how much disk space you have. There is also some performance impact, though it is becoming less and less apparent with multi-core processors. Although, on my 600Mhz Kohjinsha with 512MB of RAM, I was still able to run a WinXP to perform some basic operations. It makes my computer a dog slow, though, but it works.

Now if the pros weren’t already obvious, perhaps the most significant pro is the flexibility in using whatever operating system you desire and the ability to quickly and completely backup that system. When archiving old projects, you no longer just back up the project files, you back up the whole system, environment setup and all. That means, several years down the road if ever you need to revisit those old projects, you just take out that virtual machine out of storage and run it. Workspace separation also has its advantages, which can be used for increasing productivity, or improving the quality of breaks.

For system administrators, the advantage is obvious. Using only one physical hardware, they’d be able to run several different servers, minimizing costs, maximizing server utilization, and making the world a greener place by consuming less energy.

Lastly, of course, with a GNU/Linux host, now you can keep playing with your Compiz-Fusion 3D cube and wobbly windows, hehe…

Social Bookmarks:

Big Buck Bunny is the story of a large, but kind rabbit who is bullied by three naughty rodents. Finally, Big Buck Bunny decides to fight back, and…well you’ll have to see it for yourself. The visuals are breath-taking, from the tall grass blowing in the wind, to the stream reflecting off sunlight, to the cute and cuddly creatures.

If the concept of open movies is new, or strange, to you, you may find it interesting to know that Big Buck Bunny is already the second open movie in the world, following from the success of the first open movie, Elephants Dream.

Two years ago, the Project Orange released the world’s first open movie, and it was titled Elephants Dream. Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny are called open movies because they are made entirely with open source tools, where of course Blender is the star player. Not only that, all the production files, all the 3D assets, everything used in the movie is also available for download, and it’s also included on the DVD.

Computer graphics, or CG, has been used with film since all the way back in the 70′s even before films like Tron came out. Back then, the technology was still at its infancy. As the technology progressed, CG found its way more and more into film, combining live action and animation in films like Batman, Star Trek, The Abyss, etc. and moving on into feature-length movies like Toy Story and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. What most of them have in common is the use of expensive software, such as Maya, for creating the CG (except Pixar; they use in-house technology built on top of Linux).

A lot of you probably don’t know that there is a software out there called Blender proving itself and its abilities to be on par with the big industry giants like 3D Studio Max, Lightwave, Maya, and SoftImage. But unlike its counterparts with 5-digit price tags (in US dollars), Blender is completely free! That’s right. Free to use, free to abuse, free to modify, free as in freedom and free as in beer.

Now there are a lot of people I know who are averse to Linux and the concept of free and open-source software, believing them to be of inferior quality because they’re not backed by large companies with lots of capital. I think that Blender is one of the model FLOSS software that proves this to be simply not the case.

If you haven’t seen the Open Movies yet, now would be a good time to do so. Head on over to the Elephant’s Dream page or the Big Buck Bunny page. You can also see how Plumiferos, another movie in the works, is coming about, as well as a whole lot of movies over at the Blender Movie Gallery. Oh, and of course, tell your friends or give them a copy. Don’t worry, it’s free (and open); Edu Manzano or the MPAA won’t be knockin’ on your door anytime soon.

Social Bookmarks:

It was only 40K yen if you were going to get a Yahoo!BB subscription with it. But at 60K, it was still a bargain, since it was only 6mos used and at half the price of a new one. And I got myself one last weekend.

Taking it home, what was my first impression? First of all, it was preloaded with Vista, and instead of a recovery disc it had a 4GB recovery partition. I had to test all the hardware first to see if everything was A-Ok. Touch screen worked, webcam worked, the controls beside the screen (a lot of ‘em: D-pad, track pointer, launcher, shutter, rotation, enter, brightnes. scroll keys. left and right mouse buttons), webcam, TV tuner, bluetooth and WiFi, all working perfectly. And you had no less than 3 ways to control your pointer: via the touch pad, the thumb pointer, and touch screen. As for text input, well you had the physical keyboard when you really need the typing speed, or you can use the touch screen.

While it still had Vista, I decided to do a quick speed comparison test. Nothing fancy, just a quick test to see which OS would allow me to work more before I had to get off the train at the station. In short, boot times.

Here are the results:

Windows Vista Home Basic Startup time:
1:10.03 – Time to welcome screen
1:49.83 – Time to desktop display
4:06.85 – Time to finish loading everything

Ubuntu Gutsy LiveCD startup time:
0:22.21 – Time to LiveCD menu
3:02.19 – Time to opening tune
4:26.33 – Time to finish loading everything

Vista was able to boot in just a little over 4 minutes (about the time it takes for a train to get to the next station) and 20 seconds faster than Ubuntu. That’s swell, until you consider the fact that IT WAS A LIVECD! For those not in the know, a LiveCD basically allows you to run an OS without installing on your computer. That’s right, that 4 minute Vista on my fast hard drive barely beat Ubuntu running off a CD drive! Hey, I wanted a fair fight, so I had to handicap Ubuntu..<snicker>

Alright, so what are the real comparison figures for Ubuntu and Vista when both are installed in the hard disk?
Ubuntu Gutsy LiveCD startup time:
1:01.44 – Time to Login Screen
1:10.41 – Time to opening tune
1:35.58 – Time to desktop display
1:39.49 – Time to finish loading everything

You could argue that the Vista desktop already appears at about 1:50, but you just can’t do anything with it yet for another 30 seconds, where you can *technically* do something e.g. click a button/menu, just don’t expect your computer to respond well.

So Vista was out and Ubuntu was in, and without needing to install any drivers at all, the CF and SD card reader, controls beside the screen, the webcam, 3D card, sound, and most everything worked out-of-the-box and without my intervention. And from the info in the Ubuntu Forums thread I had found earlier, I was able to get Koji up to speed.

So right now, I can type away on the train(where I wrote most of this post’s content yesterday on the train to Kyoto). Heck, I could do away with the typing altogether and just scribble away with Cellwriter.

I don’t really need to say this but I’m one very, very proud Ubuntu-powered Kohjinsha owner!

Social Bookmarks:

“Shaberu” has a total of 200 dishes, ranging from snacks to complete meals, Western or Oriental, and can even be filtered of ingredients you have to avoid, say, due to allergy or your doctor’s advice. And among the different dishes, Shaberu offers you different ways to search for a recipe. Of course, you have the basic option to browse the entire list, but you can also specify what ingredients you have, by set menus, keyword search, or by filters. Personally, I found the filter feature useful; I filtered for dishes that were easy to prepare and can be done in 10 minutes, but you can filter it for other criteria like calories as well. I decided I wanted seafood and picking one from the results, chose Clams Steamed In Wine.

There are 3 basic steps to do when cooking:

Prepare the ingredients and tools
In this step, you can choose how many people you’re cooking for, which automatically adjusts the shown amount of ingredients you will need. And you can also check off items you already have, like in a checklist, and Shaberu saves this data so when you turn on your Shaberu the next time you’re in the groceries, you’ll know exactly what to buy. Shaberu also tells you what tools are needed.

Go over the cooking process
Of course, before any cooking actually begins, you have to make sure you’re ready by reviewing each step of the cooking process, from preparation to finishing touches. You can of course skip this part if you wish.

Guided cooking
Here’s where the real fun begins, and where Shaberu, as well as the capabilities of the DS, shines. First of all, Shaberu means to chat in Japanese. Naturally, you can’t be holding your DS in one hand will you’re holding your pan and vigorously stirring with your spatula! Shaberu talks you through the dish so you don’t need to hold it. Just place it somewhere in the kitchen, preferably on a location where you won’t accidentally cook your DS, and listen to the instructions while you cook.

Although you can set the speed of the synthesized voice, for inexperienced cooks like me, I need a way to sort of pause it without having to touch my DS (specially not my touch screen) with my potentially dirty-from-handling-raw-food hands. Here’s where Shaberu’s show-stealer function comes in. Like I said, Shaberu means to chat, and chatting is a two-way thing. Using the DS’s mic, you talk to your DS to tell it to go to the next step, go back a step, repeat the step, and even to ask it for more details (Err, so how exactly do I clean these clams?). Of course, you can still navigate it with the touch screen if you so wish.

After cooking the dish, Shaberu confirms if you were abe to successfully make it and celebrates with you with confetti while showing you how your dish should turn out. It also takes note of the dish that you cooked in its calendar, so you have a record of the dishes you’ve made so far.

Ok, now onto the Cons. As you might have probably guessed, Shaberu is a Japanese title. Naturally, it speaks Japanese and you can’t change languages. And even though Shaberu uses simple language, unless you’re well-versed in Japanese kitchen and food terms, or you have another DS running Rakubiki Jiten, you’re gonna have a bit of difficulty following the steps.

Overall, Shaberu makes full use of the multimedia capabilities of the DS to deliver a really effective cooking guide for both beginners and intermediate cooks alike. For expert cooks, I suggest going for the sequel of Shaberu, where you’ll be instructed by no less than 7 hotel chefs.

Social Bookmarks:

Camorama can be used to test if your camera is feeding video information to your computer, and also for taking pictures or recording videos. However, for my particular camera, it couldn’t adjust the color correctly. I was worried that the linux driver for my camera had a problem. Well a badly-colored videocam feed is better than no feed at all.

Next up was research. What program do I use with my webcam for video calling? Gaim/Pidgin is a multiple-IM client capable of connecting not only to Y!Messenger, but also to MSN, AIM, GoogleTalk, etc., but couldn’t do video because these companies use private and proprietary protocols with their networks they want to keep private. I wanted to be able to call Yahoo! Messenger clients, so like what I usually do when I’m clueless about something, I hit the Ubuntu Forums and do search (or post a question if search results aren’t fruitful). Sure enough, there was a thread that answered my question. After a conversation with Loell, another UF member, I tried the following applications to see which best suited my needs.

Kopete

Kopete is a multiple-IM for KDE, though you can still use it in GNOME. It has a nice, clean interface which I think looks better than Gaim. Trying out the webchat feature, I was able to connect to my Y!M buddies. However, while the person on the other end could see my video stream, all I got was a single frame. The first frame of what is supposed to be a video stream (at best, I managed to get another frame a few minutes later). Also, there was no audio with the webchat.

Gyachi

First of all, I would like to state that this is my personal opinion: I really hate Gyachi’s interface. The first screen you see looks like a mess, or at best an old, unsophisticated Win95 program. The buttons are cluttered, and I really can’t make sense of the interface. But I was able to try out the webchat feature, and it worked. But like Kopete, webcam with audio was a no-go. Supposedly, you have to start audio chat aside from your webchat do get around this, but I never was able to make audio chat work either. So either I use Kopete or this for webchat without video. And I’d rather the clean Kopete interface than this. As a small saving grace though, Gyachi notifies you when your buddies sign in as invisible, so there’s no hiding from a person with Gyachi.

Wengo and Ekiga
Taking a different approach, why not just use a softphone for VoIP? Ubuntu has Ekiga by default, and unlike Skype which uses its own proprietary protocol, Ekiga is SIP-protocol compliant. In human terms, Skype can connect to Skype only, while Ekiga can connect to ANY SIP phone. Linux Skype can’t make video calls by the way, so that’s automatically out. So why not Wengo instead of Ekiga? Wengo is more fully featured than Ekiga. Wengo can be installed in Windows, Mac, and Linux, it can make SMS as well as calls to real phones anywhere in the world (I loaded it up with 10euros, which is the minimum. Calls and SMS are really cheap by the way), and it’s also a multi-IM client.

In conclusion, while I never got webcamming with Yahoo!Messenger solved, it was a good learning experience, without which I would have never learned about Wengo, to which I’m casting my vote. It solved the day for webcam with voice, I just have to convince whoever I need to talk to to download the client, but it’s not that hard since Wengo is really a good client, better than Skype. It still has some kinks, which I’m sure will soon be solved by the open source community behind it as more and more people start using it.

Social Bookmarks:

During that trip as well, I visited an old friend that now runs Photo Story Creations, a shop that puts your pictures on mugs, pillows, even tiles, as a mosaic or just a straightforward picture. Imagination’s the limit to what you can do with their products, you just need to tell them what you want to be done with your pictures. Having previously used trialware mosaic programs during my Windows days, I poked around in Synaptics Package Manager to see if I can find a mosaic application for Linux.

Sure enough, there was a fast, little program called Metapixel. It´s actually two small programs: metapixel-prepare and the main metapixel program. The metapixel-prepare program lets you choose a source directory of pictures and a target directory to use as a picture library for metapixel. Creating a mosaic takes around 3 1/2 minutes, which is already comparatively faster to other mosaic programs. But this speed advantage really comes in handy when you´re making mosaics using the library, since only half a minute is used for the actual creation of the mosaic. The other 3 minutes is used for preparing the library, which is a one time deal in this case.

One thing that might turn off some users is that Metapixel is a command-line program. But it’s not really that hard to use. To prepare the library, you use the following command: metapixel-prepare Desktop/sourcepictures Desktop/librarydir Afterwards, just type in
metapixel --metapixel input.jpg output.png --library Desktop/librarydir --cheat=30 The input file is the target image that you want your mosaic will look like and the output is, of course, the final image that will be produced. Notice that I put in a –cheat=30. What that actually does is overlay a 30%-opaque final image on to the mosaic, similar to the flower mosaic above. Unless you have a really vast library of pictures with all possible colors and you’re going to create a pretty big mosaic, this option can come in pretty handy. There are also other options, like the collage option. The difference between a collage and a classic mosaic is that the classic mosaic lays out your pictures in a perfect grid, while pictures in a collage can overlap each other.

Another cool tool that should be in the toolbox of the Linux photographer is Hugin Panorama Photo Stitcher. It features tools for correcting perspective, and of course, stitching tools for creating panoramas.

To stitch photos, all you need to do is create points in your pictures to help the program automatically stitch your photos. In the example above, Hugin automatically adjusted for the perspective distortion effect of my camera, stitching three photos seamlessly. You may also want to check out the official Hugin stitching online tutorial.

Social Bookmarks: