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I’ve always been a huge fan of free software. Not just open source software but even the purely cost-free variety. I love the freedom involved in trying out various different pieces of software either to find the right one for you, or just because you like the process. Very early on, when I first started my adventures on the internet, finding free software was one of my major online pastimes. In those days my favourite haunt was the now defunct Softseek.com. Eventually that site was bought out by ZDnet, and I was forced to set out on my search for greener pastures.

There are hundreds if not thousands of sites that list free software, but there are some I have come to rely on when I am looking for something specific, or just browsing to see what is new and interesting (or old and interesting). Since this has become a bit of a loose science for me, I thought I would share with you the places I visit for my regular free software fix.

Nonags>>

A simple site with a single page listing of each category of software. Listings go from the latest entries to older software at the bottom of the page. The great thing here is that you can find some real old gems which might not have been updated for a while but are still great pieces of software. Best of all is that only software without spyware or nag screens are included in this repository. This is always my first stop when looking for a specific type of software.

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I occasionally flirt with the idea of being more organised. Don’t get me wrong, I am more organised than most people. The photograph above is of my todo lists and notes which regulate my day-to-day activities. That’s the way it’s been for a few years now and that is the only way I can maintain my sanity considering my do-it-all persuasion. But, there is always more that can be done. I’ve never gotten into the strict calendar scheduling and note-taking habit. When I started this blog, I thought maybe a bit of more structured scheduling of posts to be written and tasks to be done on the administrative end might do me some good. So I set off down the internet stream in search of the right calendaring software.

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A few days ago I finally received some copies of a quarterly print newsletter I work on with Vishal. I’ve been working on this regularly for over two years now. For most of that time I worked on it with Anjali. In fact we came up with it together from scratch when a local engineering contracting company in Dubai wanted a complete makeover of their in-house newsletter. During that time I had very little to do with design and production, which was handled by Anjali using the standard Photoshop + Illustrator + InDesign setup. At the end of last year she moved home-base so I took over the mantle of getting this done every three months with Vishal’s help. The first major stumbling block was that I didn’t currently own Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign, and I hadn’t owned or used them in a long time. Since the last few years had been almost completely devoid of large scale print projects for me, I had never felt the need. I had moved on to open source software.
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I saw Spiderman 3 two days ago and just didn’t feel like writing about it. Sure, I could have gone into the post-mortem of every little piece in it that worked and didn’t work, but I realised that none of that would go far enough into explaining why I found it disappointing. In a seemingly un-connected event, today I came across a mention of this Slashdot piece about Blender on Blendernation [later I also saw a related thread on Blenderartists]. Lo and behold there was a large number of people doing post-mortems of every little piece of both Blender and the Slashdot piece, that either worked or didn’t work for them. Just as I was about to dismiss the whole thing and put it off to sour grapes on one hand and over zealous teenagers on the other, I realised there was a connection I was missing. While everyone was tearing everything apart and analysing every word, sentence and minor feature, we were all forgetting to ask the most important question: How entertaining is your 3D software?
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I’ve been an admirer on the Linux sidelines for a long time now — many years, in fact. I think my first brush with Linux was in the dense text listings of Amiga PD (Public Domain) software magazine ads, where a single item often read “Unix-like operating system for the Amiga”. I even came across a very early version of Red Hat in its infancy, on some magazine cover CD that a friend gave me. At the time I didn’t even own a PC. Once I moved over to PC land, and became familiar with the internet I came to know Linux well, at least by reputation. And since then I have slowly but surely moved towards open source software, culminating in the present time when all my professional design, illustration, video, and web development work is carried out purely using OSS.

The only hold back in this migration is Windows which I still use, but after some recent glitches and file losses, I have finally begun looking towards Linux for an eventual shift. Before I left for my vacation in January, I started downloading and trying out a whole slew of Live CD Linux distros, to get the hang of it and also the find the one that suits my needs best. Since I got back I continued my downloading spree but found to my dismay that my computer refused to boot from the CD anymore. That certainly put a damper on my playful experimenting so I set out to find the culprit.

It wasn’t the BIOS as I first thought, but instead it seemed to be a dirty lens in the CD drive which just didn’t allow for a quick pickup on the bootable discs at startup. The normal way of doing this is the much hyped “CD cleaner” discs which come with a special CD that has a cleaning brush on it and some special solution for the cleaning, but I’ve not had much luck with those in the past and my drive is quite old. I though perhaps it was in need for a fuller treatment. So I took it apart for a thorough cleaning, and these photos resulted.

The prognosis isn’t good however. While I might have managed to clean the lens, this drive has had other problems before, including a drive mechanism which sometimes gets stuck. Once it was all opened out, these problems are appearing again and I can see that there are obviously some mechanichal issues with the gear system in there which makes the opening and closing mechanism and the one that raises and lowers the drive head not co-ordinate as they are supposed to.

So for now I have moved on to a spare drive I had lying around, and this patienet will have to wait for some future leisure time when I can tinker, decipher and understand.

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The listing in the newspaper sounded innocent enough:

EYE YOGA…
If you wish to get rid of your spectacles, attending Sampoorna Eye Yoga Camp can do it the natural way. The camp will teach you eye exercises, Vedic in origin, that will help in relieving you of eye disorders. Register for a free lecture in South Mumbai. On January 17. (Tel: 98xxxxxxxx)

My vision is quite normal and I don’t wear spectacles, but my brother and father do, and so this was of interest. We decided to go, and I went along for moral support, and for remembering any useful details as the member of the clan officially interested in this sort of thing.
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I seem to be going through a “let’s do a logo for this community project” phase. Just an observation, and not a complaint, because I’m a staunch supporter of the the “Open” movement and am glad that this is one way for me to do my bit. My latest cause is the Open Clip Art Library.

Those who aren’t familiar with this project should have a look at it. It is truly a worthy challenge to try to put together a free collection of “open source” vector clip art. With the increasing viability of software like OpenOffice.org and Inkscape, a good collection of clip art is essential to complement these packages. I recently visited the site and saw a call for logos for the project. I sketched out a couple of ideas and executed them in Inkscape. The logos submitted so far are viewable here. At the moment I’m writing this my logos have not been put up on the page, but they will probably show up once the administrators has had a look at them.

I wish this project continues a healthy growth, because it is an essential part of the open source alternative. Those who don’t subscribe to that “idealism” can go there purely to get some cool, FREE clip art.

Samir

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