inkscape

After hearing such good things about it from my fossfolk friends over the years I'm delighted to be going to OSCON for the first time this year. Not only attending, but delivering a 3.5 hr tutorial on Inkscape.  It's scheduled for 9am Monday 25 July.

I'm running a full day Inkscape workshop for ICT in Education Victoria on Wed 14 September 2011 at the Statewide Resources Centre in Carlton (150 Palmerston Street)

It's aimed at absolute beginners - new to Inkscape and new to vector drawing in general.

Registrations are open for linux.conf.au 2011 and the Open Source Developers Conference 2010 and I'm speaking at both about Inkscape.

OSDC 2010 will be held at The Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne on the 24-26 November.
http://2010.osdc.com.au/proposal/29/inkscape-free-your-vectors

I've been slack lately.  My editor, Michelle Lowman, found me at DrupalCon and kicked me up the proverbial to get my act together and FINISH THE DAMN BOOK. Which book? Beginning Inkscape.  An intro level guide to using Inkscape.

I've been crazy busy of late, and seem to be suffering the same fate as others in that I'm using micro-blogs for the quick updates and burning need to express those 'top-of-mind' thoughts, rather than posting here to http://kattekrab.net - Ah well.

Not that you care. I don't imagine these rare postings of mine are missed much by anyone! :)

So what have I been up to? Conferences. Again.  Ya'd think I would have learnt to keep away from these unmitigated stress-fests by now. Oh no. Not me. Never learn, Can't be told.

Entries closed and voting is open for the about screen contest for the next release of Inkscape.  There are 36 entries, some of them representing hours of dedicated artistry by their creators, others flashes of inspiration quickly rendered with our favourite tool.

I've picked 9 of the 36 for my own personal shortlist... but I can only vote for one - which will it be?  What do you think?

View all 36 here http://inkscapers.deviantart.com/journal/24960257/ - and create an account to vote!

The amazing team that build my favourite Open Source software application, Inkscape, have bunkered down in preparation for a new release.

linux.conf.au 2009 starts in a little over 2 weeks in Hobart Tasmania...

Will you be there?

Deep into preparations for the Inkscape tutorial I'm giving at linux.conf.au in Hobart in January, I've been practicing techniques and recording them using RecordMyDesktop. It is a Linux application that does exactly what it says, screencast and audio recording of what's happening on screen.  It works very well!

Some time ago some lovely person on the inkscape channel suggested the following fix to my desire to have inkscape default to landscape, full screen when I create a new document. It's become such second nature to me now I don't even think about.

But as I passed this tip on to someone today - it occurred to me it might be worth a wee blog post. Hope someone else out there finds this useful :)

Note: Make a copy of default.svg before embarking on this jiggery pokery - in case reverting to factory settings is required.