Stunning Random Wallpapers for your [openSUSE GNOME] Desktop

I came across an interesting project named Webilder. It is so awesome.

Webilder can...

- download flickr photos that match tags (for example: beach,party)
- download photos from flickr users of your choice.
- download most interesting photos from flickr.
- download amazing daily proshots from Webshots (requires Webshots account).
- automatically download new photos for you.
- change your wallpaper every few minutes.
- import webshots collections (wbz or wbc formats).

Webilder includes...

- a simple photo collection browser, that will let you view the images in fullscreen, or set them as a wallpaper.
- browser integration for webshots - downloaded images are automatically added to your collection.
- command-line photo downloader.

I've got some stunning wallpapers from Flickr's daily feed of Interesting Photoes. I experimented with few keywords like: Gothic, Smile, Beautiful, Pretty, etc. And I got some wonderful pictures.

Sample Screenshots from my Desktop





openSUSE was not having rpms for this package. So I went ahead and created a build-service project for this. Go GRAB The RPM :-) (1-click install)

After installing the rpm, right-click on your gnome-panel and add "Webilder" from "Add to Panel..." You can click on this icon and launch webilder any time you want. From Tools -> Preferences you can choose the flickr tags, time after which wallpaper should change automatically, configure webshots account etc. Make sure you enable "Download Interesting Photoes" under flickr tab.

Thanks a lot to Nadav Samet for the awesome application. There were some small bugs in the software but there are some excellent wallpapers that I am getting that make me ignore these minor issues. I hope we get enough contributors to get these minor issues fixed and more features added (Download only high-res images, etc.)

openSUSE Conference 2009 & Germany Trip

The openSUSE Conference 2009 on Germany was my first overseas trip. A small twitter style update about it is:


Pre-Travel

- The VISUM (German for VISA) processing for the Germany trip began very late, owing to the budget discussions. At last, Thanks to Zonker and Nat Friedman, all these issues were settled and the budget sources were found.
- YSR's death caused grief to various people in various ways and I was no exception. My first visa interview date became a state Government holiday because of it and so visa interview got post-poned
- Got the visa approved just two days before the actual travel date and began my travel (and purchases)
- Big Thanks should be given to Alexia Henrie, Jacqueline Junghanns, Vijayalakshmi Sharma for all their timely help


Travel

- The flight started at 2:00 am from Bangalore. Suresh and Nikanth who came with me clarified my few inquisitive doubts. After long travel and a two hour wait in the cold Paris airport, we reached Nuremberg at around 5:00 pm local time. Somehow I did not feel one bit sleepy.
- Nuremberg is a lovely place and I immediately fell in love with it. It is not a crowded, traffic-filled modern city but a small city with lots of green fields, clean air and water. The day we landed the sun was shining brightly, much to my relief.
- There is a castle in the city center and every wall of this castle and every building around this castle has a story behind it. My friend taking me through this trip patiently explained me all the stories in detail.
- Met a lot of people in the conference. The openSUSE conference had people coming from all corners of the world - Australia, China, India, Europe, England, US, Mexico to name a few.
- It was good to meet all the great people of the openSUSE community in person. Some of the people were drastically different than I have expected.
- I was interviewed by Sirko Kemter (gnokii) for radiotux. The audio podcast is available here. Listening to this audio clip helped me understand the things that I need to improve in my future interviews ;-) It is indeed a great honour and I should thank Sirko for this.
- Attended a lot of talks. But my "Session of the conference" goes to a talk with a noble purpose. The unconference session on Accessibility by Stephen Shaw and Bryen Yunashko is the one that I felt the closest to my heart. It motivated me a lot to contribute to a11y. Let us see what I can do.
- After the conference I spent about 3 days in SuSE offices in Nuremberg. The facility is fantastic and ~3 people get a private office with a glass wall on a side. The whole building is naturally lit and aesthetically designed. It is a real A+ facility.
- The Internet connection in Germany is the fastest I have ever been. For someone coming from India (where we have to still pay a fortune for 2 mbps connection) when the speedtest site showed me download speed of 64 mbps, I was awestruck.
- I did not have much problem with food. Contrary to what I expected, Not everyone in the western world is a meat-eater it seems.
- The Germans seem to eat breakfast like a king and their dinner like a pauper ;-) The breakfast is too extensive with a huge variety and the dinner is very light and with less choices. (may be a flawed observation)
- Germans prefer to call their homeland - Deutshland. The term "Germany" is given by british people who have the habit of altering the names they cannot pronounce. We have these cases in India as well.

Autobahn

The thing about Deutshland that impressed me the most is: Autobahn . It is an engineering wonder. It can be roughly compared to the national highways in India for purpose - but way beyond comparison in terms of quality. The suggested speed in the Autobahn is 130 kmph and everyone exceeds this. There are _no_ speed limits on these roads and you can go as fast as you can. Travelling in a sports car in this road felt like flying. The roads and traffic lights are so well planned that I didn't find a single speed breaker.

The first thing that impresses any Indian going out of India is the awesome roads. The congress primeministers who ruled India for more than 50 years and travelled to Europe and USA were able to find Girlfriends but not the fact that good roads are vital for a country. Thankfully we had one Mr. Vajpayee who realized the need for world-class roads, after more than 50 years of self-governance.

Post-travel
After 9 days of trip, I found that: Sorkkame endralum adhu num oorai pola varuma (Even Heaven cannot come close to hometown). : It is such a nice feeling to be back in India and feel the humidity in the air, hear the horn sounds again, and feel the warmth of the merciless Sun. I believe The lack of sun and the high-cold is probably the reason for the low population (humans and insects) in the western world ;-)

Some of the photoes are published in my facebook page.

Most Wanted Feature

In People of openSUSE interview, there is a question: Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible? :

If I were to answer this question, I would say:

Mailing list softwares should calculate the mail counts in every thread and if a thread exceeds 19 mails, it should be deemed spam and terminated immediately. No further replies on the thread should be allowed to pass-by. The software should use AI and block any mails, if some smart users try to change the subject and continue the thread. If the warriors cannot come to agreement in less than 19 mails, they wont settle in 100 mails either. So let them meet offline, face-to-face and decide upon solutions.

Well, may be it is too much of an ask. A mutt script to automatically mark threads with more than 19 mails as read will be better.

okaythnxbye

P.s: Why the number 19 ? I just wanted to honor the boundaries of teenage.

Vijesh

I and two friends were travelling in a new car bought by one of my friends. I was taking a photo of the driver's eye image shown in the rear-view mirror. And the conversation went like:

Friend 1: What a sense of photography, wow wow !
Me: We are all engineers you know, we should constantly innovate ;-)

Friend 2: BTW, speaking of photography and innovation, whom is Vijesh trying to impress ? he is blogging a lot about photography these days.

Me: I think he is genuinely interested in photography and it doesnt look like he is interested in photography to impress anyone. May be he could've started for that reason.

Friend 1: Who is Vijesh-da ?

Friend 2: He is a Kaatawn. The only guy whom I have ever seen hit a six from our hostel ground center up unitl G block Mess.

Me: I will make sure I will convey the words of praise to him :-)

So, Vijesh, It will be nice if you can do a "Ghajini" like pose with your mottai thalai ;-)

Google Chrome OS

So, the big news from Google is that they are releasing a new open-source operating system, primarily targetted for Netbooks, name Google Chrome OS. I had plans of buying a netbook which I guess I will postpone, until a clear winner (market leader) emerges between Moblin, Google Chrome OS, Windows7, and etc.

An ironical and interesting thing is, there is no offical installer for Google Chrome for Linux yet, but the announcement says, google chrome will be based on Linux. (should I say GNU/Linux ;) ) Looking forward to future.

irc, keyboard, etc.

The keys "s" & "d" are dangerously close. In IRC, I almost sent: "Just kissing" when I wanted to send "Just kidding".

And, it got me to think about Levenshtein distance.

Dogs of War - United Nations

I was wondering if the United Nations (UN) has been able to prevent/stop any wars at all. For sure they could not bring peace for:

- Tamils in Srilanka
- Tibetans in China
- Afghan women in some parts of Afghanistan
- Kashmiris from Pakistan/India
- Iraqians either when Saddam ruled or when US attacked them (No debates please on whether this is right or wrong)
- Iran/Palestinian problems

Reading about the recently intensified war of Srilanka vs LTTE and the thousands of harmless civilians getting killed, I was reminded of a conversation in the book "The dogs of war" which goes something like:

Wars are made by egotistic people on power, with terrible impact on common people lives. The winners write the history in whatever ways to boost their ego and fame, often projecting the losers of war as the most evil reincarnation of Satan.

These are not the exact words, but is something on these lines. The author will cite Adolf Hitler as an example of this, how Hitler has a bad reputation in history books across the world.

These words of Frederick Forsyth are so true that I believe organizations like UN, though started with noble goals like world-peace, can only slow down things but are incapable of stopping people at power, from abusing it to gain personal glory.

I was also reminded of another thought, whose source I forgot. Humans as a species have become so fitter, that they can be destroyed only by each other. So we are inventing modern ways to reach human extinction faster with things like cluster bombs, chemical weapons etc. I am not sure if there will be a third world war, but there will be no fourth world war, as humans would've become extinct by the third.

I was told by some of my European colleagues about the angry emotions of some non-native europeans, (immigrants/refugees of wars) when they hear about bad things in their homeland. I just wish peace and safety for everyone and not any other life getting injured by the Dogs of War and emotions of the affected people. As a politically powerless human being there is nothing more that we (me and most of my blog readers) can do except Hoping for a peaceful tommorrow.

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