Linux Movies Group

Linux Movies and Open Source Programmers Joint Meeting Highlights

Wednesday, September 18, 2002, 7pm
Mel's Diner
Berkeley, California

Drew presented a demo on his VAIO laptop of his new Python-based DV editor outputting frames to PPM images. He also showed skim, a zooming text viewer that makes it easy to look at files at a glance and do searches. It uses a RAYZ-style interface zoom window in which the mouse wheel zooms in toward the center of the window. It is implemented using a Tk zooming canvas.

Jason described an alpha channel bug recently fixed with the Kona HDTV board. He also introduced Russell, who recently left ILM to join Tippett. Russell described himself as being part of "the group getting rid of film at ILM. Tippett is preparing to do their first digital cameras feature. Russell mentioned Linux has been used at ILM since 1996 to control a Grass Valley video routing switcher.

John described his Forth4 (not ANSI) compiler he is working on. That is 386 native, but not at the bios level like Sun's OpenBoot.

Drew mentioned that his lighting simulation program had made it onto Rendermania and is driving some traffic his way. For those who visit via Rendermania HTTP referrer Drew has a special hello page that includes his resume.

Jerremy offered to help Robin with his Film Gimp project, maybe do the code rendezvous with 1.2.3 Gimp.

Catherine, who has a background in painting and textiles -- and a math degree from UCB, is learning to program in C++ and Java. Her programs use pseudo-random numbers to generate designs for quilts and rugs.

Catherine describes her current project:

I'm in the planning/visualizing stage for a program (GPL, maybe written in Java) that would:

 

(a) let an artist/textile designer create vector-based tile-able repeat units (with rich possibilities for internal symmetries and counter-change coloring of the sort that textile designers care about),

 

(b) offer the artist/designer a number of randomized variants of repeat units to choose from,

 

(c) save the chosen designs in a standard vector format (maybe the SVG format?), and

 

(d) communicate with the GIMP and use its scripting and painting facilities for laying out the repeat units (possibly with some randomness) and for refining the design by hand.

Thanks to everyone who came and helped make the meeting a success! Headcount was 11: Robin R., Gabrielle P., Ramona H., Jason H., newcomer Catherine J., newcomer Russell D., Kelsi H., Drew P., John C., Jerremy H., and Michael C.