free software
Ubuntu without “win key”
Nov 28th
This post is an adaptation of one post I made on my portuguese blog. It may contain some write errors (especially on manicurist part).
One day I was talking with my friend (and GSoC Guy) Lucas Veloso, and I solved a problem that bother many Linux users: the use of “win key”.
May we call “ubu key”? 
Step-by-step for win key “removal” e ubu key “install”:
- With a nail sandpaper, sand the top of the key until you see no image there (be careful to don’t damage the key).
- Alternative: According Lucas, if you use a transparent nail polish on the key and remove it using acetone (after a while), the image can be erase easily.
- After remove the image, pass nail polish on the key.
- Print the image you want to put on the key on a normal sheet (i made it 0,6cm x 0,6cm).
- Pass transparent nail polish on both sides of the sheet over the image. The sheet will become a little “plastic”.
- Cut the image carefully, using a knife.
- Paste the image on the key (you may paste with the nail polish) and pass more nail polish to fix it and protect.
- The end.
Wow, I’m talking like a manicurist… 
Below is a picture of Lucas’ keyboard, in a different version, as you can see:
Another keyboard that I like is the one of Jose Vitor:
His girlfriend made it for him, inspired by my portuguese post.
PS: Here goes the template made with inkscape to create the “ubu key”.
PS2: Yesterday I saw one “Ubuntu keyboard” for sale. It looks nice…
I bought an ogg player
Nov 18th
I’ve just bought an ogg player (the box says MP3 Player, but I will use it to play ogg…). As many others, it doesn’t say that it plays ogg, but it do (look the picture above).
Funny part: Look the page of manual (translated below)…
Red part: Important: For unknown reasons some Windows XP doesn’t open automatically the window Removable Disk.
Go figure…
Liquid Rescale Plug-in: step-by-step
Oct 1st
On my last post I wrote about the “Liquid Rescale Plug-in” for Gimp and published an image that I resized. Now I’ll show how to make it step-by-step.
First I choose a picture. The original size was 2048×1536 pixels.
Then I choose Layer > Liquid Rescale…
I changed the width to 1500 and “OK”:
Well, this is no good. The image was resized, but the plug-in didn’t know what was important on the image.
So I backed up the original and created a new transparent layer to identify what was important on the image:
On this new layer I filled with black what I want to preserve (I think it would be any color).
The new layer after painting (the white part is transparent):
Following, I selected the photo layer, then I choose Layer > Liquid Rescale…, but now I set my new layer as the area to preserve.
Finally, I executed the script and voi là!
OBS: I did the same thing on my three years old computer running Ubuntu Feisty (Athlon XP 2000+, 512Mb RAM DDR), and on my new computer on my work, running win XP (Pentium 4, 3.0, 512Mb RAM DDR2). On my computer the process was really really really faster.
Cool resize plugin for GIMP
Sep 28th
Some time ago I saw this post about a super horizontal/vertical resize algorithm which preserves the proportions of what is important on an image. Yesterday I was reading unread posts on Planet Ubuntu when I saw this post of Jorge Bernal where he says that already exists a plugin for GIMP of this algorithm (this is why I love free software).
Well, I installed it on my computer and made a test with my picture. Look the “before” and “after”:
If you want to play (and I think you will), download it for your plataform. After install it will be available on “Layer” menu.
NO with comments!
Aug 23rd
Brasil says no to the OOXML format.
Congratulations to ABNT for this decision! We can’t accept a standard that doesn’t follow standards or a standard that only one company can implement…
Meet the “open surface”
Jul 17th
![[MPX: Servidor X com suporte a multi-touch]](http://andrenoel.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/mpx.jpg)
![[MPX no Ubuntu]](http://andrenoel.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/mpx_ubuntu.jpg)
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