Art Builds on Art
A couple of days back I got the bridge drawings from Leona.
A friend, Damon, was over at our house that evening. Leona had visited us and he had met her then, so I wanted to show him the drawings.
Of course, I had to explain what they were about. I told him the tale of the engineer and the bridge, I talked about crazy software teams and why they arise and about open source and how that works.
We were using an old laptop, running Ubuntu. He asked if we could write something like photoshop on this thing. I said, we could, but someone has beaten us to it, I told him about the GIMP.
So we fired up the GIMP and I opened Leona’s drawing in it.
Now a little digression on the GIMP is in order. I have used the GIMP many times, not frequently, but the GIMP must have been around 17 years or more. I can’t remember a time with Linux, but without the GIMP.
But, I have never been able to do anything with it without considerable cursing. At 25c a curse I could have bought photoshop many times. Instead, I muddled by with the GIMP until whoever had asked me to do some magic with it lost interest.
So while I was desperately trying to remember how this thing works, I told Damon about the GIMP Tool Kit, or GTK.
I explained how when the guys started to write it the first thing they decided to build was a GUI Toolkit, but they called it the GIMP Tool Kit.
This eventually became to be known as GTK and was used in a plethora of projects, usually beginning with ‘g’. But that is a whole other story.
So, by now Damon had taken over the computer and was exploring the GIMP. We needed food, so I started getting that ready. Ten minutes later I glanced at the screen.
Damon had done more in ten minutes with the GIMP than I had in 17 years.
So we stopped to eat and talk. He says, “so that thing is free?”. I explain, yes its been around for years, but its not just free, they give you the whole manual and everything you need to build it. So if we need to change it, if something doesn’t seem to work, we can try and fix it.
So he asks again, “so that thing is free?”. And he tells me how he has used photoshop a lot over the years and never knew there was a free option. He confessed, that the software he used, or rather the activation key, might not have come from the usual source. He felt bad about that, and mad that he’d never heard of the GIMP.
I was just relieved. Before he tried it I was expecting frustration with the tool, that it didn’t work as he would expect, that things were not quite right. It is why I made a pathetic attempt to show him what it could do before I let him near it. I’d always heard the GIMP is ok, but you really need photoshop.
So here was Damon, editing a photo Leona had given us, that was inspired by a story on stilldrinking.org
And now all of this has lead to more stories here.
This is what happens when ideas are shared.