Online communities are awesome! I’ve been pretty much glued to my computer monitor for the past 2 days trying to make my new Nvidia video card (GeForce 9600GT) play with Linux. To be fair, the hardware does come with a CD which contains software for the Windows platform; but that doesn’t help me much.
Enter the Ubuntu community, http://ubuntuforums.org. These online forums have a wealth of valuable information on every subject imaginable when it comes to managing your Linux system. I was able to solve my missing driver issue with the help of this thread. I’m continually amazed at the level of help and support that you can get from online communities. who knows… I may even try to help somebody else in return
Last night I had the opportunity to deliver yet another technical speech to my Toastmasters club; the goal of this speech was to “persuade with power”.
Like all my speeches, I delayed my efforts until the very end because I couldn’t think of anything to persuade the crowd with. Just hours before my deadline, I decided that I would persuade them to consider open source software.
My speech was a hit with a few members of the audience, and lasted almost 10 minutes, a new record for me!
Although I didn’t use any visuals during the speech, one of the suggestions I received was to include a nice visual representation of the topic; so I put together a quick timeline to point out a few milestone in open source. This might come in handy for another speech.
I started out using both programs, but quickly settled down with Inkscape. After trying out a few features, the Inkscape GUI felt a bit more polished and more intuitive than Xara Xtreme.
Take a look at my first stab at creating a business card using Inkscape.
At this juncture, I’d have to say that using Inkscape to create a business card is not only possible, but also a painless experience. I will of course spend a little more time cleaning up my vector graphic before sending it to the printer.
I also can’t help to love their slogan, which is: Draw Freely.
I’m in the process of creating new business cards and want to do it using open source software. I must admit that it’s hard to resist booting into Windows and firing up Adobe Illustrator because I can probably get the vector graphic done in half the time, but that’s not the point here.
So — what are my options as far as open source vector programs? I plan to test 2 programs for my project
Inkscape
An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Xara Xtreme
Xara Xtreme for Linux is a powerful, general purpose graphics program for Unix platforms including Linux, FreeBSD and (in development) OS-X.
I am interested in finding out what other people are using to create vector graphics. Please post a comment if you have any suggestions for open source programs. I will follow up with comps from each program.
I haven’t said anything about my latest project with Seattle Towncar because the project wasn’t complete yet; but as of this week seattletowncar.net is open for business on the web; and it was designed by me of course.
I’ll be adding this piece to my digital portfolio soon.
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