After the so much loved analog clock and the relative screencast I did some time ago to present to the world the first plasmoid ever, it’s time for a little replica.
The new clock I made is more modern and fresh, and it’s digital. It’s made to look like the big informations that you can find in the train stations, the ones who flip down to change what is written on them.

Working both in Plasma and in Oxgen is really worthwhile to create these nice stuff. ;-)
So, here it borns this clock. And this is just the beginning, because both me and Nuno have a continuous flow of ideas of new features and cool effects we can implement into it, at the point that Nuno yesterday said that “this is going to be the best plasmoid ever”. And I really hope so. ;-)
For the pretty pictures, viva Nuno!
I made a little screencast, so you can see how nicely it animates. Unfortunately it has been a bit fucked up with the colors, so here’s a screenshot to see how it really looks:

IMPORTANT NOTE: In the screencast I’m showing hours and seconds, instead of hours and minutes: the seconds are displayed in the screencast just to make you see the animation better.
Seconds will be added, as the code that makes the animation is pretty fast, but we still haven’t deicided where; they can be little and near the minutes, or simply a ‘:’ flashing.

• Download the screencast (OGG Theora, 145 KBytes)
• Download the screencast (AVI, 138 KBytes)

Have fun! =)

So, in really few words, this is the white set, I removed the double arrows because as I already told you I didn’t like them very much, and they’re are already gone.
Nuno and Ken forced me to make the tail thinner, but I’m not totally convinced… I will release for sure a version with ticker tails, for those who liked them. And I must say that git really rocks for that kind of works! =)

They look much more professional indeed. Let me know of what you think. =)

Here he is:

And our new president drying his underwears on the fire at aKademy 2007 ;-)

Anyway, apart from this joke, Aaron knows I fully estimate him, he is a good friend and we hacked toghether since the beginning of KDE 4.
So good luck dude for this new important role, and continue rocking! =)

…also known as my vision for the default oxygen cursor theme

Hello everyone,
finnally I managed to get blogging again. I would like to show you some cursors I did in the last few days. I’m sorry if the image below doesn’t look very good, some cursors even look blurred, but that’s not my fault. I spent an entire afternoon in figuring out how to do that composition without having an enormous loss of quality with many programs (inkscape was behaving incredibly badly), so I won’t redo them just because some of them look a bit blurred. Please understand me.

Anyway, to give you the “proof” that they look great, not like that image, I attach here all the PNGs with the basic arrow in all the different colors: (randomly sorted)

But before showing you the whole thing, some disclaimer:

• Those cursors do look pretty nice, but the set is still far from being complete or perfect, or even something that comes closer to that.
• They do look a bit childish and playful, that’s partly because of the composition made in a “raimbowish” way, but that’s also probably because of the shapes, I’m not satisfied at all by the the double arrows.
• The clock will have another post dedicated, as the idea is completely original, and it still needs to be completed ;-)
• There is no whitish theme. I know, and I’m already working to have it.
• There is still an incredibly vast space for improvements, they will be much nicer for the final release.
• I’m sure I forgot something else….

So, here is the thing, in all the colors the Oxygen palette permits, so that it will suit any taste: (again, I’m sorry for the blur some of them have)

Ah, I forgot to say, why I did so many colors?
Simple, every people at aKademy, while I was doing them, told me stuff like: “I would like to see them red.”, “Why don’t you make them green?”, “Hey, yellow is so cool!”, “Please, do them blue!”, “Gray will look awesome…”, etc etc… So, here it comes the solution!
The cursor parade: the right color to anyone!

UPDATE: One of the reason that lead me to make all the different colors and that I forgot to write is usability. Anyone is free to choose the color is better for him/her basing on the color scheme it’s used more on his/her desktop. I made a test with a couple of people that usually loose the usual white cursors of (k)ubuntu on their screen, especially when using programs like oo.o, and I made them try the yellow cursors. They haven’t lost them once until now (more than a week). That’s not because it’s big or something, is just a matter of choosing the right colors, colors that make enough contrast on every background.

Because of the huge work-marathone and the enormous and continuous flow of ideas that is going on here I just find time for a very quick post. Basically I’m posting this photo since I’m actually involved into a new emerging community with lots of energies and lots of ideas, but that had suffered from internal problems more or less one month ago. Fortunately everything has been resolved, and now it’s one of the best and most sane community I know in the world of open source. Let’s hope it will always remain that. Good luck KDE Italia!

Download in:

• Small size (532×356; 286.3 KBytes)
• Medium size (1064×712; 879.6 KBytes)
• Large size (4256×2848; 6.7 MBytes)