Hari's Corner

என் நண்பர்களுக்கும் உறவினர்களுக்கும் எனது இனிய தீபாவளி வாழ்த்துக்களை தெரிவிக்கிறேன்.

Here's my next Geeky and Meeky episode, entitled, quite appropriately "Change of Format."

I downloaded a few free Comic-style fonts from Blambot. Would like some feedback from you as well regarding the changes.

My sincere thanks to John Leach who creates the webcomic Everybody Loves Eric Raymond for responding to my e-mail query regarding the software he uses to put it all together.

Oh and a very happy Deepavali to all my friends.

For a long time, I've been looking for tools to create comic strips, mainly because I find that GIMP is not exactly suited for the job even though it's an excellent image manipulation tool. Even though I couldn't find a single Linux-based comics creation program (or even a decent, free Windows-based program), I did come across an interesting website when I searched for one: Stripgenerator.com. I personally wouldn't use it, but for those who have no skill in drawing but have a lot of creative ideas for cartoons, this seems to be a good idea.

Pre-built graphics aren't really my thing and in my opinion you miss the creative satisfaction of drawing your own characters, but at least these tools will keep you playing with your ideas for a while. I did look at some of the strips on display there and while most of them aren't too clever, there are a few which I enjoyed. Even so there is an element of repetitiveness in them, mainly because of the shared graphical elements.

ToonsAndComics.com is back after we found a reasonably decent host. Hopefully things will settle down in a few days time after resolving a few minor bugs/issues during the changeover.

Apologies for the delay in restoring the service. We really had to search desperately for a decent host at a reasonable cost. Since brinkster didn't work out as the basic (rookie) package didn't provide MySQL, it took us a few more days to hunt around for a host which does. I consider it my fault for not looking at the features list closely enough before suggesting it. Anyway there should be a refund so nothing is lost except time.

If you are a budding/amateur music composer like me or you just need to vent your creative energies into music, Linux has the best tools in the business to get the job done. I've looked around every corner of the web and I couldn't find a MIDI sequencer/composer better than Rosegarden. It does have a bit of a learning curve and you'll need to learn how to use the score editor (or the piano roll) to make sequences but once you master that, it's a bit of a breeze to put together a wonderful little song. I know there are other MIDI sequencers and trackers, but in my opinion, nothing comes close to the stability and configurability of this program.

I've always been fond of Trackers, ever since I used MIDITracker under Windows but I couldn't find one which was stable and feature-rich like it, so I decided to go with this program instead. And once I found my way around the piano roll, composing music is as simple as drag and drop.

Of course, you need to set up MIDI on your Linux system first, but I've already covered that in past articles. You can either go with TiMidity or use qsynth (a GUI front-end to fluidsynth). Of course, you need good sound patches or sound fonts.

You can download sound fonts for use with qsynth/fluidsynth at HammerSound.net or you can get the EAW patches for use with TiMidity. I don't have any particular preference for either, so use whichever one works for you. Make sure you download a GM-compatible set if you intend to share your work with others.

Here's a sample piece I composed in Rosegarden (MIDI format):

Download: new-creme-1.mid (18.9 kB, ~2 min)

Don't ask me why I named it New Creme 1. Note that it is copyright material, so please don't use it for any purpose other than personal enjoyment without informing me.

Here's the next edition of Geeky and Meeky entitled "Wrong Career." I took a lot more trouble over it than usual, so I hope the results are worth it. Enjoy!