I'd like to take a moment once again to highlight the software MyPaint. It has continued development at a slow but steady pace since the last time I mentioned it, and has just hit version 0.6.

The biggest new feature in 0.6 is layers. They're entirely hotkey driven, which may seem strange, but it actually works really well. The hotkeys are well chosen (for example, PageUp/PageDown to switch layers), and the layers concept is kept extremely simple.

Support for layers implies adding support for a file format that can store layers. MyPaint has gone with the OpenRaster format, which seems pretty nice. It's basically an archive of XML and various binary files (such as PNG files).

Aside from layers there have been some improvements in the undo and saving features. Undo is now blazing fast, just like one would expect it to be. And there are more options for saving, the best one being the scratch-save feature.

Scratch-save saves the current painting to a unique file. Each subsequent scratch-save creates a new unique file. This is great for saving stages of your paintings as you go, or just quickly saving backup files in case something horrible happens.

As I'm writing this blog entry I am sitting on the couch at the Blender Institute, acutely aware that I will never be able to revisit this part of my life again. Peach was a truly remarkable experience, even if I can't remember half of it.

At the beginning of the project I had high hopes, and was aware of a larger context in which the project was happening. I talked of new business models, and how the media industry was changing right under our noses... and how the big boys were going to have to change with it, or get out. I talked about how media production is becoming more local, and how media distribution is becoming more direct.
But during the actual production of Peach I forgot all about that stuff. We were just making a short animated film. It completely slipped my mind that this project was related to those things at all.

Now that the fog of production is clearing, these thoughts are sifting back through my mind. And although Big Buck Bunny certainly won't spark any sort of instantaneous change -- or indeed, any change at all just on its own -- it's nice to know that I've helped create something that is a part of this change, even if it's only a small part.

On a slightly different subject, the premiere of Peach was pretty awesome. We got a standing ovation from the audience. It was enthralling. Although I must confess that I'm holding out to see the results of the online release. The premiere consisted largely of people that were already interested in and supportive of the project, so even though they were strangers, the ovation had a tinge of that parents-at-a-school-play feel. They were there to be supportive in the first place, so the ovation means less. But it was still an amazing feeling, and it did still mean something.

I accomplished something exciting tonight. At least, exciting for me. You see, one of the very last things that was keeping Windows on my computer was the lack of good audio and video tools for Linux. Being a film maker at heart, there's no way I could abandon the tools that let me make movies.

Tonight, I finally patched together an entire audio/video pipeline that takes me all the way from video capture and audio recording, to video editing and audio mastering. Not that I did this all in one night. I've been looking for these tools for a long time, and slowly collecting software and taking note of what works and what doesn't. But tonight the last piece of the puzzle fell in place.

The tools I've assembled are as follows:

• Kino
• Audacity
• Blender
• Ardour
• xjadeo
• JACK
• ffmpeg

I don't want to bore you too much with the details, but here's a quick run-down of what role each of these play:

I was invited the other day by Frank (a programmer on the Apricot Team) to attend a Free Hugs gathering at a crowded square in Amsterdam.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Free Hugs, watch this video: Free Hugs Campaign In short, you stand around holding signs with "Free Hugs" written on them, and let people hug you (and hug back, of course).

Needless to say, I couldn't possibly refuse to go along. And I'm glad I did. It was quite an experience, in more ways than I anticipated.

There was of course the great fun of it, and the elated feelings from human contact. But it was surprisingly moving at times. There were some people that I could barely communicate with due to language barriers, but we connected through hugs. And it didn't matter who it was. All ages. All races. All classes. All genders. It was very hippie and awesome.

Even people that didn't hug would often let slip a betrayingly genuine smile across their face.

It was also fun having people take pictures of us. I'm not a big fan of posed pictures, but having people take pictures of us standing out there with "Free Hugs" signs, and giving hugs to complete strangers, seems very representative of the way I'd like to be remembered.