A Revolution: Does It Worth the Trouble?

Today a Syrian friend of mine asked me a very interesting question, "Now after you toppled the regime in Egypt,would you say that it worth the trouble? Is life better for you guys now?"

As you know, there is an ongoing uprising in Syria now, and with the domino effect we are witnessing here in the Arab world nowadays, each country serves as the crystal ball for the next domino tile to predict its own future in it. In Egypt, many times when in doubt during our revolutions, we used to cheat from Tunisia, and copy what they have done when they faced the same issue. And now it's Syria's turn to use the Egyptian crystal ball.

I do not watch the Syrian national TV, but let me guess what messages are being aired there nowadays. For sure they are telling people now that such uprising is going to harm their economy and the country's stability, and here is Egypt as an example, their economy is getting worse day after day, and guess what? they are still ruled by the army. No democracy there yet! Right?

Anyway, instead of putting my two cents here, I preferred to ask my friends on twitter and see what do they think?

I myself believe that we've broken the barrier of fear, and if this is the only achievement for us, then it's enough. Menna Fawzi shares the same opinion as she believes that now any future dictator will be sure that we can topple him/her any time if they failed to listen to our demands. Aly Amer believes that putting the pillars of the formal regime in jail is an enough threat to any possible future corrupted regimes. Samia Jaheen and Nahla Ghoneim believe that - even if we haven't seen the fruits of our revolution till now - yet no one can ever see a fruit without planting the seed first. No matter what, it's a long journey to freedom and democracy and we are obliged to start it in order to find out the taste of freedom later. Sarah Raafat also believes that this is the best gift we can offer to our children. And finally NG Noah and Samer Hassan agreed that there is an immediate fruit of what we have done though, we finally have something that we never had before; Hope!

I'm not sure if we have answered my friend's doubts or not. I also know that our answer might seem to be a bit dreamy and optimistic. But she has to believe that this is just the truth, despite all what they say about us in Egypt, it came out that we value dignity more than stability, and we value hope more than economic growth.

From Paper to GIMP

This is my workflow when drawing stuff.

1. I draw them on paper, using a pen.
2. I scan them as greyscale, and normally 300 dpi.
3. Then I open them with GIMP, try to use eraser to clean the drawing a bit.
4. Increase Contrast till all dirts are gone.
   
5. Increase Levels to make the lines stronger and solid.
6. Change image mode to RGB.
   
7. Add another layer, with white background, and set it's mode to multiply.
8. Start colouring on the newly added laters, and add more layers if required.
9. And that's it.

I never used Photoshop before, however I think the above steps should be almost the same there.