Blonde girls and Internet Celebrities : they can't fail!

There seems to be an infallible recipe for success if you're lucky enough to be a "blond girl" - it has been scientifically proven that Youtube is the best platform for your success.

To prove this point below check this short list (maybe a little random in the selection) but hopefully giving a little diversity in the appeal of these blond girls.

The key is being blonde and having a mission.

Marina Orlova (http://www.youtube.com/user/hotforwords) Channel Views: 20,560,475
Marina is hosting one of the most popular channels - Her mission is to teach her audience proper English. Also worth mentioning that she's Russian, single, very smart and she's not blond anymore (pretty ironic).


Lisa Nova (http://www.youtube.com/user/LisaNova) Channel Views: 16,904,947
Her real name is Lisa Donovan she's an actress and specialized in doing parody and interview
Her mission is to entertain.

Zuzana (http://www.youtube.com/user/charliejames1975)  Channel Views: 7,801,071
A Czech girl very athletic, her mission is to motivate you to do fitness and her workout are pretty impressive.

Cristina Rad (http://www.youtube.com/user/ZOMGitsCriss) Channel Views: 1,269,268
From Romania she is a bit of a poet, artist, musician and rebel her mission is to bring back the revolutionist or the artist or both from her audience.

Lilou Macé (http://www.youtube.com/user/liloumace) Channel Views: 294,390
Specialized in Spirituality,  New Age, Law of attraction, Lilou is a French-American author, her mission : to help her audience to improve their awareness.

Lux Kassidy (http://www.youtube.com/user/AskAPet) Channel Views: 40,684
Last but not least, Lux is a sporty top model (that might also be a Porn Star?!) and her mission was to educate her audience on the matter of relationship and sex ... but it seems that she has thrown the towel (unfortunately).

NB: The "channel View" is indicating the amount of people who have clicked on the "user profile page" - the number of videos viewed is usually a lot more.

Hell, it's 'bout time!

LinuxMint Isadora 9 LiveCD bug ?!

Using a LinuxMint "Live CD" when you're not at home and have to use another PC is pretty cool. Because you're sure not to mess with the user's settings accidentally, and do not have to bother if the PC has viruses or if it's slow at startup because it loads drivers ... and that's why I'm always carrying such CD when I go on vacation.

But today I thought I was going crazy : booting this particular PC from the LinuxMint Live CD/DVD Isadora 9 with only 2 devices attached Microsoft comfort curve Keyboard and Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse ; something really weird happened -- randomly the "up" key signal was sent about every 2-5 seconds (and believe me that's very annoying ...)

I confirmed the issue with "xev" and made a quickfix using "xmodmap" by disabling the keycode 111 (Up key).

I wonder if I'm the only one who has experienced this bug ?

Gimp in only 1 dock

As you may know by default GIMP has two default docks:

• The Toolbox with "The Brushes, Patterns and Gradients dock".
• The LayerBox with "The Layers, Channels and Paths dock".

Which can be a real pain on small display (like 1024x768) -  because basically one third of the display is gone for the docks.

But you can actually merge the 2 docks into the Toolbox, the lower part then contains the brushes, etc .. and the Layers - I've worked this way a couple of days and it's very convenient, (before that settings I had always issue with the LayerBox getting in the way).

Now I just press CTRL+L to access the Layers and CTRL+B to access the ToolBox.

The smaller theme I'm using is the official Small theme from the Gimp package but with this line uncommented (search for the keyword "smaller" in the gtkrc file

# Uncommenting this line allows to set a different (smaller) font for GIMP.
#font_name = "sans 8"
font_name = "DroidSans 8"

Also Here's the content of the gimprc file

# GIMP gimprc
#
# This is your personal gimprc file. Any variable defined in this file takes
# precedence over the value defined in the system-wide gimprc:
# /etc/gimp/2.0/gimprc
# Most values can be set within GIMP by changing some options in the
# Preferences dialog.
(default-image
(width 1024)
(height 768)
(unit pixels)
(xresolution 72.000000)
(yresolution 72.000000)
(resolution-unit inches)
(image-type rgb)
(fill-type background-fill)
(comment "Created with GIMP"))
(monitor-xresolution 86.000000)
(monitor-yresolution 86.000000)
(save-tool-options yes)
(save-accels no)
(toolbox-wilber no)
(theme "Smaller")
(help-browser web-browser)
(toolbox-window-hint normal)
(dock-window-hint normal)
# end of gimprc

By adding "(toolbox-wilber no)" you can save a little extra space at the top of the Toolbox by removing the probing eyes.

Below are extracts from the Gimp's online manual

Dialogs and Docking: "GIMP has great flexibility for arranging dialog windows on your screen. Instead of placing each dialog in its own window, you can group dialogs using docks. A 'dock' is a container window that can hold a collection of persistent dialogs, such as the Tool Options dialog, Brushes dialog, Palette dialog, etc. Docks cannot, however, hold non-persistent dialogs such as the Preferences dialog or an Image window.

Why everybody is picking on Flash ?

Lately Apple (AAPL) started a feud and has bad mouthing Flash, and many users are complaining that Flash is crashing their browser, that Flash is able to use their audio, or even webcam without consent.
Linux user are complaining that they can't use Flash (or don't have Flash pre-installed) and it's a pain.

Well, yes Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia) is a Adobe's monopole and unfortunately Adobe doesn't have a particular tendency to make their application slim and compact (err, I mean a 45 MB download for an application to read a PDF ?!).

Because Flash isn't open-source nobody else but Adobe can fix it when a security hole has been detected, and that is particularly tricky since Flash is the only application that run on Windows, Mac and Linux (a hacker's dream ...)


Today html5 is presented as a rival, a savior and a potential replacement for Adobe Flash...
But honestly, don't any Adobe's supporters worry ; it will take years for html5 to replace Flash, and a good competition can only be beneficial to improve Flash.

Macromedia, Adobe Flash Player and Flash Professional - why is there so many names for this ?

People are often confused concerning Flash, because it's something that usually is there and questions are only starting to arise when it's time to update it or when you start having adobe error messages.

Flash has always been a tricky one to deal with, here is why :

First the name : some people are still looking for a product named "Macromedia Flash" - Well, it isn't there anymore because a few years back (2005) Adobe acquired Macromedia Flash.


In 2005 Flash was a very attractive product, a breakthrough on the web, because without it fancy web developers were only counting on javascript, animated gif and html to do some magic and that wasn't pretty ...

But what really made Flash a Star was the incredible growth of Youtube.

And Adobe still has to provide a free plugin called Adobe Flash Player.
Which by the way isn't provided for some Linux distro, because it's a proprietary application.

Second confusion : What Flash is capable of doing, some users think that because they have Flash downloaded and installed Flash from Adobe website now they can develop their own application or make animation (basically they can generate .swf files)
And that's the second mistake, even if the product has the same name Adobe Flash, what they're downloading is usually already on their computer (otherwise no Youtube)

Because to be able to program you need a way BIGGER application called "Adobe Flash Professional" see http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/

And obviously this "Adobe Flash Professional" is not Free, there is a trial version though, which is fully functional and offers every feature of the product for you to test-drive during 30 days.
it's here https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index…

5 links to download Gimp Brushes

As previously mentioned the new major release of Gimp  (2.8) will come with new resources (organized by tags) - the current kit is pretty old (see picture)

But where can Gimp users find already cool brushes :

First, I recommend to download GPS (gimp-paint-studio) - GPS is a collection of brushes and accompanying tool presets made by Ramón Miranda.
GPS is very complete and comes with documentations and tutorial - the focus is on traditional artists (brushes are called "2B Pencils", "Anatomy Pencil", "Oil small" etc ...)

Secondly the brush kit from davidrevoy.com called "Chaos and Evolutions" worth a shot.

Otherwise you can find a compilation from various source at www.techzilo.com/gimp-brushes/
or  brushes.deviantart.com

Also good to know "Photoshop brushes" work in GIMP (2.4 and above) ; which means you can also add .abr files into your /brushes folder and they'll work too.


And in last resort you can always make your own brushes.

3 ways to learn how to Draw Manga

if you're eager to learn how to draw Manga -  or simply looking for website teaching manga drawing ; Here's a handy list of website :

www.howtodrawmanga.com

www.mangatutorials.com

And last but not least Mark Crilley Youtube Channel that contains more than 100 videos

How to Draw Manga -- Manga University How to Draw: Tutorials

Gimp Developers talk to Gimp artists and ask for help

Every Gimp user may have complaints at least dozen times about the default resources in GIMP (you know the square empty brushes, the pepper brush etc ...) and even if many contributions have been made (i.e : Gimp Paint Studio being the most famous) ; it feels like adding new settings and options onto an already uncontrolled mess.

Because to be honest, when you have worked a bit with Gimp you end up using only your favorites brushes (usually collected on various random website) and depending on your style (e.g : grunge, traditional oil painting, gothic, techno etc ...) ; that means every time you want  to select a brush, palette, script ... you have to go into this dreadful mess of presets and options ...

Well, it's about to change with the introduction of resource tagging in Gimp 2.8 - because the plan is to drastically get rid of the vintage brushes and depending on the artists feedback and contributions to add new useful (and well organized with tags) set of brushes.

How can an "enlightened" Gimp user help : Simply by posting his contribution to the Bug 589371 - Improve default set of resources.


Now hurry because Gimp 2.8 is expected to be released at the end of 2010.
And if you want your best brushes, palettes, scripts, presets etc ... to be there you better get crackin'.

Read full article at the gimpusers.com GIMP artists! Your help is needed!

2 Amazing BJD from the Cerberus Project

---

Exactly to the opposite of the uncanny valley ; which is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. The theory holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.

It seems that many people have a strong attraction to anime figures or dolls, especially in Japan - Lately I stumbled on 2 websites one is the Cerberus Project that introduced me to the wonderful World of "Ball-jointed doll" (BJD) and where I found these 2 gems (among other).

(c) Cerberus Project

Selvaria

and

(c) Cerberus Project

 Devil Girl 

And the second website is  gamerabaenre.com but I will make a separate post about it - because there's so many beautiful PVC figurines there that it deserve a special post.