myMix

Crystal : super sew it!

2012-01-19T06:51:00.000-08:00

Remember my last post "Selvaria : sew it!" : My only regret is that Crystal doesn't have created a youtube account (yet).

Well, here it goes :

The costumes are spectacular, kudos for "Firefall" - the game looks a bit like Starcraft "Ghost" ... So happy, it's really good and Crystal is going stronger and stronger, and this is awesome!

Whatever cosplay she wears, she is always stellar in it.

Now, I only wish she would star in a movie ?!
I wouldn't mind seeing her playing "Black widow"
But what are the odds of that ...

Tilt-Shift made easy for Gimp

2011-11-22T13:49:00.000-08:00

GIMP plug-in Toy 1.0: simple tilt-shift fakes from Alexandre Prokoudine on Vimeo.

Source : libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/toy-plug-in-for-gimp-simplifies-creating-tilt-shift-fakes

How to mimic a photo of a small model - while in fact it's a real photo of a normal sized house, people, boats etc ... The magic is in the focus blur and a feathered selection.

The plug-in (requires compilation) is available here at registry.gimp.org/node/25803

A gallery of Van Gogh's Paintings Get Tilt-Shifted (12 pics) - My Modern Metropolis

And a Photoshop tutorial to achieve the same effect www.tiltshiftphotography.net/photoshop-tutorial.php

Selvaria : sew it!

2011-11-18T06:11:00.000-08:00

Selvaria from Valkyria Chronicles was once featured on this blog with the post on the Cerberus Project figurine.

Her full name is : Selvaria Bles and she is a 22 year old Brigadier General War Witch and one of the main antagonists in Valkyria Chronicles & Valkyria Chronicles 3.

This splendid character with silver hair had me stumble upon one of the most breathtaking cosplayer : Crystal Graziano - She really does Selvaria justice.

But then I found her various cosplay version of Cammy and then I really thought Crystal deserved to be featured in the blog. There was too many "serendipity".

Here's a few links to her website and interviews :
www.flickr.com/photos/preciouscosplay/
onpaperwings.deviantart.com/

www.facebook.com/people/Crystal-Graziano/
twitter.com/#!/itsprecioustime

My only regret is that Crystal doesn't have created a youtube account (yet).

But I won't despair : her popularity is going strong by the days, and her last shoot as "Black Widow" with the "Big white Bazooka" is a must-see.

Doom music a little extra

2011-11-17T12:52:00.000-08:00

The previous post about Doom music revival (the original music were in MIDI format) contains a small list of website
where you could listen to remix of this legendary tunes :

You can now add another source :
www.gamefront.com/files/4483399
for an additional bonanza of 42 MB of pure awesomeness remix of the original music :

cdoomtheme.mp3
e1m1.mp3
e1m2.mp3
e1m3.mp3
e1m4.mp3
e1m5.mp3
e1m6.mp3
e1m7.mp3
e1m8.mp3
e1m9.mp3

And a very informative document by the author Sonic Clang (Brian Kline)

There has been so much talk over the years about how certain songs in Doom were inspired by other artists. Everyone knows “E1M1” was inspired by “No Remorse” from Metallica, and there are others. But what people don’t realize is that there are songs on the radio every single day that either sound like other songs or were inspired by them. People make such a big deal about the Doom songs sounding like a Metallica song, but it really isn’t uncommon at all.

Quick environment sketch with Gimp

2011-11-10T09:27:00.000-08:00

Gimp 2.8 is about to be released soon (January 2012 ?!), and many people are waiting for the single window mode impatiently.

In the meantime, I've stumbled upon some nice Google+ posts involving some painting or photo-montage.

Painting environment composition is fun, and in a couple of hours, you can see result ... just experiment and try various brushes (the chaos and evolution set (by David Revoy) is recommended) ; one benefits of doing such exercise is learning to make good composition and harmonious sceneries, and how to set and use the light - because that's key.

These 2 videos might help :
YouTube - Quick environment sketch
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGYqZZwzp18 (from idrawgirls.com/tutorials/2011/10/20/how-to-paint-landscape-mountain-river/)

Picture credit : Phillip Koops / Peileppe

How to put Gif on fire (with Cammy and Morrigan)

2011-05-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

From two previous articles: "Street Fighting with Gimp" and "cammy is back" ; Cammy White (as shadowloo "killer bee") was featured to show Gimp's ability to generate animated Gifs.

But to be honest, since there was no background, the gif files were a bit boring - now browsing through deviantart I found this gem - that script creates an animated fire effect ; just what we need to add some magic to a good fight.

And here's the result ... pure delight!

Credit : Sprites used are coming from the "Sprite Database" :

Morrigan sprites sheet
Cammy sprites sheet
Fire Animated script made by Fence-post

How to Publish your own Book

2011-03-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

Maybe you've read about self-published author "Amanda Hocking" (the 26 years old writer from Austin, Minnesota) and you're wondering how to self-publish yourself ?

First thing to notice about her, is that she tried very hard before succeeding - she had the story, the writing skills, the book was ready, the only thing that was preventing her to get published was actually ... publishers, which thought the public wouldn't like her book ?! which thought some other books should have priority ... whatever the reason, Amanda did the good thing and past over their head.

This story is really inspiring and a big hope for freelance and occasional writers because it means everyone got a chance now - and that's for the public to decide what they like.

I prepared a selection of links to help you publish your book :

How To Publish Your Own Book (In Print) Cheaply

How to self publish your book explained in 2 mn
www.lulu.com/publish/books

Other inspiring success stories from Lulu
www.lulu.com/success_stories

But now don't be fooled, when the book is out there - it doesn't mean it will sell ... because on top of having writing skills ... you'll have to master the techniques to promote your book, and find ways to spread the word about it using clever marketing ...

Now if you make it big, make a book about it. I'll definitely buy it!

Discovering GIMP FX Foundry

2011-02-22T10:21:00.000-08:00

There are different profiles of Gimp users, from the digital artist geniuses spending hours on a canvas, the photograph expert looking for imperfections and tweaking the color's histogram, the retouching pro mixing various images into one epic composition, to the newbies that are just wondering how to do stuffs quickly and that looks good in matter of 5 mn.

For all these audience (but mostly the last), I think the GIMP FX Foundry is a pretty good collection of scripts - that will allow creation of fun effects and experiments (like the fx-foundry banner at the top of the article - which was made using the 'shrek-text' script).

How to install the FX-foundry scripts ? just download and extract the 100+ scripts in a temporary directory and move them into the gimp script folder - then launch gimp and voila!

Now be aware that some scripts require a preexisting image or photo some don't - you'll have to experiment a bit.

A nice way to see what each script is doing is to open the FX-Foundry menu and let the cursor hover on top of the script's name, that will show a bubble with some explanations.

Inkscape - customizing keyboards shortcuts

2011-02-15T06:14:00.000-08:00

This post is all about the attempt to standardize a bit the keyboards shortcuts within Gimp, myPaint and Inkscape.

Essentially the Zoom, the undo, accessing the layers, and exporting a file. What mainly caused this urge to maintain the same logic within these applications is the fact, that sometime you have to use all of them during a design process, and ctrl+L in Gimp to access the layers panel is doing a destructive simplification of the shape you're working on in Inkscape - also pressing Z in myPaint to undo the last command is such simpler than the ctrl+Z that it made sense to have that setup as well in the other applications.

This post will only focus on how to change Inkscape shortcuts - since it's really easy to assign shortcut in myPaint - (basically you open the command menu and press the key you want to assign) - same in Gimp you open preferences and change whatever you want to the menu command ... but when it comes to inkscape you have to dig deep into the config files to find the way to change the shortcuts ... they're hidden in ./config/inkscape/keys/default.xml

The following default.xml file is assigning the keys :
- ctrl, shift x = export
- z = undo
- ctrl z = zoom
- ctrl l = layers
- ctrl, shift l = selectionsimplify
- ctrl, shift e = xml editor

http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=Y975Q57R

You can download the config file at pastebin

Making a Calendar 2011 using Gimp or Photoshop

2010-11-30T06:16:00.000-08:00

To create a calendar in Gimp it's really easy - there's a couple of scripts you can download here or there.

It's easy afterward to customized and get any look you want.

Below I opted for a "grunge" look, therefor I used the Downcome font then added some textures, some dirty spots and then applied a "Tear off" effect (that you can find here)

Here's below January 2011 which looks like the it has been printed on potatoe's sack.

There's a similar method for Photoshop you can find at : http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/designing-tutorials/create-a-calendar-using-scripting-in-photoshop/

Originally found on 100 Best Photoshop Tutorials of All Time that Yield Professional Results

UNetbootin the perfect tool to save cd/dvds

2010-11-16T13:53:00.000-08:00

Tired of burning cd or dvd for a Linux live CD ?!
Have a look at UnetBootin - this little tool will install your Linux iso file on any USB key (assuming you have enough free space and you're ready to format it) - you will save a cd and it will be faster and less noisy ... what you've got to lose ?!

Work for Windows and Linux : UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads

Installing mint-x "Julia" on an USB stick

2010-11-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

I'm currently using Linux Mint Helena 8 on my laptop ; and since Linux Mint Julia 10 RC is now available , the idea grew to install Julia on a spare 4GB usb stick I had in my drawer.... Here's how it went :

Downloaded the Linux Mint 10 32bit iso torrent file at 10h30
Burned the cd
booted on the CD - this distros is absolutely gorgeous - so I tried various applications and finally decided it worth a shot.
selected install from the Live CD
selected destination as the /dev/sdb 3.8GB filesystem showed by the installer
around 70% I noticed an update grub event happened
the installation was completed at 11h09

I rebooted - then press F10 and selected in the laptop bios a restart from USB Hard drive and ...

I was very disappointed to have a black screen while the fan were blowing like crazy, I waited 5Mn ... it was no help.

Then I ejected the usb stick, planning to reboot on my old Linux Mint Helena 8, but then something worse happened, there was a grub rescue error - also in text mode, requesting a missing filesystem.

I re-insterted the usb stick and reboot - and there it was a grub loader offering to boot either from 2.6.35 Julia on the /dev/sdb or to boot from Helena 2.6.31 on /dev/sda ... and it worked just fine.

The USB stick isn't flagged as bootable, and the grub loader was modified on the existing Linux Mint Helena - and I can't help but to wonder why ?!

But nevertheless Linux Mint 10 "Julia" is absolutely gorgeous, the "brushed steel" is perfect, all the icons are like little gems (especially the firefox icon) - the overall experience is absolutely outstanding, I'm currently running it from my 4GB USB key - and still have about 1.1GB of free space available ...

OpenRA : the unexpected return of Red Alert!

2010-10-03T03:39:00.000-07:00

Red Alert was a quite addictive game offered as a free download from EA website (back in October 2008) ; to work it required to burn 2 CDs (one for each side) and for linux or mac user would require a DOS emulation (Dosbox or Boxer for Mac) .... after all these efforts the game would then bring you back in a alternate / parallel / temporal war-torn universe were Allies and Soviets Comrades are in constant fighting over world domination.

But rejoice people, because thanks to a small team developing OpenRA in their free time
you just need a 3Mb file to play (no more CDs, no more Dos Emulation) --

check the website at OpenRA

Sintel - a Dragon's tale

2010-10-03T03:04:00.000-07:00

Wow, Sintel is ready! Big kudos for the work done, it's brilliant, it's shiny ... it's beautifully made, ...

You can download the high resolution movie (up to 2048 x 872 px which is about 270 MB)
Check the project official page at Sintel - Open Movie

Last time it was a giant white rabbit fighting against critters (Big Buck Bunny), in a funny Rambo pastiche kind of way - now, the new animation is getting more mature, the story too, with breath-taking landscape, more characters, lost cities, and ... Dragons.

Although Sintel is only 15mn long, (Big Buck Bunny was 10mn ...) many comments are hoping for a longer version, a sequel maybe?!

Check the http://www.youtube.com/user/BlenderFoundation

Drawing Tutorial by Jolly Jack

2010-09-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

The video above is the part2 out of 3 - I've seen Drawing tutorials many of them - some are just plain "speed painting" with no explanations whatsoever - but I recommend these 3 videos by Jolly Jack because he gives a lot of good information and advices during the process - very helpful.

I'll try to highlight a few interesting points :

Before starting you should already have a rough idea of what you want to draw
When drawing start with the head - set where the character is looking and build the body according to that pose.
Concentrate on the figure's flow, make the pose looks right
Use a very thin brush (1) for the rough sketch
keep the layer 0 for the white background an use layer 1 for the sketch
After the basic outline is done on layer 1, get a larger brush and add details starting with the eyes
You should work at least in 300dpi
When the rough is done on layer1, it's time to add a new layer for the final line-work
add 2 layers (one will be used as a buffer and made invisible)
set the layer1 with the rough to 15% opacity and retrace it on layer 3 (line-work)
use a slightly larger brush (3.1) for the finished lines
After the line-work is done, duplicate the layer and merge them - to add contrast
Now it's color time, add a new layer (4)
If possible have a palette for each characters you have - otherwise load a previous artwork
Layer 4 is used for the flat colors, use the lasso tool on layer 3 then return to layer 4 and fill the selection
After the flat color is done add a new layer (5) for shadow, using black with 40% opacity
Then add the light (new layer (6)) with white and 10% opacity

Interesting to notice that the whole process (starting from scratch with a blank document) to the final artwork seems to have taken only about 1 hour - Impressive!

What is "BlogThis!" (a great bookmarklet)

2010-09-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Today I'll share a little secret on how I write my blog.

In the past I used to bookmark links I wanted to post about using delicious.com and then came back later and start posting about it... the main problem was that usually when I had some spare time to write a post I completely forgot many links and or couldn't find them back in my delicious account (which tend to be a mess) and when I finally found or remembered it the "hot news" wasn't hot anymore ...

Now, Thanks to a bookmarklet found on the "blogger help" I can basically bookmark link directly to a blogger draft, and therefor the first step of hot-linking to a "hot news" or a typing a few word on the spot is done. And that ... really makes my blogging experience a lot more efficient.

What is BlogThis! ?

ComicSpace.com Rest In Peace

2010-09-16T16:14:00.000-07:00

What is it lately, this unexplainable need to change everything that works ?
What about this idiom "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" ?

Is it like Digg v4 all over again ?

Same scenario here, users were misinformed about upcoming changes, users have lost pages, data, etc ... and worse users will have to invest 4-5 hours to get used to the new interface (based on Wordpress, Comicpress) which isn't very intuitive...

IMWAN • View topic - ComicSpace.com Rest In Peace

Found a new one!

2010-09-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

Remember the post about "The key is being blonde and having a mission"

Lucky me today I found another one Justine Ezarik... she's blonde but I'm still not sure about her mission ?!

See for yourself iJustine (ijustine) on Twitter:

"I am the internet! Apple fan, Youtuber, technology lover and avid twitter! Be my friend!"

Maybe she just want to be friend with everybody - sounds cool

Photo credit : Justine Ezarik at the 2010 Streamy Awards. From TheBuiBrothers.com

deviantART muro

2010-09-15T03:40:00.000-07:00

Not the first attempt at offering a drawing platform using Flash - deviantART muro is the new kid on the block and it may actually be a good bet from DeviantArt - because of their strong community of talented artists.

check for yourself :
http://fav.me/d2vx5sb
http://fav.me/d2ypkch
http://fav.me/d2ykx35

A nice tutorial is available

Maybe the fact that some brushes or advanced features have to be purchased is a bit disapointing.

Similar attempts already mentioned in this blog includes :
http://blogmymix.blogspot.com/2009/09/odosketch.html
or the defunct (!?) http://sketchory.com/

Supergirl Tutorial by Juan Martinez Pinilla

2010-09-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

If you're an aspirant designer (or simply a Supergirl fan) and want to get some nice tips on the coloring process, have a look at this Tutorial above, it's really impressive (kudos to Juan Martinez Pinilla for this! it's always a great benefits to see how the professional artists are doing their masterpieces).

See the finished painting on Juan's deviantart page.

By the way, Supergirl was played by Helen Slater, back in the days (1984) ...

Digg has broken an ... axle ?!

2010-08-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

Digg V4 ... At first it probably looked like a good idea, then there was the alpha phase (where most people thought to be a scam ) - but all geek are suckers for a newer version (see Bloggers Trade: Digg Launched New Digg)

Result ... Digg 4 is really, clearly a nightmare version and digg user (diggers) are running away... (including yours truly).

I don't care about the Double account creation issues with Facebook Connect issue, or the "Upcoming section" gone, or the missing bury button ... (incidentally the report button also disappeared, meaning basically all spam links will stay forever) ... only positive point so far, the new design looks good (I give you that).

But what is upsetting me the most is that ALL my submitted links are lost, gone ?! (and I've been a digg user for over 2 years)

More information on the new version http://about.digg.com/blog/digg-version-4
and the inevitable "Known issues" page http://about.digg.com/known-issues

More rants on How the new digg sucks (not from me) http://digg.com/news/technology/Bigg_Day_Today_for_Digg/20100827003318:3212b68f651a4bd6bf5d87631f5a8eb8

Now If you'll excuse me ... I'm heading for my new account on reddit.com, thanks for reading

Inkscape 0.48

2010-08-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

Inkscape version 0.48 is available now!

Inkscape is a free vector graphics editor, the 0.48 release notes covers the new features among them (in a nutshell):

A new Spray tool
multipath editing
improved editing of nodes selection
improved Connector tool
a number of crucial changes in the Text tool
even better snapping
some changes in the bitmap handling department
a number of new extensions

Also worth mentioning a detailed review on Libre Graphics World

Cammy is back, fighting Morrigan Aensland

2010-08-05T07:12:00.000-07:00

From a previous article: "Street Fighting with Gimp" ; Cammy White (as shadowloo "killer bee") was featured to show Gimp's ability to generate animated Gifs.

As an experiment, using the same gif and technique, the challenge was to check how hard it would be to replace Mr. Bison by Morrigan Aensland (Darkstalkers series) - and 1 hour later, here's the result :

Conclusion, that wasn't difficult ... just a matter of being patient and consistent in the process.

Credit : Sprites used are coming from the "Sprite Database"

Morrigan
Cammy

See all posts related to Cammy

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

2010-07-30T16:14:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

LinuxMint Isadora 9 LiveCD bug ?!

2010-07-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

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 ?

2010-07-12T01:14:00.000-07:00

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 ?

2010-07-12T00:34:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-09T08:12:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-02T01:33:00.000-07:00

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).

Selvaria

and

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.

How to download bit-torrent files with Opera

2010-06-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

The Opera browser never fails to amaze me - not only it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux - but you it has embedded mail, and can be used to share files (with Opera Unite) but it is also able to download bit-torrent files.

Compared to the traditional download where the file source can only be downloaded from one server - bit-torrent files are sharing the stress of the download on all the clients that are currently downloading the file, making the process a lot more efficient and faster - see illustration for a better understanding (extract from wikipedia) :

Here's a step by step of the process of downloading a bit-torrent DVD (Linuxmint "Isadora")

step 1 - click on the torrent link and press "Open"
step 2 - select destination and press "Yes"
step 3 - check downloading process

Originally posted on Alashazam: How to download a DVD torrent using Opera

Basic Apple Troubleshooting

2010-06-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

Maybe I never mentioned it but I've been working for Apple Care some years ago and I'm still trying to help people who own a Mac from times to times.

The kind of issue like :

my iMac won't boot
I can't login into my session
I forgot my login password - how can I reset my password
How can I reinstall Mac OS X without losing my data ?

Sometime troubleshooting a Mac gets tricky and just won't work after a series of quick fixes, but to my experience fixing the mac starts by asking a few important questions - because there's nothing worse than a wrong diagnostic when it comes to repair - so ask yourself these little questions :
- Just before the problem happened was anything changed on the hardware level (new devices, new Ram installed ?)
- Just before the problem happened was anything changed on the software level (system updates, new application installed ?)

Now here's a compilation of useful links from the Apple kbase concerning iMac :

Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
iMac G5: My computer stops responding during startup
iMac G5: Troubleshooting when your computer won't turn on
iMac G5: Troubleshooting when there's no picture on the display

And don't forget before calling Apple Care they will ask you the mac serial number so get it ready - you will save precious time during that call, also prepare the original install cd/dvd and the AHT (Apple Hardware Test) cd.

Good luck

Safari 5 bug with Google Analytics

2010-06-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

Recently the new Safari 5 from Apple.com was available
but it seems to have a little issue loading www.google.com/analytics (see picture above)

Apparently from the Develop menu / Show Error Console the culprit is :

settings:19[The HTML that caused this error was generated by a script.] Unmatched  encountered.  Ignoring tag.

settings:21 is not allowed inside 

. Moving  into the .

WARNING: Bogus Adobe Reader 2010!

2010-06-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

If you received a mail like this one below - beware it's a trap, mark this mail as spam.

There is no such product as Adobe Acrobat Reader 2010

for more official answer to this - See the adobe forum

Inkscape - filters magic

2010-05-19T05:44:00.000-07:00

Inkscape is an Open Source "Free graphics vector Editor" - that you can download and use under Windows, Linux and OS X.

It doesn't work like Photoshop or Gimp - but more like Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X ; which mean you will deal with vectors instead of pixels.

The huge benefits of vector is that compared to pixels, when you zoom into the picture, it stays crisp - you won't get large square or stairs.

You draw shape, square, triangle, stars, and color them, use gradient, you can mimic 3D ... but when it comes to textures, and photo effect, usually people start to look at Photoshop (or Gimp) - while in fact Inkscape is perfectly capable of doing it too - have a look at the scenery below.

It's in fact very basic shape for the sky, 3 layers for the grass and the tree - where some filters were applied.

Blender, Durian and Sintel

2010-05-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

Maybe you remember that little cartoon featuring a giant white rabbit called "Big Buck Bunny" made in 2008 - still downloadable in HD - the cartoon's quality was impressive and comparable to what is made by Pixar and Dreamworks (read review).

Well, from the same producer "Ton Roosendaal" a similar "open movie project" is in production and should be available in more or less 2 months from now - that's "Sintel" (read more at the durian.blender.org)

Here's the trailer :

durian.blender.org/news/sintel-teaser

And when you're at it have a look on the process of creating characters - it's pretty interesting!
DVD training 5: Chaos Evolutions - Blender Store

Now because sharing is caring : the results of the Durian Open Movie project are being licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. This includes all the data published online and on the DVDs, and all of the contents on the website.

Opera, blogger and still the "uploading picture" bug

2010-05-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

I just updated my favorite web browser Opera (I was running version 10.10 and now I'm running 10.53) - first impression .... wow, it's a lot faster than before (kudos for that) but I still have this pesky issue when I'm blogging using blogger.com or draft.blogger.com - when I want to add a picture by uploading a new one ... there's simply no "choose file" button - the window looks like that (in blogger.com)

and same issue (with the new uploading feature of draft.blogger.com) the window looks different but same issue - no choose file button - but the bug seems to be known and reported.

De-duplicate with Fslint (little review)

2010-04-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

When free space starts to shrink - you can either erase some files, or compress them or archive them on cd, dvd - or use fslint (Author: Padraig Brady) - a very cool tool (for Linux) that will scan your hd and track duplicate files.

I was a bit suspicious before using this tool - because usually I know where my files are etc ... but I decide to make a test with my external HD (used for backups)

To make the test more interesting I noted the free space before launching fslint and it shows 8.1 GB free.

Here below is the "fslint-gui" main screen - on the top is shown the search path - and below are the various options - by default it looks for "duplicates" now press the Find button (below)

The search process is pretty long, checking all the files with various methods - to make sure there are really duplicates files.

It took around 20-30 mn in my example.

When all "duplicate files" are finally displayed - you can delete extra files, right click and open them - to have a look, save the list of duplicate files and ... the cool feature "Merge" them - which mean fslint will keep multiple version of the same files - but hardlink them - so the space is used only once.

Tip : Now the funny thing with Merge is that the feature is a bit counter intuitive - because if you select 2 files to be "Merged" - these 2 files will actually be excluded for the Merge ... so make sure you toggle your selection before "Merging"

Result is pretty impressive, after "Merging" all my duplicates - see below my Free space jumped to almost 19GB (remember I had only 8GB to begin with) - pretty cool stuff!

You can find other reviews for fslint here and there.

Doom music (still) rocks

2010-03-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

Back in 1993 appeared as a shareware what would become later a legend in the gaming industry as THE "first person shooter" - (even if there was a predecessor "Wolfenstein 3D") - Doom was the one that change the games genre forever...

More than the high end graphics, more than the exploding barrels, there was an amazing music that added to the gaming experience a total immersion in the "Doom" nightmarish world...

Here's a list of website were you can listen to remix of this legendary tunes :
Doomworld -- Music
Paul's Stuff - DOOM Music
The Doom Remix Project - the Dark Side of Phobos (mp3 download)

NB : You can even listen to them directly from their webpage, using this "mp3 player bookmarklet" from delicious.com called playtagger.
Check this website for instruction on how to implement it.

"The image's Quest"

2010-03-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

I'll start with a simple scenario : There's this photo you downloaded a few months ago ... and now you want to find where it comes from (because you want to credit the person who took the picture, because you want to find the web site's url you took it from, because you want to contact the author or do a modification and want to make sure the author posted it with permission to modify ... )

What to do ?

The first obvious thing is to search the filename on any search engine (google, bing, yahoo, altavista, photobucket etc ...)

But assuming the filename can't help you - (either it's irrelevant or you saved it under a new name - so there's no way to get any clue from it)

Here's some of my suggestions :

Google is offering the feature "Find similar images" which is cool because you can direct the search visually, but in my experience I end up at best with a "close, but no cigar" situation (this service was previously in the Labs section http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/)

Now if your picture is a .jpg inside your photo - there are more informations than you think (it's called Exif) and you could use that to narrow your search.

For example flickr.com is offering a search tool based on the camera model (it's called "Camera Finder")

There are also some "image search engine" with a twist, that could help you in your quest :

www.kalooga.com specializes in finding image galleries rather than individual images
www.picsearch.com
http://elzr.com/imagery allow to specify filetype, color, size
www.pixsy.com video and image search

Alternatively some search engine like "retrievr" (http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/) will allow you to either draw what you're looking for ; or (like TinEye) will allow you to upload the photo you have and hopefully find where this photo appears!

And in last resort, if all else fails, there is idthis.org where you can post your photo and hope that a viewer will give you a hint, or advices that will put you in the right direction.

Now, if you have other tricks, your comments are welcome ... I have this pesky photo downloaded 2 months ago and still can't find it's source... (I wish, the source url could be automatically embedded in pictures).

How I made the switch to LinuxMint

2010-03-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

How (and why) I switched to LinuxMint

My laptop with Debian/Lenny(stable) crashed again today - "X server" Failed with a weird error "xf86OpenConsole : Cannot open virtual console 8" :

It happened to me already a few times before - causing loss of all the work I was currently doing (opened documents etc ...).

Today I wasn't happy either when it happened and didn't want to troubleshoot - and since I've been testing LinuxMint for some time ; I figured it was time to migrate from Debian/Lenny to LinuxMint/Helena

The trick was that I didn't know if I could do that with the data in place.
So first step was a complete backup of my /home folder on an external HD (just in case).
Then (as root) I renamed my home folder "/home/myMix" folder into "/home/myMix-Shared"

After that I was ready to boot on the LinuxMint liveCD (good surprise, even my wacom tablet was recognized)
then on the installation screen with the partition I selected "specify partitions manually (advanced)"

The partition dedicated for the system had to be formatted obviously
but the /home partition - I made sure that the format option stayed unticked

and then I launched the installation (keeping my fingers crossed)
My username under LinuxMint is still "myMix" (that's why I had to renamed my /home folder previously).

After the installation (around 30mn) I ejected the cd, rebooted and then logged on the LinuxMint
I had a look at the /home there was myMix and my the other folder but I had no permission to read or write, so I typed the following command :

cd /home
sudo chown -R myMix myMix-Shared
sudo chgrp -R myMix myMix-Shared

And that was it!

No data were lost, and now I just had to move each of my previous folder in their new /home/myMix
until the "myMix-Shared" was empty.

Kudos to the LinuxMint team, their distros is gorgeous - now I can enjoy tab in Nautilus and Gimp 2.6 among other goodies (like compiz).

Google Picasa - Debian step by step install

2010-01-19T04:00:00.000-08:00

After the Google Chrome - Debian step by step install - How about installing Picasa ?
it's even easier - because picasa is included in the google debian repository

step 1 : Add the Google repository in the sources.list file

http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/

Step 2 : select picasa package

Apply ...

That's it - done

Google Chrome - Debian step by step install

2010-01-18T07:24:00.000-08:00

Chrome is available for Linux at http://chrome.google.com
there doesn't seems to be any official Debian "repository" yet to install it using synaptic (packet manager) - the installation has to be manual

1. need to download the package from this page below
Google Chrome - Get a fast new browser. For PC, Mac, and Linux

2. When on the desktop using xfe (file manager) and using the root user - you need to right click the package and choose install/upgrade

3. The package is then installed and will also appear in synaptic

That was easy!

Talking Photo

2009-12-14T12:51:00.001-08:00

"Jackson Pollock" simulator

2009-10-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

With a flash application (made in 2003) below you can happily move your mouse around the screen, leaving a trail of paint, and left click to change colors, ... the result is an abstract paint that looks a lot like what Jackson Pollock was painting during "The Springs period".

Paint like J. Pollock From the website jacksonpollock.org

Youtube companion

2009-10-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

For the multitude using Youtube - this is a list of url that add extra nice features.

The first one is quite simple :
it will allow you to watch your favorite YouTube video over and over again without pressing replay
(very nice if you have kids - because they love to listen or watch something for hours)
Replay Youtube video - Tuberaplay.com

The second one is when you are sending links to your friends
SafeShare will remove distracting and offensive elements around YouTube videos, and it will also allows you to crop videos before sharing them.
http://www.safeshare.tv/

The third one is a tool to convert your favorite YouTube videos to high quality mp3s
http://www.dirpy.com/

And the last one is to allow you to download the video in a mp4 or avi format
http://deturl.com/ or http://pwnyoutube.com

Scribd : Super5 adventure

2009-10-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

Super5 - Le Rock avant tout!

In the previous post I was testing an embedded book from issuu.com - this time I used scribd.com ; which I think is a bit easier to use and a little faster ... So I republish the Super5 comics using this module - notice the various way to display the comics (slide, book, and List) - pretty cool, uh ?!

© 2009 Gom&Laurent (translation: Peileppe)

Copyleft: this is a free work, you can copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the Free Art License http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en

The Super5 band is known all around the world. Some call them the "legendary band" many speak about, as "the best Rock band in the 11 universes".

This comix, is inspired on an episode of their life, that is a little romanced from the real facts.
For more explanations you can check here.

http://blogdunrobot.blogspot.com/
http://lerockavanttout.blogspot.com/

Rock On for Super5 !

Girls of Gaming online

2009-09-29T14:15:00.000-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More volume

Warning : If you click on the module above you will enter in a fullscreen reading mode

odosketch

2009-09-26T02:20:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was impressed by a flash website called Sketchory - where you could draw in black and white and share your art with other - who were able to see your drawing process ...

Yep, that was cool - but this is totally pwned by this new website called Odosketch.
Check odosketch - Fresia - (the page will take some time to load) - below is an example of a Painting by "Five"

Motion Portrait: more demos and animations

2009-09-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

I can't get enough of this Motion Portrait, this is really great
There's actually more videos of what can done ... and it's amazing!

Check MotionPortrait: Demo for all these videos.

About yesterday's post where I was complaining that I couldn't find a way to export the animation - Today, thanks to Kaushik for the idea, using screen capture and a little work of arranging the picture I could export the animation as a gif file - result on the left.

Motion Portrait (from Japan)

2009-09-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

This Motion Portrait is great, I've seen website where you could create portrait from scratch like this one,
but this one from Japan is a un-be-lievable!

You can upload your portrait - and it will create a 3D version of it, and on top of that you will be able to customized it - by adding beard, hair, gadget (like this cyborg's eye).

Too bad, there's no way to export a video (or maybe it's possible but my Japanese isn't that great so I didn't find the option there)

Check this yourself on MP CHANGE

The choice of Christina Aguilera for the test, is completely ... err, completely ... random.

Gimp: How to make a "Russian Propaganda Posters"

2009-09-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

Nice tutorial, to get a "Russian Propaganda Poster" effect on your illustrations or photos with the Gimp (2.6) - only a dozen of steps to follow :

Open photo (easy)

duplicate layer your illustration (to keep an original)

duplicate layer for each item you want to colorize

convert to grey (color/desaturate)

Use Color/Curves to get more contrast (need a bit of practice)

convert to 3 colors (Posterize)

Open custom palette with 4 colors (white, black, orange and red)

select color grey - drag and drop orange

select color black - drag and drop red

same process with the different layers you created on step 3 ; so goto 4

add some texts and export as png

See full episode here

Meet the GIMP[Episode 053]: In the USSR the Posters are watching YOU!

For some real posters samples, here's a website where you can find lots of propaganda poster (beware the website looks is a bit ... how can I say that ... well, you'll see by yourself)

http://posters.nce.buttobi.net/

Applying the same process here's another attempt - that has nothing to do with "Russian Propaganda Posters" - it's just a figure of style.

Open Clip Art (ocal) a bad news and a good news!

2009-09-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

I've got a bad news and I've got a good news.

The bad news is the openclipart upload has been broken for over a month (last successful upload 31-July-2009!) - So that's quite a shock and a sad news.

The error is :

"/var/www/openclipart.org/htdocs/cchost/cchost_lib/cc-fileverify.php"(223):

Uninitialized string offset: 0 [2009-08-25 13:08


pm][127.0.0.1][/cchost/submit/fullmix]

But the good news is : the openclipart team is working on a "beta" website and it looks brilliant already!

have a look here.

I really like the new website, every features I've dreamed of are now there :

Clipart preview
Browse Clipart by Tag with Preview
Five Stars system for Clipart evaluation
and it's still organized by Artist's profile
etc ...

Cute Critters Free Icon Pack

2009-09-04T05:57:00.000-07:00

Good finding, today I was looking for some cute animal icons and just found this nice little pack on the left - free to use on tutorial9.net

Cute Critters Free Icon Pack | Tutorial9

Sketchory - Chun Li

2009-08-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

Couldn't resist to post this last one - brilliant!

[Get Adobe Flash player to see this as animation]

Sketchory

2009-08-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

I'm back from vacation with this very cool website, full of "Creative Commons license" sketches like this one below

This website is based on Search for sketch and is organized by tags (you can actually participate in the tagging process)

In my opinion the top "cool" feature on Sketchory is to play the animation of the sketch, that's quite innovative and interesting ; especially if you're interested in learning how to draw manga for example.

[Get Adobe Flash player to see this as animation]

The website is here (including blog, labs, and random animation)

Now, if you feel like creating new sketches then you will have to do go there (Sketch Swap)

But, just in case you're about to create your lifetime masterpiece - read this first -

Opera: upgrading to Opera 10.0 beta 3

2009-08-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

That couldn't have been easier - see pictures below
saved the .deb file - then launch Xfe as root right clicked on the deb file then select "install/upgrade" - and that was it!

Opera: Opera 10.0 beta 3 for Linux changelog

celtx : Debian Installation

2009-07-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

Interesting find, I was looking for some advices on how to write movie/comics script and then one thing leading to another I found Celtx

Celtx is a (brilliant) script editor or as they call it a "all-in-one media pre-production software" see the overview on Celtx website. Basically it make the whole writing process a lot easier since it will pre-format most of it for you (I especially like the creation of characters) - you just have to write and develop your ideas, the rest is done by Celtx - and when you're ready to publish you can export to html or pdf ...

The application is offered for Windows, Mac and Linux (kudos !)

Unfortunately there's no Debian package ready so it has to be done the old fashion way (uncompressed it and deploy) - but it's not too hard.

In only 4 steps :

get the tar.bz2 (18MB) file here
once it's on your desktop uncompress it
then move it in your /usr/local/bin directory (using sudo mv or your favorite file browser running as root)
then create an icon or link to "/usr/local/bin/celtx/celtx" which is the executable script

and there you go ready to write your first script.

Rock'n'Roll trip with Super5 - grande finale !

2009-07-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

My Transcript :

Now, you see why the ring buoys are vital in a car !
Darn, look we were going to Leningrad
Man !
Well done Kurt! without you there would have been no gig tonight
but hey ! ... What did you shout like this ?
but Kurt wasn't there anymore ...
Lots of people pretend to see him when it smells like teen spirit ...
but on this road man, go figure ?!
I think ... he said "grep me" or somethin'
Well, sorry guys, but I still don't get it, why is the song named "a virus in the computer" ?

Here's the original post Blog d'un robot: Rock Robot

Rock'n'Roll trip with Super5 - page 4 (and 3,2,1)

2009-07-07T12:42:00.001-07:00

Okay, since today's page 4 was actually easy - and yesterday I had the opportunity to watch an excellent tutorial on how to make comics bubbles on Inkscape ... guess what ?

Yeah, I remade all the 3 pages (already posted in the last days) ... exactly what a true Super5 fan would do !

Here's the original post Blog d'un robot: Rock Robot

Comic Bubbles Tutorial

2009-07-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

Aaarh, I wished HeathenX's crew had this tutorial posted a few days ago ... this is about drawing comics bubbles - very excellent tips there

Screencasters.heathenx.org Blog Archive Episode 091

Also the link for the comic's fonts
blambot.com

Super5 : Inside joke

2009-07-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

Rock'n'Roll trip with Super5 - page 3

2009-07-06T10:59:00.001-07:00

My Transcript :

KURT ?
What the funk ? We thought you were dead
Alone thinking suicide
(are you) writing a new song ?
Care to join us, we'll have a gig at the Pribinaček festival
Concert ... festival ... thousand of junkies
Do you want a ring buoy ? .. darn (we're out of stock)
Never mind

Here's the original post Blog d'un robot: Rock Robot

Rock'n'Roll trip with Super5 - page 2

2009-07-05T05:44:00.001-07:00

Continuing my little work of translation ... here comes page 2

My Transcript :

we just had received our ring buoys, so we were rushing to the festival
the ring buoy are very comfy
we should have filled them with helium
... like badass Led Zeppelin
Aha, Ah, Ah
Bloddy Hell, Watch this !

Here's the original post Blog d'un robot: Rock Robot

Rock'n'Roll trip with Super5 - page 1

2009-06-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

Super5 Rocks and I'm a big fan !

So here's the translated version of page 1 of the "Rock'n'Roll trip with Super5".

This French comic is a co-production by Super5, published as a Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France Creative Common Attribution Licence; the license of this Artwork has been changed to artlibre.org (see original post )- which is similar and compatible with the previous CC-SA license.

(My humble contribution as a fan, is this (poor) translation into English - but don't worry more pages will follow in blogmymix - the motto is "to share and publish")

Here's the original post Blog d'un robot: Rock Robot (in French).

Opera : How to add search engines

2009-06-23T07:32:00.000-07:00

Adding search engines - Opera Knowledge Base: "Adding search engines

Opera comes with a default list of commonly used searches, but you can also add additional searches if you do not find your favorite among the defaults. In fact, it does not even have to be a search engine, most sites with a search field can be added as a search.

To add a search, simply right-click (Ctrl-click on Mac) in the site's search field and select 'Create search' from the menu. Enter a name for your search, and a keyword, which can be used for searching directly from the address bar. Then click OK."

This feature is really cool - and works pretty much as the FireFox "Add a Keyword for this search" (see explanations on mozillaZine website)

But unfortunately this feature is broken (the create search is unactive) in Opera Unite beta see this posts ; hopefully it will be fix in the next release

Search trick for public domain pictures

2009-06-22T07:10:00.001-07:00

Here's a trick for Firefox to search public domain pictures using the "Add a Keyword for this search" - you have to edit your new bookmark with this syntax :

http://images.google.com/images?q=%s&as_rights=cc_publicdomain

it then will look for public domain pictures.

Installing Opera Unite under Debian

2009-06-21T04:12:00.000-07:00

It's not exactly as friendly as the version 9.64 install ; (where everything could be done within synaptic) - but it's quite easy (took me 2 clicks)

download the .deb file from http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/10-unite/intel-linux/
launch Xfe as root then click Install/upgrade

And that was it !

Opera Unite

2009-06-17T02:57:00.000-07:00

Opera Unite's slogan of "re-inventing the web", would probably have sound a bit arrogant since very few people have heard of this internet Browser before.

I knew myself a little about Opera 9.5 - because a couple of month ago - I was looking for a browser able to download torrents, and found Wyzo (that didn't really impressed me) and later discovered that handling torrent files has been a standard feature of the Opera browser (for quite some time) and so when I heard about this new beta version I was excited to see what it would be ...

Opera Unite in a nutshell is like sharing your stuff on the web directly from your computer to others.

I've read some critics talking about performance compared to other services, about security issues, about this solution not being environmental friendly since you have to have your PC "on" all day and such ... all these critics make their point, but this Beta is quite exciting.

I can see various scenarios where Opera Unite is really attractive

I'm chatting with my friend Bobba Fett and we have to transfer a 12MB files - no way to send this by mail, I don't want to upload this on a ftp server etc ... I just launch Opera Unite and share the file - then send the http address of my local opera unite page to Bobba and as soon as the download is finished - I close Opera Unite.
At home, I want to send a couple of files from my Linux box, on my mac - of course I could start sharing on the mac, setup a ftp service on the Linux box, ... or just launch Opera Unite and already use an interface I'm familiar with.
I want to setup a "Facebook like account", but I want to have total control of my content

There's probably more benefits, but that's what convince me to install Opera Unite.

Impressive OpenSource and Free art collection

2009-06-17T01:15:00.000-07:00

If you're still not convinced that open source and free software such as Gimp, Inkscape, and Blender can really kick ass then please have a look at the latest issue of Code:FREE

CODE:FREE - Chrisdesign blog

the breathtaking illustration on the left is from Luciano Lourenço with Inkscape

Nice collection of caricatures

2009-06-16T05:32:00.000-07:00

If you like caricatures (like I do) - then you will be interested by this set from openclipart.org - also good to know all of them are published as public domain.

See the link to Open Clip Art Library johnny_automatic

Psychonauts

2009-05-20T04:28:00.000-07:00

Good news everyone, Psychonauts is available for free at gametap.com (just click on the picture below) - you will need to register ; but it's worth the effort - since there's 2 pages of free games to download.

NB: the game is only supported on Windows 2000, XP and Vista

Running tiddllyWiki with Opera on Linux platform

2009-05-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

In order to run tiddlywiki on Opera you need 2 files the empty.html and the jar file:

But you also need to have java installed (see Enabling Java in Opera for Linux - Opera Knowledge Base)

sudo find / -name libjava.so /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.17/jre/lib/i386/libjava.so

if it's not there

sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jre (1.5.0-17-0.1)

and then you need to go into Opera / Tools / Advanced / Content and tick "Enable Java"

go into "Java option" and put the Java's path

Then you need to quit + relaunch Opera, and load your local tiddlywiki

this message will appear just approve it - and it's done

Duke Nukem Forever

2009-05-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

So now it's pretty official there will be no Duke Nukem Forever ... apparently the financial crisis has finished him ?!

Here on this link below you will find avanced 3d characters (including a topless podgirl (NSFW))

ZBrushCentral - Duke Nukem Forever Characters

I bet you will read this quotes with the Duke's voice

Damn, those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride!
Hmm, don't have time to play with myself.

And some music from Duke Nukem 3D, Playstation (1997) found on Mark Knight's website.

As a final hommage to the Duke ... I'm playing Grabbag as we speak !

FreakAngels

2009-05-12T12:19:00.000-07:00

Lately I've stumbled upon a very addictive comic ; the story takes place in London, an aftermathed London to be exact ... it starts just like that (and I hope for you it's not already 10pm, cos you will spend the night reading ...)

23 years ago, twelve strange children were born in England at exactly the same moment.
6 years ago, the world ended.
This is the story of what happened next.

The official website is FreakAngel

(Instructions and smaller version here)

Installing Opera Web Browser in Linux Debian

2009-05-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

Lately I've tried the Opera web browser and as far as today for me it rocks under Windows - so I tried to install it on Linux Debian ; and went to the opera website, clicked the download link (image below).

But I had second thought since using synaptic "is like shopping on Amazon, with one click purchases" , ... after a bit of searching, I finally found this nice little article in Opera's documentation -

In conclusion actually just add this in the /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install opera

and voila ... you're done with the clean installation of Opera in Debian.

Opera Web Browser | Faster & safer | Download the new Internet browsers free

The Hunt For Gollum Movie Website - COMING SUNDAY 3rd MAY

2009-05-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

If you're a Lord of the Ring fan - you will be delighted to know that there will be a 40 mn movie free to download on the website below available this sunday.

This movie is completely made and produced by hardcore Fans (around 150 contributors) - by the look of the 2 trailers, this will be good ! And I can't wait ...

The Hunt For Gollum Movie Website COMING SUNDAY 3rd MAY

Slow Wave

2009-04-26T03:43:00.000-07:00

Based on an interesting idea "" this website allows anyone to submit a dream to a skilled comic artist. And after selecting one he will turn it into a comic, and publish it.

Slow Wave is an ongoing webcomic that incorporates actual dreams submitted by readers into a fictional narrative, written and drawn by Jesse Reklaw.

So instead of simply talking about your last night's dream during breakfast, you can actually show the comic it has inspired. Totally cool !

I would recommend to have a look at the archive section of the website too - it goes back to 2004 and it's awesome.

Slow Wave

Street Fighting with Gimp

2009-04-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

Gimp has some hidden secrets - and among them is the ability to generate animated Gifs - so to give it shot I needed to find a couple of sprites - As a Street Fighter fan I obviously selected Cammy White here and Bison here.

Before even starting the animation a little work is required on both Sprites file :

1. removing the green color to make it transparent - you need to add an alpha channel on the layer and then using select color / green and remove it - should do the trick.

2. You also need to proceed to a horizontal rotation of Bison's sprite (otherwise the sprite won't face each other)

Now it's time for the big fight "Cammy vs Bison"

From a blank document I started copying and pasting respectively from Cammy Sprites file and Bison sprites file into the new animation layer - when copying make a new layer each time then merge down - so the 2 opponents are on the same layer - the process is quite long and my sequence is 20 layers in total.

The key for a smooth animation is to keep the previous layer visible - so you don't move too far from the previous position.

Each layer will have his own digit for the animation and in parenthesis the duration (100ms) and the mode (replace). This syntax is for Gimp to understand how to manage each layer.

At the end the whole sprites on top of each other looked like this :

To make the whole animation nice - the first and the 20th frame are identical ; it's an imposed trick because the Gif will loop forever - Now to export the result as a Gif file make sure you select "save as animation"

And here's the result :

We're not worthy

2009-04-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

I was getting all excited about ArtRage2 and found some tutorials ... to do absolutely crazy things with textures. And then I realized there's so much to learn and sooooooo little time ; but I know that when I grow up I want to be Nick Harris ;)

[ Pixelbrush ] - Interview with Nicholas Mark Harris

"We're not worthy!" (repeated, while bowing, to guests whom the two deem themselves unworthy to interview)

Springtime

2009-04-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

A little pseudo painting using ArtRage2 - "Spring" is the word !

Announcement openclipart release version 0.19 (cont'd)

2009-04-01T03:02:00.000-07:00

While I'm using the new ocal version ... I noticed the 0.19 release includes 248 html files with quick preview - this is new (compared to previous release) and really makes the ocal's browsing experience fun ...

For exampel I found this excellent set of cartoonish animals from StudioFibonacci.

Here's the link to the official announcement from Jon Phillips co-foundator of the openclipart website
Open Clip Art Library Release 0.19 Announcement and OCAL10K Goal Exceeeded | rejon.org is Jon Phillips.

On a sidenote I also noticed a few cliparts that were included in the 0.18 release have disappeared in the 0.19 ; like this one below - luckily it's still available from the clker.com website :

Announcement openclipart release version 0.19

2009-03-31T02:19:00.000-07:00

Great day for the openclipart community !
The new openclipart library (release 0.19) is available to download (375MB)
that's about 12,000 high quality scalable vector graphics (SVG) files released into the public domain by over a 1000 artists

it's around 1GB after extraction (including png and svg files) - and the library is sorted by Artist's name - which is cool !

More information on this Announcement 19 - Open Clip Art Library Wiki

Virtual hairstyles

2009-03-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

Nice and neat, a web page to mix and match celebrities hairstyle

The result Paris Hilton with Beyonce's hair

And Beyonce with Blond short hair (not bad)

Try it on Choose from hundreds of virtual hairstyles and get a new hairstyle and hair color within seconds.

Brilliant video of the fairytale Little red riding hood

2009-03-30T04:07:00.000-07:00

Slagsmalsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Liquid rescaling

2009-03-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

I found on flickr.com a nice set of "mini-me"

Which reminded me of what can be done with the liquid Rescale plugin for Gimp (I'm not saying this set has been made with it - although I would be surprised it has been made with something else ... )

Check the Harry Potter picture below (originally from the polishlinux.org GIMP tricks: Liquid rescaling by example) just to get an idea of what can be done with the LqR plugin. Cool right ?

40 Beautiful Robot Characters Illustration

2009-03-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

For the robots lover - Here's a nice website full of them
40 Beautiful Robot Characters Illustration

50 Cute and Adorable Monster Characters Illustration

2009-03-24T06:21:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of stuff I like - bright colors, neat vector lines, efficient, ...
There's a lot more on the 50 Cute and Adorable Monster Characters Illustration website.

Tom gauld's Goldmine

2009-03-03T23:47:00.000-08:00

Browsing on flickr last week I found this little gem - worth a visit

Flickr: tom gauld's Photostream

Transforming a photo into a sketch

2009-03-03T23:46:00.000-08:00

Very cool Photoshop tutorial - take a photo and transforming it - into a sketch.
Create an Illustrated Look From a Photograph - PSDTUTS

Broken, Broken, Broken

2009-02-24T05:37:00.001-08:00

I'm sure you know the old saying " if it ain't broke, don't fix it ! (or in my case don't update it)" and it happened again this week - I broke vlc - it used to work just fine until this last update (picture above).

Vlc to read flv, or mp4 or non free format depends on 2 libraries libavcodec and libavformat - they were working in version 0.svn20080206-15 but ... latest version is broken ... it was in fact documented on the debian-multimedia.org repository - too bad, I didn't read it ...

A fix is posted as well on the debian-multimedia.org but I can't figure this out

18/06/2008 :
Broken ffmpeg libraries :
Since Debian use the same soname packages name than my packages, official packages (vlc, totem, etc...) linked against libavc* doesn't work with my libavc* packages.
If you want to use vlc and friends you need to downgrade libavc* packages to the official packages.
Beware : downgrading to these packages will remove all debian-multimedia packages who depends on libavc*
To downgrade do the following :
dpkg -l | grep 3:2008
for each package echoed do :
apt-get install --reinstall =0.svn20080206-8
0.svn20080206-8 is the unstable version and 0.cvs20070307-6 for testing (check with apt-cache for the current version).

Mmmh, it has been broken since June 2008 ?!

sudo dpkg -l | grep 3:2008

libavcodec51 3:20080706-0.3 lib to enc/dec multimedia streams - runtime files
libavformat52 3:20080706-0.3 ffmpeg file format library
libavutil49 3:20080706-0.3 avutil shared libraries
libpostproc51 3:20080706-0.3 postproc shared libraries

Mmmh, okay ?!

in sources.list > deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ etch main
in synaptic > set prefer version from "oldstable"

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libavcodec51=0.svn20080206-8
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libavformat52=0.svn20080206-8
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libavutil49=0.svn20080206-8
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libpostproc51=0.svn20080206-8

Mmmh - should work ?!

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libavcodec51=0.svn20080206-8
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Version '0.svn20080206-8' for 'libavcodec51' was not found
[...]

Naaaaah, also tried with =0.svn20080206-15 just in case ... same

PhotoBooth effects with the Gimp

2009-02-19T04:12:00.000-08:00

Lately I tried to recreate the "stretch" effects you can achieve with the Apple PhotoBooth application (see link below).

Using the Gimp, it's actually quite easy to mimic this feature using Filter/Distort/iWarp

Here using Grow :

Here using Shrink :

Here using Move :

see Mac OS X 10.5 Help: About Photo Booth
and some examples of photo booth pictures here

1234567890

2009-02-12T05:39:00.000-08:00

it's a geek thing ! and it's today

Countdown (actually up) to the UNIX Epoch time being 1234567890!

Wacom : Photoshop Elements

2009-02-05T02:29:00.000-08:00

After I gave a shot at ArtRage2 bundled with the Wacom tablet, I took the other cd that was in the box - and installed .... Photoshop Elements (PE) ...

First surprise, it wasn't a cd but actually a dvd and the installation took ages to finish (2GB ??) - so I thought that I would have something quite impressive - and in fact, (second surprise) it's just a minimalist version of Adobe Photoshop with limited features, ... there Adobe Bridge CS3(c) to browse into the pictures, and then a couple of assistant (or wizard step by step guided tutorial (sort of)).

Anyway, it's not too bad, (2GB ??) the filter gallery is impressive, but the mega killer stuff are the brushes, ... yep, I have to say ... I was quite convinced that Gimp was in some respect a fair equivalent to Photoshop, but after using those brushes, ... Well Gimp has some improvements to make.

On the left as usual a little sample done with Photoshop Elements (PE)

And below some additional resources :
Photoshop Elements resources
Photoshop Elements

Subway Series 2008 - ArtRage2

2009-02-04T08:27:00.000-08:00

Impressive gallery Mr Ed Velandria uses the time he spends on his daily subway rides from Brooklyn to Manhattan to sketch portraits of other subway riders on his laptop computer with ArtRage and a digital drawing tablet.

Subway Series 2008 - a set on Flickr

Mark Verhaagen

2009-02-04T00:48:00.000-08:00

Really beautiful works, very inspiring, fresh and efficient.

Mark Verhaagen | News

Viral Animation

2009-02-03T08:28:00.000-08:00

Always nice to combine cartoons and real life, the concept isn't new - it reminds me a lot of La Linea (the Italian animated series created by Osvaldo Cavandoli in 1969)

V WATER [viral animation] on the Behance Network