A few sketches and busy-stressful times...

Just a few fun sketches I made last night to wind down before having an early night for the first time in nearly two weeks.

GSoC2013 T-Shirt and Certificate

This morning, I finally received my T-Shirt and Certificate for Google Summer of Code 2013 :)

When my schedule/workload allows (perhaps mid-November/December), I'll start looking into getting the new depsgraph <-> Blender integration work under way. In the meantime, back to the academic trenches!

Canon 7D and Linux Mint 15 64-bit (With USB 3.0 ports)

Yay! After over a week of failed attempts, this evening I finally managed to get Linux importing photos off my Canon 7D.

"Grape Flowers" - One of the images I managed to import off

Searching around on the internet, apparently this is a very common problem ([1] [2]) for 64-bit Ubuntu-based systems (12.10 onwards or so) with USB 3.0 ports (USB ports are apparently unaffected).

I managed to get this working by following the instructions here, and using digikam to import.
I can probably get this working with another application as well (e.g. gtkam - I'll try that next time, since digikam doesn't really create directories that well)

Blender Tip: Keyframe Selection Hotkeys

Yesterday while browsing the comments section the Caminades blog, I noticed a feature request relating to a feature to select all the keyframes within a channel in the DopeSheet Editor. At the time, I thought: surely this already exists! I'm sure I've implemented something like this, which was ported over from an earlier feature in the old 2.4x days... Apparently I did implement said feature, but apparently only in the Graph Editor! Grief!

While checking out the code for the mappings used, I realised that it would be handy to let animators out there know what the mappings were. I've probably posted about these in the past, and if I have, it's probably been a while since I did so and people may not have seen it (or have forgotten by now). So, a little reminder probably won't hurt.

So, without further ado, here's the logic behind the current mappings.

One Week of Linux

So, it's been just over a week since I switched my laptop over to a dual-boot setup with Windows 8 and Linux Mint 15. (Has it really only been one week?!)

Orange Fish

Today, I came across the following fish in one of the aquariums I visit from time to time:

Apologies for the image quality - it was an impromptu shot taken using my ultra-crappy phone's camera (which promptly died a few shots later, just when I had lined up another really nice shot of another new arrival in the tank).

EDIT: Apparently, this is a "Sea Perch"

Linux Dual Booting Adventures: Part 3 - Installing Linux (Tutorial for HP Envy 17-jXXX)

In this post, I'm going to try to document the process I used for installing Linux Mint 15 (Cinnamon) on my HP Envy 17-j007tx alongside the preinstalled Windows 8. Hopefully this will be useful to someone out there, just like the post that I based much of this process on helped me (cheers to Larry Mulcahy!)

I'll start with a condensed version of the process I employed. Along the way, various missteps taken will be noted/numbered, and discussed at the end.

Ok, let's get started!

Linux Dual Booting Adventures - Part 2: Installed at Last!

As of about 2 hours ago, Linux Mint has been installed on my laptop, and as of just under an hour ago, I've managed to get it into a stable configuration so that I can start it up normally :)

Say Hello "hippoalpha"

The setup process has not been without some very hairy moments. And, the setup I've got right now is not actually completely configured correctly yet...

Linux Dual Booting Adventures - Part 1: Getting the LiveCD Working

Last Wednesday, I finally managed to get the Linux Mint Live CD running on my new laptop, after over a week of failed attempts and a lot of reading online. Moments later, there was a strange wind outside, and the sky looked something like below:

LaTeX Tip: How to define variable like \subtitle{...} which can be used from the preamble

Quite often when working with LaTeX, it is quite convenient to be able to define things like subtitles and/or other extra fields to be included in the title section, as per the screenshot below:

Now, before we go any further, I should mention that I am aware of the existence of ready-made custom document classes out there in the wild which often provide the necessary bits and pieces already. But, for argument sake, let's say that we want to keep things lightweight (i.e. fewer deps on external packages) or want to know how to do this in future should the need arise.

Thoughts on Windows 8 and a New Laptop

A few weeks ago, I finally bought a new laptop as the successor for my long serving and well loved Toshiba. As much as I love the computing setup I have on the Toshiba (including what IMO is the best keyboard around. Period.), in recent months, a number of factors have conspired to remind me that eventually, I'd have to find (and adapt) to working with a successor for it.

Argh! Stupid Automatic Updates!

I've been slowly coming to the view that "automatic updates" are evil.  E V I L!

Of course, there are some valid uses for this (from a software engineering perspective): namely for distributing critical security patches to users who would otherwise never install them let alone know that they were available. However, apart from that very small corner case, it is NOT ACCEPTABLE that automatic updates are able to barge their way onto users' devices, steamrolling working setups and workflows with little to no option for users to choose otherwise.

In particular, it is particularly not acceptable that an update which completely rearranges the UI, removes valuable point-of-difference functionality, and in the process also manages to make previously beautiful interfaces look like a pile of steaming crap designed by preschoolers, should be forced upon users without any way of opting out or easily rolling back to the previous setup.

This is the situation I find myself in with my tablet this morning, after it had a forced firmware update pushed and downloaded to it this morning.