DreamLinux 2.0 Works & XGL version

I recently tried these out, there almost identical, as a matter of fact the only difference, is the built in addition of XGL added to the modules on the XGL version naturally. Running the distro from the “Live” cd doesn’t give you the full performanc eand effects as installing it to your HDD, but you can get a general idea of how things look and work, so play around with the live version before considering the full installation.

The OS looks a lot like Mac OS X, but with a linux feel, and I have to say that it comes with a nice set of software pre-installed which is a double plus. I couldn’t get the XGL version to work properly, even after a full install , and using a Nvidia card, that is listed as fully compatible on their website. X server fails to initialize, meaning that you cannot log into the GUI. I however can disable 3d acceleration, and log into the GUI (from the live version), but without 3d acceleration, there is really no point, since it would be running the XGL version of Dreamlinux, without the XGL, therefore, I’d basically be running the WORKS ed. I haven’t had the time to really get in depth with it, so there are a few things that I want to test out, for one, I’d like to see a distro with built in DvD playback and support natively, which yes, I understand that it’s technically illegal to include them due to some stupid restrictions, but maybe a distro with built in VLC (which plays DvD’s natively).

Dreamlinux is very powerful and for being so robust, I’m a little suprised that the entire install fits on a regular CD. So remember to update your version as soon as you install it (if you decide to that is) to increase stability and usability.

I also want to take some time and jsut add XGL to the WORKS version, which would be very similiar to the walkthrough on SuSe 10.1. I feel that installing the Nvidia drivers myself from Nvidia’s website, would probably allow me to run it with 3d acceleration.

Dreamlinux is definately a distro to keep an eye on, and the whole package is nicely assembled..shit they (Dreamlinux team) even have added a nice aero glass look to their website, and that beats the shit off of downloading from a repository, and to the “not-so-technically-inclined” , it doesn’t seem so scary. I’ve long been a fan of Live distributions, as it allows the end user to decide whether or not to install it.

If you are more technically inclined and what to build or add modules to Dreamlinux (or start from the ground up), you can use MKdistro, which is also located on thier website . I will be playing around with this quiet a bit since it is a graphically beautiful OS, and as I said before, robust with an everyday users software, and best of all, it’s free.

Feel free to comment if you have any questions or are a current user of Dreamlinux and have something good or bad to say about it.

I think the only negative thing I can say at the moment, is the slow speed of navigating through their website.

How Dumb can Microsoft be?

You know, there used to be a day when I loved Microsoft, defended them to the last stand. That day has long past since I started utilizing my Macs more, and previous to Mac’s Ive been a long fan of Knoppix, and Ubuntu. I only have a few (out of 13 computer systems) that still run Windows, my HTPC, which uses Windows Media Center, and a laptop that I use to diagnose or run apps in the “field”. Recently, my station at my office, which I use for invoicing and paychecks, which uses Windows XP pro, had a blue screen error upon boot. Kinda funny isn’t it? I own an I.T. company, with highly qualified techs, and yet I experience the same damn thing that someone else who has no knowledge of comptuers or how they work would.

Honestly, my first reaction was a good laugh…due to the irony of the whole situation. But none-the -less, I was only concerned with retrieving my backup files on the system (client invoices etc). I figured the easiest way, is how I (personally) would do it…boot from a Live Linux distro -insert your favorite distro here- and just mount a external USB harddrive and drag and drop, then perform a reinstall of Windows. Well I did that, all went fine, but upon my first boot (after a reformat and full reinstall of XP pro) I get a “Proccess_Initialization_Failed” blue screen now. I naturally looked up the meaning through Microsoft’s database, and came across this page, note the resolution that Microsoft gives, and tell me how damn stupid can you possibly be….go ahead click the link LOL.

Microsoft 

EDIT: I had to perform another reinstall and everything worked the second time around….go figure..

More Hardware & Software (and games) reviews coming…

Since I lost my database of hardware reviews a few months ago, and since I wasn’t successful on recovering them, I will be bringing more hardware reviews on some new gadjets I recently picked up. I like to actually use the hardware for a week or so before writing a review (unlike other places that feel a need to slam out a review without really fully testing the product). A few cell phones, palm pilots, networking gear, and some other items are on the list. My day job has been really strenous lately, so I haven’t had much time to work on other things, including the blogs.

I have been sent like 15 games from a few buddies of mine to mess around with that I haven’t had the time to even install, so hopefully by Sunday I can install them and give em a whirl…it’s just that lately, when I finally have the time to do what I really want, playing games is the last thing on my mind…I usually do things that I need to, like ummm eat, and sleep..

But as I said I’ve got some good things coming soon.. 

-Exempt

Stop Motion Video…

I was watching an amazing stop motion video here and was trying to percieve how this man assembled this. Now stop motion video’s are made form taking hundreds (or thousands) of photographs over and over, while slightly manipulating an object or what not, a tiny bit each photo, then assembling them to form a “film”. I was thinking that for some parts of the animation, and this is theorhetical, you could actually film it with a camcorder, and export it as a PNG, (like the Scanner Darkly method, see previous post) and basically remove PNG segments to create the photographic effect without as much time consumption. Now I haven’t tried this myself but I will give it a go this weekend to see how well it works.

Cd/DVD/PC (etc) labels/covers

Ive been using this site for years, and have to say it’s one of the best sites out there with FREE downloads for cd/dvd/pc/games/gamecube, (you get the point) covers/labels, for those people that backup there DvD’s (I personally don’t care if you are backing up or ripping your Blockbuster/Netflix rentals), but with a CDstomper, your DvDs don’t have to look so shitty with magic marker inscriptions! The site is completely free, and very useful, so if possible, make a small contribution, these guys deserve it. If you are not familiar, you can bittorrent a copy of DvD X Copy (platinum) from www.thepiratebay.org , or you can locate (google) DvD Shrink and use the ISO burning tool of your choice.

http://www.cdcovers.cc/ 

Windows Media Player 11, Work around…

As we sometimes say, it’s not what you know, but who you know…well in this case, it’s both. Let me state this right off the bat: ” All information here is posted for informative purposes, and in no way do I approve of software piracy”. Ok now that aside, I have come across a partial workaround for obtaining Windows Media Player 11, the only problem is….it’s in Dutch, or Finnish, or maybe its Swedish, point is, if you wanted it for playing movies and music, then the language doesnt matter since you basically double click a movie, and it opens and plays it. The Play, Forward, Backwards, and menu buttons can be changed to English, but the File, Options, Help, etc at the top cannot be. So if you wanted to use it for burning cds, or making custom playlists (via menu system) then this isn’t for you. However if you just wanted the nice new “aero glass” look and feel, and something just as shitty as Windows Media player 10 (“shitty, is a personal opinion, and does not reflect the general population”) then this IS for you.

Some Windows users are not able to install Windows Media Player 11 due to problems with the recent WGA implementation.

I had made a previous post about the WGA “bug”, which finally, Microsoft has publicly stated that the authentication is roughly about 80% accurate , they say that 1 of 5 out of 80 million Windows users to be exact. Isn’t that around 85% then?

Here is another solution aside from the work around:

On the Dell systems that were purchased (see previous WGA post of mine), I had called Microsoft, and explained the situation, they took the issue up with Dell I figure, and gladly gave us new liscences. If you have purchased a PC from ebay, or craigslist, or from a local mom and pops PC store, and you have issues with Windows Genuine Advantage, then you can call Mircosoft at this number: (800) RU-LEGIT , yah, I’m serious, that’s the number, explain your situation, it’s painless, simple, and they work very well with you, I guess that’s one thing I can praise about Microsoft, customer support is decent!

Anyways, those that are interested in the workaround, due to installation problems or “insert exscuse here” your reason may be, leave a comment, a valid email (no I don’t spam your shit, or care to sell your email) and I will send you the download link, and instructions. I do not host the file, I do not own the file, the site holding the file is not in anyway related to me, I am just providing the information, since this is America, and I did , personally fight for my freedom of speech. NOTE: some people are having problems leaving comments, in this case, create a wordpress.com account, login, and then the comment box should be seen.

Lastly, my favorite media player (movie content only) is VLC media player, an open source project that supports almost every single OS platform out there… and for music, the free version of winamp.

Comic Book, (kinda like Sin City) Photochopping…

A preview of whats to come (most likely sometime early next year) of a short 5 minute film that I will be working on, along with the “scanner darkly” video effects. I still need some help on animating the rain, since I can’t figure a logical way to efficiently render it frame by frame ( I just might have to). But it will just be a demo to add to my personal portfolio, and mostly, just for fun. There are many tutorials online on how to do this, everyone’s technique varies, so I didn’t think it was neccessary to post a “how to”

How to: Make a film look like – A Scanner Darkly

How To: Make a new movie, or existing movie, look like the upcoming film “A Scanner Darkly”

What you’ll need:

1. Your content..your film, or movie naturally…

2. Quicktime (pro) or another program capable of movie imaging to PNG files

3. Photoshop

4. a arse load of time
Step one: Transfer your content to your computer.
Step two: Open it in QuickTime Pro.
Step three: Go to File > Export… select the Export: as Movie to Image Sequence. Then Click Save.
Step four: Go to File > Export… select the Export: as Sound to Wave. Then Click Save
Step five: Open about 50-100 frames in Photoshop. (The last step basically spliced the movie into several (hundreds to thousands depending on video length) slides)

Step six: Use the following effects,

Artistic>Poster Edges Filter (11,3,6) or re-adjust these once you apply the other filters Noise>Dust and Scratches (1,1)
Stylize>Diffuse (anisotropic)
Adjust brightness and contrast since the last few filters will usually darken the video quiet a bit Save the file and repeat with the rest of the frames.

The fastest way to do this once you have a look that you are satisfied with, is to automate your tasks in photoshop, Create a New Action, record your steps, and set either a hotkey or you can even use a macro program to click automatically, which is what I ended up doing, and is the fastest way to do this. To give you a time reference, my 23 second film consisted of about 550 PNG files that needed to be edited, and on my macbook pro, took about 10 seconds (once automated) per PNG file, applying filters, and saving the file, then closing it automatically. The macro program just clicked the mouse button in the same location over and over. There are many mouse click macro programs out there, choose the one you like best. The whole thing took about 4 hours to do, but I didn’t start off with an automated process, once I realised I could achieve a consistant look and feel once I had my settings correct.

When you are completed converting the frames, re-open quicktime.
Go to File > Open Image Sequence – and click on the first PNG of the image files you edited.
Go to File > Export – For Export, select Movie to AVI. Click Save.

After this you can add audio tracks (you can rip the audio track as well with quicktime), or you can add music as I did in your choice of editing software. It really helps to have a good quality video editing software, Pinnacle Studio (in combination of Pinnacle Liquid pro) is decent for PC users, and of course Final cut pro HD is great for the mac, for less technical users, I guess you could use Windows Movie Maker 2, and for mac users, iMovie HD.

I plan to make a short film, and by short I mean like 5-10 minutes lol, just to use some different rendering effects and to see how it looks as a whole. If your not familiar with the film A Scanner Darkly I highly recommend checking out Warner Bros website here .

Have fun!

-David

“exempt”

Real time Satellite tracking!

Want to track a satellite, or see when it’s going to pass over your area? goto: http://www.n2yo.com/?s=25634 
in conjunction with a few other free online apps ( email me for the locations ) you can watch LIVE streams as the satellites pass over your area, with very good clarity. Kinda like the GPS tracking on the Bourne Identity….or you could just check to see where your girlfriend is..

E-Rope, changing the way we plug shit in…

This is “E-Rope” , which won the 2006 Idea award, created by Pratt students. These are not only aesthetically pleasing, cmon blue LEDs are sooOOO 2005-06 – ish, well hell, I still like them as long as there used in moderation…anyways, they are a great cure for “vampire power”. Think I’m making this up? Well I’m not! Vampire power is basically power that is still being drained even when a electronic device is turned off. Most devices still continue to trickle some power even in there standby modes, but turn these E-Ropes 90 degrees, and *blip* no more power drain. Now my opinion on these is, sure there cool looking, very high tech-ish, and sure if you have a hard time reaching a socket at an odd angle behind a couch, these will help you slightly, as for the vampire power deal, how about just unplugging the shit? “No pluggied in, no drainy”….but hey I’m all for innovation ..

-David