Friday, July 30, 2010

Lessons from Linux Sanity


After days (or weeks even) of rigorous research, unending frustration, heavy headaches, and personal files lost, I can finally say I survived this misery!

Over the past couple of days, I decided to get my feet wet again with the latest release of Ubuntu, labeled version 10.04 "Lucid Lynx". As far as I can remember, I did try to install it on my laptop immediately after I heard the news and saw the download sites active already. And with my decent internet connection, I managed to download the ISO liveCD in not less than two hours. Upgrades mean so much to me and with my current installation of Linux Mint 8 "Helena" on my laptop, I'm willing to replace it with Ubuntu (which by far is the best Linux distro I've used yet). So the download was finished and I was able to successfully burn the image into a decent CD. Then I loaded it in Hailey's (my laptop) CD drive and booted from CD. But to my surprise, I see nothing but Ubuntu's wallpaper with a gray box on it. But I thought that might just be a glitch on my hardware or something faulty happened while reading the disk, so I removed the CD then loaded it again. Bam! No luck. I kept trying the same routine for at least ten times I think, yeah, you could just imagine how persistent I am. And with my very limited time back then which I have wasted so much, I decided to stop the effort. So I waved goodbye to installing Ubuntu 10.04. I could've researched how to deal with this but I just didn't have sufficient time back then.

Fast forward a couple of months later, with time on my hands, I was finally able to realize the problem and researched for some solutions to it. And I did. The problem relies on my video hardware not detecting the proper configuration for the installer (which has a really nice GUI, by the way).

To give you a brief info on my video card, it is an NVIDIA GeForce 800M G. Honestly, I hate dealing with hardware as much as my tolerance is concerned, but I thought it's all or nothing, so I went on.

So here were the steps I took to bypass the video problem and get on with installation:

  • press F6 when you see the screen with small graphics below (keyboard with something beside it)
  • you should hover your selection over to the "Install" option.
  • a series of text will appear below allowing you to edit the commands, delete the words "quiet" and "splash", then type "nomodeset"
  • proceed with installation, it will go on smoothly from this point on
  • until...
  • you boot on your OS and see nothing again
  • if you have dual operating systems (as in my case) or not, a boot menu will appear before you could proceed with your OS, this is the GRUB menu as we call it
  • again, hover to the operating system of your choice and press E to edit the commands again, just like before search for the words "quiet" and "splash" and replace it with "nomodeset"
  • now you can enjoy the Ubuntu experience!

However, past this point, I have seen some minor graphics innaccuracy, being the NVIDIA driver not installed in Ubuntu by default since it is using the Nouveau video driver which is natively supported in this version. My screen just doesn't look right and crisp enough. To solve this issue, I will install NVIDIA drivers for Linux.

So I then grabbed the NVIDIA Linux installer from http://www.nvidia.com and have successfully downloaded the "something.run" file. That was my first time encountering a file with such file extension, but with help from the forums, I figured how to install it.

The steps I did to install the NVIDIA driver on Ubuntu 10.04 are as follows:

  • run the terminal and type "gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf" or press ALT F2 and type the same thing
  • add these lines at the very end of the text file and save:
  • blacklist vga16fb
  • blacklist nouveau
  • blacklist rivafb
  • blacklist nvidiafb
  • blacklist rivatv
  • press CTRL ALT F1 and login with your username and password
  • type "sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia-*"
  • stop the X-window manager that you are currently running by typing "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop"
  • cd to the directory where you saved the NVIDIA driver
  • type "sudo sh "NAME OF DRIVER.run" and press ENTER then follow the instructions from there on
  • restart the window manager by typing "sudo service gdm start"

And that's it, the next time you start Ubuntu, you don't need to edit its boot entry in the GRUB menu. However, if you're planning to upgrade the Kernel, repeat the above steps if something like this happens again.

So I was very very happy with the results I am savoring so far. BUT another problem came up. It's my wireless connection. Why the hell is it dropping every now and then???

So I did the usual thing I would've done. I went wired for the moment, researched for some fix. And wow, there are sooooo many proposed solutions nobody even said "This is really working now.". It did differ I think depending on your manufacturer.

My wireless chip is a Realtek RTL8187Se and I've read in the Linux Wireless site that this chip isn't supported "yet". I kinda felt down and mad with Linux. But there's hope still. And again, after days and days of research and after a couple of reinstallation and repetition of the steps mentioned above, I finally solved my wireless problem. I maybe speaking too soon but so far what I've done eradicated the dropping problem for two days already. All the credit goes to the people at the forum who willingly help.

First thing I did is to download a Windows driver for my drive. Next, I downloaded a Linux utility called "ndiswrapper", with "ndisgtk" as its frontend. What this does is it loads Windows drivers and use them on your Linux machine. So I executed the file, searched for my windows driver and voila, nothing happened. I don't get anything. What's worse is that I don't detect the wireless network anymore. Bugger. I restarted Ubuntu then it worked like magic, the wireless network is detected and I am very happily connected to the internet.

Just a final note though (I'm not sure if it's needed), you might also want to install "linux-wireless-backports-modules-generic". You can type in the terminal "sudo apt-get install linux-wireless-backports-modules-generic" or you could access the Synaptic Package manager and search for this.

By the way, I didn't have to remove Gnome Network Manager and WICD.

Good luck!

Friday is Naruto Day!

Warning: Non-Blender and Non-GIMP related (somehow)

Yay! ^_^' Sorry for this ever so unrelated and time-wasting post. Well, here you go. Some photos of my Naruto action figures (a gift from my girlfriend) which I love a lot!

And did I ever tell anybody that Friday is Naruto day? Well now you know. ^_^'


Thursday, July 15, 2010

Building Blender 2.5: Success! ^_^

After successfully compiling Blender 2.5 on my Linux Mint OS, I decided to create a batch script to automate the update and build process:


#!/bin/bash

cd ~/blender-svn/blender/
svn up
python scons/scons.py -j 2



Thanks a lot to François Tarlier for suggesting to build on my own. ^_^

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Flight





Modeling, Lighting, Animation, Compositing: Blender 2.5

Sound Editing: AudacityLink

Final Sequencing: Avidemux

Music from http://www.soundsnap.com

Blend file: http://depositfiles.com/files/cyfvcqy41

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Blender 2.5 Recurrent Neural Network

Recently, my friend Goat Man released this animation with an interesting simulation of a neural network (a circuit of biological neurons, as commonly observed in human brain). Inspired by the LSTM model > http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/blues/ and Feed-forward and Recurrent models > http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1245465 and used PyPy in conjunction with this.

For more info about neural networks, you can check this link from Wikipedia > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network.

Here's the animation:




And you can check the source code here too (wow!) > http://pastebin.com/HQUGNnSZ

Monday, July 12, 2010

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Struggle


"The strongest have their moments of fatigue." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Poor little fella, was trapped inside the china cabinet and eventually died...

Blender 2.5 Test: Smoke Explosion

My first published Blender 2.5 Smoke test.

Now that I look on it on a farther perspective, I wish I could have done some things a little bit more "proper". But due to rendering constraints, I guess I'll call this done for now and am very happy I have learnt many things about Blender 2.5's Smoke Sim.

The issues in this test right now are:
- particle jitters
- over occlusion
- raytraced shadow errors
- not so high smoke resolution (computing power?)
- lack of additional debris
- lack of mesh volume collision
- volume light absorption

P.S. Sorry for the darkening. Must have been the codec I used. :(



Saturday, July 10, 2010

Blender 2.5 Test: Color Grading

I never thought color grading was this frustrating but really satisfying once you get things right. I tried my luck with color grading inside Blender 2.5's compositor and here's what I got. It really isn't final yet (really wasn't), but I just wanted to know what you guys think. By the way, the girl on the photo is my girlfriend and I have her permission to post it here. ^_^

I was trying to achieve a somewhat sinister/gloomy feel here, I hope I got it right. ^_^

P.S. Thanks to François Tarlier for some tips.




And here's the node setup:

 

Friday, July 9, 2010

Back from Ilocos

I just got back yesterday from a trip to Ilocos Sur and Ilocos Norte. It was soooooo exhausting yet exciting so I guess it's compromised. And I needed that rest after all. Anyways, I'm still getting some rest from the trip, hopefully will get back to normal state soon. Below are some photos I took during the trip.





Friday, July 2, 2010

Toy Story 3: Movie Review


This might seem a little bit too late for posting but I'd proceed anyway.

Having watched Toy Story 1 and 2 as a kid, I was very exhilarated and awed by the fantasy-reality that was "inside" the screen, of which felt so real and tangible.

Then years later, with me already a young adult (although I don't admit it "yet"), there came Toy Story 3, which had been very much sought and anticipated by many viewers, even those who doesn't seem to be the type watching animated films. I might say it was one hell of an experience watching the film, it felt too real and engaging. It felt as though I was part of the movie. With a moving story and an eye-candy visual, it will definitely bring tears and laughter.

Pixar and Disney, the creators behind this one-of-a-kind film, has yet did it again. Aside from the fact that they are my dream companies to be working on, they really are the masters in this craft. If you have been eagerly doing your research, this is actually a fruit of joyful labor and hardwork, back during the days of John Lasseter. As compared to other film companies and animation studios, they focus relatively on story and animation, which I think are the principal aspects that makes a movie successful and relevant.

Toy Story 3 is, no doubt, one of the best animated films yet that Pixar has ever made (aside from Cars). Everything technical is just in place as they should be, the modeling, scale, lighting, visual effects, and animation. They stand out on their own, balanced and weighed accordingly. It must have been extremely fun for the artists to be working on such a big and wonderful project and it definitely payed off.

I really would want to tell you more how I felt but it might already be a spoiler to those of you who haven't had the opportunity yet. so if you haven't yet, what are you doing? Go head to your nearest cinema, buy some popcorn, and experience this one-of-a-lifetime thrill.

Overall score: 9/10

Portfolio Update

Whew! Finally, I've updated my DAPortfolio after some time.  Anyway, have fun. ^_^

http://reynante.daportfolio.com/gallery/352063#3

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Cookie

Warning: This is a Non-Blender/GIMP related post.

Here's Cookie, the latest member in our family. He's a gift from my friend Mike. ^_^