David Wright's Blog - Computing

Looking for a free copy of 3DMagix?

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:57:23 +0100

3DMagix is now free

Sorry; sarcastic alert, knocked this up in a hurry:

Are you looking for an Advanced 3D Animation Studio Software similar to 3D Max Computer Animation to download?

3D Magix can now be downloaded for free. Because 3DMagix has helped so many people Create Cutting-Edge Animations From The Comfort Of Their Own Home it has been decided to release 3DMagix for free

3DMagix Creation Studio Suite

"Easily The Most Powerful 3D Creation Software On The Planet!"

3DMagix has so many features it's too much to list them all here are features of the latest 3DMagix

3DMagix is also fake - Blender 3D is not

For anyone wondering, this is just my response to this post at BlenderNation about some idiot selling Blender as their own work. Blender 3D is a great, free and fully opensource project for creating and animating in 3D, as well as a billion other things.

Linux Holding Kids Back

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:00:00 +0000

This has to be the funniest thing I have read in relation to Linux, a teacher claims Linux is not free and possibly illegal. The teacher discovered a student showing off a laptop with Linux installed and giving away free copies and then made her ignorant claims about Linux.

My two kids aged 7-10 years old don't use Windows at home. They know more about computers now than anyone of their ages who use Windows. Just as I did when I was a kid and had an 8bit computer which helped and encouraged my understanding of computers. Then Windows came along and destroyed this by hiding the computer away from the user and not supplying tools to do anything with the computer. For example if you wanted to become a programmer on my Amstrad CPC it came with Locomotive Basic and the ability to write machine code and it also had CPM operating system. With Windows you get nothing, unless you fork out for it, although to be fair you can now get Visual Basic and C# now. But with Linux I can load up my software management software, select a category, for example Development and then choose a language of choice. This could be PHP (my career option), C, C++, Mono (for .net and c# development on other systems than Windows), Ruby, Java and any relevant IDE to help develop with.

My kids are also experimenting with graphics software and doing really well with the likes of Blender 3D and Inkscape. My son has been creating his own comics and has been showing so much imagination.

So this is holding them back apparantly........

Is Windows ready for the desktop?

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:05:00 +0000

Sorry I just had to ask this question. I think I have seen a similar titled article in the past but this is mine and is my opinion so argue the toss but you won't change me.

It's no secret I am a Linux user. I have been aware of the name Linux since windows 3.1. I read a little column in .EXE Magazine in 1994 and it always intrigued me. But back then internet access was pretty much non existent in the UK save for BBS systems so getting hold of it would have been no go. Apart from which it was pretty much useless for the average person, although I was a good programmer back then.

After writing my last entry with eye candy in 3D desktops it made me think more. This article is best treated as the opposite view of a regular Windows user using Linux. Also before I get harrassed Linux is actually called GNU/Linux but I am not going to repeat that everytime so from here on Linux actually means a distribution based on the GNU/Linux kernel. Linux is actually a GNU project. GNU/Linux really means the Linux kernel, the actual operating system. But most people, incorrect or not, refer to Linux as the complete package of the operating system, the window manager, desktop environment and applications that run on top of it. This is also how I will also incorrectly refer to it. For more information see GNU.org website.

Continue reading "Is Windows ready for the desktop?"

Another reason why I prefer Linux

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:31:28 +0100

All right I admit this is pure eye candy but it looks so cool. I have been using Linux in one form or another since 1996 and started using it exclusively as my desktop since September 2nd 2002. Yes I can pin point the date as that was my ill fated decision to become self employed, At the time I needed to use legal software and Linux had everything I needed. A free office suite in the form of OpenOffice, an accounts package and a PHP/HTML/CSS development environment.

However since then, what is known as Linux has come a long way. I am currently using Fedora 9. It suits my needs perfectly. But just recently I have been playing around with 3D desktop settings provided by Compiz, 3D compositing window manager. I thought I would share a couple of screenshots I took. Both are from using a plugin called Expo. It takes the virtual windows on the desktop, zooms out and puts each desktop next to each other. Complete with reflections and a slight curve.

Two movies simultaneously in a 3d space.

This first one I was just testing the limits. Here two movies are playing full screen, one in each virtual desktop. Yes I know it's completely pointless but then again so is Windows Vista yet people actually 'BUY' that. What's cool about this is whilst the movies are playing the reflections are also kept updated too,

World of Goo running via WINE and placed on a virtual desktop.

This next screen shot is showing a really cool game I have been waiting anxiously for called World Of Goo. It's a brilliant game and has been given awards. Please buy this game to support indie game development. It's only £12. It will be available on Nintendo's Wii as well.

Anyway, this again is showing the game playing in real time with reflections. I suppose again it's not practical but it could be useful if you have multiple applications running and you want to switch to the one you want. This works by moving the mouse to the top left and the screen zooms out to show all desktops. All you have to do is double click the window you want.

So there you go. People are quite shallow and eye candy is what marketing is all about.

Stephen Fry wishes GNU a happy 25th Birthday

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:28:10 +0100

Not only is Stephen Fry a top all round intelligent bloke, he is also a supporter of free software. And being as intelligent as he is appreciates what it means to society as a whole.

For more information visit http://www.gnu.org/fry/ . Here is his birthday message and for those who don't know I'll leave it to Mr. Fry to explain;

Google Lively 3d live Chat rooms hit the spot

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:00:00 +0100

Lively Website

I have tried out quite a few chat rooms over the years from plain text to isometric and some 3d ones. With the exception of the text based systems, none of the alternative chat systems seemed to be easy to use.

Most of the chat systems I looked at always seemed too fiddly or slow, or full of 'yoof' who skipped English lessons. I have also tried Second Life and tried to like it but it is just full of morons, to be quite frank. I don't want to be discover my inner 'furry' or some hidden transexual...no comments please. I don't want to be a shop keeper who hangs around all day waiting for some one to virtually buy something. Honestly, the first time I tried second life someone appeared and tried to sell me stuff. I asked him about it and seriously that is what he spent his Saturdays doing. Oh and I certainly don't want to get involved in virtual sex. Honestly for those who have never tried it, real sex is great and you can burn calories.

One thing Second Life has going for it is it's economy which you can make real money and it's level of customisation. You can make your own objects and clothes inside Second Life. Can't fault that.

So why am I writing about Google's Lively? Well so far personally this has to be the best I have used in terms of practicality. It just works. Admittedly it is beta and has a few flaws. The one thing I liked the most is you create your own rooms and that's it. There is no world as such. Just you and your room. You can add objects to the room to make it more interesting. Things like tables, chairs and lamps can be put down and moved around. You can also add projectors and TV's which can stream YouTube movies live. Excellent. Also you can hang picture frames and link to external images, such as Picassa. I linked to my Flickr gallery though.

Currently it's not possible to create you own content and rooms but that is something planned for the future. From what I can tell you will be able to use Google's SketchUp to design a room. This is quite handy as it's easy to use. Content will be able to be created from a variety of 3D applications.

From a chat point of view it is pretty good. What made me laugh a lot when I invited a friend into my newly built room was the ability to interact with another Avatar. For instance punching and kicking or holding hands and patting on the back. Brilliant. The text appears as bubbles above the head of the avatars. This is ok but I found it a little awkward to see when the side bar was open and trying to move my avatar around to see them. Having said that Avatar control is simple. You can double click on a space and your avatar just appears there. No messing around walking to the spot

What's more interesting about Lively is that rooms have been designed to be embedded into a website. This means you can have your own personal space, my test room is below. In order to enter a room you will need to install a small plugin for your browser but shouldn't take more than a minute. Each room has it's own url and I believe it's possible to make objects in a room a link to another room so you can build up a network of rooms. By making it more personal for me has made it more useful and fun. I can invite my friends to my own space instead of turning up in one giant venue. Having said that there are plenty of public rooms available on Lively's website. There are plenty of cafes and bars for example.

Another great touch is the use of emoticons and IRC style / commands. For instance typing ";-)" makes your avatar wink, ":-P" sticks tongue out, typing LOL and your avatar laughs, ROTFL and your avatar rolls on the floor laughing. To quickly use animations you can type it's name. For example typing /wave, /bow, /flirt will make your character perform those actions. Absolutely brilliant.

So as you can tell I am quite excited by it. But what's in it for Google? Well if you read all the above then you will notice how many Google products I mentioned. All this personal information being in the hands of one company could be slightly worrying. How much you trust Google is a matter of personal taste but linking all these products in and you can't help thinking 'How cool!'.

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Free Virtualisation with VirtualBox

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:13:10 +0100

I had an opportunity to test out VirtualBox on a server at work with Fedora Core 6. Due to a hardrive crash our sales system was unable to send pricing to the website.

Whilst trying to build the system from backups I came across problems due to missing libraries which I couldn't resolve using various compatible libraries which I needed for a custom Apache build. I was already aware of VirtualBox and went to check out their website and saw they had a new release 1.5. So I promptly installed it on my newly built Fedore Core 6 server. This concept isn't new. VMWare Inc. have been offering virtualisation products for quite some time now and are really mature products. However VMWare offer premium products and not suited for casual users. VirtualBox on the other hand is available as a free product and also an open source community edition.

There are only a few steps to be aware of before installing or running VirtualBox. First up is making sure you have gcc and the kernel sources available. So a quick yum install gcc and yum install kernel-devel sorted this out so VirtualBox could do a custom kernel module.

Continue reading "Free Virtualisation with VirtualBox"