Ronnie Tucker

Having installed Kubuntu Hardy I dreaded the thought of having to recompile the libgpod library to get my iPod Classic (Black) working again. After installing Amarok I thought I’d try my iPod anyway.

Lo and behold, it worked!

Hoorah!

Well, it did. Until I actually flipped through the cover art and played some tracks did I notice that my cover art had gone awry. Drat!

After some tinkering I noticed in my Adept (package manager) that installed was libgpod3-nogtk, when I looked at the description for the library I noticed:

This version does not include artwork support

So I uninstalled it and installed the libgpod3 library.

All good!

Cover art is back (be sure to click the ipod icon at the top of Amarok, and choose Update Artwork). All is good between Amarok and iPods.

Above: the two libraries (and descriptions) in Adept

I toyed with upgrading my Kubuntu Gutsy (7.10) to Hardy (8.04) but came to the conclusion that a fresh install would do me the world of good. My Gutsy had KDE4 bolted on to it with some KDE4 apps and various other junk installed so, yeah, time to start afresh.

This is my current desktop:

(click image for larger version)

It’s a marriage between KDE4 and Compiz Fusion overseen by the Rev. Hardy Heron.

I did try KDE4’s built in desktop effects but they were just too unreliable and slow, but Compiz Fusion is still (as ever) lightning fast. Add to that the Emerald window decorator and it’s looooooovely.

After my Bubble Bobble mosaics I thought I would try Link from the SNES game Zelda: A Link to the Past.

This one was a bit more tricky since the Zelda sprite has a black outline and a black outline on the shield. I paint the black outline using acrylic paint to save me from using up all my black tiles, so I had to remove the black outline from the sprite (in GIMP) and also remove the black outline between the shield and Link, so it took some preparation before I could even start the mosaic. But once that was done it was full speed ahead, and a few hours later it was done.

Voila! One Link!

For my next trick: a flying Mario from Super Mario World

Initially I was going to do a watercolour or acrylic painting (or a series of paintings) showing some characters from the good old 8-bit and 16-bit era. You know: stuff like Mario (SNES), Sonic (Megadrive) etc etc, but then I thought: why bother sitting painting squares when I could just do them in squares… mosaic tiles to be exact.

Above: Bub and Bob mosaic on my wall
(click photo above for a larger photo)

And lo, it was to pass. After a few minutes finding rips of Bubble Bobble sprites I began to glue the mosaic tiles to a sheet of thin plastic. The tiles are actually 1cm (10mm) square which would have made them each about 15cm square! So I cut each tile in to four and used 0.5cm (5mm) tiles.

First came Bub (above, click the photo for a larger photo). The plan was to cut away any visible while plastic that was showing. But the more I looked at it, I realised it would look better with a black outline but I wasn’t sure if I had enough black tiles to do that for Bub and, the soon to be created, Bob. So I left about 3mm of plastic around the outline of Bub then painted the visible white plastic with some black acrylic paint. Voila!

Now Bob (above, again click photo for larger one). Same idea. Each one took about 2hrs to cut the tiles and glue in place with a further 15mins or so for cutting them out of the plastic sheet and the black acrylic. They are both 16 tiles square and blue-tac’d to my wall, perched upon photo’s of my geckos. 

Next: Link from the SNES Zelda game ‘Link to the Past’.

Coming soon: Even more 8 and 16-bit legends. This is FUN! 

Shop now open folks, come on in!

I’ve discounted a few older paintings and added my most recent one (The Cottage) if you want a further 10% discount you can use the coupon code: grandopening0408

You can also enter by clicking the Gallery banner at the top of the site or by the Gallery link on the right of the site.

New painting done last night:

Desolate
Oil on Canvas Paper
13″ x 7″

Originally it had more water showing but since there wasn’t anything I could think of to put in the water to keep it interesting I just lobbed it off and it gives it less wasted space. On sale soon in the all new and exciting shop (when I the company emails me the template I bought).

At the beginning of this month, ZeroOneArt had your’s truly (that’s me) as their ‘Recommended’ artist (middle left, click the screen below for full screen evidence):

Now ArtFair365 have featured me in their Artwork of the Week slot! Click the screen below for the evidence (no, I didn’t Photoshop it!).

Happy? Oh yes! But will it get me more exposure and sales? We shall see…

Did a new painting a few days ago, just got round to photographing it today.

The Cottage
Oil on Canvas Textured Paper
13″ x 8″

I’m also in the process of setting up a proper online shop thing for the site. Everything is in place, I just need to install a nice theme for the shop then I can open it up for people to (hopefully!) buy stuff. In honour of it’s opening I’ll reduce the price on some of the older paintings. Watch this space!

I haven’t actually programmed my own personal Terminator robot (as yet) in MINDSTORMS but I did hit a potential flaw in my plans.

LDD

LDD is LEGO Digital Designer. This is the Windows only application that many creators use to virtually create their model so that it can be uploaded to the LEGO web site. This application also allows you to see how the virtual model was built. So rather than designers taking a gajillion photographs of their model, as it’s being built, they just give out the LDD (or LXF) file which tells all.

But that’s no good to me running Linux!

Ah, not so. For LEGO Digital Designer runs perfectly on Linux using WINE. Behold:

LDD showing the Unibot2 robot.

So now I can easily download other peoples creations, view them from any angle then have the app tell me how to build it!

Look out world, here I come!  ;P

Way back when I were a lad, the cool toy to have was LEGO MINDSTORMS (the robot building kit made by LEGO). But at about £200 it was a bit out of my price range. As I got older and had the money to buy it there was a new version due out, LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT but it was also £200-ish. I assumed that the older version would come down in price as the new version came out. Wrong! It’s so highly prized that the older version is still about £200 to buy!

Now, many years later, I have the chance to play with LEGO MINDSTORMS. I spotted a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT on eBay for only £130 and snapped it up with all due haste! Even eBay has very few MINDSTORM kits on it.

Several days later I took delivery of said prize and, wow, does it look cool!

They certainly give you enough bits!

Everything you see in the photo above comes in one biiiiig box! The only problem is that the LEGO software (to program the ‘brick’, bottom right) only runs on Windows and Mac. But, thankfully: Linux hackers to the rescue! One fellow (John Hansen) developed his own language and compiler to program the ‘brick’ in Linux so, in appreciation, I have bought his book: Lego Mindstorms NXT Power Programming: Robotics in C

I’ve only had the kit a few days so I’ve not built anything as yet, but the book has a few examples in it so I’ll be building them first methinks.

Look out world, the Terminator storyline may still happen!