With that said, I’ve also started another project … getting Linux fully functional on one of my PowerPC macs. Currently, I have Fedora 12 working almost flawlessly on my PowerMac G5, with a few quirks and problems I have yet to resolve. I am planning on moving this project off my G5 to reinstall OSX 10.5 Leopard back onto it (I need a reliable system for school), and use my PowerBook G4 instead for my Linux experimenting. Although it doesn’t seem quite as exciting on my laptop, as it lacks the luxury of my 30″ Apple HD Cinema Display that my G5 has consumed my desk with. I think it will still be a worthy system to recon with.

Experimenting with the various PowerPC Linux distributions, I have found one that raises the bar above the rest … Fedora! As popular as Ubuntu is, it’s PowerPC support is absolutely horrendous (at least with my experiences). I haven’t even been able to get Ubuntu installed properly, because it has serious issues with not just my graphics card, but the windfarm controls on my G5. Fedora has graciously taken hold of my G5 and runs impressively fast. But with every great thing, there are several issues.

I have no sound. Not only that, but I have no clue how to get sound working properly on the system. An lspci results in no card information either. Any and all help here would be greatly appreciated.

There is also an issue with my graphics card. Occasionally, my system with lockup and not allow me to do anything forcing me to cold boot. Sometimes, the screen will go crazy, while others it will just appear to be frozen. Then there are times where the monitor just completely stops receiving video all together, and I’m left staring at a black screen.

Other then that, I’m loving the idea of being able to tickle my tux side and enjoy the freedom of pure open source technology. I’ve always been a *nix fan at heart, which is one the reasons I love my Macs (which are BSD based, btw).

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who know binary and those who don’t.

Yes, it’s an old techie joke, but the same concept applies to the world of Twitter. I’ve had my twitter account for a while now, but never really used it that much. I’ve actually never really found much of a need to, until I got my iPad and the new version of Twitterific was enough to grab my attention again. So, I figured I should probably get up to speed with the blogosphere and actually slap that puppy on my sidebar for you (my viewers) to checkout.

You can FOLLOW ME on Twitter too!

I have a few other things I’m working on with my website. I’ll be creating a unified Downloads section soon, so getting all the goodies I have spread out through my posts will be easier to find. You guys must really like that Fur Library, because it has over 14,000 downloads so far.  Insane!

Anyways, with that aside, I’ll bring you up to speed with some things that have been going on. First off, I am loving my new iPad! It’s completely replaced my laptop and it goes practically everywhere with me. I keep a cleaning cloth in my pocket from the people who droll on it when I let them check it out (and the screen tends to get marked with finger prints a lot too).

I’m learning the ropes with writing in Pages to work on my eBooks while I’m on the road. Its quite an experience. I’m slowly porting things over from Google Docs, and hopefully I’ll start getting new content rolling within the next week or so. I’ll also be working in changing me new books over to Blender 2.5 based, since things seem to be rolling along much smoother with the development.

I also gotta pull myself away from Pocket Legends to get some work done too. That game is way too addicting. . We need some devs to start getting Blender compiled for the iPad. Now that would be awesome! Apple would probably take forever to approve it though.

The Apple iPad.

Yes, I have succumbed to Apple’s marketing hype and pre-ordered the iPad the very first day it became available. After the long wait, this morning the UPS lady delivered my new, favorite gadget. It’s … absolutely … amazing!

I’ve used the WordPress app on my iPod Touch and wasn’t impressed at all. It was nice if I needed a quick update on the go (which have been far between lately), but it didn’t have that wow-factor to keep me hooked. However, the newly redesigned WordPress app for the iPad has done just what I had expected. And it’s enticing me to keep up-to-date on my blogging as well.

Who knows … maybe it’ll even help me finish my eBooks too!

So, let’s start with my New Year’s Resolution.  Here we go … I, do solemnly swear, by the witness of the new decade 2010, will post blog posts on a regular basis.  Yes, you heard it correct and can hold me to it!  I pay for the blog so I might as well use it, right?  I will also post a lot more goodies for you to enjoy as well.

Speaking of goodies, you’re probably wondering what happened to my video podcast series.  Well, one thing I’ve learned is that things never go as planned.  During the creation of the first podcast, my svn checkout quit compiling properly.  Largely due to the fact that there was a lot of new code commits to the svn that wouldn’t let me compile on Mac OS X.  So, I jumped on IRC and started talking about it in the #blendercoders channel about my compile problems, which itself stemmed interest in another problem with compiling on Mac OS X.  The user-def.mk system for overriding the settings was, and actually always has been, somewhat of an issue.  The current method was to copy the entire user-def.mk file from the config presets, and paste it into the blender root directory to be edited.  To be honest, I’m not a coder, or at least not a well experienced one.  So, I have no clue why this was a problem.  It’s always been routine for me when compiling Blender to do this.  Well, since then, it’s changed again.  To make a long story short, I’ll need to do some more research on how it’s setup now before I can continue with the compiling series.  There are some dependency issues that need resolved too.  The video podcasts are planned to get back into development, but starting into something else other then compiling Blender.  Feel free to post suggestions in the comments, because I’m always interested in my reader’s feedback.

Another goody to expect from this year is a rewrite of the old Fur Library for the 2.5 update.  There’s some really awesome stuff I’d like to take advantage of, and I think it would really benefit those who actually used the old library.  I’m researching the in-app tutorial stuff in 2.5, so I hope I’m able to make something useful this time around.

Again, I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year, and I look forward to keeping in touch more often.

I’m about to start posting more on the website along with some of my recent projects, so keep tuned in.

The second announcement, I will be launching some really cool developer stuff on my site very soon. I’m developing some code generators for compiling Blender with some easy to understand documentation. It should be a nice contribution to the community, especially for those who are just learning the ropes.

So keep your eyes open for some really cool stuff heading your way

I haven’t forgotten about the snow post either. Stay tuned.

Regards,

Brian Hynds
Hynds|Studio and Blenderversity Administrator