The default installation of Linux Mint on my iMac went very well right up until the moment it didn’t. I don’t know the cause, but I did find a few posts online about the problem I had, namely a login loop: whereby the login screen appeared to accept the login details only to show a blank screen momentarily, and then return to the login prompt. There were comments online proffering a solution in the form of ALT-CTRL-F1 etc. Which is supposed to open a terminal window to allow fixes to be applied. The problem for me was that none of the function keys worked F1, F2 etc. ...

I am currently in the process of resetting an old 2012 iMac after deciding trying to set up the Fusion Drive in there was too much hassle. I think it can be done but as it is a proprietary RAID setup I decided to reinstall MacOS and then use an external drive as a dual boot Linux/Mac setup. I had this before and it worked well enough, the only requirement was to hit the boot drive selector shortcut. ...

Bring back personal blogging This post from the Verge appeared on my feed this morning: Twitter is creaking. Social media seems less fun than ever. Maybe it’s time to get a little more personal. In the beginning, there were blogs, and they were the original social web. We built community. We found our people. We wrote personally. We wrote frequently. We self-policed, and we linked to each other so that newbies could discover new and good blogs. I want to go back there. The Web 1.0 landscape looked a lot different than the Web 2.0 experience we are used to these days, and personal weblogs or “blogs” were a big part of the evolution of Web 2.0. In those days, it was really simple. You could sign up for a free site on GeoCities, Yahoo, Blogger, Diaryland, or any of a number of free hosting sites that allowed you to set up your blog, get going with a WYSIWYG editor, and send your thoughts out into the world… ...

In my last post, The end of social media, I lamented the decline of social media, and my feelings of weariness regarding the interaction and general lack of sociability on social media in the last couple of years. In an attempt to lower my stress level and concentrate on more productive things I am stepping further back from this charade and moving into a quieter corner of art and code. These are the two things I love and have been doing for a very long time. This step back, has come after a strong reluctance to close off avenues of marketing, but I also realise that the returns don’t warrant the effort/time. ...

Sadly, Apple has retired my 2012 iMac, after 10 years. The iMac is still working, has a decent CPU and memory and a nice display, albeit not retina, so the retirement does feel somewhat premature to me. Apple puts things out to pasture far too quickly in my opinion, Microsoft is a lot better in this regard, and Linux is top. Due to concerns about the aging MacOS version on the machine, it limits my application upgrade path, how long will developers keep compiling for older systems 2 or 3 versions, maybe, often they want the latest and greatest version immediately, who can blame them. Add that to the fact that Apple/Nvidia haven’t provided GPU/CUDA drivers for years, I have decided to retire Apple from my old iMac and switch it over to Linux Mint. ...

At the beginning of this month, November, Affinity Serif announced the imminent release of version 2 of its graphic software suit. I, like many, was excited by prospect and the hype that hinted at possibility of finally seeing some long awaited features. Unfortunately, for me at least, the release didn’t live up to the hype and frankly didn’t have features I had expected. Promised features going back years, but I am not here to talk about that, though. ...

Blender Class naming conventions - Python API As of Blender 2.8 the API naming requirement is for the class name to match the following convention: UPPER_CASE_{TYPE}_mixed_case Where {TYPE} is two letters denoting the class type inherited: HT – Header MT – Menu OT – Operator PT – Panel UL – UI list The class identifier “bl_idname” mast match the class name. Valid class name and identifier examples: class ADDONNAME_OT_my_operator(bpy.types.Operator): bl_idname = 'ADDONNAME_OT_my_operator' ... class ADDONNAME_MT_my_menu(bpy.types.Menu): bl_idname = 'ADDONNAME_MT_my_menu' ... class ADDONNAME_HT_my_header(bpy.types.Header): bl_idname = 'ADDONNAME_HT_my_header' ... class ADDONNAME_PT_my_panel(bpy.types.Panel): bl_idname = 'ADDONNAME_PT_my_panel' ... If class name or identifier doesn’t meet the conventions, Blender will raise an Error warning but still run: ...

Backface culling in Blender is set in two places, for solid view and for material view: Solid View In Solid view, i.e. Matcap, Studio etc. it is set from the topbar dropdown as shown below: Material View In Material view, i.e. EEVEE is it set in the shader panel on the right, as shown below: Advantages Using backface culling allows the user to see through the backside of geometry. This is handy for looking at the bottom of objects, through a ground plane for example. It is also handy for spotting flipped normals in meshes, as the will appear transparent in the viewport. ...

Unfortunately Symbolic Links and shortcuts don’t work within Typora’s file listing. I found a work around though: Create a symbolic link to the folder you wish to add in the default Typora markdown directory, this will then show up in the the file listing, it won’t do anything though if you click on it, as it isn’t implemented or supported in Typora yet. But, if you right click on the icon link in the file list and choose Open in New Window it will load the linked directories contents. ...

I seem to have let this site go unloved for a long time. The main reason I suppose is a lack of motivation in posting and a bigger lack of interesting things to post. I have been quite busy though, both with Blender and in the last month, or so, with Moi3d. I hadn’t used Moi3d in a long time and was starting to miss the little tool, so took a few weeks to refresh my muscle memory and get some practice in. Artstation now has a number of new posts and I am happy with the results. Nothing major on there, but steady output. ...