VPaint source image screencast from Nicholas Bishop on Vimeo.

Fair warning if you've ever used Blender before or have experience texturing in 3D programs you will likely cream your pants!

The code is now available in a custom Blender build here. You will have to be patient for this to be implemented fully into texture paint mode.  I wait with much anticipation for the ability to export to an image/texture.  Nicholas, you're brilliant.

Beagle Board running Ubuntu Netbook Remix from Blaze on Vimeo.

 Here is my demonstration video of the beagle board successfully running ubuntu netbook remix.  A beagle board is a small development type motherboard about the size of an adult palm.  It can run a variety of linux operating systems including android and ubuntu on it's OMAP3 processor.  This has to be the cheapest way to build your own netbook.  Plus it's 100% modifiable without any legal restrictions.

Much appreciation for the people who contribute to the development of open source ARM based software.

http://beagleboard.org   buy one for only 149$ USD!

http://beagleboard.org/project  Check out the many beagleboard open sourced projects

http://ubuntu.com  Download ubuntu netbook remix free

Valve is always raising the bar and has announced the release of Alien Swarm.

"Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community. Available free of charge, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics. With your friends, form a squad of four distinct IAF Marine classes."

http://store.steampowered.com/app/630/   Grab your free download on steam.

Yesterday Jesse Brown Host of TVO's technology podcast "Search Engine" scored an interview with Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement.  The agenda was the new tabled copyright bill, which could possibly criminalize millions of Canadians.  Jesse asked some excellent questions on how digital locks could effect consumers as well as how the US lobbies were responsible. The spin never stops for each reply it seems to get larger.  Mr Clement claims Canada must be WIPO compliant, while Jesse reiterates the fact that being WIPO compliant does not mean an outright ban on circumvention.  The Minister avoids the question entirely by talking about how Canada isn't adopting what other nations are doing simply because those ideas are not effective nor appropriate in a digital world.

Listening to this short interview is especially worth it for the ending minute.  Not as bad as the last time an Industry Minister was interviewed by Jesse Brown but still entertaining. In 2008 a different minister in the same position (also with a new copyright bill) basically hung up mid reply.

From the live stream CBC providedhttp://cbc.ca/video/

The Bill can be found online here.

 On June 2, 2010 at 3:30 p.m. EST Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement and Heritage Minister James Moore presented Bill C-32 the  Copyright Modernization Act.  This will be the third time the Canadian government has tried to pass copyright legislation in order to modernize Canada's laws.  Advocates from all sides of the debate called for a balanced, fair, technologically neutral copyright bill during the copyright consultation which took place last summer.  Over 8000 people submitted their opinions to that copyright consultation and it was left up to the ministers how to best strike a balance between stakeholders with a wide range of opinions.  

     My problem is that when I went to install the game I tried to use the CD key provided with the rebate but it did not work. I may have not been using the right CD key but it was the only one I could locate that could possibly be for that product. I wrote to the technical support staff of Activision's website support forum. I was informed that I would have to purchase a brand new game in order to use a game which was included in the purchase price of my original video card hardware purchase. To me this is as simple as a company trying to double dip from my pocket rather than address the inherent problems with their digital rights management software maliciously placed within the video game Activision offers.

     In conclusion, I was unable to install a product which I legally paid for. I don't know how much I actually paid for the product as I said, it was included with my video cards. What baffles me is Activision actually trains its support staff to blame the customer for their greed.

Heres the correspondence I had with an Activision Technical Support Staff member.

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Select the images to see full size.

Click More for the rest   --->

The Mac version of the steam client was released today.  Following this news phoronix.com points out that indeed a steam client for Linux is on the way.

Check out this file from the steam store with clear references to Linux as well as this code found within the Mac OS X client I spoke about a week ago.

 "There is no doubt, Steam is coming to Linux!" -Phoronix.com April 22, 2010

From CBC's Video Help page:

 Linux:

- At this time Linux is not supported.

Not anymore! At least in Chrome with Ubuntu 10.04.

Recently, in the past week Google released a significant update for the chrome browser in linux and now I'm able to watch all the cbc video that I previously couldn't!

I wish I knew what exactly in the chrome update has made this possible, my feeling is it has something to do with the flash plugin.  Here's the screenshots of my experience with both the Firefox and the Google chrome browsers while trying to access cbc.ca/video for my favorite CBC host George Stroumboulopoulos.

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However on Firefox I get the same result that CBC Linux users have been experiencing for years:

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Roland writes: Get this crazy one, my 5 year old inhaled this screw.

I don't even... how the... WTF