Office Comics Pack

I'm currently writing the Season 02 of "Call Center Grinder"
and since I've almost finished the text and dialogs ; I'm ready to move on with the drawing part, incidentally I was looking for some existing backgrounds - but I actually found a lot better : a complete "Characters and Office package" (64MB of vectorized illustrations especially designed for story-boarding) that looks pretty amazing ...

This is an example of what could be the first episode of the Season 1 if I had used  the provided clip-arts (originally in colors but I convert them in gray tones) :

Here's the link for the files (and kudos for the author : the quality of the clip-arts is amazing)

• Design Comics :: Characters and Scenes for Storyboarding & Design
• Create Your Own (Office-related) Comics

Xena Fan-art

After last week troubleshooting ... I needed to get back on track and what could be better than a little Fan art ?!

It's like Xena is saying "Go back to work!"

Test-Driving Linux Mint 10 "Julia" RC (part 3) fixing grub

Please read previous article Test-Driving Linux Mint 10 "Julia" RC (part 2) USB stick to get the context

Being stuck with a broken grub ; I had to read documentations to fix the situation
I started with http://grub.enbug.org/Manual where I found out that menu.lst no longer controls the menu. But grub.cfg is the new configuration filename.
After inspecting the local HD's grub.cfg - I couldn't find any link to the USB key's uuid ?!
I then inspected the USB key's grub.cfg and definitely found mention of the local HD "Helena"

First thing I tried (rebooting on each volume) was :

sudo update-grub 

But it was like "pissing in a violin", nothing changed.

Then I found http://www.systechblog.com/some-ubuntu-problem-solving-tips.html
and http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/p20/GRUB2%20Bash%20Commands.html#GRUB_USB

The solution looked a bit tortuous but I did what was instructed there : rebooted on the live CD (I made previously)
clicked on the internal HD boot volume waited to see it on the desktop then typed

mount | tail -1
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/xxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx /dev/sda

and finger crossed rebooted and it worked - there was no grub rescue error and the laptop was now rebooting Helena

The problem was now that the USB key was useless (can't boot from it anymore)
But I did the same rebooted on the Live CD
inserted the USB key waited then typed

mount | tail -1
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/xxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx /dev/sdb

and finger crossed rebooted
and it worked too - except it kept the link to mint-8 "Helena"

And that's the happy ending of this little experiment with mint-10 "Julia"
Now the next challenge for me is to manage to install Gimp 2.7 on the USB key
But before that I think I'll be back drawing for a while ... and do some work.

Test-Driving Linux Mint 10 "Julia" RC (part 2) USB stick

After installing a Live CD of mint-10 "Julia" on my usb stick 4GB using inetbootin  ; I decided to go for the full installation, but still on the usb stick (not on my internal HD that still contains mint-8 "Helena").

First thing I did was my backup using "mintbackup" (just in case something would go wrong, better safe than sorry).

And then burned the mint-10 "Julia" RC iso file on a cd - boot from the live cd (a lot slower and noisier than from the usb obviously) and launch the install.

After 15-20mn the installation was complete, I checked the result:
the USB stick had 2 partitions :
/dev/sdb1 3.8GB as ext4 (0x83) and still 1.1GB available !!!
/dev/sdb2 236MB as swap (0x05)

At this stage I was delighted and impressed so I rebooted pressed F9 and selected USB Hard drive in the bios menu. But then big disappointment there was only a black screen in text mode with a blinking cursor.

I shutdown removed the USB stick put it aside and started again but then something more serious happened -
a message

"grub rescue> error: no such device : fbbba5b7-8624-a5d3-4e561-ebdf2113311" 

appeared and it made no sense
because it was the uuid of the USB key ?!

Anyway I put the USB back, pressed alt+ctrl+del - and then ... I could see a grub menu offering to boot from 2.6.35 "Julia" or my old 2.6.22 "Helena"
For some reason the installed wrote something on the internal HD to include a call to the grub file of the USB key
and couldn't boot otherwise the USB key was in.

And the worst was that the USB key alone couldn't boot - that sound really strange.

The situation was I could still boot "Helena" or "Julia" but assuming the USB stick was plugged permanently on my laptop - and I couldn't used the USB on another computer because it wasn't bootable ?! 

I asked for advice on irc and got the answer that :
a- when performing an install it's better to remove internal HD of the equation (disabling it from the bios (which a couldn't do with my current Bios), or simply physically removing it (no way))
b- I could probably fix the grub and everything should work fine afterward

I thought to modify the file menu.lst - but discovered later that now the file used by grub is now grub.cfg and that we're not supposed to modify it manually.

to be continued ...

Test-Driving Linux Mint 10 "Julia" RC (part 1) Live CD

I'm a Linux Mint user and very happy with this Linux Distribution, because I don't like to spend much time to troubleshoot and tweak the system - and Mint is perfect out of the box (looks good, easy to install and to customized).

I'm running "Helena" (codename for Linux Mint 8) and curious about the latest release I wanted to have a pick at the latest release ("Julia"codename for Linux Mint 10).

After hesitating for a while (because I know there's always something that can drag you into troubleshooting and testing for a couple of days) I decided to test-drive "Julia" (if I may say so!?)

Anyway I added the package unetbootin into "Helena" and downloaded "Julia" iso file.

 

The result was a Linux Mint 10 "LiveCD" installed on my USB stick - which was faster and more silent than an actual Live CD. But don't be fooled even if the media is a USB (and therefor able to save changes from one session to another) it reacts like a Live CD, obviously.

After the boot screen appeared and the "mint" desktop appeared with the brand new theme (brushed steel called "mint-x metal") I knew that I had to install it even if it was a Release Candidates (which means targeted at developers and beta-testers)

But then that's where the real challenges started ... to be continued

Call Center Grinder Character studies