Build your own – Page 6 – Strider’s Web

AV Linux 6.0.2

AV Linux is another incredibly powerful boot-from-DVD build focused on a specialist task set and workflow, and once again it is centered around audio/video production (hence the name). It has all the tools most of us will ever need to create, edit, and compile our projects into coherent multimedia presentations. Like most Linux builds, the default menu buttons and icons are aligned across the top of the screen (although you can move them to any screen border you like best), and they have a small collection of the links to the stuff the developers felt was most important on the screen proper, like help files and the install tools.

Like more and more operating systems, they also have an Icon Bar running down one edge of the screen, giving you a smartphone-like collection of apps/programs to access from your start screen. Again, you can rearrange any component of the desktop to suit your own preferences and habits, like throwing the Icon Bar to any other border, but since this is a Live DVD, you will either have to remaster it, or install it on a Flash Drive/Hard Drive, to get it to remember your preferences from boot to boot. Besides making your choices persistent, installing it on a thumb drive will also allow you to update all the programs and install more of your own, so you can tweak it into the perfect tool set for your projects.

The build itself includes an amazing range of Audio, Graphics and Video content creation software demonstrating the excellence of Open-Source solutions, and the fact that they are free is just making a good thing better. This one is designed for a 32bit computer, meaning this Operating System is designed to turn a regular OLD PC or Intel Mac into an Audio/Graphics/Video workstation with power you won’t believe. I have been somewhat surprised to discover some of my legacy computers are able to outclass some of my newer Windows systems for multimedia creation after booting them from this kind of Linux Live DVD.

The video at the end of this post is for the LAST version of AV Linux; this version is way better! But he covers a ton of stuff included with the OpSys (no great surprise, he coordinated building it, so he knows it best), and most of the basic stuff is the same. Only the names have changed, to protect the innocent Apps (sorry, I couldn’t resist). It gives you a wonderful overview of a lot of the software packages included in the last release, and as always the latest version has all of that and so much more. If you are an audio or video creator and work inside computer environments, this will give you an excellent understanding of which tools you will want to call up for what processes.

Sci-Fi Fonts For Your Own Creations

If you are building your own artwork, or animations, or videos, or perhaps a button set for a web site, it can be fun and useful to have some Science Fiction Fonts in your toolkit to give a bit of flavor to your creations. A great place to start is with the complete Futurama suite. It has both of the alien languages fonts (and if you didn’t already translate all the jokes on the signs that use them, you may want to go back and re-watch some of the episodes, with you cheat sheet close to hand) as well as the Title, Ambient, and Bold Fonts used in the series. The RoboCop font is a classic, Back To The Future is a good choice, Alien is a classic, and Splash Gordon is also quite a good catch. Because of the way that last web site does everything server side with Javascript, that link only gets you to the site. You will have to drill down to get to the font itself.

There are a number of other series that make their font set available which you should search out, but you will also find some quality resources at the font compilation sites. 1001 Fonts includes 137 free Sci-Fi/Fantasy Fonts, and Da Font has several hundred more, for instance. FontSpace includes a bunch more, as does Fonts2U. Note that on several of these sites you will get different results with different search terms; try several of them and see what other goodies you come across.

Android WordPress

Thought I would try out using the Android WordPress app to see if it was easy or not. It did take a bit of poking and prodding to figure out which icon did what; hope I didn’t delete too many entries in the process. Of course, a build up of fatigue poisons could be playing a part in that fight, since I just spent the last 5 days in London celebrating the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who

The one thing it seems to be lacking is the ability to create HTML tags and JavaScipt and source code in general. Looks like my shuttle bus is here, one more hour and I will be home. This has been serious fun.

Crazy Talk App

This is a silly app, spun off from a silly program that I like a lot. The Crazy Talk App allows you to take an Actor, record some dialog, and slave them together for lip syncing. Yes, I know, lots of apps do that. But this is the only one I know that gives you some slider bars that allow you to create and edit animated facial expressions for the resulting video. They have 2 App versions, one free and the other 99 cents. It does have a bit of a learning curve, and to take advantage of everything you will need to get the actual Crazy Talk Program, so you can do stuff like create your own Actors.

Car Teeth

I was wandering to lunch the other day, when I ran into this in the parking lot. Someone had taken a sports car and added imitation sharks teeth to the grill. While I figured they did it to make the car look tough and cool, the actual effect is more like you just ran into a character from Pixar’s Cars; terminally cute. After he modded his vehicle, I suspect he was surprised at how it turned out.

Anime Studio builds

If you are into building your own animations, and you are using Anime Studio as part of your toolset, here are a few videos to inspire you. The first is called Ballade by Yaki, the second is TTTest1NS, the final one is Dark Prints. Each of these is pretty amazing in its own right, and all of them were assembled using a single cost effective animation program. So what are you in the process of building, to show the world?