Compiling Blender with Cuda Support

With Cuda 8

Assuming you've already installed cuda 8 in /opt/cuda also install gcc5 from the aur and create the following symlinks, so CUDA will use the old compiler:

# ln -s /usr/bin/gcc-5 /opt/cuda/bin/gcc
# ln -s /usr/bin/g++-5 /opt/cuda/bin/g++

After that set gcc5 as your default compiler with:

# export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-5
# export CXX=/usr/bin/g++-5
# export CXXCPP=/usr/bin/cpp-5

Than install blender from source using yaourt with the following command:

# yaourt -Sb blender

When it asks if you want to edit PKGBUILD edit it and comment the line with BUILDCUDA="OFF" so it looks something like this.

#  BUILDCUDA="OFF" # Disabled due to gcc 6.1 not being supported by cuda as of right now

After that compiling and installing should work.

With Cuda 7.5

Ever Wanted to Make Your Photos Look More Professional? My favorite android image editors

My friend recently asked me for a recommendation on on an image editor for android. He wanted to primarily use for improving the looks of some of his photos.

I quickly tried several editors based on other reviews. And here is my conclusion.

  1. First off I tried Bonfire.

Pros

• It has lots of great features and has nice sliders (friendly user interface) for adjusting lots of the filters
• In my opinion has all you need for improving the look of your photos
• Lots of effects

Cons

• Once it came to saving photos I was disappointed. It doesn't save the image in the original resolution, but saves them based on your settings which you can set up to 6144x6144, but who wants to save there photos in higher resolution than the original.

 You can get it from playstore here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gogoinv.bonfire.android


  2. Next I tried Fotor

Pros

• Like bonfire it has lots of filters and effects
• All you need for improving your photos

Cons

• The user interface isn't as friendly as bonfire's. It doesn't have sliders to adjust the filters.

Get it from Google play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.everimaging.photoeffectstudio


  3. Finally I tried Snapseed. My favorite of them all

Pros

• The best user interface in my opinion (No clutter at all).
• Has all the filters you need to improve your photos
• Plenty of effects
• Can edit raw photos

Cons

• May not have as many filters and effects as some other editors 

Get it form Google play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niksoftware.snapseed 


  4. An editor that I've used a lot before I tried new/different editors is the one called Image Editor

Pros

• Supports layers
• Multiple tabs/projects
• Plenty of filters
• Can do the usual canvas or free layer manipulation

Cons

• For adjusting the filters it doesn't have the best interface (no sliders)

Get it from Google play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pcvirt.ImageEditor


Thanks for reading this short review.

Leave a comment if you have any suggestions or for other reasons.

Need a Good Free Video Editor? Shotcut video editor review

Note: This is not necessarily the best open source video editor, but it's definitely my favorite.

I have been looking around for a good video editor for quite some time before I ended up with shotcut. I won't be going into the details of shotcut as the features can be found on it's website. I'll just be describing what I think are the pros and cons of the video editor.

Pros

• Supports lots of audio, video, and image formats thanks to ffmpeg
• It's being actively developed and keeps on getting new features (see the roadmap)
• Has many video filters
• The filters are easy to use (In my opinion much easier than openshot or kdenlive's filters)
• Cross-platform (Linux, Windows, OS X)
• No need to import media - Native editing
• Very flexible UI using QT. Can be customized to your liking
• It's faster (less lag) than some other editors I've tried

Cons

• It may still crash at times although in my opinion it's fairly stable already (Just make sure you save your project frequently)
• No keyframe-able video filters although it's planned for a future release

I ended up with shotcut since the chroma key filter is really easy to use and powerful (much easier than kdenlive's chroma key filter). Another thing I like about it is the speed control of a video changes the speed of the audio as well whereas in kdenlive it'll remove the audio when modifying video speed.

The color grading feature is also really simple to use and powerful and is a must have in any video editor. I use it in about every project. It can really make your video look a lot more professional.

Here is an example of before and after applying color grading:



And a screenshot of shotcut with the color grading filter settings open:




That's it for now. I know this is a really short review, but this is my first video editor review and I'm still learning.

Feel free to leave a comment.

All You Need to Compress Videos on Android

Warning: Compressing videos on android devices can take a long time.

Download and install the FFmpeg Media Encoder from Google Play

Here's an example screenshot:



It's pretty straight forward to use. Select an input file then an output file and format. Next you'll want to select a template or create your own.
My templates:
240p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:240' -preset veryfast -strict -2
360p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:360' -preset veryfast -strict -2
480p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:480' -preset veryfast -strict -2
720p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:720' -preset veryfast -strict -2
1080p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:1080' -preset veryfast -strict -2
veryfast (mp4):
-preset veryfast -strict -2
Explanation of the options I used.

-vf scale='-2:240' -vf stands for video filter and the video filter we are applying is scale='-2:240'. The -2 automatically calculates the width based on the height to an even number. If we used -1 instead of -2 it would calculate it to the exact whole number but this could result in an error because the codec (we didn't specify a codec, but the default for mp4 is H.264) we are using has to have even numbers for width and height. The 240 is pretty straight forward; it sets the height of the video to 240 pixels.

-preset veryfast -preset option is to set a preset for H.264 encoding. The general guideline is to use the slowest preset that you have patience for which will lead to a smaller file size. Current presets in descending order of speed are: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow. The default preset is medium.

-strict -2 -strict experimental or -strict -2 option is needed to encode audio to aac.

Configuring Theme for GTK applications on Archlinux with Plasma 5

There are two packages available to configure gtk applications to have oxygen theme: kde-gtk-config and kde-gtk-config-frameworks from aur.
You will also want to install oxygen-gtk2 and oxygen-gtk3 themes available in the arch repositories.
To configure the themes for gtk applications run the following command for kde-gtk-config:

kcmshell4 kde-gtk-config

For kde-gtk-config-frameworks

kcmshell5 kde-gtk-config

Basically kde-gtk-config-frameworks is built for kf5 and kde-gtk-config is for kde4. I use kde-gtk-config on plasma5 since it is in the arch repositories.
Note: to configure the theme of root gtk applications run the previous commands with kdesu.
Another thing to note is that the configuration files don't get created automatically so even if kde-gtk-config shows that it's configured gtk applications to use oxygen-gtk theme it might not be. Therefore change the themes for gtk2 and gtk3 applications to something else and apply then change it back oxygen-gtk if you wish.

Archlinux with Plasma 5 installation

last updated: Feb. 23, 2015

First Connect to the internet
Next is partitioning and mounting
After that installing
Note: in partitioning and mounting step you should have mounted the partition you want to have as root on /mnt for the following commands to be right:
Install the basic packages you want to the new root. In my case its the following which installs archlinux and plasma 5 with sddm desktop display manager:

# pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel sddm plasma

Generate an fstab

# genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Make sure fstab looks right

# nano /mnt/etc/fstab

Chroot and configure the base system

# arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Locale
Edit locale.gen and uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

nano /etc/locale.gen

Generate the locale(s) specified in /etc/locale.gen:

# locale-gen

Create the /etc/locale.conf file substituting your chosen locale:

# echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf

Export substituting your chosen locale:

# export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Create a symbolic link /etc/localtime to your subzone file /usr/share/zoneinfo/Zone/SubZone using this command:

# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Zone/SubZone /etc/localtime

I use:

# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Belize /etc/localtime

Hardware clock
Use either UTC (recommended):

# hwclock --systohc --utc

localtime (discouraged; used by default in Windows):

# hwclock --systohc --localtime

Hostname

# echo myhostname > /etc/hostname

Add the same hostname to /etc/hosts:

# nano /etc/hosts

---------------------------------------------------
#
# /etc/hosts: static lookup table for host names
#

#<ip-address> <hostname.domain.org> <hostname>
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost myhostname
::1  localhost.localdomain localhost

# End of file

Set the root password
Set the root password with:

# passwd

Install and configure a bootloader
I use either syslinux or grub.
See syslinux or grub for details or check the beginners guide

Users and groups Add a user. examples:

# useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash archie

# useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash archie

Give the user a password:

passwd archie

Add user info

# chfn archie

Read more about users and groups here.
To be able to run commands with sudo uncomment %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL from the /etc/sudoers file:

# nano /etc/sudoers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
## Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command
 %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Display server
Install xorg-server:

# pacman -S xorg-server

Display Driver
First, identify your card:

$ lspci | grep VGA

Note: if you don't get any output, try looking for a 3D controller instead:

# lspci | grep 3D

Then install an appropriate driver. You can search the package database for a complete list of open-source video drivers:

# pacman -Ss xf86-video

Or check this page.
You might also want to install touchpad drivers if you have laptop.

# pacman -S xf86-input-synaptics 

Finishing Up the Installation
Some things you'll probably want to install before you reboot into your new installation is a browser, terminal, and also kmix (sound aplet in system tray). I chose firefox for browser and konsole for a terminal.

# pacman -S firefox kdemultimedia-kmix konsole

Enable SDDM and NetworkManager with:

# systemctl enable sddm; systemctl enable NetworkManager

Exit out of chroot:

# exit

Unmount partitions:

# umount -R /mnt

Reboot:

# reboot

Additional Packages
You might want to install additional packages example:

$ sudo pacman -S kdebase-dolphin kdemultimedia-ffmpegthumbs kdegraphics-thumbnailers exfat-utils fuse-exfat ntfs-3g kio-mtp dosfstools gparted thunderbird firefox ktorrent smplayer amarok gstreamer0.10-plugins kate gimp kdegraphics-okular gwenview digikam blender kdenlive p7zip unrar unzip zip cups cups-pdf gutenprint system-config-printer flashplugin networkmanager-openvpn openssh libreoffice hunspell hunspell-en k3b cdrdao dvd+rw-tools oxygen-gtk3 oxygen-gtk2 wget ntp firefox-adblock-plus

For the thumbnailers to be used you need to configure it in dolphin
Cups and ssh you need to enable yet with:

$ sudo systemctl enable org.cups.cupsd; sudo systemctl enable sshd

Then reboot or run the following command for it to work:

$ sudo systemctl start cups; sudo systemctl start sshd

You might want to install additional printer drivers:

$ sudo pacman -S gutenprint foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db-nonfree hplip splix foo2zjs

Speed Up applications startup in kde
User Rob wrote on his blog this "magic trick" to improve application start-up time by 50-150ms. To enable it, create this folder in your home:

$ mkdir -p ~/.compose-cache/

Install extra fonts

$ sudo pacman -S ttf-bitstream-vera ttf-dejavu ttf-freefont ttf-linux-libertine ttf-oxygen ttf-droid ttf-liberation ttf-ubuntu-font-family

My combined bash history of installing Arch Linux and Plasma 5 with additional applications:
Note: do not copy/paste the following commands unless you know what you're doing.

ping google.com
lsblk
fdisk /dev/sda
mkswap /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3
swapon /dev/sda1
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/home
pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel sddm plasma-next
genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
nano /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash
nano /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen 
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Belize /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc --utc
echo jeromy-lenovo > /etc/hostname
nano /etc/hosts
passwd
pacman -S gptfdisk syslinux
syslinux-install_update -iam
nano /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash jeromy
passwd jeromy
chfn jeromy
nano /etc/sudoers
pacman -S xorg-server xf86-video-intel
nano /etc/sddm.conf
systemctl enable sddm; systemctl enable NetworkManager
pacman -S konsole firefox kdemultimedia-kmix
pacman -S pulseaudio-alsa libcanberra-pulse
exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot
sudo pacman -S kdebase-dolphin kdemultimedia-ffmpegthumbs kdegraphics-thumbnailers exfat-utils fuse-exfat ntfs-3g kio-mtp dosfstools gparted thunderbird firefox ktorrent smplayer amarok gstreamer0.10-plugins kate gimp kdegraphics-okular gwenview digikam p7zip unrar unzip zip cups cups-pdf gutenprint system-config-printer flashplugin networkmanager-openvpn openssh libreoffice hunspell hunspell-en k3b cdrdao dvd+rw-tools oxygen-gtk3 oxygen-gtk2 wget ntp firefox-adblock-plus
sudo systemctl enable org.cups.cupsd; sudo systemctl enable sshd
sudo systemctl start org.cups.cupsd; sudo systemctl start sshd
sudo pacman -S ttf-bitstream-vera ttf-dejavu ttf-freefont ttf-linux-libertine ttf-oxygen ttf-droid ttf-liberation ttf-ubuntu-font-family
cd /tmp
curl -O https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pa/package-query/package-query.tar.gz
tar zxvf package-query.tar.gz
cd package-query
makepkg -si
cd ..
curl -O https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ya/yaourt/yaourt.tar.gz
tar zxvf yaourt.tar.gz
cd yaourt
makepkg -si
yaourt -S dropbox
reboot

Downloading with curl showing zenity GUI progress bar

Below is a simple command to show a GUI progress bar while downloading with curl command:

curl -o "big.iso" "http://domain.com/big.iso" 2>&1 | stdbuf -oL tr '\r' '\n' | sed -u 's/^ *\([0-9][0-9]*\).*\( [0-9].*$\)/\1\n#Download Speed\:\2/' | zenity --progress --title "Downloading"

Here is an example of how it might look: