I recently tried building an early release of Blender 2.5 from source on Ubuntu Linux 9.04 (the so-called 'Jaunty Jackalope'). So that the world might benefit from my tribulations, I thought I'd record the details here.
The 2.5 build process is standardized against Python 3.1, which isn't in the Ubuntu repositories yet, so you have to build that from source. Download the 3.1.1 tarball from python.org and build it like this:
wget http://python.org/ftp/python/3.1.1/Python-3.1.1.tgz
tar xzvf Python-3.1.1.tgz
cd Python-3.1.1
./configure
make
sudo make install
You also need a big pile of libraries and build tools, so install those using apt-get like this:
Then, you're ready to check out the latest source and build Blender. (I'm sure you don't actually need most of the lib directory in the second command, but I don't know which parts are superfluous.)
Then, the final build step can be executed like this:
python ./scons/scons.py
The build process will create two folders in the same folder as your blender2.5 folder: build and install. The executable is located at install/linux2/blender. If your menus are missing when you run Blender, perhaps it is because you have rushed ahead and executed build/linux2/bin/blender, which is not what you want.
Victory is yours!
July 26, 2009
Buildroot on the Gumstix Verdex XL6P
Hello internet,
Should you attempt to compile the Buildroot toolchain so you can build a new filesystem image for your Gumstix Verdex board, you will find that as of mid-2009, files.gumstix.com no longer hosts several of the files that you will need. However, you can find them elsewhere on the web.
Lastly, you'll want to add to the file gumstix-buildroot/build_arm_nofpu/linux-2.6.21gum/scripts/mod/sumversion.c the line:
#include <limits.h>
or you'll get the error "error: ‘PATH_MAX’ undeclared (first use in this function)."
Fixed version of gumstix-buildroot/toolchain/getter_script.sh:
#!/bin/bash
wget -nd --passive-ftp $@ || (
echo Retrying from gumstix alternate site...
index=$#-1
# Copy all params into an array
for (( i=0; $?==0; i++ ));do a[$i]=$1; shift; done
# Chop all but filename from last param and prepend out URL
a[$index]=${a[index]/*\//http:\/\/www.daimi.au.dk/~spider/gumstix/gumstix-buildroot/dl/}
# Now wget that from out server
wget -nd ${a[@]}
)
Just a few other notes, since I finally got the Ethernet port working with Gumstix SVN r1642:
/etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface usb0 inet dhcp
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
/etc/modules, with correct Ethernet driver selected (smc91x, not smc911x)
# MMC support -- comment the next two lines to enable using CF
mmc_block
pxamci
# Compact Flash support -- Must load smc91x or smc911x first!!
smc91x
#smc911x
pcmcia
# Load USB host driver
ohci-hcd
Becoming a renewable energy engineer, part 2 (with videos)
I was invited to speak at Olin College a few months back as part of a seminar series about sustainability and engineering. The talk was indirectly inspired by my previous post on the topic. (By the way, Olin is great. If I were going to engineering school now, I'd definitely apply to Olin.) The folks at Olin recorded the talk, and after some manipulations with mpgtx, it's now up on Youtube.
The video is posted in 6 parts below. If I had to summarize in a few lines what I said, I'd say:
Most importantly: answer the right question.
If the question is, "How can I use our current energy infrastructure to propel myself in a 4000 pound steel cage?" the right answer is, "Build a hybrid SUV."
If the question is, "How can I kill more efficiently?" the right answer is, "Make robots kill on my behalf."
These are the wrong questions. Right now, the crucial questions we need to answer involve balancing our desire for the fruits of energy consumption against global heat death.
Differential equations: learn to solve them by computer. Learn when to distrust that computer.
Take statistics.
If a class is boring, it's because it's taught poorly. There are no college classes in boring subjects.
Go broad first. Going deep is fine if you have the passion, but as an investment, it's unlikely to pay off.
Thanks to Matt Ritter, Elsa, and the rest of the Olin folks who helped with the video taping and mucking around with the video files.
July 10, 2009
Humans 1, Skunks 0
We have survived our First Battle of Bull Run here at 57 Chandler. The anti-skunk battlements that we installed recently held up to an assault by a determined adversary. As can be seen in the picture below, a sapper has attempted to burrow through the wire mesh; the effort met with failure.
