Reading Comics on your screen...

If you like to read comic books you might know about the enormous collections of digitalized copies that float around the internet. Normally they are in '.cbr' or '.cbz' format, actually simple rar'd or zipped collections of images.

To read them on your computer, you can either unpack the file and use a standard image viewer, or find a special program to open the .cbr or .cbz files and display the "pages" of the comic.

For Linux you can use QComicBook, a very nice program that uses the qt4 library of KDE4 (but qt4 can also be installed on systems based on Gnome, Xfce, etc. - you do not need the complete KDE environment):


You'll get various zoom modes (page, 2-pages, japanese, rotate, full-screen, etc) to enjoy your comics wherever you are. I like to take some with me on my trips, so that I can read them at night in the hotel, etc.

If you use Slackware, you can get packages for both the 32 & 64 bits versions on my site.

Lego and Linux (part 5)

After exchanging a few e-mails with the author, I have managed to build Slackware packages for LeoCAD, both 32 and 64-bits versions.
LeoCAD is a wonderful piece of software to create your own Lego constructions virtually on your computer - with an unlimited amount of pieces :-)
It can import and export LDR (LDraw) files, and export to POV-Ray for creating fantastic images (see my previous post about POV-Ray).
Here is a screenshot of LeoCAD running on my 64-bit desktop:


The packages can be downloaded from my site, where more screenshots can be seen as well.

Lego and Linux (part 4)

Today I finished the Slackware packages for POV-Ray, the Persistence of Vision Raytracer, a fantastic free tool for creating stunning 3D images.
It can be used also for creating beautiful images of your Lego creations. In a future post I might write a small "how-to" with step-by-step instructions, but here is a small example:


As always, the packages can be downloaded from my site.

Lego and Linux (part 3)

LeoCAD is not so simple as I thought... The 64-bit version compiles after some patching, but it crashes horribly with some basic things.
While sorting this out, I built packages for ldglite, a little program to view and edit LDraw files. It can be called from the command line also to create images of your drawings.
Here is an example of my elevator:


The Slackware packages can be downloaded from my site.

Lego and Linux (part 2)

I finished building the Slackware packages for LDView 4.1 (Beta 1).

There are just two dependencies:
- tinyxml
- LDraw_data (the files with all the different Lego parts)

All packages can be downloaded from my site.

As the original meaning of Lego says: Play well!

Next challenge: building LeoCad...

Rio 2016

The city where I live - Rio de Janeiro - will host the 2016 Olympic Games.
If you want to see some nice images of the place where I live, check this video:

Lego and Linux

I am currently in the process of building some software on Linux for viewing and building Lego projects.
The first program I have been successful with is LDView, a very nice tool to visualize LDraw files.
I have it working on Slackware 13.0, both 32-bits and 64-bits. It is still a bit of a "hacked" installation, as it requires some fiddling with parameters and recompiling packages. But I plan to put a package on my site as soon as it is in a decent state and submit a SlackBuild for those who prefer to build their own version.

Here are two screen shots, one from the included model and another from my Lego Elevator: