.:: Arctos' Corner ::.

While I've never been any good at design stuff, this is too much of a good find not to share. Inkscape From its home page: "An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format." What a good option for poor blokes like me too broke to afford those over-priced Adobe software without having to resort to illegal options. Very Simple Designs Choke full of wonderful freebies for the graphics designer, this site has lots of Inkscape tutorials, Photoshop brushes, vector illustrations and more, all for FREE! GIMP The GNU Image Manipulation Program. Just like what Inkscape does for folks too poor to afford Illustrator, GIMP is a wonderful option to those who can't afford Photoshop lots of photo editing and image authoring tools. I'll probably try to add in more from time to time as I come across them. If you're interested, you can check out my older post ...

For those whose harddisk (HDD) are dying or simply looking to upgrade to a bigger, faster drive, here's how to backup your hidden Sony recovery partition to the new drive. Firstly, plug both disks to a computer. For me, I plugged both disks to my desktop (with my original desktop HDD unplugged to avoid accidentally messing with it). Next, get a Linux live CD. There are a few variations available, most commonly Knoppix and Ubuntu . I'd go with Ubuntu for this example. Boot the live CD run the software Disk Utility in Ubuntu to check that both HDD are detected. Make note of the drive letters for each. For my case, as the original is the master drive, it is detected as sda and the new one is detected as sdb . Create a partition in the new HDD about the same size as the hidden partition (around 10GB). Fire up the Linux terminal and copy the hidden partition over. (Note that your partition number may vary. Use Disk Utility to check for the correct partition numbers.) sudo dd if=/d...

As all Sony VAIO owners know, Sony has stopped shipping working Recovery Disks with their VAIOs. Instead, they ship their VAIOs with a hidden recovery partition on the harddisk (HDD) and you are expected to burn your own recovery DVDs using the Sony VAIO wizard BEFORE you do something drastic to your laptop - like trashing the HDD with a messed up Linux installation for example, or simply having a dead HDD which renders the " press F10/F11/F12 key on bootup to access hidden recovery partition recovery " option impossible. Now when it comes time to recovery through the disks you created through the VAIO wizard, it'll be nice if those disks WORKED but nooooo... The SZ-series laptop I got had an outdated version of the Sony Update Center with an equally outdated version of the VAIO Recovery Center (which I didn't know at the time) so the recovery disks I burned, all 3 copies of them (6 DVDs in total), were faulty and unable to be used. Thankfully I had the sense to back...

This might be easy to some but it sure took me a long time. By default, if you dual-boot Ubuntu and any version of Windows (XP/Vista/7) by installing Ubuntu AFTER installing Windows, Grub2 will be installed on the master boot record (MBR) and the smart scripts in Ubuntu will ensure that your Windows installation is found and added to the menu. However, the default option is the latest Ubuntu you have on your machine, not Windows. If you follow the Ubuntu Community guide for Grub2 , you could either set the GRUB_DEFAULT option to the menu position of your Windows installation or the exact menu label. e.g. GRUB_DEFAULT=7 (if your Windows installation is 7th on the Grub list) or GRUB_DEFAULT="Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1" An alternative method as outlined by avid (in the comments) on Changing the Default Boot with Ubuntu 9.10 GRUB 2 is to rename one file in /etc/grub.d/ and Windows will be the first listed option in the Grub menu - which is also the default option. In his...

This guy makes me want to go back to my 4 MP Kodak point & shoot to refine my eyes and skills again: Alex Majoli points and shoots

Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived: Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others including Love. One day it was announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all prepared their boats and left. Love wanted to persevere until the last possible moment. When the island was almost sinking, Love decided to ask for help. Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said, "Richness, can you take me with you?" Richness answered, "No, I can't. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is no place here for you." Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel, "Vanity, please help me!" "I can't help you Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat." Vanity answered. Sadness was close by so Love asked for help, "Sadness, let me go with you." "Oh.... Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself!" Happiness passed by Love too, but ...

Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves. ~ Helen Keller ~ Just had a quarrel with someone over what they perceived, and what I (we) perceived. Merely asking "why are you angry?" to someone who happened to look as though they are angry can have severe repercussions, especially if they think you are out to make them look bad due to the circumstances in which the question was placed. Does that mean that the question was wrong, or that it should not have been asked? I'd like to think not, for it is important, for us as humans, to communicate with one another. A simple question, a reaching out gesture, could mean the difference between life and death for some (inspirational story here ). The only issue perhaps, is that I could have worded it better, such as "are you angr...