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24.06.25

We blogged for Amiri Construction at Bartlett Arboretum in Reading today.

Afterwards we went to M&S in Camberley to buy lunch afterwards!

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23.06.25

Before our second visit to see the movie How To Train your Dragon at the Reel, we went for a walk at Frensham, Shortfield Common behind the Hollowdene recreation ground.

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23.06.25

Frensham, Shortfield Common walk. Part 2.

We walked next to the River Wey. The vegetation has grown up around the river since our last visit and there were many dried up areas of grass due to the heat.

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23.06.25

Frensham, Shortfield Common walk. Part 3.

Everything looking very pretty and green.

A hidden gem!

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23.06.25

After lunch at Frensham, we went into Farnham.

We parked in the Sainsbury's car park and headed through to Brightwells and into the Reel Cinema to see Universal and Dreamwork's live action How To Train Your Dragon (2025).

The live action adapts the original animated 2010 classic of the same name, which in turn is based on the 2003 book by Cressida Cowell.

It is directed by Dean DeBlois.

See our previous visit here:

https://www.tumblr.com/bjsmall/786003332706844672/090625-we-went-into-the-reel-cinema-and-went?source=share

As we got there a bit early, we waited in the lounge as there was a meeting in the theatre. We then walked into screen 4 once it was ready.

Coming to watch the live action again gave us even more to catch up on from the first time watching the movie here.

Again, a brilliant movie and a fantastic second visit to the Reel Cinema. Best remake of a classic movie, and one of the best of the year so far!

Here is a list of some of the characters and their actors:

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III - Mason Thames

Astrid Hofferson - Nico Parker

Gerard Butler - Stoick the Vast

Nick Frost - Gobber the Belch

Gabriel Howell - Snotlout Jorgenson

Fishlegs Ingerman - Julian Dennison

Ruffnut Thorston - Bronwyn James

Tuffnut Thorston - Harry Trevaldwyn

A full list of cast & crew members can be found here:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26743210/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cst_sm

Official site:

https://www.welcometoberk.com/about-the-movie/

DreamWorks site:

https://www.dreamworks.com/movies/how-to-train-your-dragon-2025#introduction

Blog post featuring teasers, posters, links to my animation reviews and book information:

https://www.tumblr.com/bjsmall/771419356962963456/311224-i-read-my-new-book-how-to-train-your?source=share

Explore the interactive map of Berk to see information on the character actors, dragon species, locations and other material for the movie.

See video below about Toothless the Night Fury:

Amazing!

🐉🐉🐉🐉

Can't wait for the live action adaptation of the second movie in 2027!

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23.06.25

After seeing How To Train Your Dragon, we had stir-fry chicken and noodles with Blue Dragon sauce later for supper!

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21.06.25

We watched Dreamwork's How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) today.

A brilliant and emotional final to the HTTYD franchise!

See my review below:

https://www.tumblr.com/bjsmall/640240815557525504/030121-we-watched-how-to-train-your-dragon?source=share

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Using Distrosea, I had a look at Rocky Linux 9.

Rocky Linux is a Linux distro designed for the VFX industry. It serves as a drop in replacement for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Rocky Linux website:

https://rockylinux.org/

Here is a example of an animation studio that uses the distribution.

DreamWorks' migrated their workstations and servers from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Rocky Linux 9 in 2023 and completed the rollout the following year.

DreamWorks Animation website:

https://www.dreamworks.com/about

About RHEL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux

About Rocky Linux:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Linux

Here are some reasons DreamWorks Animation moved from Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

- Red Hat dropped the CentOS Linux operating system in 2020. They ended support for version 7 in 2024. 

CentOS was an downstream version of Red Hats main operating system without its branding and support. Rocky Linux fills this void left by CentOS.

DreamWorks used CentOS alongside Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Both their Workstations and server set-ups were migrated to Rocky.

- Red Hat further restricted access to its source code in their Enterprise focused operating system.

- Rocky Linux has become a very popular open source operating system for the VFX industry and features many modern advancements and desktop environment choices such as GNOME, KDE, XFCE, MATE and Cinnamon.

- Like all Red Hat based builds of Linux, Rocky Linux uses the DNF (Dandified Yellow Dog Updater) extension to manage application installations via the Dnfdragora package manager. However it also uses the universal Flatpak extension to install applications from the GNOME software centre.

- DreamWorks animation pipeline uses their recently opened sourced Moon-Ray renderer, which is built on Rocky Linux. The source code is available on GitHub.

The tool supports Linux and Mac OS. Here is a link to the Open Moon Ray installation and compiling on Rocky:

https://docs.openmoonray.org/getting-started/installation/building-moonray/general_build/

It features a set of commands for installing various graphics libraries (for the render tool and Houdini, a character effects development tool), as well as toolsets which can be applied to programs such as Blender.

There are many YouTube videos about the open sourcing of Moon-Ray itself and some showcases of it working.

Rocky Linux is a downstream, complete binary-compatible release using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system source code.

Unlike RHEL, Rocky is completely free to use. It is released under the BSD 3-Clause license, which allows free use, modification, and distribution. 

There are no licensing or subscription fees associated. RHEL is a commercial product from Red Hat and requires a subscription license to use.

Rocky's selection of desktop environments can be installed independently in their own disk image file.

Each one can also be tested on a live USB before installation.

Users can also install their desktop environments of choice using the command line.

When running the system on a server (which is the common way of using Linux systems) it will just have the command line interface when a monitor is plugged in. 

Distrosea:

https://distrosea.com/

The latest build is Rocky Linux 10, released in June 2025. The version available to test on Distrosea is 9.

I tried GNOME, MATE, XFCE and KDE.

As this MATE desktop edition didn't come with either Dnfdragora or GNOME Software, I tried installing Blender (an open source animation tool) using the 'sudo dnf install blender' command in the terminal.

However, due to the graphics limitation of the VM, the program couldn't launch.

To install software graphically, you can use GNOME Software Centre that comes on GNOME. This can be used on other desktop environments as well.

A good Linux distribution if you are using graphics heavy applications and need a robust enterprise grade operating system without the cost!

Another Linux distro that is similar is Alma Linux, another enterprise focused operating system that uses the same foundations as CentOS.

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20.06.25

We started today by visiting the Guildford Road industrial estate.

Homebase has hoarding boards around it. It will be transformed into a M&S food store. We went into Pets at Home.

Hamsters!

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20.06.25

We went into the town of Farnham today.

We parked in Riverside and walked down towards brightwells.

Work is continuing with the removal of the construction bridge in Borelli walk.

Brightwells Yard looking great!

We headed towards Gostrey Meadows, where the new playground is taking shape. The wildflower meadow looks fantastic!

We headed towards Elphick's past St. Andrews' Church.

I bough this small Schiech frog whilst we were in here. It was nice and cool in Elphick's.

A new Mini Cooper driving past the old Woolmead site.

Afterwards we went to get our tickets to rewatch the new live action How To Train Your Dragon (2025).

We will be seeing it on Monday, can't wait!

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20.06.25

After lunch, we went for a walk around Farnham Park.

We met Heather and her dog Alfie in the park. Here he is!

In the distance we could see the piling machine on the Deer Park site near the Six Bells.

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20.06.25

Farnham Park walk. Part 2.

Dappled light and an even closer view of the piling machine!

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20.06.25

Farnham Park walk. Part 3.

A walk back through the Beech green Avenue!

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19.09.25

Dad and I had some spicy rice (Peri Peri and Mexican) with mackerel for supper. It was delicious!

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18.06.25

Another sunny day!

Pictures down the bottom of the garden near the wildlife pond and bug hotel.

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17.06.25

Here is Blossom the sleeping dragon bathing in the sun!

I got him from the Frensham garden centre.

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17.06.25

Pictures in the garden on a sunny day!