Sneak Preview Cinnamon Archangel-12 theme

Sneak Preview of latest Cinnamon Original Theme:
Archangel-12.

I hope to have it released within a week. Possibly sooner.

Interesting name choice, gets me thinking.

I love the look style!

Loving the downlighters on the top border - I am dying to find out what lies behind the doors in the left pane!

Swarfendor437 wrote:Loving the downlighters on the top border - I am dying to find out what lies behind the doors in the left pane!

The lighting is on the left side of the content-view, as well.

star treker wrote:Interesting name choice, gets me thinking.

The original inspiration, as you know, was "alien". I then started thinking sideways about Area-51, which exists next to area-50 and area-52.
I decided to veer toward a theme that "hints" or "suggests" but leaves any interpretation to the viewer, instead of saying something outright. However, there is a bit of the hitch about the Skunks Works at Groom Lake.
So, if you look at the "Plain Text Icon," it may look a little odd. As if the icon for text on a page is a code or something.

That is because there is. I have hidden four hints to breaking it within the theme. One is in the Metacity. One is within the icons. The other is... Well, maybe it is behind that door Swarfendor wondered about. The first hint is in the theme name, of course.

Ahhhhh!



Very quick find in Waterfox and DuckDuckGo!

Ahhh yes, the SR-71 Blackbird. Huge fricking plane, engine design is scramjet, louder then all hell, requires ear plugs, and ear muffs over those, to be anywhere near that thing when its running. It has a top speed of Mach 3, but can attain a bit higher at 80,000 feet above sea level, due to the thinner atmosphere. But the plane design was abandoned for a reason, and thats because you know the Airforce has a plane that can go much faster, and is much smaller, less drag co-effecient, and less weight, and hopefully more stealthy.

The Blackbird is one of my favorite planes actually, but even I got to admit the thing is a dinosaur! But if you heard this thing getting close to you in the night, you would fear it, cause like I said, that scramjet engine, is like the sound of hell opening up, ready to swallow you up whole. Beautiful plane, despite it being antiquated today. He should name his theme Blackbird, obviously.

star treker wrote:Ahhh yes, the SR-71 Blackbird. Huge fricking plane, engine design is scramjet, louder then all hell, requires ear plugs, and ear muffs over those, to be anywhere near that thing when its running. It has a top speed of Mach 3, but can attain a bit higher at 80,000 feet above sea level, due to the thinner atmosphere. But the plane design was abandoned for a reason, and thats because you know the Airforce has a plane that can go much faster, and is much smaller, less drag co-effecient, and less weight, and hopefully more stealthy.

The Blackbird is one of my favorite planes actually, but even I got to admit the thing is a dinosaur! But if you heard this thing getting close to you in the night, you would fear it, cause like I said, that scramjet engine, is like the sound of hell opening up, ready to swallow you up whole. Beautiful plane, despite it being antiquated today. He should name his theme Blackbird, obviously.

Actually, the Archangel-12 was the Precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird.

Also, there is already a theme named Blackbird.

I must point out, however, that the theme name is suggestive and a hint... as well as sounding good. The imagery of the theme is more of the Facilities used, than of the plane, itself.
In the image of the Text Icon above, that symbol near the bottom is the letter "Lambda", (not a letter "A.")
Which means if you want to break the code, you'll need to brush up on your math skills (and knowing your chemistry may help, too. No more hints!)

Within about a week, I said... I underestimate myself...

Here it is:
https://www.pling.com/p/1405519/

Absolutely beautiful theme, I really love the Aliens look to it. And just as SWARF said, I too like the lighting job on it. The icons are beautiful as well, you do good work, and it shows.

From what I understand, your theme is for Cinnamon and Mint users though, so I am guessing I can't install and use it on my setup. If I remember correctly, mine is XFCE 4.12 on Zorin OS 12, with a Whisker Menu version I can't remember.

star treker wrote:Absolutely beautiful theme, I really love the Aliens look to it. And just as SWARF said, I too like the lighting job on it. The icons are beautiful as well, you do good work, and it shows.

From what I understand, your theme is for Cinnamon and Mint users though, so I am guessing I can't install and use it on my setup. If I remember correctly, mine is XFCE 4.12 on Zorin OS 12, with a Whisker Menu version I can't remember.

I think your whisker version is 1.5.1
Yes, it should work on XFCE 4.12, https://www.pling.com/p/1405528/
but the Whisker theme portion will not- however I can make a gtkrc-2.0 file for it.
On the gtk2, the Menubar menu backgrounds will hide, which is different from the gtk3 version: i changed them to always be present and highlight when used in order to create a new effect as well as give the illusion of steel plating.

I just looked it up, and I can now confirm that my Whisker menu version is indeed 1.51. I am going to that link to download and see if I can get that theme running on my setup. If you find the time, I of course will appreciate your modification file for the Whisker menu. Its been awhile since I messed around with theaming my OS, I've been using Azenis for quite some time now. But I just really like the way your new theme looks, so I want to use it.

Aravisian wrote:

star treker wrote:Ahhh yes, the SR-71 Blackbird. Huge fricking plane, engine design is scramjet, louder then all hell, requires ear plugs, and ear muffs over those, to be anywhere near that thing when its running. It has a top speed of Mach 3, but can attain a bit higher at 80,000 feet above sea level, due to the thinner atmosphere. But the plane design was abandoned for a reason, and thats because you know the Airforce has a plane that can go much faster, and is much smaller, less drag co-effecient, and less weight, and hopefully more stealthy.

The Blackbird is one of my favorite planes actually, but even I got to admit the thing is a dinosaur! But if you heard this thing getting close to you in the night, you would fear it, cause like I said, that scramjet engine, is like the sound of hell opening up, ready to swallow you up whole. Beautiful plane, despite it being antiquated today. He should name his theme Blackbird, obviously.

Actually, the Archangel-12 was the Precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird.

Also, there is already a theme named Blackbird.

I must point out, however, that the theme name is suggestive and a hint... as well as sounding good. The imagery of the theme is more of the Facilities used, than of the plane, itself.
In the image of the Text Icon above, that symbol near the bottom is the letter "Lambda", (not a letter "A.")
Which means if you want to break the code, you'll need to brush up on your math skills (and knowing your chemistry may help, too. No more hints!)

Hi Aravisian,

1. I never studied higher maths - I attended a Secondary/Comprehensive School because I failed my 11+
2. i never did Chemistry - only one girl in our final year did Chemistry and she had to get the school to buy in a teacher for her extra-mural chemistry studies as our school only covered Physics and Biology and General Science. The new Headteacher (complete jerk) who took over when it became a Comprehensive ceased my Office Practice as in his narrow-minded wisdom he could not see the difference between Officce Practice and Typewriting - if he had attended both lessons as I had done he would have learned otherwise! So it was too far into the school year for me to take up Shorthand as he made his decision 6 weeks into the Autumnt term! So Physics appealed to me... but, the class teacher had no control of the class and when I was in another lesson, the noise they were making could be heard across the quadrangle - a glassed quadrangle to boot in the Science Block. So to replace Office Practice I ended up having two lots of General Science which meant what I learned the day before was repeated the day after - and the young teacher was so impressed with my work he then passed it round the class to copy what I had written - so no it's never going to happen for me - just like I can't be bothered to CSS or html or C++ - I will leave that to more capable hands!

Just been to pling.com - funny how watching Hitman 47 only the other day is what came to mind when I saw the turbine wallpaper John Smith: "She missed!" Agent 47: "No she didn't" - the glass broke and two security guards get shredded in the Turbine test rig!

Swarfendor437 wrote:Hi Aravisian,

1. I never studied higher maths - I attended a Secondary/Comprehensive School because I failed my 11+
2. i never did Chemistry - only one girl in our final year did Chemistry and she had to get the school to buy in a teacher for her extra-mural chemistry studies as our school only covered Physics and Biology and General Science. The new Headteacher (complete jerk) who took over when it became a Comprehensive ceased my Office Practice as in his narrow-minded wisdom he could not see the difference between Officce Practice and Typewriting - if he had attended both lessons as I had done he would have learned otherwise! So it was too far into the school year for me to take up Shorthand as he made his decision 6 weeks into the Autumnt term! So Physics appealed to me... but, the class teacher had no control of the class and when I was in another lesson, the noise they were making could be heard across the quadrangle - a glassed quadrangle to boot in the Science Block. So to replace Office Practice I ended up having two lots of General Science which meant what I learned the day before was repeated the day after - and the young teacher was so impressed with my work he then passed it round the class to copy what I had written - so no it's never going to happen for me - just like I can't be bothered to CSS or html or C++ - I will leave that to more capable hands!

Yes, I think I may have given the wrong impression. The code is just there for fun.
I doubt, to be honest, that anyone will break it and if someone does, there is a good chance they will not say anything so I will not know about it. It's like doing a crossword in the Paper; a person undertakes it because they saw a challenge and like challenges.
That being said- It IS a challenge and no minor one, either. It will not be easy to break. I do not want to say too much as that would be more hints... But, assuming that few people that download the theme will be accessing this particular thread: I will extend this much:
-Many steps are required to create a cipher.
-Knowledge of engineering, chemistry and astronomy are needed, in order to know the mathematical relationships between principles and substances in order to determine the next step, from one to the next, to create the cipher.
-Once the cipher is made, several more steps are required to figure out the proper syntax for the lines on the icon to be applied to the cipher.
Each step is a puzzle, some are difficult and tedious and some are no-brainers that a person would probably over-think instead of assuming the Simple Solution.
Once that is done, that can be translated into a 256x256 image that can be set to 30% to 50% opacity and applied as an overlay to the 256px Icon to...

I say too much.

No you said plenty!

Translation= My knowledge level and skills are bellow the minimum requirements, my being needs an upgrade to a Threadripper CPU, 128GB of RAM, and a 2080TI GPU.

I'm good at the things that I know and do, but solving that puzzle, way out of my league. But, if someone does manage to solve the puzzle, I say they are required to let everybody know, and then secure their trophy, which hopefully is a years supply of chocolate, or something. HEHE

Anyways, I am running on the theme right now. Had to do the GTK3-NOCSD deal, so that the titlebar borders would be the same systemwide. So far thats working, and most of the theme is working as well.

Apparently, due to the fact that I am not running on Zorin OS 15, is the reason why I am missing the file manager background that has that door. No freaking way am I upgrading my OS unless it totally dies like a bad relationship.

Also, my Whisker menu uses its own separate theme deal, originally, Aravisian had to provide me the theme file to decorate it, and it got a sexy decoration indeed. But Azenis kind of meshes well with Archangel, but not 100%.

star treker wrote:But, if someone does manage to solve the puzzle, I say they are required to let everybody know, and then secure their trophy, which hopefully is a years supply of chocolate, or something. HEHE

No prizes, other than bragging rights to pull it off.
Throwing a code out on the web that is a major challenge is something that I have wanted to do for a very long time. I originally planned to plant one in AzenisEX. But it was not really appropriate and seemed a bit silly.
This time, given the background of Archangel-12, it seemed to fit. So I dredged up the work I had done on the idea over the past year and updated it to fit in with the theme. Bucket list item marked off.
But I predict that zero people will actually go for it. I think pretty much everyone will chuckle at the idea- and that is about it.

star treker wrote:Anyways, I am running on the theme right now. Had to do the GTK3-NOCSD deal, so that the titlebar borders would be the same systemwide. So far thats working, and most of the theme is working as well.

Apparently, due to the fact that I am not running on Zorin OS 15, is the reason why I am missing the file manager background that has that door. No freaking way am I upgrading my OS unless it totally dies like a bad relationship.

Your menu separators are bad, too, on the gtk3 apps. The gtk.css is for above 3.22 and you are running on 3.18. So there's bugs all over the place.

Hi Aravisian - here are my put together desktop with Walls from Enlightenment PCLinuxOS theme and Wallpapers by Linux Freack who made fantabulous wallpapers for Ultimate Edition Oz-Diamond II-B (based off Ubuntu 13.10 - probably the most beautiful fork of Ubuntu ever made as an OS The hardest Diamond - B-II):

Probably my all-time favourite wallpaper:

Swarfendor437 wrote:Probably my all-time favourite wallpaper:

Screenshot_20200723_224253.jpeg

Hey, isn't that the thing that killed Captain Kirk?

Very beautiful wallpapers SWARF indeed. And lucky you, clearly Archangel-12 is dominating your desktop better then mine!

Well, the Nexes didn't really kill Captain Kirk, everybody thought he was dead. The Nexes put him in a different reality, an artificial one if you will. He was presumed dead, until Captain Picard, 70-years later, discovered Captain Kirk. In the Nexes, time has no meaning, so Kirk was not aware of how many years had passed. After Picard helped him come to terms with the reality of the situation, he got him to agree to leave the Nexes, in the pursuit, of stopping a mad man from taking innocent lives.

If you asked me, Star Trek Generations, was one of the most interesting stories thus far in all of Star Trek. It sparks philosophical discussion in regards to the Nexes, even The Matrix did the same thing as well in their movies. At the end of the day, if you know that there was a place you could go, where you couldn't die, you could live forever, and that place would morph itself to any reality that you wish it to be, wouldn't you want that? And additionally, if you had that, would you ever give it up?

star treker wrote:Very beautiful wallpapers SWARF indeed. And lucky you, clearly Archangel-12 is dominating your desktop better then mine!

Trekker, give me a bit of time, I will see about coding a gtk3.18 Archangel-12.

star treker wrote:Well, the Nexes didn't really kill Captain Kirk

Fine. Soran did. Kirk died in the thing, you nitpicking hippy.

star treker wrote: if you know that there was a place you could go, where you couldn't die, you could live forever, and that place would morph itself to any reality that you wish it to be, wouldn't you want that? And additionally, if you had that, would you ever give it up?

Nope.

When I was (a lot younger) I would always go round and watch the original James Tiberias Kirk TV Series. I think I only ever saw the one Star Trek Movie in the Cinema - it was interesting as it reflected what was happening in the world at the time. The Klingon Empires (Russia) was bankrupt (of ideas?) - bearing in mind the whole ethos of Star Trek is there is no longer a need for an economy - we were all using part of ourselves zero-point energy. I too would not want to live forever but would love to see a revolution against the monetary system so we could concentrate on what our talents are, develop those and leave a valuable legacy for future generations, not just Star Trek next generation. Our current situation is a bit like Logan's run - everything is hunkey dorey until reality hits - Apple and Nike using concentration camp Uighur's in the production of their high end c**p products, South American mafia gangs working for Automotive manufacturers, forcing native peoples to collect charcoal to convert to pig iron with male workers kept apart from their families and no PPE provided, Phillipinos dangerously and illegally mining rare minerals for Apple, workers dying from working 12 hour solid shifts dying at their Nike machines. Us being slaves to the system we have accepted as the 'normal'.

https://mindinabox.bandcamp.com/track/the-fall

https://youtu.be/cpckthij5GM

You know, I always thought Kirk's middle name was fascinating to me. Tiberias is so obviously a Roman's name. Turns out, Tiberias is a city on the western shore of Galilee in Israel, that was named after the second Roman empire.

A good reason not to have eternal life in this world - watch "The Old Guard" on Netflix - first part of a trilogy.

Well here is one of my earlier creations I made for Ultimate Edition 2.9 - I called it "UltimatE Dark Materials":

Swarfendor437 wrote:Well here is one of my earlier creations I made for Ultimate Edition 2.9 - I called it "UltimatE Dark Materials":

Screenshot_20200726_202300.jpeg

SWARF!

I think I know what your inspiration was for the background. It looks a lot like what you would see on a biker gangs cut. (leather jacket with gang insignia) Looks pretty good.

Since you know what direction the Zorin dev team is going for Zorin OS 16, you should do one that says...

Zorin OS 16, Powered By ARM

The inspiration was actually R. Geiger's 'Alien' - the swirl is actually the moon I took on long exposure and moved the camera around then I modified in GIMP and possibly Dark Table - if truth be told I can't remember how I made it but I used 'extrusion' if my memory serves me right at all!