I have mentioned previously that it was somewhat difficult getting back into the swing of blogging, and no doubt some are wondering if this past week or two have been a relapse of sorts.

Thank goodness for puppy photos!

Anyway, I have not been posting much lately (or visiting many other blogs or even responding to many comments in the past couple days) as I have been busy. Work-related busy. Which is good, but it always seems to come when I have a good couple posts in mind, and then I am unable to complete (or start!) them.

So, you may be seeing more puppy photos for the next few days. I have a big work project to complete and I need to get it done ASAP. And, there are also some projects to do around the house, so my blogging time will be limited. I’ll have to stock up on puppy photos while she’s still young.

Little Too, the Chihuahua puppy, is a little over 3 months old, born on January 15th, to answer Pete’s question, which reminds me that I have puppy photos I took with my camera phone, which may make me eligible for fame.

It’s also good that Michelle has a short attention span, as just Tuesday morning I had an idea for a short animation flick, which would probably be under a minute long, which may be too long for her, but by the time I’m done it may be that the credits take longer than the actual animation. The trick, of course, is finding the time to actually do it…

And, I’ve not forgotten about Lemurian Dawn just yet either, which ought to make Mike at least somewhat happy. Of course, Pete would probably just be happy if I were to finish “Darnella,” which was the story that made Joanne shout “YES” although I’m not entirely sure what the “YES” was for.

And, why does it always seem things happen when I’m not keeping up with blogs? Don’t read blogs for a few days, and then you come back and find out things have changed, like, for example, Doug is moving. Not that it matters blogwise, as there is no indication (unless there was another post I missed) that he’s quitting blogging. I’m still ahead of him in Technorati, but he’s gaining on me. Unfortunately it’s because my ranking has gone down the toilet from a high of almost 200.

Good thing that Joanne switched domains and hasn’t been blogging much, or she’d probably be trouncing me in Technorati by now.

By the way, don’t forget to check out the Brain Broadcasting blog, which will be my little shout-out for his inclusion of me in his Read and Comment Day 2008.

And, that reminds me I still have memes to catch up with. Oh, and 150+ links to sites of interest that I need to share.

I need to win the lottery so I can hire a personal assistant…

But, I don’t play the lottery because it seems like a waste of a buck. Maybe I should bring back that Buy Me a Soda plugin…

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On this Tuesday Tech Corner–ooooh, look, puppy!

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In lieu of Mundane Monday—hey, look, puppy!

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Click on the image for the full-size view.

Curiously, my first YouTube video was 7 seconds long. The second was 6 seconds. And the third is 5 seconds. At this rate, pretty soon I’ll just be posting single frames…

Anyway, so today (and yesterday) I worked on a new space ship design. Picked up some tips from another modeler on my last design, so figured I’d start from scratch and see what I could do.

As well as modeling the ship (which is fairly basic, except for the addition of a Docking Bay door, which none of my previous models have had), I also did the textures (what 3D modelers call what you would normally identify as the “paint job”) and the displacement map, which gives the tiled appearance on the ship. Mind you, I spent more time on the texture map than on the displacement map. I hope to do better tiling in the future.

I think I am finally getting the hang of 3D modeling. Not quite ready to take on anything too elaborate just yet, but I feel that I am finally getting into the swing of creating things. Still a lot to learn, but I feel that I am making some progress.

Oh, the video? Here:

I still need to learn the best format to submit to YouTube to get a good quality image. If I render as a QuickTime movie with no compression, I get a high quality movie that YouTube rejects. If I render with MPEG-4 compression (tried 90 KBytes/sec and 192 KBytes/sec) and I get a low quality image (like you see) that YouTube takes, but it looks bad. Video encoding will be another day’s lesson.

The flight path did not turn out as I had hoped. While I did focus the camera on the ship, in the hopes of creating an effect where you stick with the ship but you can tell that it’s flying through space, the flight path was supposed to appear as though it was going straight ahead, with some banking. But, it just appears to wobble in space.

And, the flame exhaust isn’t really animated either. It moves, but the flames don’t have any real motion. That’ll be a future learning experience too.

I am most proud of the Docking Bay door on this one. It could still do with more detail, but it is more detail than I have had on my previous models. This was relatively easy. Since I was creating a model from scratch, I could simply add the door where ever it was easy to do. I also chose a place that was a reasonable place to have one. But, if I were trying to recreate a specific ship design, it would be more difficult, as determining a precision location is going to be harder than just sticking it where it is convenient. You know?

I also think the bridge (the “glass” bubble on top) turned out fairly well. That was more due to the lighting than the ship design.

Enough play for now. I’ve got to get some work things done now…

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I’m thinking that perhaps I should have been a weatherman or a politician, because those must be pretty stress-free jobs. After all, you can be wrong with alarming regularity and still keep your job.

In fact, it’s usually the off-work things that cause you to lose your job. Get involved in a scandal of some sort, and you’re probably toast. But, you can wrongly predict the weather day after day, and, apparently so long as you’re able to explain why you were wrong (weather patterns shifted, El Niño, a dozen Super Doppler radar systems spread across the region just aren’t enough, etc.), they’ll keep putting you on-screen day after day after day. Or, you can pass mind-numbingly stupid legislation time after time, and still keep your job just so long as you can argue with a straight face that it was “for the children.”

Odd that incompetence isn’t a reason to lose your job.

And, for a third easy job, how about being a consumer reporter? This has got to be the easiest job in the world. Just subscribe to Consumer Reports magazine, and recycle their reports to create your TV bit. Not enough reports in the magazine to fill your schedule? No problem. Just point out the obvious and hype it up like you’re really rolling up your sleeves and getting out there and investigating this stuff.

Here’s an example from this past week. One of the local consumer reporters had a story on how to save money on your repair bill. His advice? Fix it yourself. Don’t know how? Look it up on Google! Wow! Probably took more time to do the promos than it did to research the story.

If sloth and general incompetence aren’t enough to cause you to lose your job, then your job probably isn’t very important. On the other hand, these jobs typically pay reasonably well, so if an easy day at work is your thing, perhaps you might want to look at a career change into something that’s not so much of a mental challenge.

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Photo Quality: Not so good.

Pose: Priceless.

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I thought my last video, “Buzzing Around the Earth,” was a little too fast, although in retrospect, perhaps it wasn’t after all, especially if you’re not planning on stopping for a visit and just trying to get through the neighborhood as quickly as you can.

So, anyway, this new animation clip is much slower. And, oops! I did it again! I rendered the animation at a lower resolution than what YouTube displays. I must remember to change that in the future!

Without further ado, here it is:

I did create the whole thing this evening, from building the model to rendering the animation. I’m guessing maybe about two or two and a half hours were spent on it. I started with creating a rocket, which ended up looking something like a booster rocket. So, then I duplicated my completed rocket, bridged them together, extended the bridge and then added the spherical head. And, that gives it a Star Treky look, which wasn’t what I was going for at all.

I was just playing around with the modeling software. It’s been a while since I’ve used it, so I had to brush up on it. Not that I was too advanced with it anyway, but you still manage to forget what little you did know! I skimmed through the manual the other night, and read up on a feature I hadn’t tried before, so I gave that a go and have a better idea now how and when to use it!

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Yesterday’s eMail debacle has been resolved, for now.

The server was so overwhelmed by spam that it affected even outgoing mail. Some mail was stuck in the outgoing box for about a week.

Thanks, spammers! Much appreciated that your efforts to sell me junk I’m not going to buy from you continually interfere with the normal operations of my mail server.

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So, today I discover that people are apparently not receiving my eMails. As near as I can tell, the last successful eMail I sent out was on the 15th. Seemingly, from the 16th on, outgoing eMail just disappears into the ethers.

No bounces. No failure notices. Nothing. On my end, every indication is that everything was sent successfully.

But, the eMail never reaches its destination. Even if I try sending to myself or my alternate eMail addresses: nothing.

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For today’s Mundane Monday, we have a photo of a pile of logs.

You see, dear future reader, back in the early 21st century, we had these (often) giant plants around which we called “trees.” You may have read about them in your history books.

We grew them for decoration as well as their functionality. Trees were raised and harvested for lumber and paper and such things. No doubt your history books tell you about these things, and how the big bad paper companies would cut down trees heartlessly to make paper pulp out of them. I’m sure they don’t mention the paper companies also planted new trees to replace them. Few people in our time get upset when a farmer plants carrots and harvests them come fall. But, I suppose if carrots grew fifty foot tall, some people would raise a stink about them being cut down, even if they were replanted the following season.

At any rate, sometimes we cut down trees and chopped them into logs for firewood. No doubt in the future such things were banned to cut down on carbon emissions to fight global warming. And, no doubt your ancestors and our progeny were utterly surprised when they all froze to death in the upcoming ice age. I’m sure that Al Gore argued that the ice age was caused by global warming.

Anyway, the next time you’re out hunting polar bears and penguins for food, remember the trees that once populated the frozen tundra that you call “Florida.” Maybe you can find some timber buried beneath the snow. Perhaps you could dig them up and burn them for fuel and heat.

Unless, of course, Al Gore XL has made a career out of warning how global warming might negatively impact the icy sphere you call “Earth.” Above freezing temperatures will only result in the resurgence of weeds and parasites. That’s the funny thing about politicians. No matter how good things are, or how bad things are, they’ll always find a way to run around warning you about some pending disaster bound to happen if you don’t listen to them, send them money, etc.

Maybe one day, dear future reader, you’ll unearth an incandescent light bulb. Then, you can whack Al Gore XL over the head with it. That would be poetic justice.

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