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  • Discussion Forum

    Discussion forum

    How's everybody doing?

    Forum post

    Author
    Message

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2011-05-12 10:57:17.000
    I haven't seen any posts for a while, and I've been really bad about updating my blog.

    Work has been pretty busy, as I am putting my newfound newLISP programming talents to use, creating a prototype for a new product. Don't tell anyone, but I want to make this prototype so awesome that it will actually be a new product at one point.

    My wife has been pretty busy herself lately, working at a government office downtown and taking computer programming courses at BCIT. We're becoming quite the geek pair, the two of us. :)

    I've also been watching a ridiculous amount of professional Starcraft. There is a new North American league called the NASL that is on five nights a week, plus the GSL from Korea and various other small tournaments.

    How about you guys?

    OscarWilde
    Posts: 10080
    Posted on: 2011-05-12 17:58:29.000
    Doing good here. Am a bit upset Celtics and Lakers lost. Was hoping to see them in the finals. I’m hoping LeBron doesn’t win a ring this year, or I may have to swear of the NBA for the rest of my life.

    Also I’ve been doing a lot of Blender 3D design which is fun. Still learning how to use the app and I’m getting to a point I can do some fairly good basic design of household objects. There is a lot of patience required to do more intricate detailed design work. I know people who want point and click and use basic models which to modify to get a close approximation of what they want. However, I’m going the other way, putting in my blood sweat and tears to design from scratch every model in my project.

    Don’t know if I can inline images here, but here it is:

    First image is for a snowman competition on Blender Cookie. Everything here from scratch, based on the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where Calvin makes a snowman who contemplates the evolution of the snow man. I originally started to do the Calvin animation, but I was getting frustrated with some aspects of modeling the face and with the deadline nearing, I had to make do without Calvin. The moon is a UV Mapped image of a moon on a plane. I originally did have a spherical moon with the UV image wrapped around it, but unless I was gonna do some mad animation, I went with simple to lower render times.



    The next image is a concept design for a bar I often design for, it’s the bar logo (which is a diamond) and two glasses of cocktails in the background. I used LuxRender, a physically based ray training program. The image is a little dark and low in res, but the full sized one looks much better.



    The next image is a blender fluid test, this time a wine bottle pouring red wine into glass. I rendered a frame in the middle of the fluid animation:



    I have the fully rendered animation too, but it’s pretty large and I don’t know if it’s worth updating to my dropbox. Besides if anyone is interested in the power of Blenders fluid animation, they can just youtube for it. Pretty damn impressive for open source software.

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2011-05-12 21:35:30.000
    Neat stuff OW!

    I have to get back into 3D stuff in time to render my next novel's cover.. of course I have to finish writing it as well!

    AllYorBaseRBelong2Us
    Posts: 10468
    Posted on: 2011-05-14 14:55:37.000
    Been working a lot and so forth. Say, any reason there is a huge empty margin to the left of the screen? I have to take up the entire screen just to see a thread in IE8.

    Anyway, Will try to post-whore more.... :)

    Mord
    Posts: 8487
    Posted on: 2011-05-15 20:31:33.000
    Working a lot but slowing down a tad for the summer so I can get the boat out and spend some time on the lake. trying to get some renovations done on the house. Also rugby season is here again and with me still playing, two of our kids joining the program, and both myself and my wife coaching in the junior program there's very little time left during the week anymore. Also I'm in Toronto right now just for two days for some business stuff. The flight wasnt as bad as I thought.

    (blame the lack of grammar and punctuation on my iPad)

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2011-05-15 21:41:46.000
    [quote]
    Say, any reason there is a huge empty margin to the left of the screen? I have to take up the entire screen just to see a thread in IE8.
    [/quote]

    Usually there is a margin both to the left and the right, but OW’s awesome images stretched it out a bit (I may, at some point, put in auto-resizing of images, but it’s a low priority at the moment)

    Oh, and don’t use IE8. :)

    OscarWilde
    Posts: 10080
    Posted on: 2011-05-17 04:36:49.000
    Okay I re-sized the image to fit within 800px length. Hope that works better with in terms of balance between image size and thread layout.

    Ajar
    Posts: 2413
    Posted on: 2011-05-28 13:37:04.000
    I've been spending most of my weekends elsewhere. Went to NYC earlier this year, a couple of trips to MSP to visit my girlfriend, several drives down to Cincy to hang with friends... it's been good, if busy. New boss at work, but that seems to be going okay so far. My successes last year earned me a lot of credibility and have made my job quite a bit easier this year because my area of the process runs a lot more smoothly.

    Drum lessons continue apace. This month has been jazz drumming, which is really fun.

    I was actually happy to see both the Lakers and Celtics lose. Those two teams have way too many championships and finals appearances between them. I'd rather see the finals between two teams that rarely or never get there, which is true of both Miami and Dallas.

    Things are going great with the girlfriend. Only problem is that it's still long distance. It's tough to find a job in a different country, even in this case where I don't need visa sponsorship or even relocation assistance.

    jay
    Posts: 1696
    Posted on: 2011-06-03 10:51:48.000
    Well I am doing well. I have actually been spending a lot of time on my poetry over the last year and a half. I recently published the first 250 poems in hardcover format:
    http://www.lulu.com/product/hardcover/portly-poet-volume-1/15717792

    All of the poetry was originally published on my blog, "Portly Poet" and can be viewed for free however. Sometime this weekend I expect the Amazon Kindle version will become available.

    Thats pretty much it for me. Other than that its pretty much SSDD. :lol:

    fondue
    Posts: 5643
    Posted on: 2011-06-09 11:36:20.000
    Playing lots and lots and lots of Minecraft ...

    AllYorBaseRBelong2Us
    Posts: 10468
    Posted on: 2011-06-28 02:26:23.000
    I'm playing Port Royal II, fixing up the house, and musical instruments (for fun and profit!)

    :)

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2011-09-29 10:32:52.000
    [quote]
    Work has been pretty busy, as I am putting my newfound newLISP programming talents to use, creating a prototype for a new product. Don’t tell anyone, but I want to make this prototype so awesome that it will actually be a new product at one point.
    [/quote]

    Well, a few months later, this has actually happened. My little prototype has turned into a real product. It took a little longer than I thought (doesn't it always) and of course the managers asked for lots of changes, and the integration with the old stuff took a little while , and of course bugfixing...

    But it's now all ready to go! I'm a bit nervous but also excited!

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2012-02-16 13:47:29.000
    Okay, here's the update, my product is in production and has been for a little while, and has actual users! I actually got to talk to a bunch of them in a conference call the other day, which was very cool. They really liked the speed and ease-of-use!

    It was nice to hear that. :)

    Harby
    Posts: 6011
    Posted on: 2012-02-18 14:17:14.000
    Does this product interface easily with smam? Because if it doesn't, I could see that as a big limiting factor.

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2012-02-22 13:42:24.000
    The Smam interface is coming in the next version... :dance:

    AllYorBaseRBelong2Us
    Posts: 10468
    Posted on: 2012-02-24 04:42:18.000
    AYB has opened his first two ebay auctions....
    http://myworld.ebay.com/woodwinds_etcetera

    Getting rid of crap AYB doesn't need, for moneys for his latest obsession (which depending on your view might be even more lame than Magic the Gathering...)...or for other necessary things.

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2012-02-24 10:59:28.000
    What's your latest obsession? Obsessions can be fun. :)

    AllYorBaseRBelong2Us
    Posts: 10468
    Posted on: 2012-02-28 01:09:00.000


    a few weeks ago AYB was just sitting there, playing IL2 Forgotten battles and thinking (whilst shooting down Zekes with a Tomahawk) about how he would set up an airfield, complete with command structure, planes, vehicles, and pilots when GI Joe came roaring back into his imagination for the first time since 1988


    AYB Wasn't well moneyed as an adolescent and didn't have a whole lot of toys. Christmas and birthday was the only opportunity to get anything over $5 in the i980s for AYB, which seemed to have left a latent buying frenzy potential in the Infernal Lord of Smam.

    Now AYB is obsessed in buying GI Joe crap, have dropped about $400 on it so far. It is SOOOOO Cool!


    also, this is funny and seemed to really stoke the fire:
    http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-20-stupidest-gi-joe-vehicles-ever/

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2012-02-28 13:46:52.000
    Oh man, that "stupidest vehicles" page had me laughing until my sides hurt.

    AllYorBaseRBelong2Us
    Posts: 10468
    Posted on: 2012-02-28 23:12:09.000
    The internet truly is the best thing ever.

    :)

    Mord
    Posts: 8487
    Posted on: 2012-05-10 17:11:39.000
    "Imagine showing up for war one day, and they tell you to get in this thing."

    ROFL:lol:

    OscarWilde
    Posts: 10080
    Posted on: 2012-05-29 12:05:07.000
    What the heck is up with #8? How does it work even as a toy? I'd be pretty pissed as a kid getting that toy and find out the rotors kept banging into each other. And I don't recollect there being this many toys or vehicles in the GI Joe universe. I did own a few GI Joes. I had Snake Eyes which came with a wolf, iirc. And some other ones I don't remember anymore.

    Ajar
    Posts: 2413
    Posted on: 2012-06-08 11:58:53.000
    Woo! Fixed my OS X install! My hackintosh is back up and running. :D

    AllYorBaseRBelong2Us
    Posts: 10468
    Posted on: 2012-07-06 01:41:49.000
    AYB thought to himself, "What the heck" and cleared off his workbench to make room for something he hasn't touched since he picked it up for free.

    An Apple ][ E

    it works! but, what to do with it?

    Mord
    Posts: 8487
    Posted on: 2012-08-21 13:51:28.000
    Play Loderunner. We have one in our museum and work and that's the first thing we did on it.

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2012-08-23 11:27:56.000
    Dude, LODERUNNER! We played that game to death on the Apple ][e’s in high school (they were old and outdated even then.. I’m not THAT old!) I loved the level editor. We would make levels for each other and try to confound the other person with impossible goals. It was a blast.

    In fact I loved the game so much I made my own game, Balablox, that was kind of inspired by Loderunner:

    <img src=https://p.twimg.com/AzBjvF8CUAEbqOR.jpg>

    Mord
    Posts: 8487
    Posted on: 2012-08-24 11:19:07.000
    I love that you had to take a photo of that instead of just being able to put up a screenshot.

    Jeremy Reimer
    Posts: 9342
    Posted on: 2013-01-09 23:49:25.000
    Bumping, because I'm full of blogging and news and NOBODY IS RESPONDING AT ALL!


    Views: 9739