Dinner Saturday

We stopped around eighteen hundred tonight. We're eating at Cracker Barrel, one of my favorite resturants. We are a little more than halfway to our hotelthat we are planning to slep at tomorrow. (Yes, that's how late we're getting in)! ETA is past 1:00. My blog postlooks a litle like an old telegram, text. stop, text. stop, etc. The reason is that I am typind on a Kindle keyboard which leaves much to be desired...

I am glad to be able to post at all though.

We started around 11:00 this morning, and right now, before dinner we still have two hundred and fifty mils to go. It's been/going to be a long(er) day.

New Project!

As if I don't have enough projects already, I had to go and start another one (again). This time though, it's something I've wanted to do for a long time. In fact, I think it's something that I think almost everyone has wanted to do at some point in their life: film a movie! I've wanted to film a movie for a long time now, as have a number of friends that I know. I finally gave up waiting for a good script or idea to come along and made a script myself. (actually it's still in the works) I have also been learning how to use Blender, and all in all I think that at this point it will be possible to get some good looking videos together. I also got an audio recorder relatively recently, and as good audio is a very important part for me, that would have been a killer. Right now there will be two main actors, (one of them me), and it looks like someone will have to play two parts. Things are coming along nicely though, and other than some scheduling issues, it's looking promising. The main purpose of the movie is for me and two friends who are working on it too to improve our skills. (other than just making a movie for the sake of making a movie, after all, it's a lot of fun)

For more information and updates here's the production blog:
http://blenderproject26.blogspot.com/

KJ4BXT K

IBMA

This really looks like a lot of fun:



World of Bluegrass from IBMA on Vimeo.
World of Bluegrass is an annual event like no other: seven days of education, networking, showcasing, jamming and commerce featuring the biggest names in the business. Our film takes you on a fast-paced ride through the week. If you haven't come to World of Bluegrass, check it out and make plans to visit Nashville in the fall of 2009.

Harper's Ferry

Well, I misplaced my camera for a while, and hadn't downloaded it's photos for a long time, so that's why these photos are only now being uploaded. We went for an all-day hike on the Appalachian trail earlier this year. Captions are for the photo above the text.

Along the river on the way there 

 More of the same. I think I need to clean my lens.

 The other side?

Some perspective 

 Part of the canal trail that we hiked on some.

Mist / fog 

Again, part of the canal trail that we hiked on. 

Rocks. I want to model rocks in Blender at some point. 

 Train tunnel

 A long bridge.

 I thought it this was pretty cool. See the wire linking the two ties? If that gets disconnected, it will probably alert someone that the tracks are out of alignment.

 Historic building

Recycling / trash barrels

 Historic buildings

 Curious. I just took a photo because I thought it was unusual.

 More trash / recycling barrels

 Train station

 We buy junk and sell antiques! (This is where we ate lunch)

 The restaurant where we ate lunch also had an "antiques" section. :)

Where we had lunch... Next two...

I think this was tilted to show how steep the place we were hiking right then actually was. 

 A little bit of snow. Photo documented!

 The sunset

 The sunset with less lens flare

 A very odd power line tower

 Sunset. One of my favorites of this set.

 Odd power line tower.

 Detail

 Rock sculptures. Next two...

 Can't quite read / decode it. Frustrating... I think I was able to read a little of it at the time though.

More historic buildings. Next two... 

 Canal trail. I had to use my hand as a lens hood to get a photo, and unfortunately it got in the photo. I may crop it later. You can also see that in the photo belos.

This is very high up, in case you can't tell... 

 Rapids. Next three...

 Photo taken from the bridge.

 And from the side...

 Angle view...

And some kayakers! 

Apologies for such a ridiculously long post, but I may do it again. Or I may just link to my Picasa web albums.

The Brilliant answers of a student who obtained a score of 0%

Following are the answers of a brilliant student who obtained 0% in the exam…


Q1. In which battle did Lord Nelson die?
A : his last battle…

Q2. Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?
A : at the bottom of the page

Q3. River Ravi flows in which state?
A : liquid

Q4. What is the main reason for divorce?
A : marriage

Q5. What is the main reason for failure?
A : exams

Q6. What can you never eat for breakfast?
A : Lunch & dinner

Q7. What looks like half an apple?
A : The other half

Q8. If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what it will become?
A : it will become wet

Q9. How can a man go eight days without sleeping ??
A : By sleeping at night.

Q10. How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
A : You will never find an elephant that has only one hand.

Q11. If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in other hand, what would you have ?
A : Very large hands

Q12. If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it?
A : No time at all, the wall is already built.


Q13: How can you drop an egg onto a concrete floor without breaking it?
A : Any way you like. Concrete floors are very hard to crack.


This mostly came from http://truthmafia.com/archives/2639

We Buy Junk and Sell Antiques!

Youtube

And here's one of my ocean sim tests:


I moved the red ball manually to (hopefully) make it look like it was floating, and partially succeeded.
Water is hard.

Youtube

Project London Movie downloads are available! Here's what I have done so far with one of them:

It's pretty neat that they have them available for free. Again, it's a little on the fast side, but that's O.K. At some point I want to add smoke, dust, etc., and maybe a background scene.

Youtube

O.K., I haven't posted anything for a while, but that doesn't mean I'm not active! It probably means that I'm too busy to remember to post here :) Such really hasn't been the case recently, but I have been doing things. ;) I've been doing Blender, woodworking, HAM radio, video editing, guitar playing, and piano playing. I'm going to put separate things on separate posts though. Starting with Blender... I learned how to use Dynamic paint (at least the water part of it) in Blender. It's really powerful. It will give realistic water effects without the long compute time. In fact, it will preview in realtime! (or close to it, more like 15fps on my computer, but I had the resolution really high) Here's a demo:


There are a number of problems with this animation, one major one being the speed. Animating things too fast is a common problem of mine. Also, it's showing me in the preview frame that the background is pink, which it is not.When I uploaded it to YouTube it was grey. It was rendered in cycles. I only did 100 passes per frame, so there's a lot of grain, and I think I set the ball wrong, because the water sticks to it too much, but you get the idea, and I did get it working!

You think your English is pretty good?

http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/

Neat Visual Effects

Boardwalk Empire VFX Breakdowns of Season 2 from Brainstorm Digital on Vimeo.
The Emmy award-winning team at Brainstorm Digital has put together the before and after shots from season 2 of HBO's hit series "Boardwalk Empire". (courtesy of Home Box Office, Inc) www.brainstorm-digital.com. Twitter: @BrainstormVFX.

The face tracking from 0:44-1:07 is kind of gross as shown by the video preview, but a fascinating video overall.

The Rise of Atlantis - Coming Never

This is great!



And for this guy it was just a quick test !!??