Jerry CGI

Overcast skies gave me a break yesterday, and they appear to be lingering for  another day or two.  There might even be a little rain, but I’m rather doubtful, looking at radar loops.  Also, I managed to get all the lawn and trees watered pretty well.  That means light duty at the hose.  That means dealing with auto inspection (needs wiper blades, which are eluding me) and other stuff I need to get done before the first of the month.

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Maybe I can get back to work tomorrow.  If I get to sit at the processor long enough, I’ll be doing data shifting.  A terabyte of disk (1.32T, to be precise) just isn’t enough.  Fortunately, I  have data that can be burned and discarded to make room, and other that can be shifted.  Ugh, I need another 500G.

I’m currently house sitting for a friend who is in California.  The location is a few miles east of Austin, a stone’s throw away from the Colorado river.  It’s three and a half acres of river bottom, full of flowering plants, with a sizeable greenhouse (currently empty because it reaches 130°F in there during the day).

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The last four days have topped 100°F, though today just barely.  The three previous days I watered for 14 hours each day, both lawn and plants.  It is a remarkable landscaping, several bushes are blooming at any given time.  And watering encourages the blooms.

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The watering also attracts birds and butterflies.  Today I too off during the heat of the day.  I got enough water down to where I could afford to coast a day.  Laundry, cooking, caring for the eight quadrapeds (3 dogs, 4 cats, 1 tortoise), and generally gathering wind for the next round.  I also took the new dog, transplanted from another friend’s place to the east, to a park by the river and let her seen running water for the first time.  I’m the transitional trainer, since I’ve known the dog for years.

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One way of keeping the cats occupied is to turn on the sprinkler in the back yard for the birds, essentially making a nice cool bird bath.  It’s drawing quite a crowd, sparrows, cardinals, finches, dove, mocking birds, and others, and the indoor cats are sitting at the window, utterly enthralled.

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I managed to take a nap as well.  Not deep into graphics at the moment.  I haven’t gathered enough wind for that.  But I did manage to figurre out the words for the Rock Me Mama jam by Bob Dylan (Pat Garret and Billy the Kid sound track sessions).  This is the tune that lent its chorus to Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show, that I picked up back in the spring.  This is an alternative for the sake of perspective.

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Otherwise, I’m drained.

Haven’t been doing much 3D the last few days.  Instead, I’ve been watching much needed rain miss me, celebrating a friend’s birthday, avoiding the heat, getting a cel phone reactivated (ugh, Verizon), discussing commercial projects, doing computer housecleaning, tending to animals, and countless other little things.  I’ve even had some time to be lazy and do nothing.  It hasn’t been grueling, but it has been involving.

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Not that I don’t have projects waiting on the wings.  But my schedule will probably hold off diving into the studios for a couple more days.  Then things will settle down, I’ll be here alone for three weeks (with the critters and plants that need watering), and I’ll likely be spending a lot of time modeling, assembling, and rendering.

Resettling after a jaunt east (85 miles) yesterday and back this morning.  The primary purpose, retrieving a check and depositing it.  The benefits, getting to play music past midnight with seven friends, until my pads gave out.  It was definitely fun in a rather laid back way, no one looking to buck the summer heat of evening with blazing fast music.  But it was fun, and the music pretty good.

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It was on the warm side, in excess of 100°F toward the end of the day, but I’m acclimated and can handle that.  Got to visit with the parrots, who I now know by name (Sweetie, Ricco, MaGill, Ernasto, Guacamole, Jambox, and Tommy).  Also got to see all the dogs.

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All in all, a fun trip, even if it was a little on the toasty side.  Well, make that soggy side, at least a few times when I got physical with large objects.  But it’s good to be back in the AC with the office laid out properly before me.

Generated in Illustrator (lathe splines and labels) and modo, with texture finishing and ad text in Photoshop.

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100% computer generated, 100% original art work (except the fonts).

A bottle cap for the longneck.

Gave the bottle a proper label (in progress).

I found my brand name for the lager:  Kohl-Duan.

How can you have a pilsner glass without a longneck in the background to identify the brand?

The labels are UV mapped cylindrically for easy trans and texturing.

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It still needs a bottle cap, one for in place on the bottle, and one bent by an opener.

Well, the last 24 hours has been animals, animals, animals…….

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Start with the transplant of Pup, female mix (Boxer, Pitbull, hound) from Bryan, TX to Webberville (just outside Austin, TX).  I’ve known Pup for years, and she is a good friend.  I picked her up late Monday night in Bryan, at a friend’s who had been told by the city to reduce the number of dogs they had.  They have a practice of rescuing abandoned animals, giving them proper care, and finding homes for them.  So three had to go.  Pup was the first.

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This was Pup’s first car ride, and she was rather nervous the whole way, being at night.  It was a 80 minute run, and she had just started to settle down when we arrived.  Austin (Boxer) and Rowdy (white Shepard mix) , the two resident dogs here greeted her warmly, but she was too freaked out and started growling at them.  So arrangements were made and altered and made again and altered, and  she finally got chained to a tree with lots of shade for the afternoon and night.  This morning, she was finally able to stand side by side with Austin without a display of teeth and growling.  So she is starting to adapt.  A rough start, but it looks hopeful that she will fall into the routine here.

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Then there the lost boa that had escaped a couple of months ago from its enclosure.  Last night, I found it in the bedroom I’m using.  Thrills abounded at the recovery and return of the snake to its pen.  The celebration still continues this morning.

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Then there was the Minx cat who went into one of the rooms and hid.  The door to the room was shut after a quick inspection which didn’t account for the cat’s presence.  The house settled down for the night.  This morning, I woke to bump, bump, bump…….  The cat, in attempt to get out of the room, had clawed up the carpet at the door, taking the edge out of the channel at the door and propping it against the door, making it impossible to open the door.  I had to get a table knife and feed the carpet back under the door across the full width before the door could be opened.  What a way to start the day……

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And these are just the main events.  The animals have demanded much attention and been a constant distraction (as well as a joy).  Happy to see me and wanting to express it has kept me busy between download starts.  (I’ve almost caught up, not counting today’s, another couple of hours should see me done.  What a weekend for uploads it was!)

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The heat is returning to central Texas, and the highs are breaking 100°F again.  So much for the two day cool spell (highs only in the upper 90’s, if you call that cool.)  This is a very hot start for the summer.  Hopefully it won’t continue throughout the entire summer.  I have a feeling that temps will drop in the weeks ahead, but I’m not taking bets on it.

Just spent four days offline (dialup on Win98 was the only thing available).  I watched a lot of movies on dish, which the holidays begged.  There was also the Twilight Zone marathon.  it was more fun than enduring 108°F weather outside.  It was brutal heat until Sunday’s front passed through.

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I did computer housecleaning, but that didn’t take all that long.  Just wasn’t in the mood to create anything.  But that’s okay.  I survived the heat deep in AC.

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I waxed the car, which was a rather warm task.

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Now to catch up on downloading.

The final pilsner rendering, bearing foam and carbonation bubbles, w/ GI.

Here is the glass with the beer added.  Still needs foam and carbonation, but I think this will work well.

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Global illumination adds a great deal of depth to the scene.  It’s worth the extra hours of rendering.

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I once again have the dual core MacTel lappy, so I will add a copy of modo 4 to it for rendering purposes.  It has a faster CPU, and more RAM, so I will be rendering on it in the foreseeable future.

I will get back to this as soon as I have time to sit still long enough to add the bubbles and foam (the new replicator will help immensely there).