Archive for February, 2013

Slow days

Posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2013 at 7:52 pm

Gum issue has had me on low throttle the last four days.  It’s fading, but still a little of a hinderance.  At least there is no fever associated with it.  Also, to add insult, I passed a scattering of sand, uric acid style.  I’m hoping that was it.

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On a lighter note, I think I may have found my music again.  Not big time, but a start.  Got all my net tunes on the iPad.  What a monster of a process, one at a time and some 2300 steps.  Shoot those idesigners!  But I have 45 PDF’s onboard.  A lightweight music book, for starters.

Metallic Tiles

Posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2013 at 6:23 pm

I was reminded of an incident in the 90’s in POV-Ray.  I was working on a procedural texture for some glazed ceramic tiles, and I was quite fond of the results.  I would have honestly loved to have a kitchen tiled with the pattern.  So I made a series of renders with various glass objects in the scene, and I posted one on my web site (main.com in those days, my ISP).  A week later, I got an email from a gentleman who was interested in buying the tiles in 50,000 item lots.  It  was a difficult reply to write, telling him the tiles were only virtual.  But it told me that I was on the right track.

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Looking through the old stuff, we sure did render small images back then.  We have been spoiled by the newest generation processors when it comes to speed.

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MetallicTiles

Signs of Spring

Posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 at 2:59 pm

Redbuds are popping out blossoms, the aprium tree is flowering, daffodils are blooming, the bush by the goldfish pond is popping out big purple flowers, and things are definitely starting to show some green.  It’s starting to look like spring to me.  I guess I better get the lawn tractor fixed to where it can mow again (wiring harness issues).

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daffy

Finally, honest bandwidth

Posted on Friday, February 15th, 2013 at 3:14 pm

Skybeam showed up today and gave us new hardware on the tower, a vertical receiver.  It pulled 7.4Mbps, so the three we have governed is solid.  And we have the option to go to 5Mbps.  But for now, 3 down/1 up will do.  That’s a gig an hour.  I can live with that if it stays solid.  It needs testing over a few days to check how well the cap holds up over the weekend and various times during the week.  But after all the months of crappy service, the real connection is finally here.

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New batch of meds at the clinic last night.   Seems that my lipids and cholesterol are a little high.  It’s not seriously high, but enough that the doctor wanted to put me on meds for it.

Beans

Posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 at 9:15 pm

A pair of beans (take a sphere, twist it, flatten it, duplicate it and 180°Y), give them a blush and a glimmer, render.

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beans

Digital photographic tools in the wrong hands…..

Posted on Monday, February 11th, 2013 at 4:28 pm

Nuff said.

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photo

Home Protection

Posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2013 at 9:00 pm

Grabbed my own Poser prop off the site (easier than digging for it) and made a render in modo, where I originally made it.  I like the shaders better this time.  The joke is just as bad as when it first came out, though.

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Home Protection Chaingun 332c – for peace of mind……

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HPC-332c

Sheepish grin

Posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2013 at 10:53 pm

I have to admit that sometimes I see too far under the hood on Macs.  For example, I found that firewall blocking WebProcess.app (System/Library/Staged Frameworks/Safari/WebKit2.framework) creates a NSPOSIXErrorDomain:1 failure in Safari for any port or IP blocked.

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But again, tonight I discovered the check button in the Mouse preferences pane that is set to default for scroll content in the direction of the scroll wheel.  Unchecking it means that my old Mac and my new Mac now scroll in the same direction, instead of in opposite directions.  In older systems, the scroll bar moved in the direction of the scroll wheel, which is in the opposite direction of the content.  Pull the scroll bar down, content goes up.  Why Apple felt the need to reverse that old standard as default is beyond me.  But I am tickled to have them going in the same familiar direction now.  It was about to drive me nuts.  How the obvious can so often escape us.

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WHEW!

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Daz is going nuts again, stirring up the horde on multiple fronts.  I am so glad that I chose not to become a vendor.

Bumpy

Posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 at 11:33 am

A bumper car, exported from Poser to modo, with custom shaders.  I love the rendering speed.

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bumper

Self-portrait

Posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2013 at 11:20 pm

Self-portrait, raster (Photo Booth at 5 AM) to vector (Vectoraster) to raster (screenshot) to vector (Illustrator CS6) to raster (Photoshop CS6).

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Dark

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dark

New month

Posted on Friday, February 1st, 2013 at 8:27 am

Well, considering how poorly January went, despite its good points, I am happy to see the month gone forever into the past.  I saw the worst and the best of people last month, despair and hope.  I don’t want to see that month again.