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Ah, processing. Nothing like 20 minutes of computer down time to give me a chance to update this oft-neglected live journal!
Anyways, what’s new… what’s new? It’s been busy, which is no surprise, but not nearly as exciting as past weeks. The apartment is working out great - we now have an air conditioner, which addresses the biggest concern with the space. I’m still amused at how easy it was, and relatively cheap it was, to ship a 100 pound box… I guess it makes up from the tedium of the initial ordering process.
My old dell is now setup, plugged into the TV - the result - much awesome anime. We’re working our way though Full Metal Alchemist [I need to get a copy of the movie, which picks up where the season ends] and then we plan to finish Eva. I just need to find where I misplaced disc number 2… or download 3 mid season episodes of a rather old show. Bleh. We’ve also watched Akira - damn spiffy show with insane animation.
Other than that, entertainment has been pretty minimal save the SDA hall party last night. Interesting experience - take a whole group of [mostly] design classmates, provide cheep booze, an interesting DJ, and two nifty live bands? Whole pile of fun, though now my through is raspy and my ears still feel a little sore. One thing I learned though - Gin and Tonic is officially the most awful concoction known to man - I don’t know how people can drink it, but damn that glass was brutal. In terms of music, nothing big or famous, but some good guitar, and thoroughly amusing.
Work has been pretty good - we’ve been wrapping up projects, specifically goddamn Pacer. [and Science Center, and Dorian and SummerHill]. But really though, the bulk of the effort has been Pacer. Bloody project has now taken 9 months and waaay more effort than originally projected, but I think we’ll still make a profit on it, and it has been a great learning experience. The biggest issue with this project is the damn client - they finally sent us the bathtub resources last Monday… just the tip of a veritable iceberg of annoying and time consuming changes. Not that it was _all_ the client though - Pacer was also the first real test of our lightmapper, so halfway through we re-implemented the project with the improved lighting.
Speaking of lighting, the lightmapper is working out great, or I suppose I should say PureLight now. The program is excellent, and I’m using it right now to burn [well, preview] the lighting for the Hertz exterior scene. Jeff’s off on his honeymoon right now, but he added a whole pile of features before his break [including object lights!] which should keep us busy for a while.
As for why I’m working on hertz in the middle of a Sunday, well, blame that on Pacer. We originally had a review with Stewart [our contact at Hertz] to show off our boom lift simulator this Friday, but luckily, he called and rescheduled until this coming Tuesday. Thus I’m hard at work assembling this project and figuring out the code for an accurate, physics based boom lift… a challenging but rather interesting project. The only problem is, it’s a rather large project, and I have to say I don’t appreciate starting on a 40+ hour Endeavour Thursday afternoon, if it’s expected finished and polished Tuesday morning. Bloody hell. At least it’s coming together - the scene looks great, and the physics are almost golden. I still have to rig up our nice textured model, but with the new code structure, I hope to have that part done by supper.
I’ll upload some screenshots when its ready and you can be sure of a post when we present it on Tuesday. It should be an interesting presentation - if only because we get to run it on our office’s new 50 some odd inch LCD TV. We did a test run this Friday, and damn, that is one amazing display.
Oh, and the zucchini chocolate cake turned out excellent! - That’s officially the only way I’ll eat one of those infernal vegetables.
Anyways, what’s new… what’s new? It’s been busy, which is no surprise, but not nearly as exciting as past weeks. The apartment is working out great - we now have an air conditioner, which addresses the biggest concern with the space. I’m still amused at how easy it was, and relatively cheap it was, to ship a 100 pound box… I guess it makes up from the tedium of the initial ordering process.
My old dell is now setup, plugged into the TV - the result - much awesome anime. We’re working our way though Full Metal Alchemist [I need to get a copy of the movie, which picks up where the season ends] and then we plan to finish Eva. I just need to find where I misplaced disc number 2… or download 3 mid season episodes of a rather old show. Bleh. We’ve also watched Akira - damn spiffy show with insane animation.
Other than that, entertainment has been pretty minimal save the SDA hall party last night. Interesting experience - take a whole group of [mostly] design classmates, provide cheep booze, an interesting DJ, and two nifty live bands? Whole pile of fun, though now my through is raspy and my ears still feel a little sore. One thing I learned though - Gin and Tonic is officially the most awful concoction known to man - I don’t know how people can drink it, but damn that glass was brutal. In terms of music, nothing big or famous, but some good guitar, and thoroughly amusing.
Work has been pretty good - we’ve been wrapping up projects, specifically goddamn Pacer. [and Science Center, and Dorian and SummerHill]. But really though, the bulk of the effort has been Pacer. Bloody project has now taken 9 months and waaay more effort than originally projected, but I think we’ll still make a profit on it, and it has been a great learning experience. The biggest issue with this project is the damn client - they finally sent us the bathtub resources last Monday… just the tip of a veritable iceberg of annoying and time consuming changes. Not that it was _all_ the client though - Pacer was also the first real test of our lightmapper, so halfway through we re-implemented the project with the improved lighting.
Speaking of lighting, the lightmapper is working out great, or I suppose I should say PureLight now. The program is excellent, and I’m using it right now to burn [well, preview] the lighting for the Hertz exterior scene. Jeff’s off on his honeymoon right now, but he added a whole pile of features before his break [including object lights!] which should keep us busy for a while.
As for why I’m working on hertz in the middle of a Sunday, well, blame that on Pacer. We originally had a review with Stewart [our contact at Hertz] to show off our boom lift simulator this Friday, but luckily, he called and rescheduled until this coming Tuesday. Thus I’m hard at work assembling this project and figuring out the code for an accurate, physics based boom lift… a challenging but rather interesting project. The only problem is, it’s a rather large project, and I have to say I don’t appreciate starting on a 40+ hour Endeavour Thursday afternoon, if it’s expected finished and polished Tuesday morning. Bloody hell. At least it’s coming together - the scene looks great, and the physics are almost golden. I still have to rig up our nice textured model, but with the new code structure, I hope to have that part done by supper.
I’ll upload some screenshots when its ready and you can be sure of a post when we present it on Tuesday. It should be an interesting presentation - if only because we get to run it on our office’s new 50 some odd inch LCD TV. We did a test run this Friday, and damn, that is one amazing display.
Oh, and the zucchini chocolate cake turned out excellent! - That’s officially the only way I’ll eat one of those infernal vegetables.