Changing Interests
2003.11.28
I've been off video games for about two weeks now, and before that I
was only playing "Viewtiful Joe" casually. I don't have any
urge to play games right now, and although there isn't anything really
exciting out right now, I get the feeling that it won't change. Maybe
it's just a phase, but all I really want to do right now is go to work,
play hockey, practice martial arts, and hang out with friends. Wow, I
just realized that I'll probably have to get a new computer next year.
I haven't been paying attention to computer hardware news at all for the
last five months. That's probably because my good friend Kyle is in Toronto,
and he usually kept me in the loop about that stuff.
I'm hoping that working on Andromeda will give me the motivation
to work on some of my own projects again. Since I'm using Lightwave at
work, I'm starting to miss Maya. Hopefully that feeling will blossom into
motivation. Still, I'm not big on the idea of coming home from work and
getting to work. The brain needs time to cool down, and sleep doesn't
count.
More Traffic
2003.11.27
Okay, seriously, if a traffic system can't absorb one accident without
instantly grinding to a halt, there's a problem.
I was forced to take the bus and the Skytrain to work yesterday after
my car broke down earlier in the week. I need to get a new one. Well,
not right now, but at some point. In any case, it took me about an hour
and a half to get from my front door to the office. Most of that was on
a bus, with about 20 minutes on the Skytrain. The Skytrain kicks ass.
You cross the city so quickly, completely independent of all traffic,
asshole cyclists and moronic pedestrians. It's a lot smoother than a subway,
not to mention that it's a hell of a lot more fun to be riding above streets
and buildings than to be stuck in some dark tunnel under them. I could
deal with taking the Skytrain every day if I lived downtown. Maybe next
year.
Brandy wants me to start writing about politics and "issues"
again, which I suppose I will do at some point. Right now, I'm still getting
used to operating on 7 hours of sleep.
Big News
2003.11.25
What's the biggest story in America right now? Is it the situation in
Iraq? Do people even care that the entire Georgian government was overthrown
last week? Nope. It's all about Michael Jackson, that pathetic freak show
who's so obviously been abusing kids for years and finally got caught.
Well, maybe.
To be quite honest, I don't know why people care about him. He used to
be a big star, and he used to make good music, but that was years ago.
It's almost decades ago. I suppose he's becomes a curiosity, and an example
of what can happen to a human mind that is removed from reality for so
long.
Next time you catch yourself paying attention to him, turn off the TV,
put down the paper, or close that Internet window. You'll be doing yourself
a favour!
Andromeda
2003.11.24
I start my new job on Andromeda today. I'm not entirely sure what to
expect, which is usually the case with anything new. I'm going to be using
Lightwave instead of Maya, which is making me a little nervous because
I don't know it. I'm learning bit by bit, and once I'm in the office surrounded
by other Lightwave users, working on shots, I'm sure it will come quickly.
Andromeda isn't exactly the holy grail of 3D jobs, but it will keep me
going for a while, which is something that is needed right now. I was
actually apprehensive about taking the job at all, but a trip to the office
a couple of weeks ago changed my mind. The effects for the new season
are actually not bad, and are certainly leaps and bounds beyond what was
done in previous years. Besides, spaceships are usually fun.
The office is way out in Burnaby, and will probably require about one
hour of commuting from Richmond, each way. I think I'll be testing out
some different routes, depending on how tomorrow's goes. Hopefully my
car lasts for a few more months!
I Drive Alone, So What?
2003.11.20
I used to be one of those people who would look at a huge Suburban in
rush hour traffic, being driven by one person, and think "people
like that are the problem". You know what, that's bullshit! First
of all, it depends on which problem you're speaking of.
The traffic problem? So the car is 70% longer and 30% wider. Big deal.
That's not going to make the difference between 30 minutes to get to work
and 15. The traffic problems in most cities are caused by too many cars,
not the type of car, and inadequate road systems. City planners propose
8 lane bridges, but the politicians don't want to spend too much money
during their term, so a 4 lane bridge is built. Either that, or planners
add a whole bunch of on ramps feeding into an existing 4 lane bridge.
Guess what guys!!! 5 Lanes merging into 2 lanes is a lot better than 10
lanes merging into 2. If cities were build or updated to deal with the
volume of traffic, it wouldn't be a problem.
Pollution? Who cares? Seriously, within 30 years most people are going
to be driving fuel cell or electric vehicles. 30 more years of polluting
the air isn't going to make that much of a difference, and once
the flow of car exhaust slowly stops, the air will clear up in no time.
We aren't talking about permanent damage here people. The best part is
that this trend is global. We're not going to kill the planet before we
stop using gasoline powered vehicles. It's just not going to happen. Besides,
in a few hundred years we may find ourselves deliberately trying to pollute
the air and warm up the planet to stave off the next ice age.
The bottom line is that there are going to be more and more cars on the
roads, and there's nothing you or I can do about it. So just sit down
in your bus seat, shut up, and learn to deal with it.
Matrix Music
2003.11.19
I picked up the soundtracks to all three Matrix films after seeing "Revolutions"
a few times last week. I'm really enjoying the "Reloaded" and
"Revolutions" disks. The original soundtrack CD is more than
a little crappy, since it's filled mostly with rock music, most of which
didn't exist in the film in the first place beyond shot clips. Definitely
not the way to do a soundtrack CD.
I think the second two soundtracks will make it into my playlists. It's
always a good idea to have good music while you're working. I haven't
done a "Revolutions" post yet. I'll save that for tomorrow,
or maybe Friday.
Backed Up
2003.11.18
I'm finally done. Fourteen DVDs later and my entire computer is backed
up. Well, the important stuff, at least. I think I'm going to take the
DVDs and store them somewhere outside of this house. Maybe I'll make copies
and do that.
I can't imagine anything worse than losing data. People will spend thousands
of dollars to get their data recovered from hard drives that have been
burned in fires or soaked in floods. They don't even get it all back,
but I can understand why they do it. Computer data represents a record
of your life. It's like a new kind of photo album. Lots of people would
say that if they could take anything with them out of their burning house,
it would be their photo albums. These days, you're just as likely to hear
them say "my computer".
I know I would.
Backing Up
2003.11.17
I finally started a DVD backup of my entire system. Lots and lots of
gigs of various things to burn. I hope I can finish today.
Stargate
2003.11.14
Chris and I have started watching Stargate SG-1 as part of our
weekly gaming night. Before we started one of the episodes, I said "this
is one of the crappiest ones". Well after the episode was over, Chris
had decided that it was better than pretty much every episode of Enterprise
aired to date.
People in Vancouver always seem to bad mouth Stargate because it's made
here and everyone works on it. I suppose it doesn't help that most people
don't like science fiction. Stargate SG-1 is actually a good show.
It's better than Enterprise, better than Voyager. I'd actually
put it on the same level with Deep Space Nine, especially later
in the series when things really get going.
We're still on season 1, so we've got a long way to go.
Canada Sucks Sometimes
2003.11.13
My Dad was part of the civilian formation fly past during the Remembrance
Day ceremony in downtown Vancouver. He and a bunch of other guys flew
a formation salute in their planes, followed by a bunch of old ex-air
force guys in Harvards, and a RCAF Aurora.
Wait a minute! An Aurora? Those big, propeller driven sub hunters that
look like a passenger aircraft from 1947? The ones with the huge radar
thing sticking out the back? That's all we could send on Remembrance Day?
I suppose they could technically drop torpedoes, if we had any.
Go to any Veterans Day ceremony in the States and you'll see a formation
flyby of at least one type of modern jet fighter, but not here. No, Remembrance
Day isn't important enough to warrant sending up those expensive CF-18s.
We have to save the fuel money for the flyby during the opening ceremony
of the fucking Molson Indy Vancouver! After all, fighter jets and racing
cars go together much better than fighter jets and World-fucking-War veterans.
This country is so fucked up!
Ha ha ha!!!
2003.11.12
So Apple's TV ad calling the new G5 "the world's fastest, most powerful
personal computer" has been banned, because well, someone apparently
found out that it's not even close to being the world's most powerful
PC.
Even if you wanted to make such a claim, it would have to be accompanied
by so much fine print that car commercials would be envious. There are
so many different ways of measuring computer performance that no one can
really say "this is the fastest personal computer". There isn't
a magical universal benchmark that measures processor speed, especially
across different operating systems. The speed that the processor operates
at isn't even relevant anymore. You have to look at bus speeds, ram speed
and size, graphics performance, hard drive performance, and so on. All
of these things contribute to a fast computer.
I wish "normal" people knew this stuff, but I suppose that's
asking too much. Every time I hear someone say "but Intel has a 2.8,
and this one is only a 2500" I feel like my brain is going to explode.
*sigh*
G's
2003.11.11
First of all, today is Remembrance Day. Do something to remember all
of the men and women who have died fighting to keep people like you and
me living in freedom. I'm going to watch Saving Private Ryan. I
don't care what you do, but do something.
Now, on with the rest. Thanks to my Dad for this one:
Below is an article written by Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated.
He details his experiences when given the opportunity to fly in a F-14
Tomcat.
"Now this is a message for America's most famous athletes:
Someday you may be invited to fly in the back-seat of one of your
country's most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have, John Elway,
John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If you get this opportunity,
let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity. Move to Guam. Change your
name. Fake your own death! Whatever you do, do not go.
I know. The U.S. Navy invited me to try it. I was thrilled. I was
pumped. I was toast! I should've known when they told me my pilot would
be Chip "Biff" King of Fighter Squadron 213 at Naval Air Station
Oceana in Virginia Beach.
Whatever you're thinking a Top Gun named Chip "Biff" King
looks like, triple it. He's about six-foot, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer
hair, finger-crippling handshake.....the kind of man who wrestles dyspeptic
alligators in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way.
Fast.
Biff King was born to fly. His father, Jack King, was for years the
voice of NASA missions. ("T-minus 15 seconds and counting ..."
Remember?) Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear
his dad. Jack would wake up from naps surrounded by nine-year-olds waiting
for him to say, "We have a liftoff."
Biff was to fly me in an F-14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60
million weapon with nearly as much thrust as weight, not unlike Colin
Montgomerie. I was worried about getting airsick, so the night before
the flight I asked Biff if there was something I should eat the next morning.
"Bananas," he said.
"For the potassium?" I asked.
"No," Biff said, "because they taste about the same coming
up as they do going down."
The next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with
my name sewn over the left breast. (No call sign like Crash or Sticky
or Leadfoot but, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the crook of
my arm, as Biff had instructed. If ever in my life I had a chance to nail
Nicole Kidman, this was it.
A fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety briefing and then fastened
me into my ejection seat, which, when employed, would "egress"
me out of the plane at such a velocity that I would be immediately knocked
unconscious.
Just as I was thinking about aborting the flight, the canopy closed
over me, and Biff gave the ground crew a thumbs-up. In minutes we were
firing nose up at 600 mph. We leveled out and then canopy-rolled over
another F-14.
Those 20 minutes were the rush of my life. Unfortunately, the ride
lasted 80. It was like being on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over Hell.
Only without rails. We did barrel rolls, sap rolls, loops, yanks and banks.
We dived, rose and dived again, sometimes with a vertical velocity of
10,000 feet per minute. We chased another F-14, and it chased us. We broke
the speed of sound. Sea was sky and sky was sea. Flying at 200 feet we
did 90-degree turns at 550 mph, creating a G force of 6.5, which is to
say I felt as if 6.5 times my body weight was smashing against me, thereby
approximating life as Mrs. Colin Montgomerie.
And I egressed the bananas. I egressed the pizza from the night before.
And the lunch before that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth
grade. I made Linda Blair look polite. Because of the G's, I was egressing
stuff that did not even want to be egressed. I went through not one airsick
bag, but two.
Biff said I passed out. Twice. I was coated in sweat. At one point,
as we were coming in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target
and the G's were flattening me like a tortilla and I was in and out of
consciousness, I realized I was the first person in history to throw down.
I used to know cool. Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or
Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I really know cool. Cool is guys
like Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and freon nerves. I wouldn't go
up there again for Derek Jeter's black book, but I'm glad Biff does every
day, and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in a home stand.
A week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called. He said
he and the fighters had the perfect call sign for me. Said he'd send it
on a patch for my flight suit. What is it? I asked.
"Two Bags."
Future Fighters
2003.11.10
Sometimes people look at modern jet fighter aircraft and wonder where
we can go from here. Well, this is a start:
This thing looks like is was inspired by a Japanese animated
Macross film. I'm pretty sure this Russian Su-47 technology demonstration
plane doesn't transform into a human-shaped combat robot, but it's clear
that aircraft designers are starting to think in different ways. Speed
is no longer the measuring stick when it comes to fight performance, since
we've reached a point where air resistance and fuel consumption are just
too prohibitive to going fast. The Su-47 has a top speed of Mach 1.6,
which is slower than even the "slow" F-18 Hornet, but the Su-47
is built for maneuverability. With computer controlled flight systems
able to stabilize even the most unstable airframes, shapes like the Su-47
will become more common. Combine that with thrust vectoring technology,
and pretty soon fighters are going to be turning tighter and faster than
ever before.
I must admit however, it will be weird to go to an airshow
and see a jet fighter essentially "flip" on it's back and start
flying in the other direction. I suppose there's something to be said
for the big graceful loops, even if they will get you killed in today's
wartime skies.
Animation Test
2003.11.05
I'm working on an animation test for a potential job at the moment. It
has to be done by Monday, so I'm going to be crazy busy between now and
then. If I'm up until three or four working, and don't post until the
late morning when I get up, now you know why.
I've got so much to do during the days, I'm going to have to work late
at night. Hockey, martial arts classes, The Matrix, helping friends with
websites. It's like the Universe knows I'm not working and has created
an appropriate amount of replacement tasks. Figures.
Done
2003.11.04
So the DVD is done. There are still a couple of issues I hope to address
someday, or just improve for my next reel, but I can't do anything about
them at the moment. The DVD labels and case inserts are done. I'll probably
spend a little bit of time burning DVDs and printing stuff today.
Tonight I'm playing my first hockey game as a player in at least six
or seven years. I've been playing rollerhockey regularly, but never on
a team in an organized game, and obviously not on ice. I've been skating
twice since I got player's skates last week, and I'm still not used to
them. Tonight should be interesting, that's for sure.
It's WORKING!!!
2003.11.03
Finally Adobe Encore is working for me. I tried doing the DVD in DVD
Architect, but that program just doesn't have what I need. My frustration
with Architect led me to give Encore a fourth chance, and I finally figured
it out. Last night I burned my first DVD and watched it downstairs on
the television. Finally!
There are a couple of issues I still have to iron out. I need to do some
adjusting of the main menu, since a couple of the graphics are outside
of the tv safe area. There also seems to be some kind of weirdness going
on with the buttons, where some of them get skipped or can't be accessed
using a DVD remote. Hopefully I can find solutions to these problems quickly.
I have that wonderful feeling that you get when you beat a really frustrating
boss in a video game. It's the same with conquered software bugs. Satisfaction!
Yes!!!
2003.11.01
I love seeing the Leafs get their asses kicked!
Copyright © 1999-2008 Alec McClymont. All rights reserved. Created 2005-05.
