Satisfaction...

Ahh... it's nice to have accomplished something, even though few people around me have any appreciation for it. I finished this last night for an illustration for my science fair project (though the illustration is actually an interactive display of the model and doesn't look nearly as nice because of the lower quality of a real-time render). Sorry about the funky perspective, but I had to widen the camera's focal length because I wanted to show off my little rigging job there. x) I know NOTHING about rigging a ship or anything so it was completely guesswork. But, in my opinion, it looks reasonable enough to pass for plausible. =P I suppose I'm banking on the hope that nobody scrutinizing my project knows much about ships or else they'd know that the purpose of the bowsprit (the spire protruding off the bow) is to secure the jib sails, and in this picture (and my model) it isn't connected to anything, thus: it is pointless and only adds useless weight to the ship for small aesthetic gain.

Third...

I think the third quarter is my worst quarter every year. I'm not entirely sure why. It just always seems that this is the quarter that life is the worst. The craziest. However, I am almost through it, so I am glad. I simply need to complete two things: my science project and my yearbook assignment. Oh, and the soundtrack for the yearbook. And my bible project. And a little bit of late work. And I need to pack for the mission trip. Okay, so six things... ... ... see why I'm stressed? Every time I think about my list, it gets longer. =P
Anyhow! Let me talk about a few things that excite me so I can end happy here. First exciting thing: Blender updates. Now, I'm going to go into a short little thing here about the awesome new things going on with my favorite open-source software, so if you'd rather not read it, just skip over this next section...

So! The Blender team is back to working on their newest project, code-named "Project Mango." What excites me about this particular project is the main purpose: to develop the video-effects and editing tools in Blender. Video effects and video editing are two things that Blender was not exactly meant for previously, but it could be done with a lot of workarounds and fiddling. But not anymore! =D Wonderful (though very basic in the commercial industries) tools such as motion tracking and new compositing tools as well as new faster Boolean tools and UV mapping tools... If anyone has actually read through this and is interested in seeing any of these Blender Foundation projects (they are short films, if I haven't been clear), then take a look at the following sites:
Project Orange ("Elephant's Dream")
Project Peach ("Big Buck Bunny")
Project Durian ("Sintel")
Project Mango (still in production, thus no name yet)

Okay, so I'm done with my little spasm of excitement. =) And I still have a lot of work to do, so I suppose I'll go back to it now. I have a picture to show you all, but I'm at home and my internet is too slow to upload it because it is fairly large. (Don't get excited, it's just a rough model I made in Blender...) =P Goodnight!

PS - I realize that it was completely useless to tell you to skip over that section of nerd-raving because it made up the main body of my post, so you might as well go back and read it... unless you have something better to do. =)

Yup...

Quite contented indeed...

Sick But Happy...

Had a fever last night... Woke up with a pounding headache... Miserable day... But I'm with my buddy now, so I'm happy. =) Perfectly content. We're gonna design custom hoodies and order them!

Apologies...

Aaaaaah! Noooo! I didn't write last night before I went to bed! xP I was going to, and then I went to get ready for bed and totally forgot. =P Rawr... Oh well... here's a post for today. I've begun working on 3D stuff again. Slow work. I want this project to be dooooone! xP Still have animation to do... textures to fix... rendering... music to write... [sigh]

New...

Sooooooo, what do ya think? =) I like it. It's much more like me. Now all I need to do is go through some previous posts and fix some linking errors. If you notice, when you click on a couple of the images, you get an Error 404 message. Not a good thing. Also, I've been told that I use too many ellipses ("...") in my writing... perhaps I do... ;) I also use too many emoticons. I'm not sure how formal I wanna want to get here... I'm thinkin thinking I'm going to leave it as is, partially because I don't want to go through my previous thirty-something posts, and mostly because this blog is supposed to be me and my writing style is part of who I am. (Though I will go back and remove the weird inconsistencies like the random signatures I put on some posts and not others.)

Web Browser...

I was once a PC user. I used Internet Explorer. Then I found that there were alternate web browsers! I spent time with Opera. I liked it because it was simple. I bought a MacBook and began using Safari; I didn't like it so much. Then I discovered Firefox. Ever since then, I have been loyal to Firefox... until now. I've had Google Chrome on my computer for quite some time now. In the past few months, I've used Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, depending on my various needs. However today I think my preferences have rearranged themselves because of a wonderful discovery: Chrome works. Now, I realize this is an obvious statement, but I don't mean it in exactly the obtuse manner in which I just stated it. I mean that the highest percentage of my internet usage is spent using applications made by Google. Do you suppose they take extra care that their web browser works extremely well with their other projects? Yes, of course they do! Gmail, Google Docs, and Blogger all work perfectly in Chrome. They respond more quickly, and do not display any kind of arrangement glitches as one will sometimes find when using an incompatible version of a browser. So here is the message I will attempt to convey this evening: Chrome is awesome. =)

PS: I will be doing a bit of cleaning up and rearranging around my blog in the next few days, so feel free to leave feedback about the changes. (Preferably in the comments section of this entry so I don't have to go searching all over the place for your comments. ;)