Odyssey of Ike

You can run but you can't hide.

We live in one of the mandatory evac zones in Harris county, just about 8 miles from the Galveston bay and 2 miles from Armand Bayou. So with barely 5 hours notice we packed up and headed north to Conroe, Texas. Thought being 90 miles inland would be enough.


Nope.


We set up shop in a Holiday Inn Express (I now view those commercials with a great deal of irony). We got past the bulk of the storm okay, even slept through most of it during the wee hours of Saturday.

Then the power failed at 6:30 am.

After 24 hours with no light, no phone, no motorcar, not a single lux... oh wait, that's another story. Anyway, Holiday Inn Express (es) are little boxes with no opening windows, and the emergency lights in the hallway failed after 2 hours. When the cell phones went out at 4:00 pm, we were cut off from the world completely. We managed to get through to some dear friends in Colorado who went on a search mission for us and found a room for one night at the Hyatt Regency Houston. Yep, HOUSTON. We drove 4 hours for a Holiday Inn and we could have stayed in downtown Houston and not risked death by hyperthermia.

Since we couldn't stay more than one night (Hyatt was a command post for Centerpoint Energy and Houston Police), we were still in a pickle. Then, around 4:00 pm Sunday, we got through to our house and got the answering machine (we left one circuit active to run the burglar alarm). Hooray!

We're back home now, with just a bit of roof damage. Spent 30 minutes cleaning the fridge and then settled down. Even had cable! (Uverse from ATT runs TVIP over the phone lines). We are thankful for all the prayers of everybody, and hopeful that the rest of Galveston and parts north will recover soon. We lived and worked in Galveston county for many years, and know many of the places that are now just debris and sand.

When we got home, the flag in front of our house was still standing. Pretty beat up, but still there. Pic at the top of the blog says it all.

Kelvin

P.S. Soon after taking the pic, I could hear Marine One flying overhead on the way to Galveston.

Robots Redux Fin

After a few weeks of work, I entered the robot image into the Hash monthly image contest. Sadly, Mr. Roboto and his space-suited minions did not fare well. There are some pretty talent people who enter these things, remarkable since the user community is relatively small compared to the Autodesk/Alias juggernauts. Glad I entered, since it motivated me to get the project in shape before I filed it away. Maybe I'll dust it off in the future.

The top four of the sixteen entries are here

http://www.hash.com/imagecontest/Sept08/



Kelvin

Domo Arrigato, Mr. Non-Autonomous Exoskeleton

So there I am, revamping an old animation project, and feeling pretty good about the whole retro idea of adding rivets for that steam punk flair, when I get asked the dumb question "Hey, what are those dudes doing?". I reply with indignation "Reading the blueprints, what else?".

After the kids quit laughing and go back to their loud music and hoola-hoops, I plop down in my rocker, take a big gulp of Ensure double fudge and admit that the idea of blueprints in space really does date me as an old coot.

So off I go to update the whole thing. First thought?
Cyber blueprints! That's the ticket. After a bit of work and a quick test render, I began to hear the youngsters' music getting louder, their hoola-hoops getting hoopier. This is not so much cyber blueprints as television for the presbyopia set. Perhaps they're selecting their dining menu for the 4:30 early bird special at the Space Cracker Barrel.



Well, if there's anything that I learned from Peter Schickele is that sometimes horribly inept plagerism can pass as originality. Set the wabac machine for 1977.



Here's the holo blueprint projector inserted in the scene (a alternate render of the lower left quadrant), showing that I've still got work to do with the transparency and glow settings.




So here it is. I'd go rub it in those punks faces, but its past their bedtime.

I miss Siggraph. *sigh*


Kelvin





Edit: Here's the final, final version to the right. kh

Robots Redux

While cleaning out the hard drive I found parts of an old project I did several years ago. It was lost during the move to Colorado (it got backed up on media that didn't survive the trip). Here is an AO render of what's left. Most of the models are a rev or two out of date, but you get the idea. I'll be using it for speed testing a dual Xeon server I'm fixing up for my poor man's render farm.

This is the lighting test done shortly before the crash and burn. It was halted just after the (still) mysterious robot color change in frame 293.

Now would be a good time to wash this taste out of your mouth by going to see "Wall-E", Pixar's latest film by the guy who directed "Nemo" and helped write "Toy Story".

Kelvin

On a Scale From Ichi to Ju, I Give It A Hachi

I've been feeling down lately, with everybody buying PS3s to go with their XBox 360s and such. So much technology, so little money. So to hop on the technology bandwagon, we ordered a Roku, the new Netflix enabled video streaming appliance for your TV.

A lot has been made about how Blockbuster is fighting back against Netflix, and how Netflix is spending big bucks to get ready for the next round in the movie rental wars. The Roku is the first shot, with more salvos on the way (LG is reported to have a Netflix enabled Bluray machine launching before Christmas). I'll live with it a few more weeks before final judgment, but so far I'm reasonably impressed.

1. Its small and inexpensive. A review I read slammed it for its styling (or lack thereof). Frankly, I have ethernet switches in my junk box bigger than this. If you have a boxed set of Law and Order next to your DVD player, you've already taken up more space than the Roku. Plus, tricking it out would have pushed it over the magic $99 price point.

2. Its easy to use. The interface is clean and has very few levels. The setup is simple, the hardest part being the entry of your wireless access code using the teeny remote.

3. The picture quality is good. Not great, but good. Looks fine on a standard TV. HD sets may make this a moot point very soon.

Not so impressive:

1. It streams from Netflix. Period. It is not a browser or MP3 player or anything else. In fact, you have to go to Netflix first and put programs into your queue to use the Roku. You can't add selections from the interface. So put on your slippers and trek out to the laptop on the kitchen table, you lazy bum.

2. I had to use HDMI input to my flatscreen. I only have two, and they are hooked up to my cable box and upscaling DVD player. The component outputs did not make my HD set happy, so I had to sacrifice the DVD players connection. So I'm using a rare resource to pump SD video into my HD set. The firmware needs to be upgraded for this. Of course, since the box doesn't do HD yet, an upgrade is already in the works. (of course, upgrades promised are just that. Promised.)

3. Content. Everybody's complaint, and the biggest thing keeping this from being a kyuu or even a ju. A lot of TV shows are available, and some that aren't available even in DVD form from Netflix. But movies are pretty poor in the selection department. Until then, you can spend hours upon hours catching up on the new Doctor Who or reliving AJ and Rick's exploits in San Diego without really missing the movie selection. But You Will. Maybe not now, or next week, but soon, and for the rest of your...

...oh, who has time for blogging when you can rewatch the episode where Higgins has to give Zeus and Apollo their bordetella boosters?

Kelvin

(BTW I still haven't mastered my Sega Dreamcast, so an Xbox would pretty much be a waste in my living room).

"Now that's doing it old school". Indeed.

One thing I miss about living in Colorado is the active ASIFA Denver chapter. Really no one down here in oil country to talk to about such things, and I've given up after the third "Ollie who?" response.

Of course, if you're one of those in the know, great treats in both "The Incredibles" and "Iron Giant" (Both Brad Bird films) were the cameos of Ollie Johnston and his lifelong friend Frank Thomas. In the Iron Giant they were the crew of the wrecked train, a tribute to Ollie's long fascination with railroading. In "The Incredibles", well, read the title bar.

The last of Disney's "Nine Old Men" have followed Walt home.

Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence

In a world where any studio with a few bucks and a half baked story idea can make a 3D CGI feature (I'm looking at YOU, Sony!), we see once again that Walt Disney had it right 70 years ago---its the story, stupid!

DVD extras are a lot like the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks--most are pretty lame. One consistent exception to that has been The Simpsons DVDs, where not only do you get a clever and funny menu system, easter eggs, etc., but each episode gets a well-executed commentary track. (How many times have you tried to listen to a director's commentary only to realize that you paid more attention to the film than he did?)

With The Simpsons Movie, Groening, Brooks and the other producers have outdone themselves. Although its always been possible to do, this is the first DVD I've seen that actually PAUSES during a commentary to allow time to explain, in detail, whats on the screen (if anyone knows of a previous example, please comment).

At approximately 30 minutes in, Al Jean pauses the movie to explain the saga of a joke that was constantly being pulled and re-inserted during audience tests. Usually if a director tries this, about 5 minutes of film has gone by while they're still explaining the fascinating story of a 10 second shot that no one noticed in the first place. Here, you not only get to hear the story (the church/bar gag just as Springfield gets "Trappacinoed" was constantly on the verge of being cut altogether) but you don't feel that you've missed out on anything. The video image stops and goes to B&W to let you know that the world is okay and your DVD player hasn't gone crazy.

At the hour mark, they actually stop for a 10 minute digression into the physical demands of the voice recording process. Its a bit long, and Ms. Smith belabors a point that seems odd for someone who's a voice over artist (she didn't think any cartoon before had evoked such a deep emotional response--did she somehow miss Dumbo and Bambi as a child?). To that end, perhaps a heavier hand in the recording booth could have shortened the distraction.

Lets hope that in the future other movies make use of this technique. At the very least hope for fewer commentaries where it is obvious that the only things the people talking want to do is get out of the booth and go sleep off their hangover.

(NOTE: Before anyone blogs me at length, I realize that the DVD isn't really paused. They just substitute a chapter in the program's VOB structure that has a held frame in it. In reality you're just watching a longer version of the film. But its still a feature that needs to be used more.)