ELECTRIC MUSINGS

soap …well detergent more like

2012-01-28T23:11:00.000-08:00

I've decided to follow in the steps of home DIYers and mommy bloggers and make my own laundry detergent.

This is an adaptation as found on many sites all over the web, like this one. I've changed it up a tad, mainly to experiment and also to give some variety and color to the stuff.

In my research (internet searching) it seems that 5.5oz of Fels-Naptha or other laundry (or even hand/body bar) soap is the main ingredient in this homemade melange. I was intrigued by Zote soap, but also liked the number of different recipes that used the Fels-Naptha brand …so I used both.

I've ended up with 19.6oz of soap in all, so I've more than quadrupled the recipe that uses that 4.5oz, so here it is:

• 4.333 cups Borax
• 4.333 cups Washing Soda
• 1 bar (5.5oz) Fels-Naptha soap
• 1 bar (14.1oz) Zote soap

I had some trouble grating up the Fels-Naptha soap because it acted a lot like a semi-hard cheese. It clogged up the parmesan grater surface so I switched to the smallest long-grate surface. I think in the end I'm going to have to run it through a blender/processor to break up the soap a lot more than it is now. The Zote soap, on the other hand, grated up quite nicely. When I do it again I definitely will use the Zote soap by itself, though it does take longer to grate up a 14oz block.

All in all, I'm intrigued to find out how this is going to perform. I debated on mixing in some perfume-free OxiClean in, but I'll try it at some point, but for the first batch, I want it to be original recipe.

Ok, here's the skinny on the results:

Worked great! No pieces of soap on my laundry, which I feared, but doing a really hot wash may have something to do with that.

As far as price

Most of the DIY recipes say that 1 TBSP = 1 "load"

A typical "Tide" container does about 26 loads, but it counts a single "load" as the bottom "Line 1" of the measuring device, which is about 1/8 Cup in liquid form (I know I'm comparing liquid to powder, but bear with me) as a "load" for the DIY stuff is 2 TBSP.

I used about 1/3 Cup (roughly 5 1/3 TBSP) for my homemade stuff and estimate it works great for small-medium, maybe even large loads, probably need 2/3 Cup for XL loads.

Worked out, the tide costs about 32¢ per "load" (that's 1/8 C)

The homemade stuff costs 13¢ per 1/8 C, so I figured 35¢ for a standard medium/large load of laundry - the tide would be 64¢ equiv. So just about 50% of the cost of the Tide, plus, most people say you don't need to add something like Oxiclean or other non-chlorine bleach to it when you use the DIY soap, so there's more savings there, too.

The Word

2012-01-14T12:53:00.000-08:00

Can I just say as a creative that I have serious, vitriolic hatred of certain business-world conventions (no, not cons or gatherings!) particularly with business nomenclature. Let me be more specific:

Adding "e," "i," or "web" onto the beginning of a conventional business/colloquial term. I'm going to just say that I don't care about email, as it formed, as far as I can tell, without some idiotic, 100-person, board of directors meeting spanning three continents and costing millions of dollars simply in deliberation.

Case in point: webinar

I hate this word more than my logical argument for hating it is capable of enumerating. Firstly, my spellcheck puts a squiggly red line under it– so is it a word at all?

Secondly, it's a portmanteau of web, which is shortened from world-wide web, and seminar, which comes from the Latin seminarium, meaning nursery, but means more commonly, "a meeting for giving and discussing information." While one could call this argument moot, because I've already cited it as a portmanteau, I press on: webinar has completely corrupted the word to the point where it original meaning is lost- the word, seminar, is no longer present, and makes no sense.

A part of me feels that the addition of ginormous (a popular portmanteau) into our lexica is a step backward in vocabular evolution.

Thirdly, and most irritatingly, it is yet another venture by those in the business world to attempt to add value, appeal, or even commodity to something that already has or has no intrinsic nature! A seminar is a vital part of the business world where people come together and discuss new ideas pertaining to their industry. Use of a word like webinar is a prime example of forced value. One might argue at this point that it differentiates between a physical location and the new officeless or cloud meeting convention. I disagree. Whether a seminar is held in a hotel conference room, convention center, via Skype, iChat, Messenger, or even in an IHOP, the nature of the meeting itself is not changed. Just because a seminar is hosted over the Internet (the capitalization of Internet is another bone of contention with me) does not change the fact that it is still just another seminar! You could host it at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, but you wouldn't call it a snobinar, would you? It's still a gathering of minds to discuss new ideas. The medium should have no bearing on the nature of the thing itself.

You may view this as a "making mounds out of molehills" moment, but I submit that it's a byproduct of an unnecessary, and infantile business mindset: that their fellows, constituents, and clients need to have something as silly and next-gen as a naming convention in order to attract more traffic, sell more seats, recruit more eager grads, or whatever the goal is. Or better yet, don't even call it a seminar, call it a convention!

Think of a better way to accomplish something like this than a simple and nearly-plagiarizing convention of adding a letter, or creating compound word/portmanteau to further along your business affairs. With an equally as common business phrase, why not think outside the box and focus on your strategy rather than your business newspeak for solutions.

135 and Supermacro

2012-01-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

Did some more 35mm stuff. This time I shot exclusively with my 135mm lens, which is quite nice and gives a good close view. Couple that with my close-up attachments, and you can get it crazy far- so far, in fact, that your depth of field is shrunk to next to nothing. Again, this was with expired Fujifilm stock (my last roll!).

Barbed

Bullets

The Danger Children (cool band name…)

Gas

Gated

Generator

Half Dollars

Linked Leaf

Pistola

Reflector

Rustease

Sixteen and a half Seconds

Stencil

TeeVee

Wood Protrusion

An Event of Note

2011-12-30T14:17:00.000-08:00

While I don't normally post personal events beyond the excitement of new equipment or media, I think this exception is appropriate.

I'm getting married. True story.

My wife-to-be has a nicely documented account of what transpired over the Christmas weekend, so you can read it here, on her blog.

It was an enjoyable time, one I shan't forget. My only wish is that it could have been for longer! Pictures to follow. Sadly, I only took my digital camera along, so no grainy goodness this time around.

Here's a teaser pic of our niece "wearing" her new christmas present:

Exploration of Expiration

2011-12-10T17:09:00.000-08:00

I didn't really do much with this roll, other than bracketing, to showcase the effects of color shift due to film expiration. As this "rotten" film phenomenon is most prominent in color films, even pros don't care about their b&w stock going off. Additionally, I only cited one example of drastic color shift in this post. If you go back to my previous post with Fujifilm Superia xTra 400 shots and see the first image of the jet trails, there was a second shot which also contained a massive shift in the color of the sky. I like the way this unpredictable fluctuation affects the negative.

In order to protect my "~~mystery lens~~" (~~probably a 20-25mm~~) (a Rollei Planar 50mm 1.8ƒ - because I'm a moron and didn't think to look everywhere on the lens) I had to append an extension in the shape of a "modified" effect filter (I broke the glass out...) which created or accentuated the vignette, as it's not flared. I used this generic, cheap lens ~~enigma~~ as I can squeeze that 1.8ƒ out of it.

A Metaphor

Boxen

I Don't Like Grocery Stores

Looming Lurk

Then Why are There Doors Here?

Fall's Fall

Tarred Rocks

Not an Original Idea

Morbid Curiosity

The Plus Signs

Spy Goat

Narrow Grove

Valvole

Old, Expired, Leaked, and Good

2011-12-04T14:37:00.000-08:00

Some shots from an old roll of film. This one covers a wide range of time, from the trip to Uinta National Forest, to a show in the yard of the Corner House, and to the test shots for the guitars. This was all shot on Fujicolor 400 (which was expired) and processed at the last 1-hour photo in a grocery store in Provo.

Stray Birds

Danielle XI

Al Checks

Chillin'

Reaf

Tay Lore and His Amazing Lookaway!

Tay Lore Sends a Text!

Thom Gone Digital

When the Back Opens

Alubs Pagemaker

2011-10-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

I thought of it, and I did it.
That is all.

Negative Film Stocks

2011-10-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

Two of a Kind

Ektar 100

Rock Canyon

Ektar 100

Summer's Last Stand

Ektar 100

Fall's March

Ektar 100

Deesydjuuss

Ektar 100

Sunset 1

Reala 100

Set

Reala 100

Valley

Reala 100

So Now I have a first-hand experience with what each manufacturer's stocks work like. I didn't test Ektar in total darkness like I did with the Reala, but I think I can get a good idea from the guitar photo, which wasn't as ruined as I thought. It was merely not completely in focus rather than overexposed. As we can see, the Ektar has that classy Kodak look to it. I shot some of the sunset as well, but they were …horrible. the sky was washed out, and the yellows almost non-existent. The Reala shined with it's rich blues, and surprisingly did OK in total night shots. I think that one shot of the valley was about 60 seconds or so; about the threshold for the Reala I've learned…

Having talked with my lab and with my camera repairer, I think I won't even test the Velvia 100, if it ever arrives from Adorama. He suggests the best stock is the Velvia 50, at least as far as chrome films go. I think If I keep doing negatives I'm going to definitely stick with Ektar. It was by far what I'm looking for in terms of daylight-normal shots.

I've got the Mamiya loaded up with TMAX 400 right now. I'm still waiting for my 100 speed stuff, but I've got both Ilford Delta 100 & 400 to test right after it. I think I'm going to stick with TMAX, but that's because I can't yet find PanF in 120 format. I think, though, that I need more practice than anything. 8 out of 24 useable frames is kinda shoddy… Oh well, improvement is the only way.

Preamble to the Film Battle

2011-10-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

I love film, don't get me wrong, but man, I do love the stuff you can do with digital! Here are a few test shots I did before burning the stock. These are comparable shots to what you will see when I get the film back. What I didn't do was any white balance correction on these shots. I set everything like it would have been on my Mamiya, and since almost all color film nowadays is daylight-balanced, I didn't feel like adjusting it.

I shot a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 and Fujifilm Reala 100. I decided to wait and test the 'chrome' films together, and my roll of Fujifilm Velvia 100 was on backorder, but I've got the Ektachrome all ready for the challenge!

I don't know much about the subtleties of the different manufacturers, but generally that Fujifilm has more brilliant blue/green while the Kodak stocks have a warmer, stronger yellow/red sway. Well, I mean, look at their packaging & logos, right?

And then there's the differences in their own stocks! Negative vs 'chrome,' a.k.a. slide, or positive films. I know the 'chrome' stocks have amazing saturation, almost on the unnatural side, while having a slim exposure latitude; you have to really know what you're doing when you shoot slide film! Even one stop off and you'll be in trouble. Negative film, on the other hand, is quite forgiving, allowing for a lot of play when making prints (and hopefully when scanning).

measure twice…

2011-10-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

…[shoot] once!

Well, originally it was "cut." The prime rule of the wood shop applies to almost every craft. You can't neglect an axiom like that when you're building a house, let alone a bed frame, birdhouse, or outhouse. I've had numerous opportunities to learn this simple rule.

I took this photo on my digital rebel xt in preparation to shoot this scene with my TLR that I just got back from the shop (I would make a shout out here, but Kew's doesn't have a website :/ ) and was anxious to get some film into it and start snapping… thankfully I think there were only two exposures used.

Trying to set my exposure for two cameras, with two film speeds based on the digital camera shot is a confusing thing… and I'm not doing that again. The film, I believe was exposed about 1 whole stop different from the digital: ƒ5.6 at 15s. which doesn't sound like a lot, but now I just remembered I had an 80b filter on my Canon… which is another 1 2/3 stops difference… iiiiiiit's going to be blown out. Oh well, live and learn right? Dagnabit that was a cool composition too! Well, it was only two exposures.

So now I know, and knowing is half the battle!

I drink developer… mmmm, silver

2011-09-24T13:56:00.000-07:00

Arista II 400

Thank you, Amazon.com

2011-09-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

My replacement CanoScan 9000f has arrived! And in very, very good time. I applaud you, Amazon.com.

Kids, remember: when a major tech manufacturer like Canon touches you in a way that doesn't feel good, tell a responsible adult right away!

Or, just get a replacement scanner. There is no line, for REALS this time.

Amazon has got it going on

2011-09-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

Thankfully, all of what you might have seen in terms of rage has passed.

I haven't received a call back from Canon about the scanner that was malfunctioning. I sent them a rather heated, but not nasty email regarding it, how they didn't take all of my evidence into consideration before just dropping my case, hoping I wouldn't phone bring it up again. I even sent them more photos, scanned to show the blatant line running down the middle.

But now there's no need. Thanks to Amazon.com I won't have to deal with them. I sent my malfunctioning one back and they're sending me a replacement! simple as that. I kept everything all nice & neat in terms of the packaging, even keeping some of that nifty product tape they use when they ship the product that doesn't leave a residue. It was simple: I went the service page, asked to return an item, and they gave me a shipping label and such within less than 5 minutes… dang that's good.

It helps when Amazon doesn't really "make" anything besides their eBook reader. They don't care if you want to return something! Kinda like Walmart… only better.

So with fingers crossed I await my new scanner which hopefully doesn't present any problems.

Danielle's Last Work Lunch - Post 100

2011-09-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

Off to Firehouse - Arista II 400

Patiently - Arista II 400

Crew I - Arista II 400

Crew II - Arista II 400

Crew III - Arista II 400

Danielle - Arista II 400

A Free Small - Arista II 400

Straws In - Arista II 400

Loving the Daylight - Arista II 400

The Last Bits - Arista II 400

Rubbish - Arista II 400

Max Burns - Arista II 400

Pie Shake! - Arista II 400

Oops - Arista II 400

Ill Photgrapher - Arista II 400

Why I Shoot Film (Lattice) - Arista II 400

So Here is the fruit of my labor. Developed, fixed and dried alright (though that forma-flo didn't do jack about the water spots on my negatives) and scanned in. The 35mm works fine, as the line that Canon says is on my negatives runs down the middle of the two-columned holder. I'm still a frustrated about that, if you can't tell. I shot an old, expired roll of Arista II 400 and developed it according to the MASSIVE data sheet from Digital Ruth. Quite handy, as I've only got BW-2 Tmax developer.

Success!

2011-09-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

I have (sorry, Danielle, couldn't wait) succeeded in developing a roll of B&W film …at home!

I did my research and purchased chemicals from the Photographer's Formulary, a very cool little shop up in Montana. I got the BW-2 (a pro staffer's own variation on the Kodak TMax developer) and their TF-4 Archival fixer. No stop bath required. I purchased a developing tank and reels from Allen's, a meat thermometer from Home Depot, and made my very own film washer. Here are some progress images!

My "darkroom" - it was just in my dark bedroom, at night, inside a snowmobile suit- worked like a charm! Zipped it up, covered the top end with a blanket and stuck my arms thru the legs and bam; got the negatives out, on the reel and into the tank. Better than when I took the class!

All my premixed chemicals, gloves and tank (covered and with film) all ready to go!

No time to take photos whilst developing, as I needed to keep a strict regimen or agitation and changing chemicals. Here the film is rinsing in my homemade washer! Oh, plumbing parts…

BAM! I can haz developed negativz? Yes, I can haz.

Now they'll dry and I can scan the negatives from Danielle's last lunch with the CS team. Now I just want to get my camera back from the shop, and maybe go take some more rolls with my 35mm in the mean time. The developer in working solution has a shelf life of about a week, which isn't long, but will guarantee me a good result each time. The fixer will keep for much longer…

In other news, my Mamiya C33 is in the shop for a lens overhaul- well worth the $65 price from Kew's Camera. Excellent place, that. He really knows his stuff. He was telling me all sorts of tidbits about my camera, how it was one of the earlier C33s imported to the States, by this curious sticker on the bottom of the body. Gave me a recommendation on a different 35mm and other future medium format cameras. He said that even despite the repair job (the bulb function didn't work) I got a killer deal on that camera and that even though his Hasselblad gets the job done (and probably better) he regrets selling his C330 some twenty years ago. Makes me feel even better about my purchase!

Photos! Scans! Yay!

Maybe I could have pushed the development a bit more- but no matter.

Frackin' CanoScan!

2011-09-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

So, I'm having issues with the scanner I just bought. Brand-new, high quality and economical though it is on paper, it's acting up in a way I didn't think possible with something from Canon.

Here are some examples. You'll have to click on them and view the whole image to get the whole picture- see what I did there?

These are only slightly adjusted in photoshop, for levels, but the lines down the middle are clearly visible. I've called Canon and arranged this tech support ball to get rolling, but thought I'd post it anyway, as it is tech related. I'm usually a fairly passive person in terms of my customer satisfaction, mainly because I never wanted to make a fuss, but I paid good money for this piece and I want it to work for the intention I purchased it for: scanning negatives/transparencies, particularly for the 120 format.

The 35mm holder scans them fine, however the area creating the line is in the center, where the divider between the film strips is (scanning two rows of negatives at a time- take that, CoolScan!)

Hopefully this doesn't require me to send back this one and get another one- that usually doesn't fix anything with my luck- you suck, Alesis. Hopefully it's simply a calibration issue that can be done on the fly and I can get it working.

Mamiya C33 First Run

2011-09-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

Click each photo for a 1200px view

Adrienne Wants to Go Home - Portra 400 (expired) ƒ3.5

Dal-El - Portra 400 (expired) ƒ3.5

Janssen - Portra 400 (expired) ƒ3.5

K's Plight - Portra 400 (expired) ƒ3.5

Getting Through the Day - Portra 400 (expired) ƒ3.5

Last Light - Portra 400 (expired) ƒ3.5

The day I got my Mamiya C33 from the FedEx man I immediately loaded it up… well almost. I had a time figuring out some of the eccentricities of the TLR and of this model itself. Some things were straightforward, others not so much. After I felt I had a grasp on the features and it's function, I loaded it in low light (Rob's edit bay) and began to shoot around my office. It looks like I need to feed more of the leader onto the spool before I wind it up. The first exposure (same shot as the bottles) had the lower 1/5th of it come off a bit wonky, looking more like a bad digital error than anything.

I decided to make this a series after photographing my supervisor and one of our copywriters: "Work"

I also decided to do as little retouching as possible, only adjusting levels and removing the most obtrusive hairs/dust pieces. These were scanned on an old Epson Expression at about 3600dpi. I'm planning on getting the CanoScan 9000f, which has an optical scan resolution of 9600x9600dpi (!) and has a precise, dedicated LED backlight for negatives. Sure, it might not handle the dreaded Kodachrome emulsion, but I don't have any anyway. $170 is more than a bargain.

Photos: Past, Present, and …More Present

2011-09-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

Monster

After 5 exposures with the lens cap on, I gave up on my flashlight/sparkler writing trick - Ilford HP5 400

Analogue Analog

Neither the film I used to take this photo, nor the subject, should be classified as antiquity, but apparently it is. - Ilford HP5 400

Equalize

Three completely different pieces of audio gear. - Ilford HP5 400

Brain Rock

Yellowstone somewhere, 2008 - Canon Digital Rebel xt

Bright Decay I

Some dude decided to park his truck in our driveway, so I made use of it - Canon Digital Rebel xt

Bright Decay II

It's an odd thing to have something actually rust in Rexburg. - Canon Digital Rebel xt

Hung Up

I don't know what it means, but whatever. - Canon Digital Rebel xt

Circuit City

Remember that place? Yeah, they were overpriced. - Canon Digital Rebel xt

El Dorado i El Camino

I love the flamboyant styling of the 50s & early 60s. Frack your couch, Ralph Nader! - Canon Digital Rebel xt

Musical Maturity

Yes. 20-somethings are still kids. - Canon Digital Rebel xt

Jamie

- Canon Digital Rebel xt

of Rexburg

- Canon Digital Rebel xt

Sound Sunset

After being honked at, apparently I was obstructing the view of some a-hole parked in a car behind me - Canon Digital Rebel xt

Jumping

Did I mean to? …yes. - Canon Digital Rebel xt

Taylor's Process
- Canon Digital Rebel xt

Willhelm
- Canon Digital Rebel xt

Will's Set
- Canon Digital Rebel xt

[a] thing that [I] love to discuss but no one cares about

2011-08-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

I recently read this article about this very subject.

I've taken it upon myself to correct a great wrong in Hollywoodland, perpetuated by one of the most profitable filmmakers ever, who made one of the greatest film franchises of all time, changed the motion picture industry, and who seemed as if he just gave the finger to every one of his fans (with brains) with his latest commercial diarrhea.

I like to talk about it, or at least, liked to talk about it quite often.

With one coworker in particular who's an avid a fan (perhaps even moreso than me), who has the same idea about these monstrosities. We share this pathological loathing of these films and were wont to discuss it at length. We've watched numerous and internet-famous reviews on the subject; the basic, cinema-101 errors or even lack thereof for weeks and weeks. I decided I was going to take action and I drafted an outline based on a particular review, my own and my coworker's thoughts and ideas. It seemed really good and much more complete of a story than this filmmaker decided to do. So I took the logical next step.

I began a screenplay– with only a 300-level university english education to back me– I wrote up about 15 pages the first night, and it just seemed to flow. After a week I had about 30 pages, and after a month and some hefty revision, 35 pages of solid story. I cautiously told a few close friends and associates about my plan and gave them copies of my partially done script. I picked their brains, I emailed and IM'd, I annoyed them to death with all of my persistent solicitations. After a month or so more I became obsessed with my personal health and took some time off, eventually coming back to it this last weekend. Wow. I'm clearly not an experienced writer, and this was quite ambitious.

to quote the article:
And your idea might be incredible. Your outer-space/detective pilot that bends genres and challenges what the medium is even capable of accomplishing could be amazing, or your musical about time travel could be what saves Broadway from financial ruin, but until you actually make something, you're just telling your friends about something that might be awesome, someday. Maybe.

One important thing I've gleaned though is this:

Though I'm going to continue working on it little by little and learning along the way, I have come to the conclusion that this script, no matter how much more engaging and interesting it may be to me, my friends or family, until it gets published, bought then shelved or even glimpsed at by someone who matters in the biz…

…it's still just fan fiction.

But in my mind, it will be the definitive story. Screw you, Jorge!

Image formats: addendum

2011-08-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

So, in addition to what I posted earlier in regard to digital image formats, I have an additional anecdote:

I was working away at my desk, not a thought to the assets I just handed off to the editors for a new show we're working on. One of the editors walks in and b-lines it for me with his benign yet smug mug. I should point out that this particular editor happened to engage me in conversation earlier that month on how he dislikes "artists" and people who don't understand the technical side of editing, programming, master control, etc. and that they don't care to fathom the physical limitations of their creativity. Having thus, under the cloak of semantics, slapped me in the face I expected a talking to about correct image formats, alpha channels and something else I had a more-than-adequate understanding of.

Indeed, he told me that the TIFF file I had given him didn't work, neither did the TGA or PSD file I packaged with said file. He then asks: "can you just give it to me in a jpeg?"

my face when…

Anyway, enough verbosity. I asked him why the TIFF didn't work or the TGA or the PSD and just said, "uh, it made Final Cut buggy"

I don't know what he meant by "buggy," but I've never had a problem giving them or working with a TIFF or a Targa file... I use TGAs a lot for 3D texturing because they support 32-bit structure and perfectly implemented alpha channels…

Whatever

image compression, print, and the rules of digital photo files

2011-07-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's ranting time on Electric Musings, today.

Digital images. We use them everyday, and have done for quite some time. It's shocking, however, that people don't (or don't care to) understand the basics of digital photo formats, their purposes and when and when not to use them. What's even more shocking however is the pervasiveness of this ignorance in the professional world as well as the domestic one.

First things first: digital photo file formats

1) jpeg, jpg: this format was decided on by the "Joint Photographic Experts Group" hence the name. I don't know anything about this group, but their lauded jpeg format is a royal pain in the back of creatives (or it should be, anyway).

This format was designed to use a mathematical algorithm to reduce the file size of photos, and that is all very good- most people didn't, and in some cases still don't, have the storage capacity to save hundreds or thousands of raw (.CR2 or similar) camera files from their digital cameras and some cameras don't even give you this option, but store them by default as jpegs. The downside comes in the fact that the compression that is used is called "lossy" compression, which I'll get to later. It also could not support alpha channels (which I'll cover later). Jpeg compression was at its best, best for only one thing: the Internet.

2) TIFF, TIF: the Tagged Image File Format. This is the bread and butter for digital imagery. It's versatile, can be read by almost every image manipulation or lightroom program, and has no trouble getting around any operating system. It's downside can be its size. Relatively speaking, they can be quite large but can also be compressed, but in a "lossless" method, several are universally adapted into image manipulation programs, etc. supporting 32-bit color data, alpha channels and layers, and can be saved in almost any color space (mode).

3) PNG: The Portable Network Graphics file uses lossless compression, but is not in the same league as the TIFF file. Images saved in this format can only be in RGB color space. And I'll get to that later as well. An upside to the PNG as a web-friendly format is that it fully supports alpha channels. With the advent and proliferation of high-speed internet connections, this format should logically supplant the antiquated and problematic jpeg.

4) GIF: The Graphics Interchange Format was another early means of creating small file sizes, but also for certain systems (before 1998 anyway) that could only display a certain number of colors at a time. This format does not simply use a color mode, such as RGB color space, but rather a color table, a predetermined set of colors up to a whole 256! This format seems antiquated on almost every level aside from a few things, but it's real problem was evident in the days before high-powered graphics processors: it might show up just fine in GIFeditor on your DOS machine, but the second it went on your AOL homepage, it would go nuts and look like an acid trip. It was, however, able to have transparency (not quite a standard alpha channel), animation (which the creators of the format said it can, but should not be used for- confusing), and for its method of lossy compression and color dithering. Again, like the jpeg, this is really only good for the Internet.

Now, image compression

Noted above are two types of image compression, lossy and lossless. Lossless seems fairly straightforward, in that it's compression of the file by means of an algorithm that does not permanently remove any of the image data, whereas lossy means that there is permanent data loss.

A lossless compression will enable you to minimize (sometimes by not much, but enough) the file size of your digital images, yet will retain, by the black magic that is computer science, the full detail with no losses in quality.

A lossy compression will similarly do the same to your digital files, but the compression is permanent. This type of algorithm will interpolate (looking at the whole image and at sections of change in pixels) pixel patterns and rewrite the code of the file to keep a relatively similar-looking image, but reduce the file size massively. This creates what is called "artifacting" or "jpeg artifacts." See below.

PNG - lossless compression JPEG - lossy compression

Now, I've exaggerated the JPEG compression on the right, for comparison's sake, but you get the idea. The jpeg is blurry, pixelated and has lost quite a lot of it's original information or quality. This change is permanent. And each time you open and edit the JPEG, it's structure is compressed again! You might start a JPEG with a higher quality than this one, but eventually, with repeated edits, it will look this way or worse.

Now, the print world

Print is a whole different monster and monkey wrench all in one. All digital images start out as RGB or sRGB files. What does that mean? your computer has a limited range of color it can display- a tulip field in holland is going to be up to 40x more color-dense and tonal-dense in real life than it will be from even the most expensive Hasselblad digital-bacjed camera. This limited range, or gamut, is called RGB color space, because each one of the display pixels in your computer monitor is made up of some mixture of Red, Green, and Blue- if you want to nerd out on that, search up Additive Light.

So we have this RGB space in which we view our digital photos on screen, which is perfectly fine and you would never deliberately change the color space just because. The print world is the monkey wrench monster.

In the print world, we can't, as yet, print things with additive color, because that requires photons… anyway, the traditional printing process for pictures similar to the ones above, called full-color or 4-color process, uses 4 inks to create finished work. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) in that order. Analogous to how the computer display/monitor uses mixtures of RGB to achieve the final result of a coherent image, the printing process uses the four inks. For more geekiness, search up: screen printing or offset printing. This is exactly the same principle for your home printers. You (well, your parents) might wonder why their photos never look the same printed as they do on screen, and here we are. Let me add, though, photos can look even more off when they aren't adjusted right, or when the computer does things for you- ColorSync, I'm talking to you!

In days of yore, a photographic (negatives and darkrooms, kids!) approach was used to get the final layout or design separated onto individual plates of cyan, magenta, yellow and black that would take up ink and print to the paper/medium in the process indicated above. Nowadays, with the proliferation of digital presses which take our (mostly) PostScript™ ready files and make plates, we have to be more scrupulous about how our designs and photos are prepared. The relative ease of just sending one packaged file to the printer, and not painstakingly prepared masters to be photographed has made us a bit lazy. When InDesign gives you a color space warning, fix it!

In order to make sure that our designs look exactly like we've created and printed them (our proofs), we need to make sure that everything we've been working on is compatible with the press. In other words, CMYK, or print-ready.

Now where does that leave us?

Make sure you know what you're designing for. Is it for web/interactive media? Print? Both?

Make sure you always keep a master version of your work! Wether it be an un-flattened photoshop file, illustrator or indesign file, make sure you keep the originals as well as your print-ready versions (editing CMYK images is not very fun or accurate)

Make sure you use the correct file format. Make sure you're using PSD or TIFF files for your linked images in an indesign or illustrator file, and if they're for print, make sure they're CMYK and conform to your printer's specifications including ink density, black separation and dot gain.

Understand the difference between lossy and lossless file compression and when it's appropriate. You don't need to send grandma a 50 megabyte file that she's only going to print on her home printer, sometimes, JPEGs are OK to use.

But for pete's sake, do not use jpegs, gifs or pngs in any project you're going to use for print, and if your printer asks for a high-resolution jpeg file, ask them, "why not a tiff or photoshop file?" and whatever the case, send both. You don't want to pay for a shoddy print job, just because they're too lazy to take a better file.

For the TL:DR crowd:

Do not, under any circumstance, print from, make a layout with, or edit a jpeg! Save it as a TIFF, PSD or if you have to, a Photoshop EPS *shudder* and always keep a mast backup file.

SHAT TREK: The Wrath of KhanKat

2011-06-23T17:57:00.001-07:00

http://khankatrevenge.ytmnd.com/

This is the very last khankat one, I promise.

khankhankhankhankhankhankhankhankhankhankhankhan

2011-06-17T20:05:00.001-07:00

http://khankat.ytmnd.com/

that is all.

Holy Fraking MIDI Nickelodeons, Batman!

2011-06-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

So there's this bloke called Robert, who has a unique musical and mechanical niche in the instrument repairing world: he repairs player pianos, nickelodeons, Orchestrions, hurdy gurdies, and pretty much any other mechanical keyboard device from the early 20th century.

But, he doesn't just do repairs and restorations to both interior and exterior. No. He goes one step up the ladder and makes the Rube-Goldberg music makers on-par with the rest of the 21st century. He'll upgrade your Gulbransen with much more than a good dark finish and new pistons, he'll make the thing MIDI-compatible. So now you'll get the best of both worlds.

Imagine being able to tempo-sync a recording from a good ol' jangly piano and put it seamlessly in with your mix. No tempo mastering, no correction, just pure sound of turn-of-the-century goodness.

Should make those hipsters happy for a while.

Here are a few examples of Robert's excellent work! All videos are his copyright and property.

These two are insane…

and then with the rest of the Nickelodeon accoutrements…

Professor Elemental

2011-05-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

Incredibly, incredibly funny. I'm off to buy an LP or two…

Updated Tech

2011-05-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, I decided to make an upgrade my computer. It's been a steadfast, loyal steed in my crusade against unemployment, lack of exploration and good use of free time…

March 2006. I get my graduation present a few months early in the shape of a Mac Pro Quad, decked out with a fair amount of RAM, two HDs and a spare monitor from my dad's office (not to mention the software I ordered with it, and specifically for it).

It's so odd that I've never, in the five years since, found it to be substandard. I've never even found it to be all that slow. I can remember not even a year passed with my laptop that it started to be eclipsed by lab computers, roommate's computers, and even job computers (!). The only place I wanted more was in the horsepower, and that was something I pined for even before I opened the box!

I had this brilliant plan hatched. As it was, the computer came with three years of AppleCare™ and I'm glad to say I've never needed a second of it. The day the warranty was up I was going to take it somewhere and get the CPUs upgraded from the two Xeon™ dual cores to two spanking quad-cores. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that authorized Apple techs aren't allowed to make those kinds of upgrades! Only if the CPUs are defective can they open up the beast and give it a new brain [insert "Young Frankenstein" joke here].

After a few years of waffling, I decided I'd better just nut up and do it myself. I bought some thermal grease from Central Utah Electronics, got a matched pair of Intel© Xeon™ 5335 "pulled from a server," and set to work. Little did I know, despite the warnings from every tutorial and DIY instruction page and video I watched, that you really do need a super long Torx tool to loosen the heat sinks. After several trips to the hardware stores trying different tools, returning them, and buying new ones did I finally rig up something long enough to reach the far-distant screws.

Thermal paste applied, I re-fastened the heat sinks in place, put back the plastic origami that makes up the insides of the Mac Pro case, plugged it in, pressed the power button, and waited with bated breath.

It worked. Otherwise I'd of written this from a work computer :P

So now I've got eight delicious cores of power. All in all, I'm working with a 150-175% overall computing increase. I was a bit confused, but I think I know the real problem.

So I always knew you were supposed to install RAM for computers like this in pairs. What I didn't know is that notwithstanding the physical accuracy of my installation, I failed to comprehend that you need to have an even number of memory in total, not just a number of chips installed. I currently have about 5GB of RAM installed. [cue groans and facepalms from the computer wizards]

The computer came shipped, cheapest, with 1GB (2x512MB) and I purchased 4GB (2x2GB) of RAM from a third party. Needless to say, that was dumb- or I should have at least removed the 1GB and tried to sell it or something. I'm on track to get another 4GB (2x2GB), which will give me 1GB per core, an optimal setup, according to a friend of mine. Having an odd number, is no bueno. So this could potentially speed things up, or at least prevent a lot of future problems from occurring.

Another upgrade/maintenance process I'm working through is a general cleanup of my storage and HD configuration. What I plan on, is getting an SSD (solid state drive) for my main startup and applications drive (roughly GB) and just for kicks I'll get a 120GB drive. I could technically make do with about 80 or so, but just to have some swap space and VRAM space, I'll go 120. The other three drives I have will then have more space to store everything else. I've currently backed up my second drive which was almost full and will then erase that and make it the my Windows 7 drive. The current Windows drive will become the main documents storage as it hasn't been in use for very long (only about 2 years or so), and the primary drive will house less-important files and things of that nature, as it's been used the longest and hardest of the three.

So after all that information you really wanted to know, I'll stop. After telling you first that I'm also planning on buying Renderman for Maya. I've finally gotten sick of how much finagling and render time MentalRay uses and I'm just done. Also, the impetus for all the maintenance is that my computer is becoming a bit buggy (not form the processors, I hope) and I'll finally be upgrading it to Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) so goodbye Maya 8.5…

Typographic Rage

2011-05-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

In a search to find an accurate RGB value for the logo and opening crawl of Star Wars [pushes glasses further up nose], i stumbled upon this authentic, fan-made tutorial. After a fine-toothed combing over, I had to vent some typographic rage over the details in that tutorial.

Their research of the typefaces was fair. Franklin Gothic is indeed close to the main body font for the opening crawl as well as the "Long, Long ago…" text. Some sources cite News Gothic as the main font, which is discernible mainly by the uppercase "Q," the numerals, both of which are absent from any of the crawls, but on closer inspection, News Gothic could be the more likely of contenders. However, I want to firstly correct the typeface for the episode name (not the number). The tutorial lists the font as "Franklin Gothic Medium Condensed," when in fact the correct typeface is the Univers family, the font: 49 Ultra Compressed.

This however, is rather superficial compared to the other horrors within.

It states that you need to condense the width of the fonts up to 80% of their original size… [and I just threw up in my mouth again]. Let me please explain something:

In the 1960s and 70s graphic designers utilized different tools to achieve the graphical needs of clients than we use today. For typesetting, copy was originally written on a typewriter and then a typesetter or designer would lay out every thing in moveable type, use a linotype machine or even hand-draw the letterforms. In other cases, where work needed to be produced quickly and economically, Letraset rub-on letters were used instead. This technique was relatively straight forward: you pick your typeface, get the number of sheets you think you needed, blue-line your baseline grid, and used a bone folder, or rounded metal tool to transfer the letters onto your paper, usually over a light table to see the blue lines better (blue lines would not appear when Xeroxed).

Long story short, the type that was used to set the opening scroll, which was screen-printed from the original onto glass, would not have been compressed like that, because they didn't have the readily available technology of digital typesetting in 1976/7! There's also the fault that the versions of the text that fans have access to were perspective-corrected, not the original glass master plates.

So there are three possibilities for where this supposed distortion comes from:

Distortion in the fabrication process of the glass master plate: it was most likely photo-transfered to the silkscreen, and perhaps they discovered that the glass was narrower than they originally thought or were told, and had to improvise by adjusting the printer's (that's photographic printer) aperture to fit within the silkscreen's area. This could be disproved however, as there are varying percentages at which to squeeze the type digitally in the tutorial.
The perspective-corrected versions of the opening crawls were not accurately restructured. Again, this could be disproved by the varying widths, but then again, this could itself be an error. I've already given my evidence that the text would not have been squeezed at all.
My strongest conviction- The final footage was squeezed during compositing: In the old days before Nuke, After Effects or Shake, compositing two separate sequences of film onto one another was done with an optical printer. Crudely explained, it's two projectors aimed at a single piece of new negative stock to be exposed. This was an arduous process in iteself and frequently yielded very grainy-looking composites (go watch any low budget sci-fi film from the 70s-80s). To get around this, in Star Wars, John Dykstra (Thank you, Sam Longoria, for the correction) and co. used a modified camera which exposed traditional 35mm film stock in a different manner. The VistaVision camera system flipped the stock and exposed it horizontally rather than vertically (as with the anamorphic Panavision system). The end result meant that you could expose a greater area of the film with less distortion, but also with less grain. This was ideal for composite shots, as was proved in their efforts in all three of the original trilogy. What this all means is that the safe zones for each method of exposure differed. It's quite possible that when the crawl (which was shot with the Dykstraflex- the modified VistaVision camera to have motion control) was composited onto the shot of the starfield matte painting and had to be adjusted during the composite to fit within the safe area, OR that the compositor had to give his best guess as the projectors for both film stocks were different, necessitating a zoom and slight distortion in the projection. This small amount of distortion is well within the norm for doing a comp like this (especially having to work with stock that was photographed upside down), I expect, and shouldn't be looked down upon. (if this is over your head, take a photography course that teaches darkroom techniques, and read up on compositing.)

What I'm really getting at is that to be absolutely true to the opening crawl text… optically composite the thing the way they did it!

ILM founding member Richard Edlund making a pass on the crawl from A New Hope. Note that the glass plate is being filmed at an extreme angle and also upside down. The device he's holding is the controller for the motion control system.
Photo source: Wookieepedia

Now you'll say: "But what about the prequels? they look the same as the originals! They have distortion too! You don't know what you're talking abou-"

Then I'll say, "Shut it!" If you like the prequels that much, then I suggest you just go back to your sick, sad, little world. But seriously, the distortion was most likely intentional to connect it to the older films. There is no reason for them to have been distorted, except this reason. Incidentally, the prequel, and special edition crawls were done digitally, probably in After Effects or mapped to a simple polygonal plane in a program like Maya.

And I'll say it again: There's also the fault in that the versions of the text crawls that fans have access to were perspective-corrected, not the original glass master plates. They were taken, piece by piece into a program like Photoshop and the crop/perspective or transform/perspective tool was used on them to make them look like the glass masters that none of them have probably ever set eyes on.

The point I'm trying to drive home should be quite clear. Typographers don't design their fonts to be compressed, squeezed, bloated or otherwise meddled with. The raw typefaces, rub-on type, linotype, or digital versions, were designed the way they should be.

DON'T DISTORT TYPE!
and no, I'm not telling you why I needed the RGB value for the Star Wars yellow…

Movie Themes

2011-05-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking recently on the theme of …themes. Movie themes in point of fact. There are lists and lists galore on the interwebz, so just chalk this one up from a music/film/synth/misc geek. What are the best film score themes? ~~I'm talking in terms of the main title themes, not leitmotif themes for characters, but the first bit of original composed music~~ (not existing pieces of pop music splayed over a film's opener) ~~that you hear when the film rolls on the screen~~.

I've had to let this gestate for about three months (I started writing this back in February '11) to make sure that some of the more recent additions to the list would hold up. I usually forget about the …forgettable ones in about that time.

First off, the criteria:

a) the feeling: I want to get goosebumps, chills, whatever; something that moves me. Something that speaks beyond the notes.

b) lexicon: these will have to be films I've seen, and though I haven't seen them all, even the classics, I'll be picking from this lot, so don't cry …or do, if there's a movie on here I haven't seen before.

10) Jaws opening titles - Perhaps many skeptical looks at the placement of this one. It's certainly well done, apt, and chilling, but it's not at the top of my list. It doesn't speak to me as much as the others.

9) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan opening titles - Some may ask, "why not The Motion Picture, which was adapted to be the theme for The Next Generation?" And I would answer, because I've never seen The Motion Picture, and Wrath of Khan was the first Trek film I ever saw. It's kind of special that way. James Horner is a great composer, who often gets a bad wrap because he works a lot with James Cameron's cash whales. This whole film was the right step for a Trek film in all of its aspects, and the opening theme clearly enforces the fact you don't need Alexander Courage's lounge-esque theme to score a movie with the Original Series cast. (p.s. I don't hate Alexander Courage)

8) TRON Legacy TRON legacy (End Titles) - While the film itself was rather a mediocre, nostalgia-stimulating cash pot, the soundtrack was excellent. Who could think of a better team to put together a soundtrack for a film like this? Well… Hans Zimmer, maybe.

7) Chariots of Fire opening theme - Perhaps cliché. Perhaps not. I'd like to think not. Vangelis' style is very unique, and not to everyone's taste, but even my parents had this LP in their collection, as did many others.

6) Blade Runner opening titles - Vangelis was born to compose/perform the music for this film, right here. Too bad there's no unsullied version of the soundtrack. And by "unsullied" I mean sans the overdubs by Harrison Ford, which he didn't want to do anyway.

5) Inception Half Remembered Dream - How else could you, in one minute and twelve seconds convey and foreshadow the events of such a complex and thrilling film? With Hans Zimmer, of course!

4) Where Eagles Dare opening titles - a truly bone-chilling piece of music. Nothing quite says "We're dropping in behind Nazi borders to infiltrate Colditz and rescue a high American brass while impersonating officers of the 3rd Reich" like nothing else can. You can see where the composer for Return to Castle Wolfenstein got their inspiration.

3) The Empire Strikes Back Imperial March - The Empire is evil, it's reminiscent of the 4rd Reich of 1930s-40s Germany. This has to be one of the most recognizable pieces of music (not just from movies) of all time. It in part helped Lord of the Sith Darth Vader to graduate from "crony" to "villain."

2) Raiders of the Lost Ark Raiders Theme - I'm glad Williams decided to merge the three smaller themes he composed into the masterpiece that typifies one of the greatest action/adventure franchises (don't look too hard at 'Crystal Skull,' or as genuine awesome Dallas would call it: the Cooky Crystal Cranium Caper) in cinematic history. It was the epitome of a "fun film with class."

1) Star Wars Main Title - This is perhaps the most widely-known film theme out there. It's quintessential John Williams brilliance. When he first met with George ~~"I Ruined The Prequels"~~ Lucas, he stated that in order to suspend the disbelief of the viewers and keep them rooted in the story rather than immediately flung to a galaxy far, far away, he needed the music to be familiar. Star Wars would not be what it is today with a score by Vangelis. Star Wars was itself a throwback to the old Flash Gordon serials of the cinema (before TV was so wide-spread, weekly series programs were shown in this format) and the melodrama, cheap effects and stories were offset with riveting, bellicose music. What williams did for Star Wars is truly beyond accurate, succinct description. A fan of Star Wars, hearing a particular cue, can instantly go to a scene from the movie in their head and relive the adventure, the fright, the suspense or the victory, all because of the film's music.

Macro Bonus

2011-05-09T22:05:00.000-07:00

So this one is the extent of my little Rebel's 8.something mega pixel power. No downsampling, just a tight crop on the photo at 1600x1067. So, really, I can't justify the purchase of a 5D MKII. Sad Day. Kinda.

some photos - practice makes …better

2011-05-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

So I decided that I needed to take out my camera and use it. My grandfather gave me a few of these "magnification" lens attachments, which just happened to fit my lens perfectly. One of the photos (that's not like the others) was taken in my bathroom as some shorts I washed drip dried. This very large textured window in there gives great light. The others were taken from my studio room. Slightly less light in there, but enough to make my Ampeg bass head the perfect object stand.

The Truth About "Re-Issuing" Synthesizers of the Past

2011-01-01T20:31:00.000-08:00

I love the sound of particular synthesizers. Several friends and associates have asked me, "why do you want/need so many different keyboards?" The same reason reason a painter has different brushes. They each can do fundamentally similar things, but their use can generate radically different results. You wouldn't want to use your 2" to blend facial details on a subject 3" tall in the painting.

There was a time when I had 7 keyboards/synthesizers at once. Oddly enough this was when I was going to school and somehow spent a lot of free time trying to compose music or just tinkering, and had less money than I do now. I think through the course of going to school and a few years following I had bought and sold a good number of these just to see what fit with the sound I was trying to achieve, eventually ending up with the said 7 units. Though I was content with these instruments in my setup I had a nagging sensation that told me what I really wanted was a Yamaha CS80.

In truth, many synthesizer enthusiasts seek after this unique keyboard, many only with fading dreams or through software emulation. Many who frequent synth and electronic music forum boards will hear the clamor for the re-issuing of the beasts of the past, like the CS80 or the immortal Moog Minimoog model D. I can remember when Moog Music got the rights to their name again and began making the Minimoog Voyager and how excited people sounded ...until they saw the price tag (and heard how it sounded). "How can it be this expensive today?!" they rant. Because frankly, it was NOT in the least bit 'cheap' when they were thriving in the 70s and early 80s.

The CS80, for example, cost roughly $8,000 in 1978, the cost of a luxury sedan. So would you shell out $42 grand for a synthesizer? Ok, I'm not being entirely fair. Production and material costs as well as methods have changed and gotten better over the last 30 years, but still, if you think about what you're asking for, it doesn't mean that the products will be "cheap" as we think of it today.

I mean, look at all the re-issue guitars, effects, and other tech and instruments in the music world. The Andy Summers signature Telecaster re-issue was a good $10,000, and it looks (like it's supposed to) like his telecaster after 10+ years of hard use! A "signature" or "re-issue" effect pedal, take the Ibanez TS-808, is marked up ridiculously over the TS-9 or even a TS-808 clone. Why? The legacy of the thing. Secondly, when a company moves in a direction of production, switching from being analog-based circuitry to almost all digital/CPU-based, they have to go out of their way to re-create the products of the past. I'm talking to you, Yamaha, Korg & Roland.

It's far less of a hassle to just keep things the way they are, manufacture an emulation or virtual version of a previous product, most of which have little more than aesthetic resemblance to the products they replicate (Roland's endless line of modern "Juno" products). And when you consider the fact that synthesizer users/purchasers make up only a small percent in the music world professionally and an even smaller size on the base consumer level, you can't help but realize that there really isn't much monetary motivation for these large companies. Boutique, for lack of a better term, manufacturers & amp; dealers are the logical choice for creating new products based on older tech (e.g. Moog Music Inc., MFB, Doepfer, etc.). This, however, is the conundrum: these small, sometimes mom'n'pop shops have no way of garnering overhead like the Fortune 500 companies that produced them en masse in the good ol' days, and their products therefore will be more expensive and/or will have a limited run.

I'd want a newly-made Yamaha CS80 as much as the next synthophile, but when you stop and think about the undertaking of such production you'll realize that beyond the cost and niche market there's also the talk of the construction. Should you improve and fix all the problems that plagued the original, or remain true to form? The truth of it is that most old tech can be distinct for several reasons: the type of components and their individual eccentricities as far as production, flaws, etc. (this is debatable- the glory of germanium -based components, NOS tubes/valves etc); the actual mistakes in circuitry which can give the product a unique sound (the original Crybaby), or mechanical or physical abnormalities that were created through poor product engineering (the Yamaha CS80).

The CS80's unique sound is partly due to its circuitry and original sound architecture: the synthesizer was essentially two 8-voiced (2 VCOs per voice) synthesizers stacked in parallel, and the sound could be mixed between the two sections. Another character trait, or flaw depending on how you think, was its frequent instability caused by heat not being properly vented through the unit (see the original Macintosh computer design- convection ventilation). So you could have a new-make CS80 that was stable, reliable and never melted down on you, but it wouldn't sound quite right. Or you'd have a shaky, Polymoog-esque sequence of bad events leading to class-action lawsuits on the company... but I digress.

Coupled with its state-of-the-art aftertouch expression system, weighted, wooden keys and tank-like construction, it was like the Aston Martin Lagonda of the late 70s synth world: heavy, unreliable, inefficient, and by its production time, antiquated and overpriced.

Famicom VS NES sound chips

2010-12-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

The master track:

These are the NES & Famicom versions of music from games that most 8-bit gamers should be familiar with. There is no post processing (though I was sorely tempted to beef up the low end for the Castlevania 3 opening- the stupid triangle channel is fixed-volume so it out-basses the sawtooth wave on the Famicom version, which is annoying) other than one instance in the Metroid opening where the FDS channel drops about 6db and a 30% pan: the NES panned towards the left channel and the Famicom/FDS panned toward the right. This track might sound a bit weird with headphones. Each version of the music is being played simultaneously, with only a few miliseconds- not even that, maybe a few samples worth- of cutting as the pacing was slightly different on the Famicom versions, which is audible in some of the tracks where one instrument fades before another.

The Metroid music is pretty unremarkable besides the opening and when you get a power up- same as the NES version. Kid Icarus follows in the same mold, with the interim/level complete music making full use of the extra sound channels- though some of the sound effects are different (the whole reason I didn't even include the original Legend of Zelda- it's almost worse in FDS form).

As for the individual tracks below: The opening theme from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link had to be pitched down 1 whole step to match the FDS version (it's in F) for the master track, but the original (it's in G) can be found below with no pitch correction. You'll also notice that the opening theme from Kid Icarus is out of tune (I didn't check which one was more) but it'll be slightly dissonant towards the beginning.

Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse

Opening Theme (NES)

Name Entry/Intro/Stage1 (NES)

Opening Theme (Famicom)

Name Entry/Intro/Stage1 (Famicom)

Kid Icarus

Opening Theme (NES)

Opening theme (FDS)

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Opening Theme (NES)

Opening theme (FDS)

Metroid

Opening (NES)

Brinstar/Powerup (NES)

Opening (FDS)

Brinstar/Powerup (FDS)

coming soon - a comparison

2010-12-19T14:23:00.000-08:00

What this will be is a comparison of the graphic & most importantly, sound capabilities between the North American/European Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the original Nintendo Famicom (Family Computer) & accompanying Famicom Disk System.

Chances are, you've never seen the unit on the left. It was made for and marketed only in Japan. The top portion is the Famicom, the counterpart to the NES sold in other markets. The bottom portion is the Famicom Disk System, also made for and marketed only in Japan. The debates and complaints as to why those of us elsewhere did not get this option are endless (sort of). But the fact could be that the whole idea of what was a 'video game' and what was a 'computer' was already somewhat established in the US/Canadian markets due to the popularity of the Commodore 64 (the computer) and the Atari 2600 (video game). The FDS was an add-on, resembling a C64's external disk drive and perhaps Nintendo of America thought it would confuse the lowest common denominator (which it very well could have).

The NES and Famicom's primary differences lay in their construction, in both form and function. The Famicom was a top-loading system (something the NES 2 would later adopt) and the NES a sort of VCR-esque insert and push down setup. The Famicom's controllers were hard-wired while the NES's attached via a proprietary 6-pin connector. The list goes on.

The main differences tie into the graphic & sound aspects.

In brief here they are:
a1) the Famicom had connections for the game cartridges (60-pin for the Famicom 72-pin for the NES) which enabled external sound chips to be used in tandem with the internal setup. While the NES actually had this same functionality, it was not, as was the Famicom, located on the game PCB slot, but on the useless and unused expansion port on the bottom of the unit. What were the extra 12-pins for then? well, nothing of any real use besides licensing. Did you ever have those pale blue or black, oddly-shaped NES games with "Tengen" written on them? they weren't officially licensed games! Every NES game made for the little grey toaster had to come in a specific form factor, but most importantly, had to be wired with the NES10 lockout chip, which ensured that the manufacturer was playing on Nintendo's terms: no religious aspects in games, licensing fees, etc. But I digress.

a2) Most of what the Famicom games did was add to the existing unit's sound channels which were: two pulse waveforms with variable duty cycle; a triangle waveform channel; a noise channel; and a PCM sample channel (where we get the horrible sound bytes a la 'Bayou Billy' 'Blades of Steel' and 'Double Dribble' just to name a few. The FDS had even more to offer. In addition to being able to save game data on the disk, the FDS hardware allowed for rudimentary FM and wavetable synthesis, further broadening the sound palette.

b) The Famicom, graced by its upgradeability and modularity, could support different methods of drawing sprites and including animation. On the SNES they're called "modes," and "mappers" on the NES. For instance: the Famicom version of Contra (Gryzor) supported a mapper not integrated on the NES which allowed for animated background sprites, more intricate layouts and generally made the game a lot less stagnate. As time went on, and the SNES began to supersede the NES, the games actually got better and game programmers found creative ways to get around it.

So, why? What's the big deal? Why is this so important? It's just fun to discover, even if it's antiquated tech. With the catalyst of the internet in the information age, these lost facts are becoming more accessible. The next post will have a short list of a few hand-picked games and the difference in music between them.

They are:

Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse - Famicom vs NES (probably the best-documented around the interwebz)
Kid Icarus - FDS vs NES
Zelda 2: Link's Adventure - FDS vs NES
Metroid - FDS vs NES

see the good in the YouTube

2010-11-21T18:37:00.000-08:00

Not mine, but a friend introduced me to this and it's a really spiffy thing to behold and hear. So in a nutshell, this genius takes old disney and similar films, and cuts, splices, tunes and edits them into a composition of his own. Very amazing stuff.

PS

Had to give a nod to the BYUtv- "see the good in the world"

Goals

2010-10-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Brisby?!

2010-10-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

Diabeetus

2010-10-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

Some New Workings

2010-08-16T20:34:00.000-07:00

Doing some film title concept tests.

movement...forward

2010-04-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

Hooray!

It's 90% there and it looks great. Now I just need to get working on something that's actually practical & applicable...

This rendered with full-quality settings including motion blur with ray tracing (!) all in a matter of hours- all 60 frames of it... with mental ray this same result would have taken upwards of 2 hours for each frame- the original is 720p (1280x720).

The lossy quality of the .gif may well hide the geometric artifacting on the letters- all of the letters, aside from the A (it was more noticeable on that one), have incorrect geometry- they have more than four sides per face (polygon), and have 'holes' in them. This is easily remedied with a simple geometry cleanup... which the final will have.

Can I Just Say...

2010-04-21T22:46:00.000-07:00

that I love Renderman?!

Yes, yes I think I can. It's great. It's one of those 'keeping the fire going' moments for me and 3D. It's fast, it's relatively easy (when placed alongside Mental Ray) and it produces good results.

Here's a sampling:

It's not a perfect shot, but I like the direction it's going- and also the fact that it took minutes instead of hours to render, might have something to do with my new-found fanaticism.

My sister, bless her, calls me an Anglophile. I love nearly everything about England, and the UK as a whole. A lot of my maternal grandparent's family is from the isles and I guess too, I can latch onto that dry Brit sense of humor... which often turns to the wacky and outrageous. Favorite bits that have come out of ol' Blighty: Dr. Who, Top Gear, Monty Python, Blackadder, Paddington Bear, and oh yeah, those four blokes with silly haircuts that made all those hit records and changed the world of music.

It's not giving up

2010-04-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

I quit my DeviantArt account.

It was full of many wonderful pieces of art and design, but the bad outweighed the good in my opinion.

It wasn't because the quality (for the most part...) but in a nutshell, the site is only for three kinds of people:

1) Accomplished artists who just want to show off
2) tweens, etc. who want to post the traces or works in progress of their copies of their favorite anime show characters
3) Perverts

Yup. That's about it. Needless to say, I've found a better place- go to coroflot- my profile link is on the right side of this blarg.

the ending.

Happy Christmas

2009-12-25T22:38:00.000-08:00

So, I was gifted a spankin' new Intuos4 tablet for Christmas this year! I'm really excited about using it, and also excited to get sketching and doodling again. One piece of the bundled software is a interesting program called Sketch Book (lite) by Autodesk, which acts very much like pencil and paper. All in all I'm very happy with my gift and I hope to use it as a faster means of sketching, sketching and more sketching.

Anyhow, here's a new update from my DeviantArt page, yet another version of my custom Fender Jazz Bass. I wanted to add more of a light scratch and imperfect look to the clear coat of the body but made it look more like the wood wasn't sanded properly before it was painted... Anyways it's leading me to experiment more when I get free time, which is becoming less and less as time goes on.

Fender Custom Jazz Bass 12 by ~jessenator on deviantART

Musical Pictures • Renderman Trail Shots

2009-11-28T19:55:00.000-08:00

What you're haring when you play the audio is... well, it's the photo that you see right above the QT player console. The audio is set to loop automatically, simply click pause to stop.

Inspired by music artist Aphex Twin, I decided to track down a way to take a photograph and convert it into a sound. I discovered a simple java applet which allows for a great deal of flexibility in terms of length of interpretation, the total audio bandwidth (capped by the total sample rate- wiki up 'Nyquist Theorem' for more details), the sample rate. All you need is an adjusted .jpg or .gif image file- it's limited, or will truncate the image to 256 shades of gray.

I simply take the original image, create a duplicate of that main background and perform a simple 'Find Edges' or 'Glowing Edges' filter and set that layer to multiply. Then adjust the main photo layer to give it a higher contrast, and as little white as possible- think of it this way- if you're working in grayscale already, wherever lighter values are the amplitude of the frequency (which you can think of as an exponential scale in the y-axis)... ok that's a bit much, but that's how it works. The process is a bit involved but I was determined to get it!

Renderman Trials

I have been enthralled with Renderman for Maya recently- although I know that the full-fledged Renderman engine is a bit different. Some of the things I love to have in my renders it does extremely quickly, much, much faster than Mental Ray.

Anyhow, here is a sample scene from a setup I created for my BFA final project.

An Almost Euphoric Realization

2009-11-22T00:47:00.000-08:00

To put what I'm about to tell you into some sort of perspective, I'll use an analogy.

Imagine that you have your near perfect writing space, thinking space, reading space- where everything is just right, except your light is always dim. It's pretty good in the daytime when you have the light of the sun pouring through your window and gives you a bit more highlight on the page you're on. But when the sun goes down and all you have is this one, single lamp to shine on your book or what have you, it's a bit difficult to see, you take longer to read than normal, and sometimes you get so frustrated with the current book you have (because of it's dangerously small type size) you just give up and wait till morning....

And now you walk down to your space to read and there's this box with a new lamp in it... you think... well I've gotten used to reading with this one, it's subtle nuances in relation to my space, it's foibles and when I can and cannot use it... but you toss that aside and say: "I'm going to try this lamp out"

Instantly you become enthralled with your new lamp! It's bright! You can read almost any size of type in any book- it's crystal clear- as if the sun were shining right onto your book!

This is what I experienced tonight: I downloaded a trial version of an alternate rendering software for Maya and it made me extremely excited and much less frustrated. So much so that I'm losing my slight reservations about learning an entirely new workflow for rendering.

Amazing thing...

2009-11-20T10:58:00.000-08:00

Bowla' Fruit 2 by ~jessenator on deviantART

Tried a new cloth material but it's still not 'there'... I think my lighting setup will have to be revisited- maybe instead of using normal point lights- which are kind of a waste in this scene anyway- I'll go for some disc lights or back to my old 'geometry' light setup.

Bowla' Fruit

2009-11-19T18:16:00.000-08:00

Bowla' Fruit by ~jessenator on deviantART

I just finished this one. The cloth looks a bit rubbery at the moment, but I'm working on it.

I think my next project is going to focus on making the scene more 'dirty' and not so clean looking.

Unexplained

2009-11-19T11:11:00.000-08:00

SO, I was playing my one guilty pleasure- Bioshock- i was experiencing an extreme slowdown in game play, which I had never before experienced on my system- in fact since I had installed a few upgrades, made sure my windows license was legitimate, and cleaned out my video card heat sink (there was a good 3 ci of dust bunnies in it) I've been getting a great fps rate. I could always tell when my GPU was getting the paces run out of it because the fan would go insanely fast- and it's louder than my CPU fans. When it was all choppy it was hardly humming at all- in fact it would go louder when I was in the menu! I thought that perhaps I had run the card to the max.

It was as if something as demanding as Biosock was running at the same time- I couldn't figure it out. I quit. Reloaded the game, even rebooted the machine and it still was going crazy crazy slow. I decided to just muscle through it. Then it completely calmed down and went back to normal. As I was walking through one area of the game- I discovered the REAL problem:

As far as I know, the Biosock (well, Unreal 4) engine or at least some part of the game structure will turn 'corpse' NPCs into these lock boxes after a while (if they aren't important corpses like Sander Cohen, any of the poor sods you have to kill for him, or the like) to save on GPU load. Occasionally you may see perhaps 5 or 6 at the very most in a small area where a lot of enemies have come to attack you (Fort Frolic after you put the third photo in Cohen's quadtych). But THIS is insane- and to be honest this is about HALF of what was actually there on the floo rafter the game went back to a normal frame rate, as there were some behind me as well.

So judging by this the game somehow generated an INSANE and unsupportable amount of NPCs which basically dropped the frame rate to about 5 or worse after maxing out the GPU's capacity and not wanting to fry it...

Glass Comparison Test

2009-08-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

There are 4 different 'shaders' being used to simulate glass. Can you guess which ones they are?

MIA_Architectural (a no-hassle shader type)
True_glass 2.5 (a Blinn shader with custom nodes)
MR Dielectric (the refractive shader meant to simulate glass & water)
AnisoGlass .2 (my creation- anisotropic shader with custom connections)

A few more beefs...

2009-08-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

...in descending order.

#3

The media. End of story... sort of.

2#

The self-proclaimed learned & wise.

#1

RealMedia player.

The Last Walk

2009-08-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

The Re-Beginning

2009-08-04T20:58:00.000-07:00

oh yeah.

It's beginning... again...

2009-07-15T21:00:00.001-07:00

So

The box I ordered for this project was a bit hastily bought. not only is it the wrong shape, it was slightly too small to house the circuit board. *facepalm*

SO, I've ordered another with plenty of breathing room ANNND it will be tapered so it will work as a stomp box.

here's a shot of the basic shape- although mine won't be painted at all:

I'll make a 3d model based on it and make a revised visualization!

2009-07-11T16:01:00.000-07:00

I finally got it.

I had done a moderately successful toner transfer and filled in the gaps in the traces with a sharpie marker, and decided that Today I would etch the board. I bought some etchant from the local Radio Shack, and had a go. All went well, the copper was etched away leaving the traces just as it should... and then I discovered that I had etched a flipped circuit design...

However I still had half a board left and took advantage. I created a second transfer and etched the board a second time, and it worked fantastically.

now I need a really small drill bit (.027") and to wait patiently for the rest of my components to arrive.

Miscellanea

2009-07-11T01:30:00.000-07:00

A piece of internet fame

I decided that Best Brands of the World needed to have a good version of the ARP Instruments, Inc. logo. So I created a version based on photos taken of the screen printed and PCB logos on real ARP synthesizers... oh did I mention I own an ARP Odyssey?

Anyhow, there it is. The serifs on the 'A' are funny, but that's how the logo was designed.

2009-07-11T01:22:00.000-07:00

So i had another go at the printing process. the second was a complete disaster- my iron was not hot enough and only a bit of the middle transfered over. The third time though it worked amazingly, with only a few bits of trace missing:

I took a sharpie and filled in the area- it's not the prettiest job I admit, but that's not the most important part now. Tomorrow I hope to get some etching solution (probably ferric chloride) and then I'll be able to tin the traces then drill the holes... wonder if the hardware store has a .03" drill bit? Most likely I'll do it with the Dremel tool- what a fantastic tool it is.

2009-07-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Well I had a go at using the heat tone transfer method to get the circuit design from the paper to the copper.

It worked... sort of. It is apparent that I did not leave the iron on for long enough, not evenly enough along the surface. This is my proof of concept however, well, proof of others' concept anyway. It is accomplished by printing from a laser printer onto inkjet paper (in my case Epson Premium Presentation Matte paper). The bond is not as strong on the inkjet paper as it would be on laser paper and the heat from the iron transfers the toner to the copper.

I first prepped the PCB surface with a wash and wipe with some mineral spirits and a good compressed air dry. I then used a Brillo pad to lightly scratch the surface, giving a bit more for the toner to cling to (it's still rather fragile even on the fully bonded portions). I then, wearing gloves, laid the cut template down and ironed atop the paper onto the copper.

A rise afterward in a bath of hot water and dish soap, gently rubbing the paper after about a solid minute of soaking. It then 'should' peel away just the paper leaving the traces of toner.

If it doesn't work- as was in my first attempt- some acetone will take the toner right off, so you can make another attempt.

Quadra Phaser Update... and Hppy 4th of July!

2009-07-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

After a more careful investigation of the schematics and component layout I've discovered that there are indeed 5 (in truth 7) pots (potentiometers) that need to be installed, and so the design of the pedal has been altered accordingly. although I must concede that the case is not slanted... that's more of my ideal looking case- it will be completely flat, approximately 2" high, but roughly the same dimensions

I have ordered almost all of the parts, with the DIP sockets, footswitch, solder, and etchant remaining. I had to order the components from two separate sources as this particular design requires some odd-valued components and weren't available at Small Bear Elec.

I decided to buy the press-n-peel blue transfer sheets as I have not had any luck transferring the toner from papers to metal- I have seen other sources that have shown how- then I will be able to actually print the circuit boards. So far it's running me about 140... which is a touch more than I'd have liked but it's not as expensive as buying two MXR Phase 90s!

And now for something completely different... It's...

2009-07-02T22:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a great German bloke, Jürgen Haible I now have a renewed interest with making guitar effect stomp boxes. This one in particular is very unique. It is a phase unit originally coming from the innards of a synthesizer: the ARP Quadra.

The more popular phaser pedal (that sounds more like something from Star Trek doesn't it?), typified in the MXR Phase 90 contain 6 circuit stage through which the signal passes creating the out-of-phase effect. The more stages a phaser has the more pronounced the effect- this effect is similar to the chorus and flanger effects- the Phase 100, also by MXR, has 10 stages, the Moog MoogerFooger MF-103 is a 12-stage, and I may add, rather lush sounding unit.

The ARP phaser is a 14-stage phaser which results in a unique sound which can be heard here: ARP Quadra Demo and with a bit of jiggery pokery can be made to switch down to any even number of stages if you want a milder sound... I don't think I'll do this on the first attempt to build it.

I've been working on the PCB layout (as seen above). The original schematic (hand drawn), the PCB and component layouts were very low-quality .gif images, and I have subsequently been re-drawing the schematic in Illustrator. The process has had some hitches... namely the scale being slightly off- but thanks to a finely divided ruler and a spare DIP socket, I've managed to get it within considerable tolerances.

There's also the issue of how to transfer the image of the PCB traces onto the copper plate. I suspect this method could be done similar to copper etching for print making- but not needing to be so time-consuming as the layer of copper on the PCB (oh, that's Printed Circuit Board) is very thin and will not need quite as much time to be eaten away with the ferric chloride, or other etchant. The image above is in reverse, as is required for making a proper print/transfer. Then I'll have to drill all the holes... which I'm not looking forward to.

A lot of thanks to Jürgen Haible for his work in extrapolating the phase circuit from the Quadra and putting it into a self-contained unit, ready for a stomp box case. Now the next large task is to create a parts list: all the components that will be populated onto the circuit board.

I'll definitely keep my progress updated.

here's a simple render of what I'd eventually like the casing to look like:

When are you gonna stop sending us those stupid turtle movies?!

2009-07-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

With my recent MST3k fixation I couldn't help but see if this SNES rom was indeed what I thought it was.

Priceless!

Better Than MS Paint

2009-06-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Gotta love it.

Form follows... money?

2009-05-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

So they say: Form follows function.

Not so much with wireless (wi-fi) routers I've discovered. In my parents' house there has been an Apple brand AirPort Extreme Base Station and an AirPort Express (to replace the firs broken express). They are designed well, and are part of the great Apple design continuum.

Both of these items cost around 300 dollars total.

This has allowed the wireless internet signal to be broadcasted on the upper and main floor. The main floor signal was rather weak and almost non-existent in the basement, even with the express. This was making work a bit impossible from where I have been living.

Today I'd had enough.

I picked up my Linksys router from a box in my closet, which I had purchased from WalMart 3 years ago for about 56 dollars. I connected it and now the broadcast signal has full strength throughout the whole house. It's blue and black, with two large antennae sticking out of the back, and a bland black power supply, with a green panel of flashing lights.

To be fair, in general the management of the Linksys is slightly more hands-on, and the settings are greater. On that note, I can manually adjust the broadcast strength of the router to a point at which I would need an FCC license... this I did not quite do, but I have adjusted the signal strength to be a touch higher.

Why did I bother with all that flimflam? I found it ironic that, given most houses have more than one floor, do not have an extremely open architecture, the Apple AirPort is not as strong, nor can it be easily adjusted so, and costs a great deal more than a 'cheap,' 'poorly designed' wireless router that actually gets the job done better. I mean, heck, with that kind of broadcast strength you could put it away in the wall where you couldn't see it!

AirPort Extreme BaseStation & Airport Express = $278
Linksys Wireless = $56

think different? yes.

Preparations

2009-05-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

I've been collating a digital library of all the cards I have.

It's been going rather quickly. At least as quick as can be expected. The purpose for this massive work, is to get a list of all the cards used in the project, the total number available, and to aid in the layout of the cards within the mosaic. It will be good so that every card will be used: MozoDojo allows the use of images in various ways, you can allow it to freely use the images as many times as possible, or use them at least once, or even strictly one time.

Two sets are totally indexed. several more to go... :/

Pectomosaic, The Continuing

2009-05-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

And so... I begin...

It all comes down to size, number of cards I currently own, how many I am willing to buy to complete it, and where I'm going to put the thing once it is done.

The more cards used in the matrix the more detail I can get from them. 3000 is the minimum I will deem acceptable, and with a maximum of around 6000 or so. As I have not as yet counted everything in my collection I have to estimate. I've got a 3200-card box that's pretty much full, and in other boxes I probably have another half of that... so let's just say 4800 cards... I have to admit a good number of those were bought/gifted to me in lots, second hand to begin with, but I have bought a fair number in my day.

I have found sources that will sell second-hand, random commons/un-commons relatively inexpensive... but that's a last resort, really.

As to where I'm going to put this as I build and/or after I finish it... I still have no idea.

As the number of cards goes up, so do the dimensions. 207.375" (17.28125') wide x
206.25 (17.1875') high are the ~5k card layout dimensions. It's possible I could create a way of breaking it down into smaller units and then transport them to where ever. With the possibility of sounding pompous or arrogant, I have to ask: who would hang this? is there a gallery somewhere in WA that would present it? I mean, Magic: The Gathering was created in Washington state, surely there must be somewhere that would.

Other little biting questions is the question of legality, all the technicalities and so forth using prefabricated, and in this case, miniature reproductions of creative illustrations in this way... I mean, in some cases it would be like painting a self portrait with miniature Van Goughs...

A New Ambition

2009-05-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

Can I be ambitious and not rubbish??

it involves this:

and this

(well not this exact one....)

here's a low-res version of what I'm thinking. no, this will not be a digital file, print out, or anything else like that. this will be made from actual cards laid out just so.

garamond shadow 1

2009-05-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this one for a couple of days. I like what's happening. Originally the lower case 'g' was visible, meaning the actual geometry, but I turned the visibility off and let the shadow take the center stage. The tricky part was deciding what sort of texture and tuning it for the backdrop.

Completed Model: Fender Custom Jazz Bass

2009-04-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

it is done. finally.

got the remaining strap length clip, the instrument cable, and fixed most of the other meshes. the poly count is high, but not anywhere near as high as it had been before- I think the strings alone were some 70,000 triangles, the tuners another 30,000 each!

Return to Zork! erm, I mean Fender Jazz Bass

2009-04-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

Room, continued

2009-04-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a more recent render. Still some FG noise, but that's to be expected with MR light shadows.

Room

2009-04-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a render of my room/studio. So far I've not had a difficult time modeling, but the rendering is still getting me. I may end up needing to redo the room geometry itself.

Apparently you can take a single mesh, without adding 'thickness' and simply flip the face normals. However I may need to make a more complicated mesh to have the photons bounce properly.

Also, I've been aiming to make the light shapes of the can lights in the room be more realistic in shape, using IES light profiles, but I haven't gotten them to do exactly what I've wanted... but perseverance right?

Here are a few shots of what I've done thus far:

I've since fixed the brushed aluminum on the computer casing.

A Run in With OpenGL

2009-03-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

This happened to me recently. I was a bit freaked out when it was happening, because I was using Maya at the time and the screen just went wacko:

I thought, well OK, Maya is on the fritz (which it does from time to time) and so I quit and tried to switch applications using command-tab, and it went even further wrong:

I was able to take these screen captures of what was going on. I later found out through some searching that this is a problem with OpenGL and the way that its resources are sued by different applications, and not a graphics card, or monitor issue, which I had feared it would be. A quick restart and it was back to normal.
Some of the forums I visited stated that this can occur when you have multiple 3D applications open at one time, which is odd.

Good Outliner — Good Scene

2009-03-11T18:09:00.000-07:00

This is something I learned the hard way over many a frustrating hour cleaning up, searching, and even trying to navigate my various Maya scene files. The Outliner. It's an amazing tool and most 3D apps have them. It's your master list, your kit of parts, it is the guide to your scene, and there are two ways to do it... a good way and a bad way.

Behold the comparative image:

The scene's outliner on the left is from a typical scene from my early days of me & Maya. There are blank, unlinked, and mostly unnecessary nodes hanging around in there. Some of it is construction history, and probably most of it was generated from improper copy & paste, importing and so on... when possibe, NEVER copy/paste from one Maya scene to another. Just don't.

In short, keep your outliner clean.

Demo Reel

2009-03-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

The intro video of my Demo Reel DVD

Demo Reel Intro from christian jessen on Vimeo.

Update- It's on vimeo now. And there are no problems with the uploaded version.

Global Illumination

2009-02-25T22:08:00.000-08:00

I've been doing tutorials from Digital Tutors to better understand the workings and application of global illumination (GI) within mental ray for May. Essentially, GI simulates the indirect illumination which happens in real life, by the bouncing, reflection and refraction of photons in a physical space. This adds a huge amount of realism to 3d renderings with elements like light bleeding/bouncing across multiple surfaces. This is not some magic button though. It takes quite a bit to adjust the photon attributes, GI amount, and other numerous settings.

Here's a setting exploring mainly the GI effect.

GI Exercise 1

Another focusing more on utilizing realistic sunlight for an interior scene.

interior tutorial 1

Another thing learned from these tutorials is the differences in photon interaction between the Maya materials (shaders) and the Mental Ray shaders, and even further with the mia_material (mental images architectural) shader. As I may have said, the mia_material has the ability to reproduce effects from the standard mental ray materials: lambert (flat, non-reflective), DGS (essentially chrome), dielectric (glass and other refractive things). All materials/shaders require adjustment in their photon attributes.

A cover, and a decision

2009-02-16T00:50:00.000-08:00

A bit belated, but over at the the Synthwerx forums we had a small contest to rearrange/remix the theme tune to the Price is Right, originally composed by Edd Kalehoff (a maker of many, many television themes and jingles over the years) and this is my interpretation:

In other news I have decided that my next landmark is the esteemed Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood California. Ever since I saw The Incredibles I have wanted to work for Pixar, and I feel that the Gnomon School is the best possible choice for me to learn the industry skills I need for that kind of future.

There are plenty of steps that I'll need to take, first and foremost is financing, because it's one of the most expensive programs out there. This is something that I want to fund myself as much as I can, I feel that I'll be more apt to take full advantage of it this way. Next I'll need to learn to love to draw. I have all these crazy, wild ideas in my head and in getting them out I'm hampered by the fact that I cannot draw well. My professors were right. So if anyone would be willing to teach me, I'd be glad to pay them. I'll also be researching alternatives in case the Gnomon option doesn't work out for me.

Finally Something New

2009-02-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

Deep Chair by ~jessenator on deviant ART

This comes from a small piece I sketched out a few days ago, just desperate to come up with something new and interesting. At some point I will implement a character I've been thinking about: a thoroughly gangly person almost melted into the upholstery waiting for something to happen.

It's called Deep Chair, because even without the intentional camera distortion, the dimensions make it a very deep seated chair. I think it's almost 3' deep.

it's all fun & games until Christian hits two people in the eye

2008-12-25T14:24:00.000-08:00

2008-12-19T13:54:00.001-08:00

DOSbox

2008-12-17T10:37:00.000-08:00

2008-12-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

so... no. I'm not going to learn 3DS Max, thought a previous post may indicate otherwise, mainly because I'll never do precise and engineering-specific architectural visualization. That doesn't mean I won't make environments, it's just that lighting values, etc. won't be able to be measured with anything real, like the lumen, lux, candlepower, or anything like that. but they'll look good and the process will be in a work flow that suits me and is streamlined.

In other news. I need to formulate a more efficient way to merge my print skills with my 3D. I had an interview, and no matter how I positioned it the point came up that most of my work presented was '3d'. This sentiment seemed to me that there was apparently no connection to print... but anyway... we'll see.

There is a connection. It can increase marketability.... ugh.. I won't... me head is burned out.

Top MST3k Episodes

2008-11-30T19:57:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't seen 'em all yet, but here's a tentative list of my top episodes/movies.

10) Warrior of the Lost World - Season 5 Episode 1
this one is reeeealy bad. I mean, I don't know if I've seen worse acting, but it all makes for an amusing round of riffing from the guys. It's actually really funny how Joel and the bots start cheering for the bad guys after a while. liverface.

9) Godzilla vs Megalon - Season 2 Episode 12
Hahahahaha wow. I think almost anything overdubbed from Japanese involving 'Godzilla' somewhere in the name automatically makes it riff fodder. This jumps up into the range of almost unwatchable movies (as is 'Warrior'). Jet Jag-ar!

8) The Deadly Bees (Killer Bees) - Season 9 Episode 5
This is a quirky yet rather bland English horror film from the 60s that really tries too hard. do stand still, won't you?

7) Teen-Age Strangler - Season 5 Episode 14
OH man! This one is a good one- mainly because of the stinger at the end involving poor little Jimmy's brother. I didn't steal no bike, neither!

6) Mitchell - Season 5 Episode 11
Joel's last episode :( this one was a real funny one. It's actually kinda funny by itself, but the comments make it that much better. BUZZ OFF, KID!

5) Hercules - Season 5 Episode 2
Oh man! This one is great as well. This is the original, with the original beefcake Hercules, Steve Reeves, not that Italian knock-off Sergio "Alan Steel" Ciani! Pretty, reptty please, with Herc' on top?

4) Space Mutiny - Season 8 Episode 20
The hero who screams like a woman, a villain whose name sounds like a brand of dishwasher detergent, recycled visuals from the 1970s Battlestar Galactica, and all filmed in the upper offices and basement of some South African skyscraper equals great riff material. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

3) Catalina Caper - Season 2 Episode 4
Wow the amount of 'white' jokes is incredible in this one, but man are those kids white. WoooOOOOooOoOoOoO!

2) Manos: The Hands of Fate - Season 4 Episode 24
Now some of you might be steaming right now because Manos isn't at the top of my list. Well, It's good, all around probably the best episode in the series. But it's one I can't watch more than once in a blue moon because it really is so bad! It drags on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on some more. I think it goes slower than 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is saying something. if you think about not watching this... tHe.. maStER.. wouLd.. NoT.. a-proOove...

1) Santa Claus Conquers the Martians - Season 3 Episode 21
The crown jewel, the feather in the cap, the Congressional Medal of Honor in the MST universe. This is one that I can literally watch again and again and it stays funny! There are so many great jokes and carry-overs in this one. I really can't say enough bad and good things about this episode. "Billy, what's Vietnam?" "Woah. Lentils" But if you could only watch one episode of MST3k in your lifetime, this is the one to watch! Hahahahahahahaha... sorry

Making Geometry Emit Light in Maya

2008-11-30T17:38:00.000-08:00

Well, this is something I thought would be overly complicated and was, for a long time, a challenge to get geometry to emit light. Essentially I wanted to simulate things like fluorescent tube lights, neon/xenon/argon shaped lights; any light that actually had physical shape. The method I'm using is not, however, without limitations. Here's a sample of what I'm talking about:

The setup for this is rather simple. First you just create a simple lambert material. Next scroll down to the mental ray arrow on the material within the attribute editor and twirl it down. There will be a value called Irradience (we'll ignore the Irradience Color value) :
Click the checkerboard to add a connection here. When this window comes up:

go to the far right and select the mental ray tab here and scroll down to the light shader section and choose Mib_light_photometric (it's possible to use other mental ray light shader, I'm using the photometric to use an IES light profile to control the light shape). Once there click on the light profile checker to add a node (which it does automatically) once in the mentalrayLightProfile node click on the file name to link to an IES profile, which can be downloaded from most light manufacturer's websites for example: H. E. Williams, Inc. has a great selection. Now this is where you'll have to experiment, but for a simple neon-esque color, select the mib_light_photometric node and in the color enter in these values:

This is a good starting point anyway. Also, back on the light profile node be sure and select Hermite Cubic interpolation. So after setting all this up you should have something like this in your Hypershade panel:

For added effect go back to your Lambert attribute editor and change your (diffuse) color to a similar value as the light color you've done already (except don't put the 'value' [in HSV mode] above 1) and the ambient color to about .5 to get a decent neon color on the geometry itself. Also, you may want to enable the glow under Special Effects to be a small amount- remember, with glow, a little goes a long way. However in larger environments where an increase in the light's value would be necessary, the glow effect might not need to be used.

As far as rendering controls go you'll need to enable Final Gather and to get a smooth result I have my accuracy set at around 5000 and point interpolation set at 50. I don't have an extensive knowledge of final gather optimization, etc. but this is what I've gotten to work. It's also possible to use this technique with Global Illumination, but this would require you to plug in a mental ray photon shader somewhere into one of the shader's attributes, but I don't know how this is to be done, and FG normally does it for most of my projects.

Now, the limitations. If you need to consider using this type, or really any type of lights, photometric or not, for use in architectural visualization you'll be at a total loss for true realistic values for your client. From the information I've gathered Maya (well, Mental Ray) currently does not support true photometric lighting (aside from the MI_physical_Sky + Sun) at all, being a 'relatively simple concept, but terribly impractical' to implement on the user level. Apparently it requires some intense programming deep within the rendering engine. But for me, I don't really plan on doing a great deal of architectural viz- I'll leave that to the architects.

Anyway, there it is.

Moving Forward Looking Back

2008-10-22T02:10:00.000-07:00

So I've decided to embark on a journey... into the past, the very heart of mid-nineties gaming, the world of Marathon.

Jason, a good friend of mine since high school, and I have started to construct a story to envelope a near 'total-conversion' for the Marathon game engine, recently updated to incorporate openGL, as well as other cross platform enhancements in the form of Aleph One. This story is called Marathon: Leviathan, and takes place just after Marathon 2: Durandal, and as if the events just prior to Marathon ∞, as if they didn't occur. Since I don't want to spoil the story I'll leave it there. As soon as we've fleshed out the individual chapters that we've outlined we'll begin work on texturing and mapping the levels and creating new content.

I was really excited about the prospects of making a scenario like this one. It really stemmed from my recent re-discovery of the monumental scenario, Marathon: Rubicon, truly an asounding piece of work, both in story and in overal production, and with a 3D model that I just randomly began to create. initially a large tower it morphed and extruded and beveled into the shape that inspired Leviathan.

In the mean time, I've signed up at the Pfhorums, a site with the last remants of Marathon die-hards. Here I'll be lending services as a texture artist and doing miscelaneous things as well. Hopefully during this time I'll be able to become better with Forge and Anvil, Bungie's own level editor, physics and graphics tools. so there it is.

Commitments, and my top 25

2008-10-19T10:36:00.000-07:00

So, I just got a new calling in my singles ward, which I must add is a very cool one filled with cool people... most of whom have brains. So, my new calling is the Ward IT Specialist... my main responsibility is to photograph everyone who's not photographed and prepare a photo directory. Funny little anecdote: In the process of taking photos last Sunday I started to develop, or rather act like, that portrait photographer you all knew and whose dry humor and goofy remarks you all cringed at... needless to say it was a very odd feeling, almost stepping outside myself and seeing what I was doing, yet having almost no control over the eruption of horrible remarks I was making.

It is something that I took a shine to, really. This was something that was within my abilities but at the same time gave me ample stretching potential: talking to people I'd never seen or associated with before, making announcements right after Sacrament Meeting about who I needed to photograph, and making soft threats to replace anyone who wasn't willing to be photographed with a picture of the Church Lady or the like.

Not in any real sort of order, but I'll just put the top 25 down (idea stolen from Taylor and Neibaur McCarrey)

1) Echoes – Pink Floyd : I first heard the 16-minute abridged version on the Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd double CD and was intrigued (thanks, Taylor!), and then I heard the full 22-minute version from Meddle and was even more intrigued and amazed by it. And yes Andrew Lloyd Webber, yeah he stole the Phantom riff from this song...

2) You Know You're Right – Nirvana : I was trying to place this song with a particular album with no success. Then I realized that this hadn't even been released until Nirvana a box set in 2002, a previously unreleased demo, which is said to be Cobain's last recording. I think that fact adds more to the eerie yet energetic performance on the song. I can see some parallels in a way between Cobain and Barret- what he really wanted to say came out rather wittingly in his songs, this one in particular, you listen to his pleading, his declaration: Pain, ringing, drawn out, unrelenting.

3) Olson – Boards of Canada : This is a very short piece, a vignette as they call it, by Scottish duo Boards of Canada. And although it's short it has so much in it, maybe I'm a sucker for nostalgia and reminiscence, but that's what it sounds like- it sounds like my childhood, a time when I was truly happy.

4) Ghostwriter – RJD2 : It's a fantastically arranged piece of work. I used to crit artists who used samples extensively, but firstly Daft Punk and later RJD2 showed me that it's in the craft of it all that the musicianship really comes out, and he is a true musician. This song is just so great to my ears, it doesn't drive as much as it cruises like a 20 mph convertible Caddy down the strip.

5) Cymbal Rush (live version on the Henry Rollins Show) – Thom Yorke : This song is amazing and more solidly confirmed the fact that I needed/wanted a Rhodes. It's simple yet complex, the arrangement of Thom's work, as well as Radiohead's is unique. But at the same time it's familiar sounding, it resonates on a different plane than just the acoustic. The arrangement of this song is my favorite by far, it's minimalistic: Johnny Greenwood on Persephone (Ondes Martenot?), Thom on Rhodes, and I think Phil Selwey managing the TR-909.

6) Idioteque – Radiohead : This is one amazing song! It grabs you and shakes you with the first bar, though it's not overbearing, it's sharp, to borrow the phrase it pierces you to the bery center. I remember I had never heard the album version and I think it was Taylor again who pointed me to a video of a live performance on SNL, one of the most prolific in the show's history, and i was floored. It was incredible! It is a force to be reckoned with.

7) Oh, Darling – The Beatles : John said he should have sung it, but although I do like his harsher voice, a la I Want You/She's So Heavy, I think this song would be drastically different had he done it. Paul's uncharacteristically rough voice really shines through, expecially on the very last verse where you can tell he's really pushing it. I think I admire it because I have a hard time myself singing harshly- maybe it's my discipline.. or lack thereof.

8) My Name is Mud – Primus : This was the first Primus tune I'd ever listened to (well, that's a lie, I had heard Mr. Krinkle on 'The Boxx' a channel where you could call in and order a music video to be played on the tv). Aside from Krinkle (which wasn't all that extraordinary comparatively), I had never heard anything like it before! A bass so prominently in the forefront of a band it was inspiring to a young person of 13 who had barely learned the bass line to Sultans of Swing. This was the gateway song that lead me to other treasures of the Primus world.

9) Indefinitely – Travis : I absolutely love this band. While not one of the singles issued from The Invisible Band, this track is well put together very well, has good, non-linear lyrics, and an air of that early '00s alterna-rock that doesn't smother you to death. It's one of their slower tunes, which I particularly like in Travis' catalogue.

10) I Wanna Be Sedated – The Ramones : Though I'm not a fan of 'punk' I do enjoy the Ramones, particularly this song, and its video. It was poking fun at a society and music scene that was obsessed with hair and glam... at least that's what I think it's about, but hey, sometimes it doesn't have to be deep to be a deep cut.

11) Shine On You Crazy Diamond (parts I - IX) – Pink Floyd : Yes, all nine parts, not the abridged version on Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd. If this isn't in a rock collection it needs to be, this is prime Floyd.

12) Driftwood – Travis : This is by far my favorite track on The Man Who, this whole album, and in particular this song remind me of endless tournaments of Marathon Infinity and nights of Rifts. Oh, man I was a nerdy high schooler.

13) Come Together – The Beatles : I think this was the first Beatles bass line that I felt proud of learning, since no one really knew the song Rain. It was also the first recording I ever made with Garage Band, albeit in a key somewhere between D and Eb

14) Trans-Europe Express – Kraftwerk : I first heard a Kraftwerk album (The Man Machine) at the home of my Blazer's leader, Chaz Hadden. I don't quite remember my initial reaction, but when I first heard TEE I wanted nothing more than to go out, sell whatever musical kit I had and get a synthesizer, which I did at a great loss of one of my most fond basses, my Washburn XB-4.

15) Army – Ben Folds Five : This was the first time since Paul McCartney that playing a piano was cool again (save my brief affair with Billy Joel... brief) it was amazing! It was someone tearing the ever loving crap out of their piano and making real music out of it, I don't think there's a single BFF or solo Folds song I dislike. I later would discover Whatever and Ever, Amen and their debut, Ben Folds Five.

16) Riders on The Storm – The Doors : I think this is the lasting jewel of the Doors that has stayed in my mind, plus Manzerek on that Rhodes is magical.

17) The Last Remaining Light – Audioslave : I really enjoy the sound of their self-titled debut as a whole, and this song is among my favorites, second only to Bring 'Em Back Alive (that lost out because of the rather let down solo), and Exploder. The whole album is great! BUY IT!

18) Disconnect the Dots – Of Montreal : This opener of Satanic Panic in the Attic is a real well done track. Again, like most of my top songs the whole album is great, despite the off-putting name.

19) Message In a Bottle – The Police : "I love the cops!" a friend of mine once exclaimed. But indeed I believe that this period in their career they were doing some of their best collaborative work, and their sound was great. Summer's if not the most versatile guitarist, Copeland, one of the great underrated drummers, and Sting, hey, he's Sting. I WILL KILL YOU!

20) Evenflow – Pearl Jam : Second only to Jeremy, this track redefined my expectations for rock and roll in years to come. It had everything rock should have and nothing it shouldn't, yeah they had long hair, but it wasn't full of mousse or lost groupies. Unfortunately for me Grunge had died by the time I had my first listen, becoming subverted by Pennywise, MXPX and Blink 182... For the sake of my friendships with good friends I won't start up on that lot.

21) Intergalactic – Beastie Boys : Ok, could I have picked a more cliche track by these guys? some might ask... No, this track is my first real encounter with the Beasties, and that it will remain. It's the first rap song I memorized, although their status as 'rappers' is heatedly debated.

22) Sheep Go to Heaven – Cake : Who in their right mind doesn't love cake? and not mention Cake. The radios and the studios always pick John McCrea's 'spoken' sung songs over their more melodic vocals...

23) Hold On – Limp Bizkit : This was in fact a blast in the face of "whoa, where the @#*$ did this one come from" I actually liked it, and it stays as one of my top songs. Thanks, Taylor.

24) Pantomime – Incubus : After Drive I really wanted to know what the heck happened to ol' Incubus, hearing rumors that they had gone the way of 311 and other such bands of 99-00... but again, like many musical wonders I owe Taylor the credit for truly 'introducing' me to Incubus and who they really are. This was one of two of the first songs I had heard by them, since I really don't count 'Drive' at all, both of which came on a mix CD created by Taylor for the rest of our band mates in Happenstance.

25) High Hopes – Pink Floyd : Yes, I know I could earn a lot of flack and disdain for this one, but it's true. I think their whole history can be summed up in this song alone. It's a track mainly about the 'loss' of Syd Barret, and having read (well, audio book) Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd this song becomes even more poignant. Perhaps Syd was the only sane one and the others were mad.

I think I'm going to post up a top 25 Albums, since there were so many I had to leave out of this list.

Learning new tricks...

2008-10-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've been using Maya for some time know and I think I have a good grasp of it... which isn't to say I've mastered it. No. Not unless I spent an entire year locked in a room with nothing but Maya and maybe food and water. Anyway, I've decided to learn a different 3D software package, just for kicks. And all you mac users with weak constitutions, please do not read any further.

Dun dun duuuuuhhhn!

I've decided to learn 3ds Max 2009.

Suprisingly, it's very intuitive to get around in and use. Max has an interesting way of performing and keeping track of polygon and NURBS editing, deformation, etc. It's like an up-front version of Maya's hypergraph mixed with the attribute editor- it's kind of its own beast though. But universally it has it's differences from Maya.

Along the lines of the user interface, I had to rethink my manuevering within the viewport. In maya, you use the option (alt) key and the various mouse buttons to either pan, zoom, or orbit around the center of interest of a given viewport. In Max it's a bit more involved I'd say. There's a new feature, I can't remember the name that allows you to do all of those functions- it's like a OS X widget that appears in the viewport. Terminology differs as well. You don't have cube primities, you have a 'box'. It's going to be an interesting experience all around I think.

In a related note, I just re-watched the Making of Myst old Quicktime .moov file from my original MYST CD-ROM, and I had this fascination with trying to find the then new and incredibly state of the art, now old and antiquated, 3D software they used. Unfortunately, StrataVision v. 2.0 is no longer availible... anywhere... not even in torrent form. So I had to settle for something a bit more DOS-like... the earliest version I could find of 3d Studio (now 3ds Max). Utilizing the amazing program DOSbox, I was able to experience this wonderment of 3D software the same way- well close- artists did back in the early 90s... all I have to say is: wow.

Those guys were making awesome stuff with tools like that? Patience, those people had a lot if it.

Here are a few snapshots of 3d Studio DOS 4, click on the thumbnails for larger views:

Simple cube (this was before perspective was implemented into the viewport- I don't know about the final rendering).

yup, that's a sphere. with some pulled out verts.

Rigid Body Dynamics Demonstration

2008-10-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

Using physical data and fields to create animation from polygonal geometry, as opposed to particle dynamics (sprite mapping). 120 faces per polygonal coin

I chose not to remap the time line on this animation and leave it rather slow-mo. The texture map is rather small (1024px), rather atypical of my maps, and looks a bit pixelated on the close up shots but it helped speed up the dynamics simulation and rendering.

fan of my art?

2008-10-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

Pazwindi's New Style by ~Pazwindi on deviant ART

Pazwindi's New Style by ~Pazwindi on deviant ART

I thought this was pretty cool, this guy, Pazwindi, painted his own bass after my design which can be found here:

Fender Jazz Bass Custom 3 by ~jessenator on deviant ART

He says it's not exactly the same, but it still looks great! Cheers, mate!

The Writing's on the... television...

2008-10-01T23:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson092908.html

There's the reality of the matter. We did it. All of us. In fact most of the seeds were planted before our 'lousy' president even took office, and of course, as Victor Hanson points out, "incumbents are always held accountable for economic malaise." bad and good. e.g. Bill Clinton and his presidency got all the credit for the reforms of the Reagan era which didn't bear fruit till the 1990s. In an freakishly similar manner we see what happened during the Clinton administration has had it's repercussions on our economy today, although they're always willing to pass the buck– in this case to us, but as Dr. Hanson points out, we share the blame: Congress of the 1990s for passing laws essentially forcing lending institutions to loan money to people completely unable to handle a loan on that magnitude, and the people themselves for being lured into these traps being completely unenlightened. That, and many other bogus debt remedies and endless borrowing and lending on all fronts, not just the housing field.

The end result, unknown, but it will be a trying time, and some say that America will never recover and become what it once was, although we've done it twice and come off better... I'm not saying it out of pride, rather out of hope... speaking of which, Obama will get elected this year, no doubt, but it won't be on his own popularity and means, it will be because the media will continue to attack and exploit the already weakened GOP, namely Sarah Palin *groan* Seriously! For the love of all that is sane, the media just needs to drop it which they won't until Obama is in office, and the Dems have their 'throne' back. Sarah Palin will be as forgotten as a Walter Mondale or (insert VP candidate name here).

Meanwhile the congress will legislate everyone into an equal state of legal enslavement, both social and economical. Oh, we won't see the social oppression on the outset, but it will come, and it will come in the form of the abolishment of organized religion, and of ultimate loyalty to the state. We will become socialist, the fruits of the more productive and successful will be taken from them and given to the grandchildren of those who've been on welfare for 3 generations. The redistribution of wealth is wrong. Helping the less fortunate to better themselves and help them help themselves is not. Maybe my rhetoric resounds like a conspiracy theory... it's true. I make no pretense about how I feel about the American left, and right for that matter. I'm a libertarian at heart, borderline constitutionalist, and I get really scared when the proposals from any candidate talk of 'enlarging' our federal government- It's ALREADY too big! If the more liberal-thinking people of this nation want more freedom they need to shrink the size and influence of the Fed. Where the *@#! is Ron Paul?! I'll tell you, he's buried, right where the American media put him. They've raised their makeshift messiah, Barak Obama, and they've christened their satan, the GOP, and there is no more room for anyone else.

Some new pieces

2008-09-21T01:04:00.000-07:00

some new stuff. I had the hankering to make a NES cartridge.. and some fictional game art for them.

The Best NES Game Ever by ~jessenator on deviant ART

The Whole Trilogy by ~jessenator on deviant ART

Also, a revised version of "...you down"

...you down 3 by ~jessenator on deviant ART

...you down...

2008-09-11T22:06:00.000-07:00

...you down by ~jessenator on deviant ART

...you down 2 by ~jessenator on deviant ART

SO these are two pieces I just did. I'm going to do a third once i get the actual original sketch of the central figure from my friend.

anyway, there it is

politik

2008-09-10T23:07:00.001-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson the voice of reason.

Every time it gets closer to elections I can only be disgusted by the candidates' incessant slandering of each other, mostly with help from the media. No, not from their respective parties or campaigns, but from the big media. Although I'm pointing the finger at them I will say that Time magazine once put it very well: The media decides who is going to run, and win. That statement pretty much sums up the beef I have with the media and its coverage of politics in America.

The news media is very selective and persuasive, which initially wasn't its primary function: to inform the American people of happenings at home and abroad without bias and without dissembling. You don't need me to tell you that it has lost its own essence. I don't watch the new networks, let alone television for that matter. Occasionally I will digest what sense I can make from news websites and commentaries I find in search of factual bases. The bottom line is, the media is as corrupt as Washington.

[another thing I can't stand is 'celebrity' commentary on politics. A recent display of ignorance and pandering came from Matt Damon. Attacking Sarah Palin, of course. All I want is to ask a question, a legitimate one, not a 'is this depraved member of the state patrol your relative?' type of question- a legitimate, thoughtful, concerned, and sane question: How long has Obama been a senator? that scares me.]

Politics have never been that interesting to me when they should have been: when I turned 18 and became eligible to vote. Like I mentioned earlier, I can't stand the candidates taking shots at each other, while raving about themselves, feeding the American people quaint and rather nebulous words, rather than discussing their actual plans (Obama party, anyone?). It seems that is all that the Democrats are focused on doing right now. To set the record straight, I am not a party leaner. I don't blindly go to the polls, and check off all the Republican candidates. It seems to me that this country, for the most part, is hell-bent this time around on getting a Democrat in the White House regardless.

I come from a very analytical upbringing, and by my nature I tend to examine the facts and the issues at hand. In all the wake of Hope™ and Change© I can't extrapolate a single bit of change or a hope for change. Our government is bloated as it is, we're in a recession, the American people in generalization are obese, lazy, dependent and, most irritatingly, have this asinine sense of entitlement. As Dr. Hanson said, an increase in taxation, broadening of federal government influence, and increase in social programs cannot do the people of this nation any good.

Social programs, the ancestors of which are still in effect in our country today, were not the answer to the fiscal disasters of the Great Depression. That was WWII. In the 1950s for the most part Americans were back on their own feet again, but the social programs still clung to the train of politics. My feeling is they could have been eliminated by now, but they still linger. My father is self made. He made decisions and took paths that led him to where he is, and he worked hard. My grandfather even more so. Some might say, well, your grandfather was a farmer, he had government farm aid- no. He had farm loans, which became so hard to pay off during the Carter years that he eventually had to sell the land.

My whole point is that we've become to dependent on the government. I find it odd that many 'liberals' who are quick to judge 'conservatives' as fascist, statist pigs, want nothing more than to just have power themselves. They'll just do it with legislation, and policy, instead of 'gun-possession' and 'religious freedom.'

I want a small federal government, not an overbearing one. I want my tax dollars to benefit the safety and security of my loved ones, not to become a self-esteem-boosting payout to a person who doesn't want to work their own way in life, and thinks the government 'owes' them something.

long time no write

2008-08-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

well, I guess I'll start off by directing everyone to my website. It went through a major change and it is much more manageable, sleek, easy to navigate and just plainly looks better.

It houses the better pieces of my work in a gallery style layout. Hope you enjoy it.

I've been working on also redesigning my subway scene, but have met with limited success. The decision to change to a more 'realistic' looking shader type has met with more problems than I want to deal with, so I'm going to be systematically reworking it till I get the look I want.

Subway car interior WIP

other news:
I ran/walked my first half marathon, which nearly killed me, but made me that much stronger.
I'm nearly not-unemployed. yay!
I'm looking for a bottle shaped like this one:

How little we've grown

2008-08-12T01:40:00.000-07:00

I was just watching an older episodes of Star Trek DS9. There's an episode called Paradise which tells of a people who were isolated from the rest of galactic civilization and how they were discovered by Sisko and O'Brien. This whole episode made me sick.

you can read the synopsis here: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Paradise_(episode)

It just surprises me how philosophy can be driven to a detrimental extreme.

I just can't relate how sickened I felt after watching it, the parallels one could draw from it. I mean, just listen to it: "But perhaps a lie can lead to a more important truth. Would any of you have learned who you truly are, at the core, if you hadn't come here? Joseph, you would have been a repairman all your life. Cassandra, you would have been a technical clerk in some closed-in room. And Stephen. My friend, you probably would have been in prison by now. Look at yourselves! Look at what you've become! What you've achieved here has redefined your potential — the potential of man. Just as I knew it would. You are the living proof."

wtf? a lie leading to a truth? The true potential of man comes in the exercising of his creativity, his personal and communal improvements, and exercise of self restraint and moderation in all things.

the worst was the forceful and almost stalinistic enforcement of the principles and philosophies that Alixus embraced. Sure some of the people may have benefited, but to deceive people by any means like that is just a disgusting display of what humanity thinks it's doing for itself. I fear that a governmental power that outwardly expressed the "open-minded" and liberal way of thought will do just the opposite. They will legislate our freedoms away from us. They'll legislate the constitution away from us. And even take away our fundamental civil liberties. They'll claim that without guns, without 'negative' speech, without rights to assemble, without religion there will be peace. And yet when someone claims an infringement they will open up the floodgates: religious thought is constrictive to the freedom of man, so therefore, religion is bondage and must be abolished. the criticism of one's choices is offensive, therefore it must be taken away. guns kill people and serve no purpose to the public therefore they must be confiscated. any gathering of people could possibly constitute a riot or rebellious act, therefore the right must be revoked.

this is the thinking I fear will come to those who think that they are learned Education and the pursuit of knowledge is a noble and right thing, but it's pursuit and those that seek it cannot allow their knowledge to replace true and pure wisdom. That is the problem with so many people- they think, well i mean, sure they 'know' a lot, but that doesn't mean they're wise and prepared enough to change things, and have the results be fruitful for mankind. I'm not saying that everything going on right now is totally right, I'm just saying that it's not totally wrong either. Thomas Jefferson's words that "a little revolution now and again is a good thing" should not be taken to the ultimate extreme of complete upheaval and reorganizing of society. we are so free, and people who don't believe so are just rattling cages because no one is handing an opportunity to them. But that is a whole different rant.

2008-08-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

so I did something I pride myself on not doing: i burned my fingers by touching the manifold on the lawn mower, RIGHT next to the part where there's a great big WARNING do not touch sticker. Needless to say, it hurt. I had in a bowl of ice for the next 3 hours before finally reading that you're supposed to soak it, then seal it off from open air. it hurt like a bugger every time I took it out of the ice water- then I braved the storm and Jamie bandaged me up. anyway, this is rather ironic.

I noticed how little I had been playing my bass as of late, and decided to get back on it and make sure I still remembered our songs (Everson is going to play a show in September again, yay!) and now, I can honestly laugh at my predicament. my middle and ring fingers, are the ones that I play with especially hard and for sliding. But I think it won't be too long before I'm back in the saddle... I've learned to not let little setbacks bother me.... I can laugh at them.

White Tennessee Castle Pride

2008-07-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

Interesting. The biscuits taste like cookies... the burgers aren't bad, but they aren't good either... and they're very small.

In other newsish stuff: I has a watch!
Or rather, I finally bought a new battery for my watch that has been dead since I was on my mission! lets see... probably December of 2003.... almost 5 years since it's been working! wow.

Evolution, Creationism, and whatever...

2008-06-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

Just a preface to these paragraphs of pontification...

I'm going to be writing down my thoughts and such as I write them, so it might read like a Faulkner novella... I'm doing this mainly for myself, to tell myself, to define for myself what I believe. I think it's unfair for anyone to be branded or pigeonholed into a general category (or categories). either black or white, no gray. Like I've mentioned before It's a flaw of man to polarize gray areas or gradate the absolutes in the universe (a secular-friendly way of saying Eternal Truth). The fact is, in defense of our own belief systems we generalize and polarize to no end. I am a man of faith. I'm not trying to be biased, I'm stating my belief and opinion/observation of how things appear (no one can really see things the way they are at this point).

For lack of a better layman's term I am a God-fearing man (I could make a dissertation just on what that means). That said, I do not hold to the tenets of Creationism. In the strictest definition of that school of thought, it is ludicrous. The great scientist Galileo Galilee stated (completely botching this quote): "I do not believe in a God who endowed man with reason and intellect who would command him not to utilize it." There are many things in the universe that we have yet to discover- I dare say that, though we are making great strides as a whole, we do not comprehend the slightest fraction of a fraction of a fraction of how the universe functions... yet. There are laws and operations that we cannot even fathom as mortal beings. I believe that one day we will though. I believe that God operates on an infinitely higher plane of understanding of these principals, laws and operations. I believe that if in any way there is, what can be loosely defined as, 'Divine intervention' Deus ex caelo there is a rational- dare I sa it- scientific explanation for the event. Many reading this may look down and decry me a blasphemer. meh, I've been called worse on my mission...

Without digressing too far from the subject at hand I will simply (is there a simple way to state this?) state that God is not above the laws, operations or principals of the universe, he has a perfect (gr. telios) understanding of them, therefore He just knows how things work.

I believe in the eternal nature of the spirit, some would call the soul, of man, the individual entity residing with this 'tabernacle of clay'. How that 'tabernacle' came to be formed in its current configuration... well, we don't know for sure, but there is scientific evidence and theory that our bodies changed over time; I'm talking about evolution. This is the part where I'm supposed to write something poignant. I do not hold to the tenets of strict Evolution. Granted I don't have a degree in it or anything relative to it, but the things that I've read and studied for myself have some things, if you'll excuse my pun, fishy about them. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I won't delve any deeper because this is going to end up at cloning and the conundrum that it is.

Some other thoughts: people who take the Genesis account of the creation as literal don't understand what the Jews were on about when they scribed it. Semitic peoples do not have an identical writing or literary style that we have today as 'western society.' We have a very Anglo-Saxon very engineering minded way of thinking, we have for a very long time, and even moreso in the last 150+ years since the Industrial Revolution, been taught a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) mentality of analysis. The Semitic, in this case the Hebrew people wrote with a symbology that just doesn't sync with everyday Joe Average. The euphemistic language of the Jews is lost on most people, but it is very rich, when you study it. Where am I going with this? Six days does not mean six days. The purpose for including the 7-day cycle in the Genesis account was to teach the Children of Israel... no, even from the time of Adam, a concept of work, rest, devotion and love. "six days shalt thou labor" and on the seventh day we are to 'rest' or as the Hebrew word shabbat denotes, stop our labors. This is a pattern that you can see in the world- if a farmer sows a certain patch of field every season, eventually it becomes infertile and just a bunch of dead earth. But a real, wise farmer will leave it fallow for a season, to replenish the nutrients that it needs to bring forth a good harvest the next season. In the New Testament Christ tells the Pharasies that 'The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath'- anyway, what I'm getting at is that the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest are symbolic. I believe that it did indeed take millions and millions of years get the earth to where it's at now. I believe that the whole universe is a part in the grand scheme of things- we are not alone in the universe, stated Neal A. Maxwell. Again, God knows the laws of Eternity, the even bigger cycles in our universe.

Evolution is not 100% neither is Creationism... it just sickens me when it either needs to be one or the other... that Evolutionists are on some humanistic crusade to 'save' mankind from the 'stupidity' of their belief in God's Creation, or that the Creationists are out to redeem the heathens in their belief that we evolved from apes and purge the big bang from their hearts... or prove that Moses rode a T-Rex or something... No... we need to stop being so extreme, we need temperance more than anything

Well, that's really all I can think of to write now. I'm tired.

It finally works!

2008-06-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

Well...

it's been over a month... almost two since I've posted, kinda weird to think about... anyhow it's very late and I'll be brief.

I finally got the Fender Jazz bass design I've been working on to WORK in 3D...
Well, ok I did get it to work before but this time, it's golden! And this is something I really have to brag about, or more accurately point out to those who really care: I actually got the details on the body (tailpiece) which a lot of modelers do not bother to do. I was able to model both the forearm and belly cut outs from the tailpiece and even though some might think it looks awkward, the belly cut out is accurate- that's what it looks like, end of story- Now how did I do this? well it might not make much sense, but what I ended up having to do was subdivide, or more accurately, cut the top and bottom faces of the tailpiece to the point that it looked like some one made the body from 20 pieces glued together (well, geometrically, not physically) after that it was a matter of pushing and pulling vertices (vertexes) [ I decided to start with a very low polygonal face count when extruding from the original NURBS curve (just a path created in illustrator) and then smoothing the mesh later ] to get the curved portions all shaped out- this took about a day and a half of tinkering to get the right starting point, then onto the final bout with the neck mount... ughhh, it was a lot easier though after i learned about 'chamfering' edges before you smooth them, VERY good thing to know. but nothing compared to the NECK.... aaagh I don't want to do it over, but I might have to. there are some funny things going on, you really can't see them in the angle I rendered, but the very end of the headstock is too beveled- but It actually looks like the headstock... I need to figure out another way to do it.... anyway- I'm way tired and I'm volunteering at the D.I. at 8 AM!

'night

2008-04-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

Hahahaha. I can't believe this worked, but using DOSBox, a DOS emulator, and a set of install 'disks' for Mircosoft Windows 3.1 I was able to make the whole thing come together! Everything works really well on it, even the sound card emulation, thanks to the brilliant people behind the DOSBox program. I originally got a hold of it so I could run one of my favorite past time games, The Even More Incredible Machine! Turns out though, that I could run it under DOS as well... so it's become more of a novelty I guess. But it's really funny because the programs freak out when you simulate a CPU speed of over 66 MHz.

So. More 3D stuff coming out in preparation for my demo at BYU-Idaho at the end of the month. I'm really hoping that things go well with it. Here's a sample of what I've been working on- packaging, etc.

The mark on the plate is the emblem of the USSR.

Dishware -WIP-

2008-04-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this for a day or so. I designed the plates, bowls, and cups in Illustrator (albeit in a cross section-like format) and revolved them in Maya. I'm still working out the porcelain-like material because it's doing some funky things, but it's coming along. I hope to add some type of design to it for my presentation up at the Y at I at the end of this month.

OH NO! I've discovered the beauty of Subdivision Surfaces!

2008-04-01T11:13:00.001-07:00

I'm starting to do more organic, character-based modeling in order to expand my horizons, so to speak. This is the start of some demonic looking imp guy... mostly because of the horns, but I think it's going fairly well so far (only about 2 hours of modeling, most of which was working with the subdivision geometry).

My CS-15 demo vids on YouTube

2008-03-31T20:10:00.000-07:00

Part 1

Part 2