Wow, an update! That hasn’t happened for a long time 
I’ve been really busy on the fantastic Maya Foundation course at Escape Studios, finding new and interesting ways to crash Maya 2008, and finding new reasons to bang my head against the desk. I’ve also been learning all sorts of wonderful things!
Some of you are on the 3D email list, so you’ll have seen most of these pictures as I tend to send them on the day or shortly after, but for a lot of you these are brand new, so this is the reason I’ve been so busy for the last 5 weeks.
Although these are mostly little learning exercises, these will be added to the 3D section and removed from this post at a later date, in the hope that I will eventually have an online portfolio under my real name somewhere else on the internet, and prospective employers wont be scared off by any amateurish attempts shown here.
There are problems, especially with the veins on the eye (and you know, the guy having no ears), but as I said, learning exercises. When I get my final project finished, expect shiny renders! Or disjointed ranting. Or possibly both.
Feedback is always appreciated! (But PS - I know some of these may turn out very dark, as my screen in class seems to be set to very bright.) (PS PS - I know the images are a bit big now but I’m too tired right now to scale them.)
Above is my version . . .
. . . and this is the texture on the tutor’s model.
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I’ve been so busy since coming down to Kent! It’s the 4th day of the course today, some of the things I am familiar with but some of the things are new and shiny and I’ve made so many things!
I can’t find my external hard drive, which is really bothering me, but if I have some more time this lunch break I could take screen shots. The thing is although I’m really ‘wow’ about some of the things I’ve made, I don’t think anyone else will think they are better than some of the things already in the 3D section at this stage. This is largely because we are going through exercises designed to allow us to make models efficiently and ‘cleanly’ (eg wont have any problems when animated or rigged). So I made an ornate bath tap yesterday and discovered all sorts of things and ways I could make it! But yeah, it’s still a bath tap in the end and I don’t know if you guys really want to see that.
If you do, tell me and I’ll grab a screenshot from here and upload it. Otherwise I’ll wait until I’ve got something a little better looking.
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I’m in Kent! Yesterday everything I own was moved by parents with a large van, and Neil kindly stayed on longer than he needed to for his stuff to help me move mine. When we got here, we then had to get everything out the van and into the house so the van could be returned in time.
Even with the help of other people, my back is so not happy with me. I had to do lots of leaning over and picking things up and setting them down again. I did bend my knees as well as my back, but as you are aware my right knee is still not 100% so I had to alternate between the two. I couldn’t reach the floor to carry on unpacking this morning until I’d had codeine. Blergh.
Despite this, I have somehow managed to get most of my clean clothes away today and I’ve started on my shoes. I have also worked out how to get Mum’s washing machine to do a short cycle 30 degrees wash. The standard 30 degrees wash is an hour and a half! Ok our old washing machine made the occasional ‘groink’ noise which made me worry, but it did have a half an hour wash setting. I cannot imagine who would need to use the longer cycles aside from rugby players, farmers, or others who regularly cover themselves in mud.
Alas I have no internet upstairs yet, I’m updating from the downstairs computer. 20 metres of cable is (fingers crossed) being dropped off by one of Dad’s friends on Saturday, so with a bit of luck and a couple of holes in the wall I should have a connection soon. Also on Saturday I get to go bed shopping as the single kids bed (6 foot 3 instead of 6 foot 6, and a little narrower) is not really sufficient.
I can’t believe my course starts on Monday! I was sure somehow I had more time before it started. I hope everything is ok!
The fish have settled in well. Stupid Fish and Slightly Less Stupid Fish were pretty unfazed by three hours in a car, however Crazy Fish was so still when we got there that I thought he had died on the way. Now they are back in the tank, all fishes are well and exhibiting the behaviour that they are named for.
For the first time in a long time, I shall now put washing on the line. It’s weird (but good!) having a garden again.
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Following feedback, I’ve added a background to the rest of the page and removed some of the darker brown large blobs from the blog text area, so it should be easier to read. Comments should now work fine! Welcome to a browner internet.
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Welcome to my new blog style! It’s still a fixed size but this time I thought I would go for graphics I liked and make it fixed height as well, with scrollbar. I’ve got responses ranging from “swish and professional”, “damn that’s neat” to the wonderfully blunt “I don’t like it”. So I guess it’s the usual and you can’t please everybody. Personally, I choose graphics over a full-page layout most of the time, so I’m happy with the ornate frame and fixed size. It’s larger than last time, but I think that just about everone I know runs one size above 1024 x 768 at least, and to be honest you’re the only people who will be reading this.
So, recent adventures! I went to visit Squirrel in ooh-aar land, otherwise known as Devon, taking advantage of his time off work and the bank holiday.
Thursday - arrived into Exeter just as the city centre was being cordoned off because someone had set a bomb off. Fortunately (I suppose) he had set it off while in a restaurant toilet while trying to set it up, and I believe no one was injured other than him. Turns out he had a mental age of 10 and had “been converted to Islam”, so actually he’d been used by extremist nutters, poor guy. We caught one of the last buses out before they extended the cordon to the bus station.
In the evening, when it had mostly blown over, we met up with Alex and tried to get food to eat, however a lot of the places were still shut so we had fish and chips and then went to see the new Indiana Jones. I found it to be enjoyable. On arriving home, a stray cat had managed to get in via the open cat-flap, so Squirrel and Ali caught it in a cat-box.
Friday - general plan was to meet up with Squirrel’s parents and see the Exmouth Festival, however Squirrel’s Mum had a migraine and so I lounged around in Squirrel and Ali’s back garden for most of the day, and worked on my Inquisitor scale models. Cat, which was definitely a stray and had a poorly eye, was taken by Ali to the rescue home.
Saturday - day of the epic trek! Ali kindly drove us all out to Dartmoor, where we then did a 5km (approx) trek. It was odd getting used to walking on Dartmoor at first, because I’ve never hiked anywhere with such a mix of sturdy ground, random bogs, and also lumps of granite. Granite is a big feature of Dartmoor, look up Dartmoor Tors if you are interested. I saw some lovely places, a couple of very well rested sheep, a lot more restless sheep and lambs, a lake, lots of rocks, ruins of old houses, what was possibly once an orchard of one of the ruined houses, and a newly born foal so young that the mother had yet to shed the afterbirth and the foal was still a bit bloody and wobbly. By the time we got back to the car I was absolutely knackered - my knee did a lot better than I thought it would and I went a lot further than I thought possible.
Sunday - revenge of the knee. Turns out it was a bit stiff after yesterday, so I was a bit restricted in my movement. Squirrel and I caught a bus to his parents house, where I met said parents and also two lovely dogs. I’m not really a dog person, but these two dogs were friendly and quiet and nice. We went to Exmouth sea front and saw the sand-sculpting competition, and the poetry that Squirrel’s Mum had put round trees as part of the festival, and saw a bit of a live band and people dancing etc. We were then picked up by Squirrel’s Dad and taken back to the house, where we met up with Ali and waterproof gear was put on. Drove down to the dock and got in a boat! Squirrel drove (sailed? captained?) us to a pub called The Turf, which seems only accesible by boat or cycle path. Barbeque food was eaten, swings were swung on, and then Squirrel (appropriate verb here) us back to the dock.
Monday - got up very late, a little tired out from all the adventures. Concentrated on packing up all my stuff, doing some more work on my models, and I started watching FLCL / FuriKuri. Got two episodes in and still only have a vague understanding of it, but have got the rest of it to watch later, so maybe all will be revealed. Ali was again very kind with his car, and took me to the train station, where we randomly bumped into Alex. Train home relatively uneventful, except from seeing loads of bunnies!! Saw a couple of big groups of them to start with, groups ranging between 4 and 7, and then did some more bunny watching and saw 3 bunnies running around and a couple other lone bunnies nibbling grass. I’m also fairly sure I saw a deer - it was at the edge of a field with some cows, near the trees, but it was totally the wrong shape for a young calf, I think it was a female deer. Also saw cows, horses, sheep, grouse/pheasant and geese. Got into Cardiff late, went straight to bed.
So a busy holiday! With lots of lovely outdoors. When I get the photos of Dartmoor from my camera I’ll put them up in the Photography section, keep a look out for that because some of the scenery is amazing, even through my amateur photography.
Any Other News - my bentou box arrived while I was away, I totally failed to make a bag for it, so I think I’ll just be traditional and get a furoshiki for wrapping it instead. My Inquisitor warband are so almost finished, I’ll take pics of the two totally finished ones and put it up in the 3D section. Not-Rambo-at-all needs the feed for his gun which is currently in Gloucester (oops), and not-going-to-be-called-Beelphegor needs his head painting and attaching, his arm attaching, some paint work finishing and then shading work doing. I have gym hair right now (scraped back in a high ponytail), and as soon as I stop doing this and get out of my pajamas, I will have gym clothes and I shall go to the gym! Rarr, exercise!
Posted in random, site work | 6 Comments »
My last day of work was Wednesday, so I dyed my hair on Thursday! I used some Clairol Nice & Easy to bleach out a couple of strips and then put Stargazer pink over the top of the strips.
I was worried that the Nice & Easy “ultimate blonde” would be too light, but actually it didn’t do much at all - it was hard to find the lighter strips to make pink! Note to self, you are blonder than you think. Anyway, the pink went on fine and now I have pink in my hair, however it was very difficult to put on and not get pink on bits where I didn’t want it, and the streaks are thicker than I wanted and a lot more neon. I do like it but I don’t want bright pink in my hair all the time.
I’m going to let the pink wash out, and then I’m going to have some pale pink extensions put in - they will be the same length as my hair so not really extending it, and it will mean I can have pink streaks without having to re-dye. The hairdresser is recommending the weave-in type, which are sort of braided into your own hair at the roots, and are unbraided and re-braided every 4 months, as the extensions move down as your hair grows. £6 per streak, so if I have about 5 that’s £30, but £30 every 4 months for someone to do my hair for me, with no chance of accidentally dyeing bits I don’t want pink, and having exactly the right pink all the time sounds pretty good to me. A hair dye job at a salon would cost £30 or more and wouldn’t last anywhere near as long as 4 months.
I’ve been talking to a hair dresser in Cardiff about it, and when Gareth has finished making pie for tonight’s dinner we’re going to wander into Gloucester city centre and I’ll poke around there too.
Other than hair stuff, I’ve been trying to find the right sort of gun to put on my not-really-Rambo 54mm scale model, watching the cat be happy at head rubs / really pissed off about people sitting on the bed where she is napping, and being a bit stressed. It’s really weird not being at work today and knowing that I wont be working for a long time, it’s thrown any routine I may have had, and I’m sort of in flux until I can pack everything up and move to Kent mid-June.
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Today, I:
- walked around City Road and Albany road talking to hairdressers
- met Kat at my house
- ate an Oriental Panini from Dough
- walked to the park
- walking a long way into the park and found a lovely spot
- sat there for a long time and splashed around
- walked to town
- bought light pink hair dye from Blue Banana
- bought blonde bleach (a shade or two lighter than my hair) from Boots
- came home, got changed
- went to the gym
- came back, changed
- did strand and allergy tests
- cooked glutinous rice and tried to make onigiri
- will eat said onigiri, filled with smoked salmon and cucumber
- will play Oblivion
I’ve decided to dye little streaks of my hair pale pink, but before this I need to bleach out the strands I want to dye a little lighter to make the pink stick better. If I use lots of pink dye on a strand of hair it’s a much stronger pink, but if I’m more sparing in my use of it I get the paler pink, down side is that it might need re-doing more.
Of course I am going to wait until I’ve finished work before doing this in case I scare clients / my coworkers.
I guess it might sound a little drastic, but maybe a change will be good for me.
Onigiri for those that don’t know, also called nigiri (I think the ‘o’ is a particle, but it’s Anglicised to include it sometimes), are balls of rice, sometimes with a filling in the middle. You can make them in many shapes, ball and triangle appear to be traditional, but you can also get plastic moulds to make stars, hearts, etc. I don’t have a mould yet, so I just used my hands. However I think I may get a mould, as my filling is more of a strata (grammar?) than a filling. For triangle onigiri I’ve seen a strip of seaweed wrap (like the ones used in sushi) put over them, but I haven’t got any of that yet. If these don’t fall apart, I could get some of the wrap and make my own sushi Though I think I may stick to cooked ingredients as I wouldn’t know how not to poison myself on raw fish.
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I’m typing this from my shiny new computer. My shiny new monitor should be arriving tomorrow (Samsung 21.6″) but I’ll be at work and I don’t think Neil is in all day, so I may get it on Thursday or something instead.
I’ve quit my job. I’m going to Kent 23rd June or thereabouts for resting my battered psyche and eventually starting down another career path. My last day of work should be May 23rd, giving me a month to pack up my house, descend upon Squirrel before I end up much further away, and say goodbye to Cardiff people until I can next travel up.
As some of you know I’ve not been sleeping well at all recently, and came down with flu from Tuesday night, only feeling better yesterday, which was a bit sucky. When my eyes stopped streaming and I didn’t have to blow my nose every other minute I did manage to get some painting done on a couple of 54mm models I’ve got. Unfortunately I have no graphics software installed on this new machine yet, but there shall be some soon and I can inflict upon you my rubbish photography of miniatures (also hence the icon, credit to sporkyadrasteia on LiveJournal).
I don’t know that I’ve got much more to post about. I just feel tired and a bit blah.
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Well that title will make no sense unless you have seen Rune Soldier Louie. If you are a fan of anime, then watch it because it is joyful. I got the box-set and watched all of it in 2 or 3 sessions while knitting.
Anyway.
You may be wondering (you probably don’t care, but you may have been wondering) why the pictures I promised a while ago have not been put up. My laptop is degenerating.
I was going to get a desktop to replace it round about June, however in addition to the cd drive not working, the screen being covered in patches of stuck pixels, MS Office install being wonky, a variety of interesting bugs, and many keys requiring a vigorous blow before they will provide a character, the power supply socket is now on the dip.
In order to charge my laptop (whose battery now lasts a grand total of 30 minutes) I have to spend a long while fiddling the plug at the laptop end until it’s in just the right place. Any disturbance such as moving the laptop, and it stops charging again.
So I abused my debit card for £310 (whimper) for parts for my new computer. I already got a case for £29 that I like, I have not got a screen (going to use an old CRT to set it up) or keyboard/mouse (got spare for now) and I have a stereo set for speakers.
For those of you who are interested, here is what I’ve bought:
- Inno3D 8800GT 512MB DDR3 256bit Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card
- Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H GeForce 7100 Socket 775 onboard VGA 8 channel audio mATX Motherboard
- Intel Pentium Dual Core E2220 2.4GHz (800MHz) Socket 775 1MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
- Kingston 2GB Kit (2×1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Non-ecc CL5 Unbuffered 1.8V
- Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache - OEM
- LiteOn DH-20A1S 20X DVD±RW/DLRAM Black Bare Drive - OEM
- Extra Value Black MicroATX 350W PSU - 20+4pin, 2x SATA
- 1 x Startech LP4 To 6 Pin PCI Express Video - Card Power Adapter
I know different people have different preferences for computer parts, but these were bought in collaboration with at least 3 people who know what they are talking about, having built more than one of their own machines, so I’m happy to go with this.
Hopefully the parts will arrive tomorrow, so construction can begin Tuesday after work! I’m having a custom install Windows XP disk, really not fussed about Vista.
I’ll probably end up extracting the hard drive from the laptop and attaching it to the new computer just to get the important data from it.
Well, that was the last post I think I’ll be making from this laptop, which I’ve had for almost 3 years. Sayounara Jet.
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Ok, I still haven’t got round to making more icons so unusually for me, I’m using an icon from IconzIcons at LiveJournal.
Things have been a bit iffy recently, from little things to big things.
I went to Gareth’s Grandmother’s funeral on Monday in Gloucester.
I left a lunch bag on the train coming home from work, containing my glasses, knitting needles, a much-loved and too expensive to replace wrap-cardigan, my hairbrush, and what will now be the remnants of some very old macaroni cheese. No word from the lost property department as yet. I had to replace my glasses very quickly at some expense, as I only had prescription sunglasses on a prescription that was quite out of date. Knitting needles and hairbrush were also replaced.
I have had to write two complaints letters for Gareth, one because he paid off a credit card amount and although the money left his debit account it appears to have not arrived at his credit account, another because an internet company were owed £5, didn’t send any letters asking for the amount, but instead passed it straight on to a debt collection agency who added late fees etc. making it about £20 instead.
My eczema has been getting worse on my face as it often does during / just after winter. I’ve been putting off the recommended 4 minutes on the sun bed to help get rid of it because I really don’t like those places, but I absolutely have to go tonight or risk at best scabby skin or at worst infected skin and antibiotics.
I have a verucca (albeit the smallest verruca known to man, the chiropodist couldn’t tell what it was for a while) but I still have to get the freezy home kit and get rid of it. Urgh.
The afternoon before the funeral, my right sinus near my nose went crazy again. They sent me to the allergy specialist, who did a pin prick test and told me I was allergic to dust mites and gave me a nose spray. I already had a good idea that dustmites don’t help my nose/skin/lungs and at any rate didn’t end up using the spray daily. To be honest, the specialist treated me like a complete idiot and when I ventured an opinion (to say that the spray he was going to give me I had used already and found it not to work) he walked a close line to outright making fun of me. So, I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday and I’m going to try and make it clear that this is not an allergy thing. I get intense pain in the sinus which causes it to run, and whatever has been prescribed me doesn’t do much to help. The only thing that does help is pseudoephedrine because it makes me dried up so there is nothing to run down my nose. This however does not tackle the actual problem.
Sorry for the negative post, but it helps a little to write all this down, I feel like it’s fixed in place and can be sorted out then.
Better news - the knitting continues, and I got some lovely 100% bamboo fibre yarn to knit some gauntlets / fingerless gloves with. It’s very very soft, like cotton, and should be comfortable right next to my skin. Also to complete - other legwarmer (now started) and scarf (able to continue now I found the other ball of wool). I also bought a massive massive reel of 100% Scottish lambs wool on e-bay for cheap, it’s not that soft but I want to make a cardigan/jumper out of it so I’ll have cotton clothes on underneath anyway.
I painted a Warhammer miniature in Gloucester, a Dark Elf riding a Cold One (lizardy thing) and have almost completed it, and I’m very happy with the work I did on the Cold One and a bit happy with the work I did on the Dark Elf.
After chatting with Squirrel about the possibility of Inquisitor-type games and 54mm models, I finally managed to find 2 54mm female models that I liked and ordered them on sale. They should arrive between 12 to 60 (!) days from ordering - I didn’t fancy paying the much higher shipping for them to arrive in 12 - 20 days, and will just keep my fingers crossed that they arrive sooner rather than later. One is labelled ‘cow-girl’ and the other ‘vampire’, and although the cow girl does look frontier-ish (big coat, riding trousers, shot-gun slung over her shoulder) the vampire could just as easily be painted up as a human or an elf in armour wielding a sword. A demonette caught my eye, but I’m not sure how I would integrate her into the game so I’m wavering over that one. I’d have to model her a top to wear under her corset and some underpants anyway (sigh).
I now need at least 1 male 54mm model, as most of the models I like are female ones. Andrea Miniatures do a range of “definitely not x” - for example, “female archaeologist” with guns and blue top, “male adventurer” with slouch brim fedora and whip, “hellraiser” (not at all Rambo) - there are maybe 20 of these “definitely not x” characters. The hellraiser one might be usable as he is grungy and ammo-d up, but I’d feel weird playing with Not Really Indiana Jones, he’s definitely set into my mind as the 19-somethings, not thousands of years into the future.
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