Monthly Archives: Feb 2008

Anslow Emus

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8°C, grey, plus a band of rain at 2pm. Cy=54 miles.

Odd the things you see, riding through a rural farming area, passing houses on the edge of the village of Anslow, I heard loud bird noises, and looked over to see 2 large grey Ostrich shaped birds. they were grey so must have been Emus I presume.
 
I took lots of photos of Rugeley power station. There is somethig mysterious, slightly menacing but intriguing about that place. Maybe it’s the industrial architechture, designers must have a field-day when they come up with ideas for them. It is a mixture of old Art deco, and new age sci-fi, but all covered in soot & dust.

Handlebar ice

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-2 to 3°C, freezing fog but some sun.

It’s hard to keep warm on days like this.On arriving at school today, the handlebars felt oddly slimy. It wasn’t until I took my gloves off that it was obvious that they were covered in a layer of ice. The rest of the frame must have been similarly afflicted too. It was as if the air itlsef was freezing and forming ice crystals, looking like snow.

LOD Export now works

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7°C, light winds, grey. 

Yesterday: a day in London. The best bit was in the Tate Modern: Juan Muñoz who makes figurative sculptures. One room was filled with these grey figures, all with the same cheerful expression but in different poses. They seemed to be in conversation, and rather pleased to see one another. The effect was almost animated as you walk around the room which reveals different figures as they eclipse and uncover each other. See the picture below. 

FSX:
It’s been a long, frustrating but addictive quest- but I’m getting 3D models into that sim at last. After a hint from FSDeveloper forum, I roughed out a Max Teapot file, with a standard FSX material, and exported. It worked! There is a big red teapot at the end of the runway in Seattle. So perhaps it needs a clean Max file, so:

reset Max; Merge the mesh in; generate new GUID & “FriendlyName”; make a new FSX material, through it apply the bitmap (pref a photoshop file) and export to X/Mdl/placement file.
A curiosity still lingering is that recently, the default placement launches the sim on the equator in the Pacific even with the placement set to Seattle.

Procedures have been put in place…

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9°C, clear, still andSun again!

How that phrase grates every time it is said on the media. It is said on most news reports about one thing or another. There is something remote that forces a divide between the listener and speaker, something dehumanised.
Adults are just as bad as kids in repsect of mis-use of English. An example that is growing in frequency is using "anticipate" in place of "expect"- as in "we anticipate that your expenses claim will be submitted by Friday".
Obviously: Some are using this in every sentence, often twice. Listen out for it; then wish you hadn’t.

Kids are more likely to adopt Americanisms, like missing word endings: " we need to get to our next lesson quick(ly)"- quite a different meaning, often it is clear thay have used the wrong one. The least bright ones will mix "of" & "have", as in " I should of known". I’m not even going to mention apostrophes.
Oops- I just did.

FSX:The Chernobyl scenery is coming along apace now.(see picture below). The rivers and lakes are all done now, I’ve had a break from trying to export 3D meshes today, though the NPP model is now mapped ( but not textured). While playing about with the Sim, I discovered that there is a firework display over the Eiffel tower if you set the game clock to 00.00 on Jan 1st. Quite nicely done I’d say.

It’s been a while

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10°C, Sun, still & cloudless. C=39 miles

…’ been busy though. Unlike most terms, I’ve made time for 3DS Max. This has beena very nice, mild and dry half-term, short too.
Still, I persist with trying to get 3D objects into that flight simulator (FSX), sometimes it gets tantalisingly close. The second picture shows an aerial view with only a shadow where the model of a generic Church should be. Good grief.

Firefox crashes: Re-install and update, with a root file clean-out in-between. Over here we are nervously hoping that thos crashes triggered by web browsing will desist.
That derelict part of Tatenhill airfield was interesting this afternoon. It would be good to get in there with my new camera for some quality shots.
Found a fab site today- with the rather predictable name of "Urban Assault". There is some great stuff in there though, have a look.

Black swans

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7°C, grey & rather windy. C=54 miles

Got it wrong today, I was quite warm setting out but the wind-chill soon got to me. By half-way I was regretting not wearing that woollen tee-shirt.
Laid eyes on two oddities today: 1- a pair of black swans ( post photo later) 2/  two scrambler motorbikes only seperated by a piece of rope. I’ve never seen a motorcycle towed on a rope before.
Still haven’t warmed up properly.
I’m deeply shocked and disgusted by this: BBC story "Indian Rhino looses fight for life"
There is not a thread of evidence that the far east’s "Chinese medicine" has the slightest foundation in fact. I can see it getting worse as China’s wealth becomes  greater. There is a noble creature, making an honest attempt at bringing up its youngster, and both their lives are taken for some arbitrary fantasy, a pseudo-science that is closer to religion.

"The conflict between rangers and poachers has claimed the lives of 60 people
over the past 20 years"

I hope none of those lives lost were the rangers’.

That photograph is going to haunt me.

thankfully, I didn’t win.

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4°C, sunny with hailstorms.

Beaten at the last moment- what a relief. So I don’t have two cameras coming in the post.
Today has hat a little tension as well for another reason- it’s been very cold but sunny and mostly clear. I’d driven to school in the car because of the prediction of bad show showers & hail in the weather forcast. That didn’t happen until the 2nd third of the journey home when the surfaces did become unsafe. After a day of regretting it, it did turn out to be a good decision.