Author Archives: essiep

Game screen

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24°C, clear & warm

Took the day off today and drove to work. Exhaustion set in again- frustratingly.
 
Two pictures today-
1/ Game screen of a bunch of characters who all seeme magnetically drawn to the spot over a fallen foe. The all bunched toghtly together and looked upwards in a detatched religious way.
2/ Our cat sleeping in the shower.

Oak galls

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20°C, same weather,

My favourite Oak tree has galls on its leaves. The tree lives in a small but wild field near home where I walk the dogs*. It turns out that those red balls on its leaves are created by gall wasps, each one has a young wasp gestating inside causing no harm ot the tree.
 
* I say "walk", not what they do.

Thrips weekend

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20°C, sunny with cumulus clouds

Yesterday: got slightly burnt at the Duxford airshow. Despite wearing some 15 & 45spf sun cream, it still got through. IU blame the thrips- they were everywhere, itching and bothering everyone around. I reckon in wiping them off- some of the cream came off too. Funny little things thrips.
The photo below shows some american planes, this opener was marred by commentary from an american woman who was lbatantly reading propaganda.
 
Today, same weather, but no showers and 72 miles on the bike. It’s been ages since I did that kind of distance so it was quite hard near the end ( but oddly, felt easier in the last 10 miles).

The difference a day makes:

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20°C, clearing, wind dying away.

Suddenly: feel back to normal, that "looking-slowly" feeling has gone, cough has too, now feeling more that summer is back.
Tomorrow is an airshow- Flying Legends which I’m taking my ol’ man to. Just an excuse for a day out really. I have some ferrying to do – that means getting up at 03.00 to take Hannah to start her German trip.
 
The ride home was less wet today, but my paper-files are not quite dried out from yesterday. I felt like a naughty schoolie with a sheet that was due in today being all sodden & frayed at the edges.
A-hem.

that took the fun out of it

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15°C, rain.

Riding home: the rain was heavy before I set off, no sign of it easing so the journey had to be made. It was fine, all that thick surface water, running rivers down the roads and so on. then as luck would have it, the back tyre went down near home. I bet that was from riding on a cycle track for the last bit. It’s now about 3 ghours later and the rain has only just stopped. I was quite enjoying it until that point.
What a summer.

Samosely

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18°C, heavy rain showers, otherwise dry.

That was it, June is officially the wettest since detailed records began in 1914. That’s not to say that 1914 was wetter, so a re-phrase is in order.
 
Roll on summer holidays, tiredness is all pervasive, deep to the core and unshakable. I blame work, accumilated lack of sleep- it adds up eventually.
Go on, rain again- I dare you!

2-pass render elements

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20°C, same old showers, humidity and snails everywhere.

3DS max: Trying to fix a problem with that render from yesterday. The light cones increase the exposure of the background. So ( it’s going to get geeky here…) have rendered out a 2 pass render elements job. That givesa background pass, and an stmospheric effects pass (the volume light). The light glow pass didn’t work, that needs sorting before I can use the file. Oddly, Premier doesn’t offer DivX as an output compressionh codec. Clearly, I have some reading-up to do.
As you can see, this is not so successful, the light glow has gone, but the light-beam is definitely better.
 
When this is done, I’m off to play STALKER.

the nation changes…

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19°C, sun & heavy showers

….or not.
 
Newsworthy stories: new premier, new "bomb" attacks. Hardly bombs, more damp squibs. Some bloke drove a burning car into Glasgow airport yesterday. Not actually a suicide attack- the driver survived with severe burns. Its not clear what all of this means, what the message is or what we are supposed to think. The security forces are on the highest alert, parts of cities get slosed now and again, and all because of the small risk of a fire started by a gas cylinder. I wonder what level of alert they will use if there is an invasion cfleet approaching British shores, or the nuclear bombers are crossing the North sea. It all seems rather silly from here.
 
Smoking: banned in public enclosed places. At last, we’ve wanted this for over twenty years. Maybe going to a pub won’t feel like such a dirty experience any more. We can wear nice clothes there instead of old ones that won’t matter if they end up all smelly.
 
I want to go cycling, but the sky wants to drop huge masses of water carried in tall clouds by westerly winds. June was wet even by wet-june standards.

Projectors

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18°C, some sun, few showers.

Interactive whiteboards: new scare, see here. It almost reads like exposure to radiation.
 
On a work related theme, we’re getting the new version of M$ Office. In the last 5 years or so, M$ have released "new versions" which have been substantially the same, with things moved from one menu to another, some file incompatibility added in and little else worth mentioning. Any other software developer would meerly release a point five update, like Office 2000.5. At some point they added in jelly-bean buttons then we all switched them off when we noticed the progammes run faster without.
This time, upgrade is worthy of comment because they actually have changed the suite. Export to pdf is there (they are catching up with Open Office), file formats have changed and there are some useful fix utilities for damaged or bloated files. The interface is the most noticable change, some fill freak when they see it. All they have done is move menu items onto tabs of buttons at a cost to screen space. Theway things operate is  always the important thing, the one that lasts after novelty has gone- and these really are better in the ones I tried in the staffroom yesterday.
 
The only thing they have missed off that OpenOffice have, is they forgot to make the software cost free.

Tchernobyl- and STALKER

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15°C, N wind and sunny(mostly)

GAME: playing a new game- as mentioned a few posts ago. This is work commenting on because it’s so immersive, there are lots of detailed touches that make the game worth exploring as an activity in its own right. there is a trading element to it, but primarily- it is a fps game based around The Zone- the exclusion zone around Tchernobyl in northern Ukraine. Do I need ot explain the story of that place? No probably not.
Here is a Wiki article of you need it.
 
See the screenshots for a taster– one is of a camp- where one of the stalkers, wearing a radiation suit occasionally whips out an acoustic guitar and strums a tune. There are strange wild animals around and the weather is very changable, heavy rain showers are frequent. The characters speak Russian, but the interface is in English- unfortunately, I don’t speak any Russian. There is very little to spoil the immersion in the game- some of the character animation smarts, especially when figures are walking upstairs- but then I have never seen that done well in any game. The whole thing really needs the newest computers to run though, it does support widescreen monitors, and represents DX9 shown off to its best.
Normal mapping and shadow mapping is very well done- though the former seems a little over-sharpened in my opinion. Another area I admire is model making, especially buildings and all those wrecked vehicles- rusting Lada cars are around, with flat tires and flaky paint. I really ought to try out normal mapping more often in 3DS Max. The overall effect matches the mood of those photos of the city of Pripyat that have been published in recent years. the Tarkovsky film "Stalker" is an obviousl link, my copy arrived this week and from the first bit I watched looks set to be an excellent film- it has been over a decade since I saw a Tarkowsky film- Solaris.
 
Oh well, more tomorrow. I really mustn’t let this game take up any sleep time though.