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A category for uncategorised posts. Or something.

El Cant De La Sibil

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20°C, clear summer’s day.

Montserrat Figureas: Delivered CD today from France. It came faster than the Amazon sourced order. Sacred music from Southern Frmace in Latin. Thanks to Simon from Can Llouquette for the recommendation. It’s good for; purity and space. It’s not good for; sing-along (thankfully). Teenagers will probably hate it though.

I’m eagerly waiting for Rachmaninov’s Vespers to arrive now. I had one on loan from our music dept. and though the recording is from St. Petersburg, the production made it all sound a bit remote and vague to me.

Rain & mist 1240m high

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16°C, rain

Last Wednesday: mist and rain photo. What an unforgetable day. We’d stopped at a rocky Col to eat, then on hearing pat pat pat of rain, decided to descend. Coming down the south slopes the rain beat, the thuinder roared and we brisky sought lower alitiudes. Between lightining flashes, I coudl see burnt out trunks fo trees, branches of charcoal in places and thought of the lightninhg bolts. Then I looked back. You know those days where light filters between deciduous trees- it becomes green; well, here the mist itself became green. I’ll never forget that moment, I want a waterproof digital camera.

Anslow Rheas

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13°C, windly but a nice sunny start. c=27 miles

Rode up to Anslow bank today to find those "Emus" that I spoke of here previously. I got a bunch of photos this time, but on looking them up in Wikipedia, they turn out to be Rheas. No less curious for that I say.

STOP 0x000000IE

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8°C, Windy, but milder

STOP NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM at NTOSKRNL.exe: I have a poorly computer. In the week I changed the RAM but not soon enough, one crash caused by it has scrambled the anti-virus’ database so it won’t run. It won’t uninstall either, nor does the update patch work. Looks like a re-install of windows is the only resort.
 
Nevermind, at least I have had more success with the other PC, the Chernobyl scenery is substantially done. The main site of the accident is done, so now my attention turns to the town of Pripyat, and possibly the famous Ferris-wheel.
2008-2-28_21-23-42-687

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.

Sarcophagus

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13°C, warm, windy & with showers.

3DS Max: Texturing that Chernobyl model. See picture. I’ve taken this render from the same angle that most photographs seem to be shot from. The second chimney (near Reactor 1 & 2) should have red & white paint on as well, only just noticed that. this model is about as complete as it needs to be for FSX, but there is some room for poly reduction and replacing details with textures.

Saturated

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9°C, drizzle & strong winds. C=36½ miles.

Cycling: Strong winds and rain serving to remind me of the torrential downpour that washed out my ride home on friday. I cut the ride short.
However, took time out to take some shots of the National Memorial Aboretum – all under water. I pondered on why they built it on the flood-plain of a major river. This area is subject to quarrying, so the course f the river and ponds will change relatively rapidly, the safety of this site is therefore at risk.

Tarkovsky

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Using YouTube here to decide which Tarkovsky film to get next. This is the one I have on DVD. I’m being equally indecisive about which YouTube clip to include here.
   
Right now, "Andre Rublev is most likley to…

It all reminds me of the time, as a teenager, watching "Solaris". It must have been on TV, long slow and strangely compelling. Perhaps Amazon will do a 2 disc special offer, or something.

The roads are dry, but covered in dark, slippery slimey dirt, someone suggested tyre rubber. Perhaps, poor traction in places.