I’ve been having a bit of a problem lately getting Safari to keep working! Seems it keeps crashing every few minutes with a library issue that I can’t seem to fix.
21006 White House
This is the wonderful 21006 White House. I love the look and did my best to recreate it, but I’m sure things aren’t quite the same. I didn’t finish the back yet, so don’t turn it around.
344 Bungalow
I found a number of old models from 1969 and rendered many last year, including this one. I finally got around to rendering larger a larger version with a better background (originally it has a seam in the back). If you search for this, you'll find that I fudged the trees and used something newer.
Fun with Z-Code (aka Inform)
Okay, I’ve been a fan of adventure games, and specifically Infocom games, for most of my life. I have fond memories of playing great games such as “Planet Fall” and “Zork” when I was in high school on my C64. However, even before playing those games, I was playing and writing games on my ZX81 using a very simple adventure engine.
Fun with iOS 4
I’ve been waiting patiently to upgrade my iPod Touch to iOS4 today. Now, as a long time network engineer, IOS has always been Cisco’s CLI. So, it was a bit weird installing iOS on an Apple product. But in the end, it was worth the wait and the install. Some common issues I had with the previous
357 Fire Station
I rendered this a couple of weeks ago and thought I’d share. This is LEGO(R) Model 357 Fire Station with Vehicles from 1973. I’d like to create a more “action oriented” version in the future, but it is pretty nice to begin with. I personally like the middle engine with the two yellow rounds. It was the reason I rendered the model to begin with.
Making My Blog CO2 Neutral, and You Can Too
Here’s an interesting idea, plant a tree and offset the carbon emissions produced by your blog. And, even better, you can make it happen for free! That is the premise behind Mach's grün's Carbon Neutral campaign. Just blog about their initiative and the “Arbor Day Foundation,” their partner in the US, will plant a tree in the Plumas National Forest on your behalf.
Are You a Nerd or a Geek?
This funny article was tweeted by Major Nelson and it was too rich not to pass on. FINALLY: The Difference between Nerd, Dork, and Geek Explained by a Venn Diagram provides a visually comprehensive way to determine the correct usage of those oft hard to pick social epitaphs you are bound to throw my way.
CSS Fun and Standards
I’ve playing around with other CMS systems lately to get a feel for what is out there. I recently had the opportunity to hack around in WordPress and ran across a neat little utility in some of their docs. It is an external Online CSS Optimiser/Optimizer that does some CSS compression.
Flickr LEGO Fun
Flickr has become my new favorite place to share my LEGO creations. I tend to use Facebook for family and friends, mainly because that is what my family and friends use. But I digress. It is pretty easy now to use available tools, mine being Windows Live Photo Gallary, that allow easy publishing. That means more time building and less time cropping and uploading. In all, a good use of technology.
All Is Well In 64bit Land
Well, I’m finding the 64bit version of Windows 7 works pretty well. I have most of my applications running again, using the 64bit versions if I could find them. The SSD drive is working great and I'm just using an external drive enclosure to get around the space limitations.
64bit and SSD Fun!
I was honored with a 128GB SSD drive today and I just had to give it a try. Since I can only have one drive in my laptop, I decided I’d swap out the old one and, while I was at it, spin up a 64bit version of Windows 7 on it as well. I’m curious to see how things will work.
Fly Me To The Moon Soundtrack
I uploaded a slightly longer version of the “Fly Me To the Moon” song to ACIDplanet.com. It isn’t much of a soundtrack since there is only one song. I created this version first but it was too long for the animation. The shorter version in the video was an edited remix of this one.
Fly Me To The Moon
Playing around with POV-Ray animation. This is LEGO model 367 Lunar Lander. I’m trying to be a bit more ambitious with camera sweeps, using easing functions and launching the lander into space!
Promotional Windmill 1976
I finally got around to trying my hand again at animating some of my virtual LEGO creations. I decided to go simple and animate the vanes and a simple camera pan for the promotional Windmill circa 1976. And, to really get my geek on, I uploaded it to YouTube.
5865 Mini Dumper
This is LEGO® model 5865 MiniDumper, part of the 2009 Creator series. I thought it looked really cool and was curious how close I could get to the original by building a virtual one.
Halo Reach Music
Bungie just released the snippet of soundtrack for the premier trailer: Lone Wolf. The iTunes purest in me couldn’t live with the default no album art found image, so I created one! Here is the Halo: Reach album art at 640x640. And no, I didn’t bother to add any text.
Reflective Fun
I’ve been using Reflection.js for some time now to generate reflective category images. I did this mainly to avoid having to create the reflections by hand. However, it has always had a bit of a lag when generating the reflections. This can be a bit jarring at times, but I’ve gotten used to it.
Fixing Code
I really haven’t liked the way the code routine displays on my blog. It adds a lot of white space and generally looks bad. To make things a bit nicer, I removed the Code: message, set the overflow to auto instead of scroll, and I removed the extra breaks.
Avoiding Index
One thing that always bugged me with using scripts is that you tend to see the script name. For example, this site has always had an index.cgi and most PHP sites have index.php in the links. I find it tacky and many commercial sites don’t do this. I don’t want to change my software, so there has to be a way around this problem. The search is on!
Looking Forward
It has been almost three years now running on my current web site design. Sure I've changed elements here and there, mostly due to changing underlying software, yet it is starting to feel a bit old to me. The problem to me is where to start. Is it color? Is it it form?
So Long GeoCities, Thanks For The Memories
Well, as of today my GeoCities site of the last 12 years is no more. I’m a bit saddened as it has been a place of comfort, seeing me through different ISP’s and such. It is because of GeoCities that I use Yahoo! mail, even if Yahoo! then turned around and removed the best features of GeoCities. I still feel that GeoCities was killed many years ago by Yahoo! and that it was only kept around due to its legacy. I’m not surprised by its shuttering in these times of Web 2.0 and the emergence of the Social Internet site.
LEGO and ZX81 Geocities Content Moved
Yahoo! will be shutting down Geocities tomorrow, 10/26/09, which means an end to my old LEGO and ZX81 website. Although I hadn’t updated those sites much since Yahoo! turned off ftp access, Geocities had remained my presence on the web for almost 12 years. Sad to say, it will be sad to see it go.
Power Station
I was playing around with World Machine and thought I’d add the height field to my Power Station image. I think it really conveys the overall scale of the scene. I also added a better star field that shows up under anti-aliasing (best seen in large version). Note that the image has been color corrected and converted to JPEG using Picasa.
Getting Comfortable With iTunes Home
I had read a bit about the new iTunes 9’s home feature. Unfortunately, trying to use it is a different matter. First off, using it requires you to log into your iTunes account. I’m assuming this is so you can transfer your old non-iTunes plus DRM laden music.