An Official notice from the Ministry of Information: Death

May you take this message to heart...

Changes, Continued.

Not satisfied with just updating the blog, I have made some serious layout changes to the photography website as well. Now, for those of you who did not realize I even had a photography website, fear not. The old site is still visible (temporarily) by clicking the appropriately labeled image below. You can visit the new site in the same manner. The Temple Galleries are currently under a redesign as well. At this time, they are only visible in the old style (though through either layout.)

Old Layout

New Layout

Music Monday

Today we again bring you Travis. This one was is one of my all time favorites by the band, and a large portion of that is due to the fun concept of the video.

Here is Driftwood.





Album: The Man Who
Recommend: I recommend this entire album completely.

New Layout.

As David Bowie once said, "changes."

We felt it was time to spice things up. Since we did not feel quite up to the next stage in home remodels, we remodeled the blog instead. Those of you using a feed subscription may want to just hustle on over here and check things out.

I would also like to take a brief moment to thank the folks at PSDTuts for their excellent tutorials.

Give said the little stream

No house is complete without...a water feature. Of course, we decided in the interest of "good taste" not to include the "spitting fish" or "peeing boy" statuary...and think you will forgive us. :)

It babbles (in a mild and hushed sort of way)...and trickles...and flows (often right over it's own banks)...

It's a work in progress.

Music Monday

From somewhere in Texas, we bring you Eisley - four sibs and a cousin. The three lead vocalists, being sisters, tend to come up with some interesting harmonies.

Today, for your viewing pleasure, a haunting melody with an unusual video, Memories.




Album: Room Noises
Recomend: I'm rather fond of Eisley, even if most of their videos are just a little weird. I recommend the whole album.

"Vacation"

My fantastic week studying Oceanography in the exotic local of....Ogden is over. I enjoyed the class, loved the 4 women I met and hung out with, and am giddy to be home and back with Brian. I must echo some of the "other" Olsons and say that the "Great Salt Lake" is not so great when you can walk across it on the backs of flies. Still, the spiders were creepily gigantic and the baby swallows entertaining. Now I can say I've been there...does that make me a Utahan, yet? What else should be on the list?

Qualified, baby!

I received my PLT (Principles of Learning & Teaching) Praxis scores today. According to the fine state of Utah, I am a qualified educator. Hmmm...nothing said of all the hours in the classroom. Ho, hum. Just a portfolio to put together and I "earn" my Level 2 license.

BTW, just cause I still can't believe it - I received a 199/200...I love days when I am smart.

Meaning of Love

Love is a pergola, not a hotdog.

http://seriouslysoblessed.blogspot.com/2008/07/eternity-in-bun.html
(thanks to Lindsay for pointing this blog out to us)

Music Monday

Back to Gotye for a week. I thought this was a very clever way to do a video. Here is What do you want?.



Album: Boardface
Recomend: Huge fan of Wally DeBacker, I recommend the whole album.

Music Monday

Another one from Travis, if you don't mind. Or if you do mind, I'm still posting it either way.



Album: The Invisible Band
Recomend: The whole album

Quatro de Julio

In honor of the 4th, we went out on a limb and had a barbeque. I finally feel like we are in the adult club...or at least we can pretend to be. (Brian would like it to be noted that HE has been giving parties for years; however, I say they are so much better now.) While we wish everyone could have come, those who did make it, made it wonderful. Here are a few shots of some of the fun with the fireworks.

A few of the "boys" hard at work.

The masterful, magical snake. Courtesy of Aaron, Caleb and Linsday.

Sabrina & Angelina...such talent

My sister-in-law Angelina has amazing talent for video editing. This is a short video of my niece Sabrina that I stole off her blog. I know the subject is so cute, but check out the editing job as well.

Sorry for the theft, Angela.

Keeping up with reality

So I thought I might show some of what I've been working on. After 2 1/2 years of playing with various ways to model water, I finally found one that works, and not just works, but works on a very simple level. Up to this point, I had been trying to model water as a three dimensional object.

Imagine a globe, with latitude and longitude lines. Each place where the lines interconnect you get a vertice (also known as an angle.) You can deform the globe by grabbing a vertice and pulling it out, down, any direction you want. However, each vertice you add to a model makes it both harder to deal with AND takes longer to compute a full picture.

The water in this animation is just a solid plane. Basically a piece of paper with only four verticies, one at each corner. But then you paint a series of light and dark shadows on the paper. In a 3d Program, the shadows can become anything. they can represent different levels of reflection, or light absorption, color, or in this case, height. Then you cause the shadows to move in one direction or another. The painted image adds about one percent of computation time compared to what it would if you doubled the number of vertices to eight.

In addition I have found ways to tell the 3d program that repetative objects, like carvings on the temple, are just duplicates of one object. The end result of all these changes is that it now takes 6 minutes to compute one frame of animation. It used to take nearly 4 hours. Here is one I did a couple months ago.
 

June Buds

Most of the plants that have popped up have bloomed now, the largest group having been this month I think. So not much left after this month in the flower department.

Dutch Iris

Peoni

Rose

 

Dutch Iris

Dutch Iris

Rose

Lily

Strawberry

Blackberry

Bouganvilla

 

Honysuckle

Lilly

Paper Zen.

Just watch. (and Listen)