Test 2

The Question was asked me in regards to the last 3d test 'what is it for?'

I suppose I should explain the point. This is a small tool to allow people to view models that I have created with Blender 3D. Beyond that, it is an opportunity to show what I am capable of in regards to programs that I have no formal training in. In short, it's a brag. I am self taught in what I do. I am showing that I understand the capabilities of the programs, and that I can see ways to make them flexible in purpose.

So, here is the proof.

This may take a bit to load. It's 3 times the file size of the last test, but in regards to my personal attention to the construction, I only had to take 5 minutes to put it together. Also, Until it has loaded for several minutes, it will only play the file linearly. Basically, it will only go left. That's not my fault. It's your internet connections. It's the same navigation, so enjoy.

Music Monday

Here is one from a band called Oasis. The song is called Wonderwall. In my browsings for things to share with you, I have found that this song, along with the song Enjoy the Silence by Depech Mode seems to be the most covered of songs on the internet. So Here along with the Artists Video, is one by the the band Mike Flower Pops.






Album: (What's the Story) Morning Glory

Recommend: I'm not a huge fan of Oasis, but we love this song. As for Mike Flowers Pops, they seem a novelty band, so enjoy to your own content.

Test

I've been trying to do some new things with some of the programs I've been learning. I decided to share my first results with you. This is a combination of work from Blender3D and a trial version of Adobe Flash 7, which is 2 generations behind the current version of flash. This has taken a week to put together, but the nice thing about this project is the setup. Now all I have to do is take any model I have created, set up the camera and animation (this will take 15 minutes and then walk away while the computer renders (that can take days.) Then when it's done, 15 minutes is all it takes to make the flash now. The template is set, and off it goes.

So enjoy this little interactive toy just below, let me know how it works. Just use the arrows after it loads.

The Govinator.

So I was just browsing family blogs and found this picture on Angelina's blog.
Just in case you were wondering why I thought this was cool, this would happen to be the EXACT same simulator that we got to test drive.


I'm just guessing but based on the instrument panel being pushed out of the way, he didn't get to fly it.

I bet he didn't get to fly the big one either.

Music Monday

I don't know if it's the trend with bands today to do weird videos, or if it's just my tastes that are strange. I find that the videos of my favorite songs from my favorite bands aren't widely accessible to a huge range of people.

On that. . . note, We bring you two from Eisley. The first one is titled Marvalouse Things. The second, I Wasn't Prepared.

Album: Room Noises
Recommend: I always recommend Eisley

Paige and the Giant Peach

Despite our best efforts to give our fruit trees a chance to devote their energies to growth/establishing, not producing, we found a wonderful surprise on our peach tree on Saturday morning. The hidden peach was just a hair short of perfectly ripe...and wonderfully delicious. We are very excited to taste our future bounty, if this is an example of what the tree will produce.

Nesting?

After Paige had cleaned out the spare bedroom, I come home one day to find the whole thing semi furnished. . .

With a rocking chair, all our stuffed animals, and all our children's books. We both have a decent collection in both the animals and the books departments. She claimed she just wanted them out where she could get to them.


But now she's talking about painting the walls bright vibrant kids colors.


I thought they were supposed to take up knitting.


No, That's not an announcement.

Out of town - San Francisco

Our final day was spent bouncing all over San Francisco. I'll talk about some of the specific attractions in other posts, first though, here are some pictures.

The Bay (?) bridge, on our way in.

The Parking Garage we stopped in had fortunes for all the parking spaces. This one was ours.



Classic San Francisco. Houses straight up and down, streets that have forgotten what level looks like. If I could live in a cute town home...I would love to live in a larger city. However, Brian would never live in a large city, so I will just enjoy looking.

Sabrina on the trolley. She really gets the "hold on tight" admonition.

Can you tell Paige was a bit tired of all the pictures/smiling? Said Paige.
Actually, don't let her kid you, this was really only the second picture she caught me taking of her.

Us riding the trolleys. I found these fascinating, more on them in a later post.

Posing with the trolley. (Am I the only one who can't say the word 'trolley' without thinking of Mr. Rodgers?)

Brian insisted on some PDA... so we could demonstrate "A Streetcar Named Desire."

I am amazed at how extensive the hills are, and the complete insistence people have of building on them.

This one was a street car, rather than a cable trolley. Electric motor, powered by the lines running over head, much like the buses, actually, which look like anything UTA uses other than the huge arms sticking out of them.


I have always loved large sailing ships.
I have never really been a fan of large bodies of water. I like the thought that dry land is always within easy reach. I like the water, just not in such large volumes.


In a nutshell, that's our day in San Francisco. I still have two more posts planned from the trip. Those will focus mainly on particular parts of the visit.

Accidental Pinhole Camera

So while trying to relax the other day up on the bed, I noticed something rather odd on the all near the ceiling. It was the movement that caught my eye. There was something very colorful up there in the corner.


It turned out to be the movement of a car, projected upside down and backwards from a tiny gap in the blinds.

I sat there and watched traffic drive by for about half an hour. Then I decided to blog about it. Then a week later I actually got around to it. There you go.

Music Monday

Today were are posting 2 videos, though of the same song. The band to which we give the honor of first double post is one of my all time favorites, with one of the all time worst names.

I saw them in an interview a couple ten or so years back where they talked about the odd band name. they explained that the formed the band when they were nineteen and that "at that time there wasn't much else we were thinking about".

That is the explanation of how a group of fully clothed males ended up with the name Barenaked Ladies. I will be referring to them as BNL from here on out. Mainly because it's quicker to type. So todays video, as well as todays other video, are for there song One week.

First the album version. Any of you my age will probably notice that there are several references to your own childhood in this video. The birthday scene from the classic movie Chitty, Chitty, Bang-Bang, and the cars from such ground breaking television as Starsky and Hutch, and Dukes of Hazzard.

But wait, there's more! These guys are probably one of the greatest stage bands of our time. They love to entertain, and they love to have fun with their own music. Here they are singing the same song during a telethon in their home state of Canada.



Album: Stunt
Recommend: The whole album except I'll Be That Girl and In the Car

Out of Town - Ames Research

Most of Friday was spent just relaxing , not running around or doing anything. Actually, Friday morning would be when I set up most of the recent posts. Friday afternoon we went to visit Jon, where he works at NASA's Ames Reasearch Center at Moffet Airfield. It was only about 10 minutes from the apartment; incidentally, he bikes to work every day - what a way to avoid CA traffic.

Those of you who knew me in High School know how much I was into aircraft. I actually had more than half a mind to study Aerospace Engineering for a living, but I became discouraged by my lousy mathematical abilities.

Going to Ames brought a lot of things back. There were wind tunnels and simulators EVERYWHERE. As nice as all the marine life was, this for me was way beyond cooler than cool. I had forgotten how much I like aircraft.

We actually got a chance to sit down at a simulator there in Jon's office and have a go at flying an F-15 SMTD variant. It looks just like an F-15, though it has large fins in front of the cockpit, called canards. Originally created as a technology test bed, Jon and his group use this special modified variant simulate all kinds of flying errors and then test methods to keep the plane in the air when it just really doesn't want to fly. Having now tried flying this simulation normally, then with the "error" and then also with the "error" and the computer assistance, I can tell you the stuff Jon and his fellows are working on is incredibly effective.


So here we are flying the F-15 SMTD (Thats Short take off and landing Maneuverability Technology Demonstrator, by the way)

Personally I think I did rather well at correcting for the error, even though I did literally crash the simulator. I mean, It's not like I was the ONLY one who crashed it.

After playing with that for a bit, we were then taken halfway across the complex to go see something a bit more sophisticated. Ever seen one of these before?

This is called a six axis simulator. It's one of those really fancy ones that simulates the whole cockpit of an an airliner like so:

Once we were there, Guess what we got to do?

I should point out that since the actual controller for the craft is a little joystick to the side of you, the more you appear to be doing the less important you are really being. I was just dropping the gear in preparation for landing. Paige was the one keeping us in the air at that point. Ok, so I'm only kidding about the importance bit. We learned that there is so much to do that though one person really could fly the thing if you were that desperate to do so, that it would be a really lousy idea to try if you have any one around capable of twiddling dials, pushing buttons and pulling levers.

We both got the opportunity to take off, land and learn a lot about the automation systems inside the cockpit, which were a mock-up of an Airbus model, a 380 I think. (Jon, correct me if I'm mistaken.)

Well, landing is neither as hard as it always was in the old flight simulators I used to play, nor nearly as easy as even the worst landing you have ever suffered through makes it seem. I bounced really heavy upon landing, touching my rear wheels twice before touching the nose gear down. At which point our "stewardess," Angelina, made sure to remind our "passengers," Jon and Sabrina ,to be careful when opening the overhead bins as contents MAY have shifted. Badly.

Paige on the other hand...

Well, she had better alignment on final approach. I think I ended up closer to the center line of the runway, but she didn't have to weave like a slalom skier the last 40 feet before landing to get there. Her touchdown was so close to perfect that if I had not seen who did it I would have thought it done by a pro. It's good to know that if the education system ever fails my wife has a future as an airline pilot.

The Gentleman you see standing out of frame to the left was John, one of Jon's co-workers, He was the one running the program, teaching the us systems and giving us part of our tour.

I'm not a huge fan of traveling. I really prefer to be home. I'm not afraid of flying, I just find airliner seats to extremely hard on my back and knees to the point of being painful. I like the comfort of driving, but I still prefer being home.

This, however, would have to qualify as the single most exciting activity I have ever had on any vacation I've ever taken. It was totally worth the travel.

Thanks Jon.




I would like to take a moment to note that due to extremely heavy fog, the simulator was the only chance we got to view the Golden Gate Bridge. Sigh.

Out of Town - Monterey Aquarium

So, yesterday was all about the Aquarium. Hey, when you're this close to the coast, you'd be kind of silly not to take advantage of any marine experience you can get...especially when your wife is a Biology teacher. In fact, so excited was she to get more pictures of marine life, and so challenged was I by the conditions, that I really have no pictures of us there. None at all.

Anyway, the place which provided us with such challenging conditions was the Monterey Bay Aquarium, located at one end of Steinbeck's and Monterey's very own, Cannery Row.

This picture is actually taken from the Aquarium End, looking up the streets gentle slope away from shore.

So I have little else to say about the days events, I'll just comment on the pictures as they go by.

This guy was firmly intent on blocking up the good view to the kelp forest exhibit. Unlucky for him then that he is only 10 inches across and the window was 8 by 20 or so feet. It happens to the best of us.

I don't know what is up with the birds on this visit, but every time I caught one looking at me it was copping an attitude. This little penguin was busy getting down with his bad self until I pulled the camera up to eye level.

Seals. There were 20 or so of these at the tide pools, but due to the disconcerting fact that if you bothered them they would go away and never come back, we could not get too close. These guys, who were all lounging on rocks in the actual bay below us, seemed to enjoy the interesting exhibits of 2 legged upright creatures they find every time they come to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Ok, maybe we weren't THAT interesting.

Sharks!

The tuna were much more aggressive, but there is that naturally disdainful look that sharks have that make them nearly as naturally endearing to ones emotional heartstrings as a puppy, or a baby.

They had both sea otters and fresh water otters. The fresh water otters were so hyperactive that I got no good shots. Just black streaks barreling all over the place. The Sea otters on the other hand were a bit more laid back, litterally, as we got there at feeding time.

That facial hair he's got growing in there makes him look a bit like a some kind of refined old gentleman.


The lesson in this next picture is never come between a 600 pound tuna and his dinner. At feeding time even the sharks stay out of the way. The sharks, comprised solely of cartilage, being hit by 600 pounds and 30 miles an hour of skeletal structure coated in lunch meat (minus the pickle and mayo, of course), would not easily survive the encounter.

After the tuna, the mahi-mahi and the sunfish had finished eating, the sardines would zip through and pick off all the leftovers. And I would like to emphasize the zip.

I have clearer pictures, but this exposure, being about a quarter of a second in length, shows the speed that these guys hit when there is squid kibble in the water.

Nearly every deep water tank had some form of ray sailing through. They don't move fast, but they are always moving. it makes getting a clear picture in low light next to impossible.

They also had a large collection of jellies. Here are three of the several they had on display.

The last picture was interesting, as it is of the tip of a bottom feeding jellyfish. I did not think that there was such diversity in jellyfish. They also had a top feeding one... which I failed to photograph completely. All in al,l the experience was not at all entirely like sitting in Dad's living room and staring at his big saltwater tank. He has no sharks, for one thing.

Out of Town - Tide Pools

So due to an amazing last minute airfare find, just slightly more than 2 weeks ago we decided to skip town and head out to San Francisco. While not personally a fan of travel, Paige was anxious to go somewhere. She had afterall spent 2 and one half of last years three month summer break bouncing around the country like some kind of skipping stone with guidance issues. More importantly, I don't believe that, inspite of a geographically scattered family, Paige has ever gone so long without seeing one of her siblings.

Hence San Francisco.

Her brother Jon currently resides out there, along with his wife, Angelina, and his 1.5 children, Sabrina and Baby Sister. The entire week has been devoted so far to Touristing. I think I've seen more notable locations in this one state on this one visit, and (believe it or not) stopped to admire just as many notable locations, than any of my other "I gotta go somewhere" moments. Usually me leaving town consists of me driving, all day and all night if neccesary, to some location that I stay at anywhere from one hour to one day before heading back home.

Our first full day out, we went to see the tide pools at low tide for sea animal watching, and then to a little roadside farm for produce and farm animal watching.

Most of our journey we were on the lookout for crabs, but it wasn't until we were on our way back to the car that we realized they were hidding in nearly EVERY nook and cranny on the beach.

Califoria gulls, and for once, they aren't hanging out in a shopping center parking lot in Utah.

We saw a large number of Sea Stars. Most of them were trying to blend into their surroundings. Doing a rather good job of it too, but Jon's eyes were to sharp for them. THIS guy however was flaunting the fact that he was a Sea Star. He was probably poisonous. Of Course we all touched him several times.

An Anenomonea. Ananomea. Ananamanome. Anenome. Anemone. Spell check is not helping this morning, sorry. Vibrantly green. Most of them were rather yellow or brown. Some of nature has absolutely no fashion sense.

A Trilobite. Maybe. Well get back to you on that one.

Here is Sabrina with her favorite person of the day... or hour. It changed a lot.

We went to the farm after the fog had started to burn off fro the morning. I who grew up sith all kinds of chickens ducks and geese was not quite as excited at all the animals. Though they did have a Rooster or two who were rather showey. They also had this white (though apparently not albino, no red eyes) Peacock with a bit of an attitude.

Most of their birds seemed to have fallen victim to either some form of a bug or severe jealousy. This peacock had 3 whole tail feathers, outstripping the more average peacocks on site by nearly 2 whole feathers. The ducks and geese and pheasants were looking similarly disheveled. There were signs of medicinal treatment, so I'm guessing it was a bug.

Sabrina on the other hand, had not only seen so many bizaare looking birds, but had not heard an animal make that type of particularly, um, interesting collection of noises. Hear she is trying to figure out weather or not it was that really big goose going on and on like it was some kind of condensed traffic jam.

This picture I'm just going to call "Say goodbye to your flower garden."

Anyway, I'll post some other pictures of our other activities soon, If I can narrow down the choices.