-
![[FSF Associate Member]](http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/images/fsf.png)
djotaku's twitter feed
-
- just started playing WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos. http://raptr.com/djotaku
- video did NOT kill the radio star. Radio is still around. MTV, on the other hand, no longer plays music videos. RIP TRL.
- Yay MD for the $170 electric bill credit!
- @harajukuroxy that stinks. My mom used to get a lot of migraines.
- My latest computer animation: http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/dtbp/node/48
- My latest computer animation:
- Nearly done with my latest animation
- @minimoniotaku: the old momma joke was hilarious
- Using akmod-nvidia, built the latest drivers for nvidia and 3D works again! w00t w00t! Blender here I come!
- Dagnabbit. Nvidia doesn't support Xorg7.4pre so no Blender for me for a while
-
Dec
31
Danny
Category: Blender, videos | 
Leave a Comment
While I was at my parents’ house, I wanted to show David, my youngest brother, how quickly I could generate I could a humanoid while also practicing the principles I learned with Raul Domingo. (Thus Danny’s extremely blocky midsection) Then I moved on to some more advanced topics, such as light. I had always been a little bit dissapointed in the light in my renders, but I never knew what was wrong. After going through the lighting tutorial from the Blender Summer of Documentation, I realized what the problem was. A twofold problem, it was a matter of power. You see, first of all, I needed to have a sum total light intensity of 2, not one. Second, the designers of Blender envisioned most scenes to have, at least, two lights. Below are some renders of my experimentation with flashlight light and sunny light. Click on them if you want/want to see the full res version.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
31
Penguin Flight
Category: Blender, computer animation | Leave a Comment
As I work on editing and uploading all the pictures I took during the holidays, please enjoy Penguin Flight!
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
30
Pao Bhangra!
Category: Cornell, videos | Leave a Comment
Which means “do Bhangra!” or “dance Bhangra!” Bhangra is a wonderful and catchy style of dance from the Punjab region of India. View this clip from the introduction to Pao Bhangra 1 at Cornell University! You can follow the link to Vimeo to see the rest of the clips, go to www.dropthebombproductions.com or come back to this blog over the next few days when I post the next part.
In order to get my video to fit within Vimeo’s upload limits, I had to split up the video into different parts. This is also from VCD disc 1 that I created for them.
Pao Bhangra Disc 1, Part 1
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
29
10 Little S’mores (Part 1 of 3)
Category: machinima, machnima | Leave a Comment
On the same principle as I presented yesterday, I thought I would embed part one of my brother’s Sims 2-based machinima, 10 Little S’mores, so that, instead of having to go to Some Sort of Productions, my readers could watch it from the comfort of my blog.
Please enjoy this great, funny little movie from my brother and his girlfriend, Tamlin. Oh yeah, the first 3:18 minutes are an intro into mapping the characters in the short film to their real life counterparts. (This was originally an inside joke film, which I convinced Dave to share with the world) So if the first few minutes leave you confused, just watch a little longer.
10 Little S’mores (Part 1 of 3) on Vimeo
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
28
I finally found out that all I need to do is to disable the WYSIWYG editor in Wordpress (which I hated anyway!) and now I can get my Vimeo clips embedded. Sure, I could point you to www.dropthebombproductions.com, but people tend not to like to leave their page if they don’t have to. I’d love to be able to embed video. Now I can!
As a celebration, here is one of my earliest videos, “Anime Hurricane”. (Follow the vimeo link to get more information on it)
Anime Hurricane on Vimeo
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
26
What I referred to as Dave’s S’mores night video is actually entitled “10 Little S’mores” and he’ll be fixing the title on Vimeo soon. (It’s my fault, as I uploaded the clips for him)
Enjoy part two at: 10 Little S’mores Part 2.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
26
Well, after fixing it up the first time to deal with the fact that I had uploaded my videos to Vimeo, I found that the site looked a bit clunky. So I revamped the opening page and fixed up some of the organization of the content pages as well. In some cases I deleted references to obsolete things (such as 56k modem download times) and in others I added information about the Creative Commons. I also added a “legal” page where I discuss the Creative Commons and some of the legal implications of remixing my clips.
Incidentally, adding the legal page made me realize that if I truly want my videos to be free in the Creative Commons sense, I need to ensure that, whenever possible, I use music licensed under compatible Creative Commons terms for the soundtrack to my videos. This will ensure that it can be shared and remixed without any legal problems.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
25
Merry Christmas!
Category: Holidays | Leave a Comment
For those of who are non-Christians - I hope you can take this time to spend with your families and friends and be happy.
For Christian readers, take time today out of the pagan rituals of trees with lights and presents by a large, fat man. Take time to remember that Christmas is about the Creator of the Earth incarnating and submitting himself to a human life so that we would no longer have to spend eternity in Hell. Sure, we may not understand the metaphysics involved and why he couldn’t just pardon us with all of the coming down and all, but since He DID go through so much, take time to remember and be grateful.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
23
How Far is infinity?
Category: Photography, philosophy | Leave a Comment
Although it may seem like a philosophical or silly question, it is indeed a practical question for me. You see, we have a tradition at Christmas-time in my family where we play dominoes on the days before Christmas and whoever wins gets to open a gift. I’m sure I mentioned this around this time last year. Well, a couple of days ago I won and my prize was a Canon 50 mm f/2.5 Macro lens from my wife! It’s a fine lens - I’ve been taking some awesome pictures which I will be uploading once the Christmas Season is over.
This is my first Canon lens outside of the kit lens my 350D came with. I really enjoy my Tamron 55-200 mm, but the Canon lenses are truly worth what they cost. The quality is top notch and it has a focus area where, as you focus, it tells you how far away the object can be and still be in focus. It goes all the way down to tenths of a foot. But on the other end is infinity. That’s right, I can focus on infinity. Silly, since I can’t see that far.
Of course I’m being facetious; any photographer worth his trade knows that focusing on infinity means that everything will be in focus from front to back. (roughly speaking, that is, because everything has to be at infinity or farther) It’s a setting most often used for landscape photography, but on this lens, it tends to be good for a few feet away.
So the reason for my question is this - let’s say I want to prefocus. I may want to do this if I know that I will be taking pictures of something at a fixed distance. I don’t want to potentially miss a picture because the focus is hunting for the right setting. This can especially be a problem if it’s dark or under certain tricky lighting conditions. So if I want to prefocus at infinity - how far should the object be? Is there a way to tell?
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
22
David has created a wonderful new bit of machinima entitled S’mores Night Movie. It was originally intended as an inside joke between friends. He, with his girlfriend Tamlin as the screenwriter, put together a 35 minute movie incorporating different episodes of what has happened with their friends into a remake of “10 Little Indians”. I was thoroughly impressed as this was his first scripted movie and his first machinima. In fact, he didn’t even know of the movement called machinima, he just happened to feel that the Sims 2 provided him with a great set of premade characters and items for him to use in his movie.
Check out the first installment of S’mores Night Movie, hosted on Vimeo.com.
Enjoy!
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Dec
21
Fedora News
Category: Fedora, News | Leave a Comment
A few big things in Fedora News. First of all, the Fedora Summit happened recently. They are tackling a lot of things for Fedora Core 7 including blurring the line between Core and Extras (a point of contention for those moved from Core to Extras - they were less important they felt) and finally having a true LiveCD. You can read more about it at Linux.com’s review of the Fedora Summit.
What was more exciting for me, was the following email concerning FC7. Although there isn’t (as of now) a breakthrough technology that I badly want (like XGL/AIGLX, etc), they still have some neat changes on board. Also, it seems to me that they always tend to have less revolutionary stuff on the odd release numbers, although I could be wrong. Exciting for me in this release are the changes to things in the background. They want to improve the boot times, wireless support, firewire, and more. One of the best suggestions, which I hope isn’t a joke, tells the user why MP3s don’t work and how to make it work. This is one of the biggest complaints we always get from new users. Here’s the content of the email (courtesy of LWN):
From: Bill Nottingham To: fedora-advisory-board-AT-redhat.com Subject: F7 Plan (draft) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 00:59:05 -0500 Hey, F7 needs a plan. So here's one. It's not in taskjuggler or MrProject. Nor does it have pretty gantt charts. Those can be added by those that care about such things. Section the First: Schedule Simple stuff. These are availability dates. Freeze dates are minus-1 week. Test1: January 30 Test2: February 27 Test3: March 26 GA: April 24 Special dates: Test2 Freeze == FEATURE FREEZE. If a Feature(tm, see below) of the release is not in a testable state at this point, it goes out. Test2 Freeze == STRING FREEZE. Gotta give the translators something to go with. We know there may be small bits that come later, but the intent is to be frozen at this date. Section the Second: Features (tm) Obviously, there are features that we'd like to have for a release. Here's what we've got, and how it fits in to the schedule. These are the 'defined' features of the release. Sure, there will be other stuff that is part of upstream projects, but this is what we're Trying To Do for F7. Mini-FAQ: Q: How did you come up with this? A: Stuff that's been talked about in one place or another, stuff that I've heard floating around, and stuff that I've made up. Q: Why is there names by these things. How did my name get there? A: Features(tm) need Names Of Accountable People. In other words, these are the people that we come to harass about the state of Features if they don't land. If your name is here, it's because you've mentioned working on it, or you seemed logical. Features without accountable people may be dropped. Q: Hey, you didn't list a date for that feature! A: If not stated, all features must be Testable by test 2, or risk eviction. All features must be fully functional by test 3, or risk eviction. Q: I've got this great feature idea! A: OK. Are you going to work on it? Can you cajole/force someone else to be Accountable? Then we'll add it! (This is going on the wiki eventually, of course.) Q: Who decides what gets evicted, or what may land post-freeze? A: The Committee! TBD, but logical names would be, in no particular order, Will Woods (QA), Jesse Keating (rel-eng), Dave Jones (kernel), Jonathan Blandford (desktop), Rex Dieter (KDE), Bill Nottingham (random bastard), Jeremy Katz (random bastard). Anyways, in no particular order, the feature list... 1. Build System for merged core and extras Accountable: Jesse Keating Important dates: Needs DONE by Test 2. Needs to be TESTABLE by test 1. Welcome to our short runway. More info: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraSummit/NewBuildSystem 2. Merge Core and Extras in source control Accountable: Jesse Keating, EVERYONE Important dates: Leaf packages may start to be moved at. All packages WILL be moved by Test 2, gating on feature #1. Reviews will take place, there will be an automated system to determine what needs review. 3. Use Pungi for tree building Accountable: Jesse Keating Must be nearly fully functional by Test 2, as it is a prereq of later features. 4. A Fedora Desktop spin of F7 Accountable: Jesse Keating (rel-eng), Jonathan Blandford, the Fedora Desktop SIG (what, you say there isn't one?) One of our release targets. Needs defined by Test 2. Test 1 can be an old-style tree. 5. A Fedora Server spin of F7 Accountable: Jesse Keating (rel-eng), YOUR NAME HERE! Another one of our release targets. Needs defined by Test 2. 6. A Fedora KDE spin of F7 Accountable: Rex Dieter Like Fedora Desktop, but with KDE. 7. Fast User Switching Accountable: David Zeuthen We want the ability to easily and quickly switch between user sessions, without logging out. More info: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/FastUserSwitching 8. Rock Solid Wireless Accountable: Dan Williams, Dave Jones For every wireless card we support, we should have working, tested support - it comes up on boot, it associates, it works with WEP and WPA, all out of the box. A requisite for hitting the laptop market. Drive fixes through NM, wpa_supplicant, kernel. 9. Wireless Firmware Accountable: Fedora-legal, me! For every wireless card we support and can get firmware to, we should work to make it included so things work out of the box. 10. Boot and shutdown speedup Accountable: me!, David Zeuthen, YOUR NAME HERE We do enough Stupid Stuff that we can make easy improvements to startup and shutdown time without large systemic changes. Includes: tagging of scripts that don't need shut down, profiling of boot, potential changes to how we organize disk blocks, and more. Does Not Include: init system changes 11. Init system work Accountable: YOUR NAME HERE Evaluate: upstart, launchd, initng. Compare, contrast, benchmark. Define usage cases, see what fits what, and what is useful. Lots of research. Not much code. 12. rpm/yum enhancements Accountable: Jeremy Katz, Paul Nasrat, Seth Vidal We feel the need for speed. Profile the rpm/python/yum stack. Find the hotspots. Fix them. 13. LobbyBuddy Accountable: Greg DeKoenigsberg Given your locale and timezone, determine where you are, and who your elected representative is. Allow you to easily send them information about how the laws should be changed with respect to patents and