Comic Life

I got an unexpected surprise with my new MacBook. The software bundle included a cool little program called Comic Life. It allows you to take your digital photos and create a comic strip affect. You cut-n-paste photos into cells, add ballons and text, you can even include the "Pow!" type of words. Perhaps the funniest feature is the sound effects that come with each action while you're running it. Usually I find sounds like this annoying, but in this case they add to the fun of the package.

I put together this holiday card version for fun.

Bagel Man the Movie Star

Found out that my semester project from my 3D animation class was chosen for display on the video wall in the new ATLAS center at CU. Sorta cool. Here it is posted on YouTube.

Hard Times in the Arctic

It's a hard time to live in the arctic.

Ancient ice shelves the size of Manhattan are falling off into the sea. And if you are a polar bear, you are now a candidate for listing as a threatened species due to shrinking habitat (sea ice).

Do you suppose this has something to do with that global climate thing Al Gore has been talking about?

iBook Repair

I just did my own repair of my old iBook G3. I used this site, ifixit.com. I got my parts (hard drive and battery) from them and used their incredible Fixit Guide. Including a wonderfully useful screw guide that you print and use to keep track of the 20-30 screws you will have to remove to get to the hard drive. For those geeky enough to want to take apart their own laptop, it's highly recommended.

Colorado, Hawaii and Water

Learned from an interview with outgoing governor Bill Owens that Colorado and Hawaii are the only two states that are independent in terms of meeting their water needs. Every other state has to share water from elsewhere outside their state. I didn't listen to the whole interview, but I really thought that was an interesting fact. Hawaii, the issue is obvious. They have to be independent because there is no pipeline. Colorado has an abundance due to the Rocky Mountain snow and the associated rivers.

Bagel Man

Earlier I had mentioned my 3D animation class. I have not posted much of my work in progress throughout the semester. Perhaps, I'll go back and post some of my more interesting stuff. But the main thing was my "final project" for the class. It's Bagel Man. He is based on silly notes I put in my daughter's lunch (when I'm packing a bagel). Here you can see him in all his 3D glory. I used Maya's tooning effects to render him as a cartoon with purple shading. His eyes come from Muppets characters like Cookie Monster (bulgy eyeballs on top of the head). And he's got arms and legs to give him full action. I used the biped skeleton built into Maya to give him life-like movements. Ray-tracing was added to give a reflection on the floor and shadows. Finally, I added music from Dave Brubeck, "Take Five", for the dancing fun.

dotMac crashing Finder

I got tired of problems with Finder crashing when connected to the .Mac (dotMac) iDisk. iDisk is actually just a WebDAV server and there are a number of options for connecting besides iDisk:

• Goliath - this is an old OS9 app (available on OSX too) that acts like an FTP client app would except for WebDAV.
• Transmit - in addition to FTP, WebDAV is supported.
• cadaver - for command-line fans.
• most web-site tools (GoLive, Dreamweaver) come with fairly robust WebDAV browsers.

Your WebDAV address for your .Mac iDisk is http://idisk.mac.com/username and authenticate with your .Mac userid/password.

Also, if you're tired of paying for for .Mac, check out notMac Challenge and Joyent.

Lightbox for displaying art photos

Ever since I heard about the Lightbox script a while back, I thought it would be cool to use for my father-in-law's artist website. Lightbox displays a modal dialog of images (or other content) overlayed on top of the current web page. I explored Lightbox Gone Wild, which uses prototype for asynch rendering (AJAX) of any type of content in the lightbox. In the end, I settled on Lightbox v2.0. This version is from the original group that coined the term. It uses prototype for the AJAX as well, but what really sold me was the "fancy pants transitions" from script.aculo.us. Check out that bling! :)

To see how it works, check out the beautiful art at Michael Wagner's Paintings and click on any of the art work to zoom in.

Sci-Fi and Hollywood

Wired News: Hollywood Eats Sci-Fi's Brains

Good piece on the doldrums that sci-fi movies are in.

Engineer It!

What a fun time. Took the kids to see the Engineer It! exhibit at DMNS. We built earthquake-proof structures, an arch, paper rockets, and a geodesic dome (design by Buckminster Fuller).

It was also great to have a new way to explain my work to the kids. The tag line for the exhibit is "Think it, build it, test it." And I can explain simply that this is what daddy does, only it's inside the computer. The "think, build, test" cycle is what my day at work is all about.

"Gmail This" Bookmarklet (in a tab)

I picked up the "Gmail This" bookmarklet a while ago and use it alot (also see Lifehacker). But I noticed two things recently when I upgraded to Firefox 2.0.

1. The popup window does not focus in the front when activating the bookmarklet.
2. I realized I don't like popup windows in the first place! I noticed the new "Email This" Firefox add-on opens a new tab. I wish I had a simple bookmarklet that opened a tab (without installing an extension).

So I realized I ought to modify the javascript in the bookmarklet myself, to get what I want. This version will simply do a document.open() and if "New pages should be opened in: a new tab" is selected in your preferences (which is the default), then Gmail will open in a new tab. This version also includes any selected text in the new message.

Here it is. Drag this bookmarklet -->Gmail This, to your bookmarks toolbar.

p.s. This was all tested on Firefox. I have no idea if it will work in IE, but it might with IE7.

Lightbulb with reflection

More samples of my amatuer work in 3D using Maya. We have been covering all the details of modeling and lighting, so I built a lightbulb casting light but also reflecting the objects it is illuminating.

I created the bulb by rotating curves for the glass and top parts of the bulb and then assigning associated materials. Then there are three lights:

bulbAreaLight - a mental ray area light that illuminates the bulb from the inside. I adjusted the transparency, translucence, and glow intensity (special effects) on the blinn material for the glass so that this light comes out of the bulb and makes the glass glow.

topLight - lights the top of the bulb so we can see that detail. Used light linking so that this light only illuminates the top parts of the bulb, not the glass. Otherwise you get weird shadows.

realLight - this is the real light cast by the bulb that illuminates the red balls. To get the glass of the bulb to reflect the objects, I set mental ray to emit photons and blinn automatically reflects.

Google is not a software company

Very interesting Slashdot discussion (Good Agile — Development Without Deadlines) on Google's approach to software development. Steve Yegge, who works for Google, has written an extensive blog entry on how software development is done at Google. I didn't read the whole piece, but you get a good taste of it from the Slashdot intro:

"In a recent blog entry Steve Yegge, a developer at Google, writes a fascinating account of life at possibly the coolest development organization in the world. Steve lays out some of the software development practices that make Google work. Go on, say you are not even a little bit jealous. ;-)" From the article:

* Developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team.
* There aren't very many meetings. I'd say an average developer attends perhaps 3 meetings a week.
* Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they take it pretty seriously.
* Google tends not to pre-announce. They really do understand that you can't rush good cooking, you can't rush babies out, and you can't rush software development.

Yegge also does a fine job of skewering what the author calls "Bad Agile."

But what is the most interesting is the following comment (Just keeping the talent happy...), that I think hits the nail on the head:

"Google is not a software development firm, but an ad sales firm (check their 10-K if you have any doubts). It uses software to attract viewers in the same way television networks use programming and magazines use articles. Under this model, it makes sense to give developers a large amount of freedom to develop whatever they want. The final type/quality/status of the software doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that there are new features appearing on the site from time to time to attract new viewers..er, users... and keep old users. Most of the applications probably won't amount to much, but just like with any media company, you only need one or two big hits a season to keep people coming back.

Google develops a large amount of its content in house in much the same way old movie studios developed all their films in house. For Google, the talent is not actors and directors but developers. Movie studios learned that you treat the talent well to keep them around and Google has taken that lesson to heart. Developers tend to want complete freedom to work on what they want with no deadlines and giving them this is the easiest way to keep them happy. Call it 'good agile development' or whatever else you want, it's really just keeping the talent happy in the hopes that they'll keep developing content to attract users.

Unfortunately, software companies that rely on software or service sales for revenue cannot take this extreme approach to agile development. They need to deliver software on occasion or someone else will replace them in the marketplace. Agile development is still the best way to go, but unbounded development only works if software isn't your primary source of revenue."

Google is the preferred destination for software developers today. College graduates scramble to make an impression at on-campus Google events. Developers struggle through rigorous interviews, just for a chance to work there. And why not? If you could develop in such a utopian environment? But is it a true test of agile development? I would agree with the comment. No. It is not, because it's not a representative software development team.

Imagine the college grad whose first job is at Google, who only knows software development like Google does it. Imagine that he/she has to leave Google and go to a real IT shop and actually answer to customer requirements and meet specified deadlines. Bit of a shock I suppose? ;)

Dying Aspens

I love aspens. They are one of the coolest things about living in the West. The shimmering sound they make as their leaves quake in the breeze is magic. They are also cool because of how they grow. They sprout suckers from these huge interconnected root systems, making aspen groves one of planet's largest organisims.

The mystery is, why are so many dying (Scientists Say Aspens Are Dying Out West)? My fear is that human activity may be to blame. Many of the theories suggested can be drawn back to man.

• fungus - climate change may have made the stands more vulnerable.
• drought - again climate change.
• human interference with the natural cycle of forest fires.
• resurgent herds of hungry elk nibbling saplings to death - caused by lack of their natural predator.

Beginner Maya: Bouncing Ball

I am taking a 3D animation course this semester and learning to use Maya. I provide this exceedingly dull beginner animation as a benchmark. Hopefully as the semester progresses, you'll see some more exciting animations. :)

Drinking Coors makes you Drunk

DenverPost.com - Coors takes lesser hit on drunk charge

Pete Coors provides proof that even Coors beer makes you drunk. In what has to be a proud moment for all the marketing execs at Coors he plead guilty to driving while impaired.

Stop-motion animation

What a fun experiement! I actually read about this in my kids "National Geographic Kids" magazine when the "Wallace & Grommit" movie came out last year. You use your digital camera to take multiple stills and then piece them together in iMovie to make a stop-motion animation. The way you used to draw the cartoons in the corner of a pad of paper and then flip through it. DIY click here.

Of course the kids had to add their little bit at the end. And they provided added vocals on the improvised soundtrack! :)

Changes at the ballpark

I have not been to the ballpark in probably over 2 years and I noticed some things while I was at the game last night. Besides the fact that the Cards lost in an impressive pitching performance by Jeff Francis...I noticed

• The men's room is labeled "Hombres" in addition to "Men". I'm not a strict "English-only" American, but does the men's room with it's universal "man" symbol really need to be bi-lingual?
• The men's room is equiped with syringe disposal. I presume for the growing American population suffering from diabetes and that will have to administer insulin at the ballgame.

So we are left with the anecdotal facts that there are more Spanish-speaking, and diabetic Americans...at least at the ballpark.

Roots of our human family tree are remarkably shallow

Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc.: "Roots of our human family tree are remarkably shallow"

Interesting article on how we are all cousins...really.

Tetons/Yellowstone Trip

Teton range
Originally uploaded by ziebold.

Pics from our trip to Grand Tetons and Yellowstone NP are in. Click here.