Ridiculous movie sequels

A friend and I were talking about the bad Hollywood sequel-itis, and ruining two good movies with 28 Weeks Later and Dog Soldiers 2, so we started coming up with some bad sequels.

A good one of his:

City of Found Children.

Some of mine:

The Abyss 2: Dry Land
The Leander Job
Snatched
Googli (plot centers around online searches for mobsters and bad actors)

Any others?

I don't normally post stuff like this...

Let's see...almost midnight, I need to get up early tomorrow, what am I doing? Cruising IMDb message boards about movies I haven't seen.

In the forum for World Trade Center, a lively discussion is going on about people rating the movie with a 1 (on a 1 to 10 scale) as a kneejerk reaction (to politics, Oliver Stone, whatever). Why am I reading this? Because it is what I do. I came upon an entry that just cracked me up:

Re: To the 140 people who gave this movie a '1'

by - Werewolf5 2 days ago (Sun Aug 13 2006 17:04:05 )

---

I loved it. To all those who gave it a one, please bend down and wait for the assistance of Michael Jackson.

Model fight update 007

A little more progress on the spybot. I've settled on this one instead of the one with wings. I wasn't liking the bridge across the top but I didn't know what I didn't like about it. I just realized while I was looking at it that what I didn't like was that both ends (the sharp parts) were going to the same points on the inner ring where the fan is. Now I know that I want the top of the bridge to go to the outer point of the body.

This is the underside of the robot. It features a camera lens along with other robotronic stuff. I file that stuff under TBD. The half-dome on the other side contains a laser that can paint targets much like the Ion Painter in UT2004. This robot can watch you from the skies and call in a rain of firepower if you get out of hand.

I'm going in to detail about the components because I'd like to make a little commercial or brochure about the robot's features.

The fan assembly was made by modelling a rectangle, rounding the edges, extruding it (Push/Pull), then rotating a copy around the center point. SketchUp has a cool feature where you can type in multiplying commands into a VCB (Virtual Command Buffer?), so after I rotated the copy a few degrees (so now there were two blades), I typed x11 and it automagically made the duplicates, all rotated correctly and spaced evenly.

Everything else on the model was drawing basic shapes, Push/Pulling, etc.

I'm probably going to go between robots and modelling the 01Robotics complex just to mix it up a little.

Nature preserve and an experiment

Here are some pictures from a nature preserve place outside of San Marcos. I can't remember the name, but we passed by a walkway over a swampish area and there were these cool...things. There weren't descriptions around them, so I don't know if they are supposed to collect water or what.

Also, I'm blogging these photos directly from Picasa 2. This may be a way to post photo collections, but if it comes out like I think it will, there won't be a link to the photos but all the photos will be there. This may not work if you want to have a link to a published photo collection elsewhere than on your front page.


 

Tracfone vs cell phone?

I've been without a handy for almost five years. Usually I'm the only one in my group to be without one.

We recently bought a Tracfone - basically a prepaid cell phone - to use when we need it. We've been on the fence about buying a regular phone, or a second Tracfone so both of us can have one.

Here's what I think about the situation:

Cell phone:
Pro: feature laden
Pro: a lot of minutes
Con: one or two year contract
Con: feature laden

Tracfone:
Pro: cheaper
Pro: no contract
Con: minutes can expire

We don't want a cell phone to replace our home phone - we have a great deal on long distance. I don't want a phone that does everything. A camera? Please! With the 1.3MP cameras on phones today I can barely tell the difference between Troy Aikman and Troy McClure. Korea has six and seven MP cameras in their cell phones. When we get there, I'm in!

I don't want a cell phone because it has a lot of minutes - I want one to find out where my family is or call someone when I need them. With this situation, a Tracfone makes perfect sense.

Any dissenters? Tracfone haters?

Model fight update 006

Spaghettis were talking about Ambient Occlusion in the renders, and I wanted to see what modo's results were. Rendering with AO is simplicity itself - change the Color Output in Render Properties from Shadertree to AO - that's it!

I rendered with AO one of the spy bots as well as a printer I modeled to see what they look like. Mind you, these are all default settings - I was interested in the default results before I started messing things up.


I think they look pretty alright, but now I want to tweak the settings. I like how the detail (albeit grainy) in the printer looks good, but with the default settings you lose some of the lines/separations between parts.

Model fight update 005

Here are some rough concepts on the first robot I'll be modelling. Both of these are some sort of recon/spy robot.

The first one has wings with some sort of thruster pods on them. The wings pivot at the body to provide directional/rotational thrust. It's basically a flying camera. The wings fold back against the body to minimize profile and it can be launched like an RPG and at some point in its flight path the wings unfold and it seeks the target.
The second concept is like a contained helicopter blade/fan array with sensor equipment mounted on one/many sides. It has skis to let it land and still have clearance for the fan to provide lift. The fan can cause liftoff and rotation, but I'm not sure about directional travel yet - maybe other thrusters, or just tilting. Deployment method may be within a sabot in a missile, or just dumped from planes.

What if they aren't Talking Heads fans?

We were driving back to Austin from Houston and somewhere south of Brenham we saw a flickering light to the side of the road. As we got closer, we noticed that it was a house on fire! There were some police and an ambulance, but during the five or so minutes we were there no firetruck appeared.


We took a few pics from the car, and then the police came out to the side of the road (there were about five or six cars parked watching the house go up) and they told us to move as there was a gas tank that could blow at any time. They were going around to the other buildings on the property banging on doors and windows to try to wake any one up that might be inside.

Sacred or Secular?

So we’re at church this weekend and the band…hold on – let me back up.

I’m from a pretty casual yet traditional church background – choir, pastor, church suppers, trying to stifle your voice when you and your friends accidentally start a laughing kick. Why is it that laughing is so much louder in church when you are supposed to be quiet?

Anyway, I’ve been to a few places where they have the more modern musical ensemble with instruments other than an organ or piano and it just wasn’t for me. For some reason it doesn’t bother me now. Maybe because I’m trying to learn guitar? Maybe because one of the guitarists has a Stratocaster just like mine? I’m not sure.

For a special music the band started playing, “The Reason.” Yes, the song by Hoobastank. My wife and I looked at each other quizzically, but went with the flow. The words were displayed, and if you had never heard the song before, the lyrics could be taken appropriately for a churchly song.


But that got me thinking. Was the band still playing a secular song? Did it become a sacred song within that context? If the lyrics are applicable, depending on the setting, does the song change? When I was in Houston I went to a weekly youth meeting thing where they had a really good band with a great female singer. They would usually do a song while the service was just about to start, and often it was a secular song. The only one I can remember was Sweet Surrender, by Sarah McLachlan.

Model fight update 004

Here is the latest of my building 5 models. I made the first story a component so I wouldn't mess it up with edits (you have to enter something like Edit Component mode (my description) before you can, uh, edit a component) and snapped copies of it to itself. The detail in the Y section is a security checkpoint, so it is only on the first floor.


You may notice a black line between the floors. I modeled a small detail around the building, but I'm not sure about how it looks from a distance. Here is a close-up of it.



What I'd like to do with the buildings is use the facilities maps to have correct and to scale outlines of the other buildings. While drawing on the map is nice for a quick look, I prefer the precision of using the blueprint, and it's less frustrating having to try to snap points that aren't aligned due to the rotation in the graphic.

That said, I'll probably table the building models for a while. I'm itching to work on some robot models.

I'll use the breaktime from the buildings to take pictures of the actual architectural details from the buildings so when I go back, I'll have a starting point.

Linux on my laptop

So I finally broke down and installed Linux on something. Why? Well, because it is there, and I've been wanting to see what all the fuss is about.

I downloaded the Kubuntu 6.06 distro (in .iso format), burned a CD and booted. It has a Live CD option, which will basically run Linux from the disc instead of your hard drive. That way, you can experience Linux without destroying your current OS.

I went ahead and formatted the drive and installed it. From what I can see, if you are familiar with Windows you can at least function, as the interface is very similar to the Windows interface, plus a browser, office suite, etc, are installed, so I'm guessing that if someone just checked email, browsed the internet and wrote an occasional document, they would be set.

I'm looking at this laptop and I'm thinking, "Sweet! I've installed Linux.... Now what?"

My 3D content creation options are limited; games are limited. I guess I'll throw some C on here and explore coding.

Model fight update 003

I didn't like the lack of granularity of modeling the buildings on top of the low-res satellite image as in my previous posts, so I imported the building map into Photoshop (erasing all the good bits) and made an image to texture a plane in SketchUp.


Here is the image on the surface. I used the square tool and the line tool to make the outline.



I Push/Pulled the outline into roughly one, maybe two stories. Here is the model with some transparency options so you can see the blueprint beneath it.


Here is the opaque model with SketchUp's built-in Shadow settings activated. You can set seasonal and time settings extremely easily - a slider.

I really liked using the blueprint image, and since it was oriented correctly I didn't have to adjust the axes in SketchUp, which admittedly would be trivial, but I just didn't feel like it.

It took me about five minutes, maybe, to make the building like this, and it is much closer to the actual dimensions/scale than the other way. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of having the blueprints, so I'll probably switch back and forth between methods.

New job == posts approach zero

My previous line of business has transitioned out of this region, which left all of us looking for new positions. Thankfully, all of us found something, and it looks like at least most of us found something we wanted to do.

I'm in my third week of my new position, which is under the umbrella of The Office of the CTO, and deals with basically looking at new technology, comparing to current technology and making sure new is better/faster/cheaper. The "stuff" that I look at is unreleased, so I can't get into any details, sufficed to say that I'm much busier now than I was, ergo no recent Model Fight posts.

So far I've jumped into the frying pan with the workload, and hopefully I can stay out of the fire.

File under Celebrity Sightings!

We were in Harbor Freight today picking up a dolly, tie-down strap and a screw extraction set. I love going to Harbor Freight. Unfortunately, there is one pretty close to work. Anyway, I'm standing in the checkout line when guess who comes in and picks something up? Joe McDermott!

Or at least I thought it was him - I've only seen his CD and pics on the website, so I wasn't sure. Plus he was in civilian clothes, and what's he doing in Harbor Freight? That's where regular people go?!!

We're in different lines, and I can't screw my courage up enough to say something; I mean, what if it's not him? Oh, the humanity! I'm rushing to get checked out (by a checker that had to ask a nearby manager what $20 minus $3.27 was) and it's about four minutes before the store closes. I run out to get the family, who have seen Joe in concert and can verify his identity. They run in but I'm stuck trying to get the dolly in the van and have the door closed enough over it and an antique table we picked up from a local Craigslister earlier that day.

Dudes, I'm like, "I'm going to miss my window of opportunity!"

Finally I get back in the store and get the high-sign ("Tippy-toe!") that it is him, so after a few excruciating minutes waiting for him to finish, I talk to him for a few seconds and thank him for signing my guitar at the concert. He seems like a very nice guy, and if they weren't kicking people out of the store (I still wasn't finished picking up my stuff) I would have talked with him more.

Of course, I fail at my blogging duties and don't have a camera.

Model fight update 002

Here is the map within SketchUp and what I will be using as a template. What I don't like, so far, is that there isn't a way (that I have found) to map an image to a viewport and model from that the way 3D Studio MAX does. With SketchUp, I had to map the image to a stretched cube. Then, I deleted the rest of the sides and back to make a plane.

I converted the textured plane to a component so I could model on top of it and not affect it.


Here is the plane with a few buildings in process. The buildings aren't to scale yet, as I didn't do my research there. It was trivial to trace the buildings and Push/Pull them up. Once I do my first round, I'll probably go back and refine the drawings, and then texture them.

Model fight update 001

My project is 01 Robotics, or [01r]. Below is the map of their campus that I will model. The main buildings (lower section) is Sales, Marketing, and development for most of their line - Entertainment, Medical, Assistance, etc. The Y-Wing-shaped building to the upper left is the building for Military contracts - security dictates separate buildings, etc.

www.colourlovers.com

It's not what you think.

Colourlovers is a website where people submit, rate, review and comment upon...colors. And palettes of said colors!

It sounds a little bizarre, but it's a pretty popular site, and skimming the palettes shows me color combinations that I normally wouldn't have thought of living together nicely (the aforementioned "lover" part of the site name), but once I see them I'm like, "Yeah, I can dig that!"

I could see it being a quick check for a website's color palettes, interfaces, anything else that needs multiple colors loving each other in close proximity.

Check it out!

Downloadable Firefly commentaries

I just happened to be cruising Slashdot and came across something that I previously missed - an article about downloadable commentaries for DVDs.

Apparently NBC has offered online MP3 commentaries for Scrubs, and Kevin Smith has done this for Clerks 2, as well as some other miscellaneous shows. This may be another way to squeeze a few dollars out of the consumers - "Even more commentaries than can fit on the DVD! Just $5 to download!!" (my idea, not out in the industry...yet). Unfortunately, I'm a big fan of special features on a DVD, so I'm mildly interested....

Trolling through the article's forum listings leads me to Big Damn Commentaries, a repository for fan-submitted commentaries for the series Firefly, the best thing on TV that nobody watched. I'm still trying to make it through the Firefly series (no fault of the series), and I haven't even seen Serenity yet, but once I make it through all the episodes I'm definitely interested in trying these commentaries out.

Model fight!

My friend and I are having a 3D modelling challenge. It won't be your typical challenge, as we aren't modelling the same thing.

My topic will be...robots! Specifically, I'll be designing a robot factory (interior, exterior views) along with multiple lines of robots (helper, combat, transport, etc).

My goal is to use SketchUp for all 3D modelling; rendering is still up in the air. 3D Studio MAX + Vray, Modo, or some of the free renderers will be explored.

Our goal is to have no less than weekly updates on progress, ideas, rough drafts, hurdles, workarounds, techniques, etc.

Post-degree studies

So I've been accepted into Texas State's Graduate School for Computer Science. My goal is a Master's of Science in Computer Science, and it's going to be a long row to hoe getting there.

Since my first degree is non-Computer Science, there are some prerequisite courses that I need to fulfill (introductory C, Assembly, Calculus I and II already taken):

• C and C++ Programming (intermediate)
• Fundamentals of Computer Technology (sounds easy, but is Junior level course)
• Computer Architecture
• Data Structures
• Program Translators OR Operating Systems
• 6 hours of advanced computer science electives
• Discrete Mathematics

Once I complete these courses, I will have what is called a Certificate for Computer Science. From what I understand, the delta between a BS and a Certificate isn't huge, and while not exactly equivalent to a BS, the Certificate allows one to either get a job in the computer industry or enter graduate school.

After these I need to take the GRE, then onwards and upwards into Graduate School.