Something people need to think about…

Technorati Tags: wikileaks,government,secrets,Forcemaster2000

It seems like lately, a lot of people, and organizations are coming down hard on the secret sharing website “wikileaks”, and it’s creator Julian Assange. (apologies if I’ve gotten his name wrong).

A lot of this is coming on the heels of wikileaks publishing 250,000+ cables which have a lot to do with U.S. embassies from around the world. What people need to think about is, it’s not like wikileaks stole these cables and published them, people who work within the U.S. government have uploaded these cables to wikileaks, feeling apparently that there are things in these missives that needs to be made public. The same goes for everything else on wikileaks. All of it was put there by someone in that government’s or corporation’s organization because they feel that the public needs to have access to these documents.

Wikileaks is simply making themselves a conduit through which the world can access these documents. If documents are being made public which could genuinely cause someone harm (who doesn’t deserve it), the government or corporation involved should be looking towards their own employees to stop these leaks rather than blaming Wikileaks and trying to shut them down.

Enjoying my new laptop

I’ve recently decided to upgrade from my netbook (which I’ve been using for two years now), to a Dell Inspiron 1545.  While I still love my netbook, and will be keeping it, I have to admit that it’s getting harder and harder on my eyes trying to look at the much smaller screen.  Dragging around this Inspiron with a 15” widescreen though is much more labor intensive. The bigger, Truelife screen is great though, I’m able to do more on this without my glasses than I could with the netbook. 

 

I’d still recommend a netbook for on-the-go computing, but if you need something other than a desktop for your everyday computing needs, a larger screen and more processing power is the best way to go.

Technorati Tags: Forcemaster2000,tech,Dell,Inspiron,netbook

Getting older is going to suck!

My wife and I were just arguing. Somehow, one channel, and only one channel on our television turned into a small box in the center of the screen. My wife wasn't sure if it was already that way, or if somehow she'd done it with the remote. I made the mistake of going in and trying to "fix" it. Somehow, between the television remote and the cable box remote, I managed to turn everything into a weird, small aspect and couldn't figure out how to get it back.

About that time, our son and his girlfriend came downstairs on their way to their evening college classes and I asked my son to try and figure out what I'd screwed up. He eventually got everything back to the way it was before I "fixed" it, with just the one channel looking weird. When my son left is when my wife and I started arguing. She was upset because she said I made us look like "old people" who didn't know how to work the remote. We argued for a little bit, then I left the room.

That was when it hit me and I couldn't stop laughing. I went back and told her that I am the old man who can't work the remote, and that she's the old woman who's so afraid of the remote, that she'd rather sit there and watch the TV even though it's all weird and screwed up! She didn't think it was funny or insightful, and so I left the room and put this up on the internet for the world to read...she's gonna love me for this one!

Minecraft!

I've finally managed to make my first "slipgate" in Minecraft! It took forever, and once I finally got it finished, it only took me about two minutes to die in the the "Nether"! I lost a crap-ton of stuff in there too, so I kept re-spawning and going back in trying to get it back. I had pig-men attacking me and killing me, fire killing me and about the sixth or seventh time of going back in there were at least five "Ghasts" hanging around the area shooting fireballs at me! I did eventually get most of my stuff back, though certainly not all of it. I'm going to have to stay away from the Nether now for a few "game days" and hope that things will quiet down on the other side of the gate so that I'll eventually be able to go back.

Damn! I love Minecraft! LOL

On blogging and Minecraft

A soul refreshing breakfast

Woke up this morning to a beautiful day! Here's my breakfast setup this morning. Pancakes and sausage, juice, hot coffee and the netbook. Sitting at our breakfast table in the library looking out over the street we live on. I've got all the windows in the house open, enjoying a blessedly cool morning, letting in fresh air and sunshine. I could use more mornings like this...the world could use more mornings like this one!

Ridiculous Heat & Humidity!

It’s 8:45am and I’m sitting here dripping with sweat!  The air-conditioning is on, but it’s so humid that it’s doing very little good.  It’s not that it’s even that hot out right now, it’s only 76 degrees.  It’s the humidity that’s making things so bad. 

I went out and mowed the front lawn this morning, only because I had to.  All my neighbors were smart and did it a couple of days ago when the humidity wasn’t nearly so bad.  So it was either, “do it now, or become the guy in the neighborhood who didn’t mow his lawn!” 

I guess I didn’t have all that much to say, I just wanted to rant a little about the damn weather! 

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

People can't leave well enough alone...

I just finished watching Superman II. Now, it's been quite a few years since I've watched it, and apparently someone has taken a cue from George Lucas and decided that it would be a good idea to go back and mess with a good movie. I noticed right from the beginning that someone has been messing around. alternate scenes were used instead of the scenes that were in the theatrical version. Scenes were removed, and in a few instances, stand-ins or CGI was used to fake scenes with principal actors.

In some cases, I'll admit this messing around could have helped. For instance, a lot of the "silly" physical stunts that were in the original film were removed or at least minimized. Scenes like a man talking on a payphone even though it was blown off it's base and scooting down the sidewalk for instance. But they took it far beyond that, especially at the end of the movie. In the original, after defeating the three krypton villains in his fortress of solitude, Clark Kent kissed Lois Lane, using some sort of mind power, we assume, to make Lois forget that he is Superman. The world remembered everything that happened and there was a stirring scene in which Superman places the American Flag back on top of the whitehouse and tells the President that he will never let this happen again.

In this new version, Superman speed flies around the Earth spinning it backwards (like he did at the end of the first Superman movie) turning back time and making it as if nothing ever happened. Everyone, this time, has conveniently forgotten that anything happened at all, completely deleting the last scene with the American flag and the President. In this post 9/11 world, perhaps this is intended to make the movie more non-American friendly. For me, all it did was completely ruin and castrate this once great movie. The studio executives responsible for this farce themselves should be castrated!

I would now have to set this "version" of Superman II on the shelf next to Superman IV, the quest for peace. Another sorry excuse for a Superman movie. Hopefully one day I'll be able to find the original version of Superman II on DVD and keep it so that someday I'll be able to show the grandchildren I hope someday to have what this movie is truly supposed to be.

Wavin' Flag by SheenaMelwani

This is a young woman I've been following for a couple of years on Youtube by the username of SheenaMelwani. She's a fantastic and gifted singer, and I wanted to share this latest video from her here on my blog. Enjoy, and if you do, visit her profile page on Youtube and become a follower too!

AT and T's and Apples Evil Plan Revealed...

Talk about curious timing! First Apple unveils their newest plot to enslave the web, the Ipad. They announce this wonderful sounding plan which will let it's users get "unlimited" web surfing through AT and T without a contract, and have recently announced how they've surpassed even their expectations by selling more than 2 million Ipads in just 60 days.

Then, just days after making this announcement, their partner in evil AT and T have announced that users of their service using smartphones, and the Ipad will now have a 2Gb cap on data usage. The Dallas-based AT and T said Wednesday that it would offer two choices: a $15 data plan for 200 megabytes of data, and a $25 plan for up to 2 gigabytes, with additional charges if the user goes over the allotted amount. A vast majority of subscribers use less than 2 gigabytes, suggesting a mass migration to less expensive plans.

My question is, if AT and T had announced these caps before the launch of the Ipad, would Apple have sold so many units in just 60 days? I think not. I'm wondering how many Ipad owners out there right now who ponied up the extra moolah for a 3G Ipad are feeling like they've been fleeced!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There are 3 important things we can get from this:

1. Oil companies cannot be trusted to be responsible

2. The Gulf oil spill, while bad, is not the end of the world

3. There is still a free press that lets us know about these things,
we just need to listen to them

LOL...not updating my blog much lately

I haven't been updating my blog much lately, but I've actually been pretty busy, both with modeling, and with real life...so here's some samples of what I've been doing modeling-wise at least...

I’m on a roll…

Getting more work done on my truck tonight than I thought I would.  I’ve added real wheel hubs now instead of just the stand-ins that I had before, and added the bench seat, complete with driver and passenger head-rests!  I’m glad I decided to keep going with this, even though it’s not perfect, it’s been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot along the way that I can apply to my next vehicle.

Technorati Tags: Forcemaster2000,CGI,Blender,Truck,3-D

Keep on Truckin…

A little more work done on my truck.  I’m not entirely unhappy with it, considering I’ve been building it from my imagination, with no real reference pictures to work from.  I figure I can finish it and use it in the backgrounds of pictures where the glaring mistakes won’t be so noticeable. 

Technorati Tags: Forcemaster2000,cgi,Blender,3-D,Truck

Truck I'm working on in Blender

This is the first realistic vehicle I've attempted in Blender. Considering I've done everything on this so far without any reference material, I think it's coming along pretty nicely. I'm mainly intending to turn this into a fuel truck for a scene I'm building, but I'll probably end up saving the truck base separately and using it to build several different types of trucks.

A little work I've done in Blender...

Yucca Mountain Shutdown…?

Technorati Tags: Yucca Mountain,government,Nevada,Forcemaster2000,nuclear waste,Senator Harry Reid

Headway…

Here’s my latest render, fixed the stove door, tweaked the textures and added a simple microwave.

This render took 119 minutes, while I was sleeping last night.  I don’t have the patience to go that long without the computer while I’m awake!

Technorati Tags: 3-D,3D,Blender,Forcemaster2000,cgi

Still working…and getting places!

I’m still working at my 3-D and I’m actually getting places.  I’ve managed to install an external render engine and rendered out my kitchen scene with it to a much more realistic looking tune.  Although it did take an hour and twelve minutes to render this 640x480 scene!  I’ll probably only be doing renders with this engine, called Yafaray, when I can start it before going to bed for the night.

I did forget to place a texture on the door of the oven, so I’m fixing that and making a few other tweaks to the scene before I render it out as a full size pic which may end up taking ten or twelve hours to render!  When I do, I’ll place a link to it here in case anyone would like to download it. 

Technorati Tags: 3-D,Blender,Forcemaster2000,cgi,computer art

Working on my 3-D again…

I’ve been working on my 3-D skills again.  My son has thrown down the gauntlet by getting much better at “his” 3-D skills, so I’ve had to get back into action so as not to be shown up.  Below is a kitchen scene I’ve been working on, following an online tutorial.  I’d forgotten how soothing it can be to work for hours straight on this kind of stuff.  If I can keep up with this, I’ll post updates as the work continues…

Why doesn’t the government want us to go to the moon?

From the late 1960’s to the early 1970’s, man traveled to the moon as a temporary visitor.  We then stopped going to the moon, claiming that it was a dead ball of dirt with nothing more of consequence to discover.

Jump to 2010…we now know (for a fact) that the moon has “large quantities” of frozen water on it.  Making a permanent manned base on the moon not only feasible, but cost effective.  President George W. Bush, a man I have nothing but loathing for, called for America to return to the moon and build a permanent base back in about 2004.  I thought this nothing more than political rhetoric to drum up votes in Florida, which it may have been, but, it started a push involving billions of dollars to make this happen by 2020, just ten years from now.

So why, now that we know for a fact that there’s plentiful water on the moon that can used for fuel, drinking, oxygen supplies and many other things that would make a moon base self-sustaining, is our government now pulling the plug on plans to return to the moon and instead focusing on traveling to Mars and beyond, “IN THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE”, emphasis on “future”. 

Even IF our government was serious about traveling to Mars next, and I don’t believe they are, it would make so much more sense to already have a manned moon base where a mission to Mars could be launched from much more efficiently.  There have long been rumors labeled as “conspiracy theories” that when we traveled to the moon before, evidence was found of either extra-terrestrials, or some pre-human civilization that left evidence on the moon of their existence.  Has some group in our government put a stop to the return of man to the moon so that we can be kept in the dark about these rumors longer still?

A Breath of Spring!

Today we finally got a taste of Spring, which should only be around the next corner!  I don’t know what the official temperature got to today, but at work it reached 50 degrees, and I was working on the roof in nothing more than shirt sleeves.  It was blessedly sunny too, and I thanked GOD as I walked across the roof for such a wonderful day.

Tomorrow there’s a chance of rain, but the temperatures should stay mild, so I won’t complain too much.  Most of the snow around here is gone or going.  It’s still early March though, and in Indiana it’s not unprecedented to see snow as late as Easter!  Hopefully though we’re through with the white stuff and warmer days are ahead for us.

So tired of winter!

I am so tired of winter! I'm usually a bit of an indoor person who doesn't need much "getting out" to make me feel better, but even I'm experiencing the winter blahs right now. I've got a serious case of cabin fever and wish I could just run outside right now in shirt-sleeves and do something outdoors. Maybe it's because we've got the new house and I haven't really been able to do anything outside yet, particularly in our privacy fenced backyard.



That snow and cold is definitely not conducive to me wanting to go outside and enjoy the backyard! I'm not fifteen years old anymore, (by a long stretch!), and don't enjoy frolicking in the wet and cold anymore. After the past couple months of weather, I'd be happy just to have a day with the temperature in the mid-fifties and some sunshine.

Still spinning my wheels...

Wow! I keep thinking that eventually I'm going to put my "blogging" hat back on and keep up with this. So far, I obviously haven't. Nor have I produced a video blog in forever. I'm not sure why, other than plain old laziness or procrastination...is there even a difference between the two?

Neither have I gotten back into my 3-D modeling either. I keep saying that I'm going to, and I have every intention of carrying through with it, but somehow, I just don't seem to make it through that last bit of push to actually do it. I did manage to play all the way through Modern Warfare 2 the other day, surprising my son. He said he didn't think I'd finish it. So I guess that I've at least accomplished something, if you can call finishing a video game an accomplishment that is. ;p

Human Target on Fox, no, really...it's good!

Last week, I caught the premier of a new Fox show called, Human Target. I was pleasantly surprised. I've just finished watching the second episode, and I'm still pleasantly surprised. The show has smart writing, great action and special effects and like-able characters. It's the kind of smart TV show that I haven't seen for awhile. Unfortunately, Fox is bouncing it around all over the place, thinking they can see if one night is going to get better ratings than another one. The only thing they're going to end up doing is getting it prematurely canceled. Let's hope enough people are willing to follow it around until they settle it down on one night at one time. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out, you won't be sorry.