Blender 2.37 Woof!

Let joy be unconfined, a new release of Blender. Big leap forward with a lot of tweaking under the bonnet in preparation for the major animation tools update planned for version 2.38.

That said, a few of the (personal) standouts for this release are soft bodies (clothes, curtains and the like), threaded rendering (for dual CPU systems like my Dual Xeon beast at work :) and widgets for easier mesh editing similar to the "professional packages" to scale, rotate and transform. Nice stuff.

Still amazed that this quality of tool is open source and free. Check out the details of the new release at Blender3d.org.

Health Update 38

Working from home today as I've not been feeling my best for the past week. Noticed I was getting spotty, which is a sure sign that I'm run down and not well, last Thursday night. Woke up Friday morning feeling exhausted. Did nothing all day Saturday, walked along to the shop for the Sunday Papers and felt really ill upon my return. Muscle and joint pain, blinding headache aversion to light and noise (usual symptoms of a bad attack). Went to work on Monday (shouldn't have) and tried my best to stay awake at my desk, achieving nothing of any note. Working from home today and feeling a bit better.

More blood tests scheduled for Thursday so I'll work from home again in the afternoon.

Empire Building

So Lesley is already addicted to BB6 and therefore I need something to wile away the next 11 weeks until it's finally all over. What did I do? I downloaded one of the greatest games of all time and configured it to run on my Win2K laptop, Transport Tycoon has landed, oh yes.

Runs like a complete dog through DosBox which allows you to play ancient games of yesteryear. I remember playing this for hours on end during my final year at Uni ('95) on a cutting edge DX4-100 with 8Mb of RAM, a veritable beast of a machine. This old laptop is an 800Mhz PIII but it feels slower than I remember running Transport Tycoon on the DX4. Anyway, "Floyd Jaguar Inc" is open for business and already making cash, chooo-woooo, chug-a-chug, marvelous.

A Google search for "Transport Tycoon" revealed a large number of communities and sites dedicated to this fabulous piece of code. I'm away to pick up a few tips on how to become a Billionaire before I'm 30... er 40, uhmm 41 then. If you don't mind breaking the law you can download the required files using the links below.

Transport Tycoon
DosBox

Update: Ah ha, you can speed up the DosBox wrapper by Ctrl-F12 which increases the CPU cycles, I've gone from 3000 to 6000, a lot smoother and seems stable. Smokin'.

Moral Highground

I'm not for watching (no really I refuse) the crap that is BB6 but how big are Lesley's baps? I mean, WTF?

Derek: Tory Fascist, 'nuff said. Will walk.
Lesley: Did I mention her baps? Thick as mince. Slapper.
Sam: Twat, will appear topless in The Scum upon her departure. Annoying. Even bigger slapper.
Maxwell: Will be very quiet, 'cause he talked so much in his interview. Very annoying.
Vanessa: Two words, Vicky Pollard. Will get sued by Little Britain and the BBC.
Anthony: Dickhead, virgin. Lesley will break him and make him her bitch.
Roberto: Fake Italian, born in Guilford. Wanabee spy. Might give somebody a slap which would be good.
Makosi: Interesting, I can see her pants.
Craig: Mullet. Will get the shite kicked out of him. First BB murder victim? Fingers crossed.
Mary: Hairy Mary, first out if she can work the door.
Science: Fiction, wannabe black guy, pretty fly for a white guy.
Saskia: Moddelll. The face of modern Britain.
Kemal: Little boy. First to be gang banged?

Telly Quest 3

Tick tick, there's now only 378 days to go until The World Cup kicks off so here are my latest thoughts on what telly will be gracing our livingroom come the first whistle on the 9th June.

Screen Size: The consensus of opinion suggests that the optimum viewing distance for a 42" plasma is 10-14 feet. Armed with the tape measure I reckon my exact viewing distance from screen to eye (lying on the sofa) is 10 feet. Hmmm, on the raggedty edge. Should I consider a smaller 37" screen? Our livingroom is not large and it may make more sense to opt for the smaller screen especially considering the crap, pixelated quality of Sky and Freeview's output. ITV is by far the worst culprit as their Football broadcasts are regularly lambasted for the poor quality of the image. A larger screen, viewed at too short a distance, would only compound these problems. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a huge variation in the price between 37" and 42" panels (in the case of the Panasonic PV500 range only £300, still it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick).

Mounting: The screen will be placed in the corner of the room so a wall mount is not an option (how to people mount these things to a wall and still manage to line it up with eye level?) I've looked at third party equipment stands but none of the current crop grab me and boy they're expensive, therefore no pedestal option. So, I'll be looking for a screen with a cabinet included (I really do like the Panasonics' image above).

The Panasonic shop in Dundee has a 50" in one window and a 37" in the other. To be honest the 37" looks tiny in the context of a huge shop window but I'm beginning to lean towards this as my favoured option. I'm going to make a 2D floorplan and 3D model of my livingroom with the different sized screens in place as a comparison (existing 28" box, a 37" and a 42" plasma screen). I'll post the results when completed with some nice renderings as well.

Update: Found details of the LCD screen (37PF9986) that Ian mentions in the comments on Philips' website here. Nice, very nice. They've even got a 42" version of the same.

Immerse Yourself

A request was made to post the .blend file for the quick realtime walkthrough which I put up a couple of months back. The file has been modified to add a "world" (basically added a ground plane and sky colour so now you can go outside and have a wander around the building without disappearing into black space) and as a result the bricked up windows have also been removed. You can find the .blend file and a new .exe (Windows OS only) at the bottom of this post. Hopefully someone with a Mac can create an OSX version for trial. Note: I haven't optimised this file fully so it may be slightly "jerky" at the moment but should be perfectly useable.

Walk mode: Use the LMB (left mouse button) to look and the arrow keys to move.

For ultimate coolness you can also fly around the model,

Fly mode: Go outside, press the "Space" bar on your keyboard, look at the ground and then use the downward arrow key to float upwards. The control method for Fly mode takes a bit of getting used to but just think of the possibilities. To cancel "Fly mode" just hit the "Space" bar again to float gently to earth (or land on the roof).

On a beefy machine (Quadro FX graphics card) I can run this full screen at 1920x1200 with very smooth movement and no texture tearing. I'm currently working on a demo which has a contoured landscape, trees (just found out today that Blender can do "Face Me", must do a tutorial for that) and obviously a much more complex building. As before the main aim is to streamline the time taken for file creation along with optimisation for more mainstream computers.

Any questions, queries or comments you know what to do. Software used, AutoCad LT, SketchUp (fantastic 3D modelling software), Blender (the best in open source software, better than the commercial "professional packages") and Photoshop (naturally).

.blend (189Kb zipped)
.exe (1.4Mb zipped)

About Time

Finally, I've found a solution to an irritation that has been bothering me for years (though not enough to do something about it). When you start Windows Explorer it opens in "My Documents" but I always wanted it to open in "My Computer" to display a list of the physical and mapped drives. I'm pretty sure up to Windows 98 this is what it would do but ever since Windows 2000 it's opened up in the useless documents folder. So...

Right click the Windows Explorer shortcut, select "Properties" and in the "Target" box type:

%windir%\explorer.exe /n,/e,/root,,

You probably all knew that and all I had to do was ask, but I didn't and now years of frustration are at an end. I post this here so I'll always be able to find the details.

With Both Hands

So, the first anniversary of this blog (technically it's tomorrow but I'll be busy watching Scotsport ITV 11:00pm). As you can see I've added a much needed search box to the sidebar to help search for the nuggets of information and thoughts I've supplied to you in the past year.

Gasp in admiration when I revealed that Manchester United would finish the season trophyless, or that Rangers' European adventure would end before it had begun. Laugh with me where I claimed the SPL title would remain at septic park and shake your head in amazement where I predicted Alex McLeish would get the sack... bwahaha, what was I on when I came up with that one?

The only fly in the ointment is when the archive file is included in the search results so I need to add a robots.txt file to tell Google to keep out of that directory as it just serves to complicate the results.

Almost forgot, I've also added a little XML graphic for the atom feed of this website, thought you'd like to know.

I'm still very busy (thinking about it) with a new, sexy template which will also coincide with renaming the blog as the current title is too easily confused with pretentious drivel served up by some schoolgirl (as opposed to the pretentious drivel served up by me).

Quiet Satisfaction

A job well done. I've actually pissed my pants. More to follow when I've stopped cheering, laughing, howling... life does not get much better than this.

SPL Champions, 2004-2005 Glasgow Rangers

No Martin, that Title is far away

Craig: "Hullo"
Alan S: "Hello, Hello"
Craig: "Who's that?"
Alan S: "It's me you arrogant little f*cker, bwahaha"

Operator: "Which emergency service do you require?"
Beggar: "Police, we've been mugged"
Operator: "Where?"
Beggar: "Fir Park"
Operator: "Bwahaha, get it rite up ye."

Gimme Gimme

It's been weeks since the company splashed any real cash on keeping me happy and motivated so, methinks, a new purchase is in order. The boss has already been preped as to my requirements so it shouldn't really come as any surprise.

It's a SpacePilot Intelligent Motion Controller Input Device from 3DConnexion no less. How cool is that going to look on my desk? *woof* Worth every penny to (a) keep the best Designer they're ever likely to meet (shamelessly ripped from Saria) happy (b) ease the aforementioned Designer's RSI (c) oh, and it's supposed to increase productivity too (hmmm...you can't rush genius).

Drool over the specs and video here. As always the weapon of choice for this Designer will be Pro/Engineer and many hours of programming those buttons with shortcuts and macros can be anticipated.

Make it Stop

I'm begging you, make it stop. Those fecking adverts for that frog ringtone nonsense are driving me crazy. You expect to get that sort of crap on the Sky channels but for ITV to give up nearly their entire array of advertising timeslots is beyond the limit that any consumer should have to endure.

It must be costing the company an absolute fortune. We're not talking the cheap, after midnight advertising slots here, oh no 2 or 3 adverts during the peak revenue stream of before, during and after Corrie. It's not that I'm even watching the telly but you can hear it, instantly going through your brain like a knife...tinkle, jingle, vrrroooom, tinkle, jingle arghhh, it's driving me crazy. Who the feck buys this crap?

What does your ringtone say about you?

People who opt for the old fashioned ring tone think they are ever so
high-brow but may end up coming across as pretentious.

Oh yeah? Bite me.

Update: It's getting worse, I'm losing my fecking mind and I'm not alone. The only course of action is to stop watching ITV and complain, complain, complain. Oh my Gawd, I'm turning into a moaning, old git... I'm so proud, my life's ambition, happy at last, feck off the lot of you.

Send your complaints to dutyoffice@itv.com I've just informed them that until the f*cking frog goes I'll not be watching any ITV channels.

RSS Feed

I was messing about with the RSS feed for this site last night and today and forgot about the hundreds (OK, 4... not counting me?... 3 then) who use a RSS reader to view this site. Everything should be back to normal now but if it's not then please give us a shout. The link for the file is here.

This is the very reason for my Development Blog's existence as no-one reads it but I got carried away trying out different things using Feedburner's service.

View From the Home Office

Working from home today so I thought a photo from my "office" window was called for. Aren't I lucky? Click on the image to see a much bigger version.

No Dougal, that cow is far away.

I used Google's Picasa and Hello software to manage and upload the image. It seems to work well but I need to sort out the formatting of the blog post.

Porn, Pure and Simple

Filthy Pictures

Absolutely disgusting. Shouldn't be allowed. One of these days, I tell you, one of these days. Look at those curves, *woof* and the lamps, do you see her lamps? Gorgeous.

ME Awareness Week

Almost forgot, I mentioned this a few months back but this week (9th to 13th May) is ME Awareness Week but you all probably knew that.

The six charities in the ME Alliance have launched their ME Awareness Week campaign to challenge health professionals to diagnose ME/CFS within six months in adults and three months in children.

Further details at The ME Association's website.

Health Update 36

Currently not good. Feeling like complete shit (past two days) with a blinding headache, joint pain and an aching back, oh and severe cramp in my legs plus the usual status of being near complete exhaustion.

I got the results of the tests for cholesterol, fast glucose, lipids and something else I've forgotten. Cholesterol result was fine (much to Lesley's amazement), lipids OK, but my Liver is still showing a high level of some enzymes or other. Of more concern was the glucose result which suggests that I may be glucose intolerant which is a precursor to Type 2 Diabetes. So I've got another set of blood tests to get soon which will concentrate on my glucose levels.

I need to do a bit of research on this glucose intolerance malarky and report back. I know my weight is the key factor in all of this but I was chuffed that my cholesterol was good, gotta love chicken kebabs (haven't had a pizza in over two months now). Anyway, I'm away to read all about my latest illness and adjust the odds on which one will kill me first and when.

As the Dust Settles

As the lights go out on another General Election there are, as far as I can see, only losers. A very strange situation indeed.

Labour, or more accurately, Tony Blair suffered a kicking but not to the level that some commentators would have you believe. A 66 seat majority is a perfectly satisfactory result. Enough for the Government to proceed with but close enough for them to pause first. Tony will go whenever and Gordon Brown will take up the reigns of power. The danger is that the backbenchers get all panicky and rebel against Tony and force him out. The only reason many of them have a career as an MP is because of Tony and they should tread carefully.

Tory Fascists: Made inroads into Labour's majority but, lets be honest, most gains were as a result of protest votes from people switching to the Lib Dems. With the anger at Tony and the Iraq war a properly organised Tory party could have probably won a narrow victory, but they remain a clueless rabble shovelling in the darkest corners for votes based on obscene policies. They have to reinvent themselves and jettison anyone tarred with the brush of Thatcher if they are ever again to challenge. I hate them but this country needs a strong opposition and at the moment the only opposition seems to be coming from within the Government ranks.

Lib Dems: If they were to punt Charlie for a dynamic, charismatic leader and work their balls off they could make a breakthrough. But they won't do either.

Angus:(where I live) SNP hold so we wave goodbye to Sandy Bushby (tory fascist) as she buggers off back to Perthshire. Not all the farmers and newly arrived English folk could get her in.

Northern Ireland (where I come from) The effective destruction of the UUP (with one sole survior in North Down, my home constituency) can only be bad news for everyone. I was never a fan of David Trimble as he had a reputation as a hardliner but, to his credit, upon taking the leadership he did more than any other Unionist to take the chance of peace and share power with the Nationalists. That the deviant, murdering scum of Adams and McGuiness et al have seen off the two mainstream parties (UUP and the nationalist SDLP) while not giving up one bullet nevermind a gun in 11 years of the so called peace process should be explained by the powers that be in Dublin, London and their chief supporters in Washington. I hope that Paisley's DUP are not permanently the leaders of Unionism in Norn Iron but until the deviants are backed into a corner from which they cannot escape I see little change in the political polarisation of my country, this saddens me.

The sooner we get back to discussion and action on the only, single issue that matters, the Economy (or lack thereof) the better. Thatcher's legacy still haunts this country. Thanks to that insane bitch we have no industry of our own to speak of and this fact has to be addressed if we're to have any sort of future. Gordon Brown will be the man who has the chance to build a lasting legacy, but when?

The Apprentice Week 12

Sense prevails. "Tim, you're hired."

New Telly Quest 2

So spooky I felt a shiver down my spine. Another story from the BBC this time about HDTV and it's drive into the European market in time for The World Cup.

"The World Cup could be one of the big launch events for high-definition TV," said Mr Fogg.

Reading on,

Germany's pay TV satellite operator Premiere will be broadcasting the event in high-definition.

So, the World Cup will be broadcast in HD but by a German pay-per-view satellite operator.

Do Your Duty

Remember to get off your arse tomorrow and vote for anybody but the tory fascists. You can make your very own version of their obscene poster campaign at this site.

As we used to say in Norn Iron (they probably still do) "vote early, vote often".

New Telly Quest 1

Just a link to a good BBC story giving some background to the future of TV to help in my year long quest to choose a new telly in time for the World Cup. What this says to me is if you're not into gaming and not blessed with deep pockets to buy a new DVD player and replace your current DVD library then HDTV is not going to be of much use, certainly in the next 5 years.

My first pass at a spec for any new telly currently stands at:

• 42" screen (the maximum my livingroom could comfortably handle)
• Corner stand unit (jings they're pricey)
  
• Plasma seems the most likely technology at the moment

Not much to be going on with I suppose. I walked past the Panasonic shop in Dundee this morning, with a 50" plasma in the window, nice, very nice. They really do look the dogs bollocks.

The Apprentice Week 11

The sharp end of the business has arrived. Sir Alan Sugar looked visibly shocked by the feedback he was receiving from the three interviewers and it spelled the end for volatile Paul and the ever likeable James (I did pick James, and Tim for places as the final three contestants).

Paul's arrogance didn't go down well with the interviewers and Sugar was left with little option but to take everybody's advice and fire him. James' problem was convincing the panel that he really wanted to be there. Why did a successful Investment Banker want to come and work for Amstrad? He really didn't come up with a good enough explanation. Shame, he was a good guy.

So that leaves, and I can't believe it, Saria (the best saleswoman you'll ever meet) and Tim. It really should be no contest, but Saria now has everybody who's ever met her praising her sales skills... Unbelievable, she's a clueless witch. Tim's youth and inexperience was the main sticking point but realising the name of the show is "The Apprentice" sense prevailed. He must win, he must. Tune in Wednesday BBC2 for the grand final.

Hate It

As this blog approaches it's first anniversary my hatred for the current template continues to grow. It's ugly, tired and horrible in every way. It's just one of the standard template choices that Blogger provide and it was one of the few that I did like when first choosing, but gawd how I hate it now.

I started, back in February, to design my own template from the ground up but that sort of went off the rails in spectacular fashion when faced with the sheer horror that is cross browser compatibility. I've since re-entered the fray but have changed tack slightly. You can read all about the quest on my development blog. This time I will not be beaten.