Multifarious Pursuits

First Post on New Site

Mr X — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:06:22 +0000

This is the first post on this new site. Our old web site (circa 2007) was a home brew affair running on an old Pentium 166 that I bought for $1.00 around 2001. That machine was so old the BIOS wouldn’t let it boot from the CD-ROM drive. I wanted to load Linux on it but first I had to find a Linux distro that was still available on 3.5 inch floppies. Slackware Linux to the rescue.

I think I loaded Slackware V7.x. I think it shipped with a Linux 2.2 kernel and I needed at least a 2.4 kernel so my very first experience with Linux (after getting it installed) was to build an updated tool chain and compile a new kernel. I followed instructions from the web, assembled the prescribed source code, did the old .config, then typed “make.” I figured there was no way in the world it would compile, I mean come on, there’s no way…low and behold, soon as I hit return, the screen filled up with text output from the compiler…what do you know, it seems to be running…but wait, almost every line seems to say “Warning.” See, there you go, it’s going to chug along and eventually error out. It was running so slow I just left it to run all night.

Next day I was amazed to see that the kernel actually compiled with no errors. Followed some more instructions from the web to get the kernel installed, and re-booted. What do you know, the machine actually rebooted and launched Linux 2.4. That was my intro to Linux.

From there I toyed around with Apache and set up a home based web server. Hacked together a couple of versions of a web site, learning HTML and CSS along the way. When we finally got broadband service to the house, I put the web site on line via a Dynamic Domain Name Service (DDNS) until the ISP blocked even the alt HTML port I was using.

Anyway, flash forward to now and here I am posting on my very own professionally hosted site. The whole endevor is just a vehicle to learn WordPress. More to follow….

By the way, the picture is totally unrelated to this post, I just wanted to see how to attach a picture to a post.

First Render with Terragen 2

Mr X — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:19:08 +0000

Terragen is a scenery generator, created with the goal of generating photo realistic landscape images and animations. The original Terragen was/is available as a free download from Planetside. Terragen 2 was released as a technology preview with a beta release scheduled for Feb 2008. I played around a little with Terragen and made some test animations. I recently purchased Terragen 2 Deep + Animation and am now getting to know its capabilities.

Here is my first render with Terragen 2 (T2). I followed the basic tutorial and this is the result. It took about 37 mins to render (3.0 GHz, 1GB RAM).

Spacecraft Communications

Mr X — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:05:30 +0000

Do you remember what the Astronauts sounded like during the Apollo program? What? Not old enough to have seen it or too old to remember? Well then, have a listen to this. I thought I would try to duplicate that classic sound. Its all about the Quindar tones. I added some pink noise, white noise and brown noise to some bandpass filtered and compressed audio along with the tones.

Buddy Bear Has Left the Building

Mr X — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 04:15:25 +0000

On November 13, 2007 that old Buddy bear moved on down the road. He was about 11 years old. Earlier this year he had to have some round parts removed due to a tumor. The biopsy was inconclusive but it was a clue for us that he might not be around much longer. On Tuesday he slept most of the day. He ate his dinner just as usual and didn’t seem any worse for the wear. Later that evening he wouldn’t take his medicine. He and Rocky went outside but when Sharon called them in, only Rocky came in. We found Buddy laying in the grass too weak to get up. I called his name and he gave a single wag of his tail and just lay there. I carried him inside and we knew he was near the end. For the next couple of hours he just couldn’t get comfortable and his breathing was labored. I sat with him for a long time, then finally went upstairs. About 2:30 A.M., Sharon came down and found him struggling to breath. She called the emergency vet and I sat with Buddy. Before the vet answered, Buddy breathed his last breath and he was gone. His 1/2 brother Max died about 5 years ago. We got them both from the same breader about 6 mons apart. That breader has long since disappeared. Now with Buddy gone, its the end of an era. He was a good dog and he will be missed.

“Universal” Globe

Mr X — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 06:31:59 +0000

Here is the opening from Heather’s leadership video. Its a ripoff of the Universal Globe. Paragon is the name of Heather’s gymnastics team. Used Blender to make this. The Globe is a sphere with the “blue marble” earth map as a texture. Extruded text to make the “Paragon” letters (one letter at a time). Made a curve path for the letters to follow. Ripped the music from a DVD and presto.

Enon Hall Restoration

Mr X — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 03:24:11 +0000

I tripped over this really interesting web site about a family from Richmond who bought and is restoring thier ancestral home in the Northern Neck of Virginia. Check it out at Enon Hall Journal .

European Vacation

Mr X — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:25:48 +0000

We just returned from a 3 week vacation in Europe. We went to a wedding in Switzerland, stayed at an Agri-tourismo in Italy, and went on an 11 day Meditarranean cruise aboard the SS Disney Magic. It was a great time and will probably go down in history as the greatest vacation ever.

3D Model of a MiG-15

Mr X — Thu, 17 May 2007 06:36:22 +0000

Used Blender and Adobe Illustrator to make this model. Grabbed some blue prints from a Russian web site (including contour sections). Used Illustrator to trace the contours and the top and side views. Imported the resulting 2D drawings into Blender as a background image. Set up three views in Blender (top, front, side) and aligned the background image in each view. Traced the contour lines with a 3D entity in Blender. Aligned the contours in 3D space and interpolated to create necessary number of ribs. Connected the vertices on the ribs and created faces (to skin the hull). Used essentially the same technique to make the wings and horizontal stab. Grabbed a humanoid figure from the web (a Blender model) and used as the pilot. Notice the canopy renders as transparent. Used Gimp to paint the cammo stripe texture, then UV mapped the texture in Blender to get the paint job. Composited the model with a photo of my desk to make the image you see here. Used this MiG-15 model in the “Fly-by” short.

Asteroid Test

Mr X — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 07:52:51 +0000

Here is a test sequence showing an asteroid floating thru space towards earth. It hits the Earth’s atmosphere and glows red before turning into a fireball. I used concentric spheres to model the Earth and its atmosphere. The Earth turned out ok, but the atmosphere isn’t quite right. The asteroid’s trajectory is too shallow so it skips out of the atmosphere instead of penetrating it. This was just a proof of concept to play with curve paths and camera tracking. Might try this again but using Terragen to model planet Earth instead.

Learned to Use LaTex

Mr X — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 04:38:19 +0000

I finally got around to learning how to use the LaTex type setting program that has been around the Unix/Linux community for years. I tried using LEd and it worked just fine, but I decided to use Eclipse instead since Eclipse is available on both Windows and Linux…