So turns out our NSA spyware proxy may actually be Skype.

The intermittent http losses had been getting closer and closer together and it eventually got to the point where I lost it twice in a day.  I was in the middle of burning Debian CDs (to reinstall the kids laptops, because apparently using the 7.1 cds I have and upgrading is not as good as downloading the 7.2 cds and using them) and quietly simmering about having to do a clean reinstall, when Josh came up with the brilliant idea to kill Skype because apparently Skype uses port 80.

I killed Skype and coincidentally just after it shut down http was working normally again.

Josh said everything should work fine now if I fired Skype back up again.

I restarted Skype and coincidentally lost http again.

Weeks are getting slower as far as socially accepted "schooling" goes and ramping up with Silly Season.

We did our usual park meet and roleplaying and a quick stint at the library this week but missed out on a chunk of the boring every day stuff such as grocery shopping as Cub has been very 4 lately and taking him out anywhere is more unpleasant than it needs to be.

Tao has been endlessly procrastinating the bookwork lately and then "forgetting", Ru has generally kept it up.  We've shifted onto the 2014 program for pocket money at their request ages ago but they still haven't worked out what they want to do for projects, but none of my ideas are quite good enough.

Both found a cat mandible in the garden (which I initially didn't recognise as a cat mandible due to a brain fart and thinking there should have been more teeth), I suspect they may have dug up he grave of the cat that had to be euthanised beginning of last year.

I finally got basic modelling in Blender.

All I needed was to find where the subdivision tool was hidden.

Early days Blender and Lightwave comparison:

Layout

I prefer having a menu on my right as I use a Cintiq and find it quicker to access stuff I don't know keyboard shortcuts for (or that don't have keyboard shortcuts) if the menu is over to the right.  I can move it in preferences in Lightwave.

Her birthday was actually at the beginning of the month, and she recently found a birthday buddy.  I'm just slow and have been busy, hence the late celebration post.

I got told once (not directly, the person doing the telling was telling it on a forum) that personalities are more or less developed by the age of 7 or something to that effect.  If this is the case, then my daughter has my nasty streak which is not something I wanted her to inherit, but fortunately she is a lot nicer than I am most of the time.

I have often described her to others as my "perfect" child (local society's often idiot notion of "perfect", seeing as I use the word to indicate how happy or annoyed I am with something), as she is really cruisy, easygoing, compliant, helpful and frighteningly mature and responsible for someone that age.

It started sometime after I upgraded to Mavericks (it was 10.9.something by the time I got around to it, and I really do quite enjoy using it) and before the next update.  I would be poking around on the internet and seemingly at random, everything would just stop working.

Everything that wasn't going over http would work fine (ssh on terminal, im programs, Tor).

I initially assumed there was something wrong with dns so tried using OpenDNS instead of my isp, but that didn't fix it.

I tried flushing dns caches every way I found relevant to OSX 10.8 and 10.9 on the internet, but that didn't fix it.

I figured there might be something wrong with the routing maybe as when I tracerouted any given site, I would get stuck somewhere inside hwng.net or bandcon.com (which appear to be the same thing), however Tor worked.

This morning, when I crawled out of bed and tackled the morning coffee sites to be followed by 3d work before our busy day commenced, I noticed that my server was slow.

There goes my 3d time again, sigh.  Now I would have quickly investigated, if it hadn't taken FOR FREAKING EVER to log into the server, and I had to leave before it had logged in, and unsurprisingly the pipe had broken and annoyingly the problem hadn't resolved itself when I was able to tackle it again later in the day.

I had Quadrapop over earlier today and she was looking over my shoulder and critting the work I'd done on Red's hands so far.  I am aware the hand is the wrong shape and was planning on fixing that in Lightwave where I have poly modelling tools but after receiving the second degree I got motivated enough to attempt it in Sculptris (after firing up Lightwave and fixing the hands on the base models and putting the legs in Da Vinci pose while I was about it).

Quadrapop had in the meantime headed home so I dropped the following image into a group chat blaming her for the kick up the arse:

Week has been flat tack.

But today they made potions.  Supervised from a distance as today is a work day.  Ingredients included a small tub of yoghurt, jellybeans, cordial (even though I told them no food items they could consume directly when they asked if they could make potions ie before they'd had a chance to gather ingredients, they tried to claim they had somehow assembled these things before I'd told them no food items), citric acid, bicarb, vinegar, hippie lice shampoo (contains only eucalyptus and melaleuca oils) and hippie plant-based detergent.

Tao made a big potion in a "cauldron" (big tin bucket with two handles, it's supposed to be a drink holder) which smelled nice and bubbled lots when you stir it.  We had a brief chat about what makes the bubbles when he dragged me out to see.

Ru assisted and then went to have a picnic on the cubby house.

I had thought maybe I shouldn't post any more 3d stuff til I got to render stage, but then I optimistically decided that some people might like seeing the build in progress, and those that don't can just ignore them til there's something pretty.

So here's a shot of the mostly completed face with the wireframe turned on so show off how well Sculptris retopos the mesh and the dynamic topography (the dense spots on the arms are accidental touches). 

It'll be pretty awful for rigging and animating but it's awesome for what I'm using it for, especially when I finally learned to mostly ignore the mesh and got comfortable with the process.

Late night lojban lesson with the stubborn 4yo:

me: Do you remember any lojban? mi prami do
4yo: mi prami do, what does dat mean?
me: it means "I love you"
4yo: mi prami do *gives me a cuddle*
me: cinba *gives him a kiss*
4yo: what does dat mean?
me: it means 'kiss'
4yo: sheen ba! *gives me a kiss*
me: ko sipna, that means 'go to sleep!'

He's still not asleep.