Massive Christmas Island Photopost 2014-15
Minimal text, many photos, some videos. Mishmash of scenic, happysnaps and homeschooling stuff coz that’s how we roll. Grab a drink and a snack before commencing.
First couple of weeks…
The airport wait wasn’t terribly exciting but at least there were planes to watch being loaded, taking off and landing.
Why you need both hands
Sprat: I want your hand for my sandwich. 8yo: No. Sprat: Why not? 8yo: I need my right hand for writing and drawing and I need my left hand to help my right hand carry stuff! Sprat: Yes that’s a good reason.
This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Base rig test
This is another one of those rare instances where I post to an external site before the blog.
I haven’t had a chance to set up a video thingi yet and am not willing to do it from Christmas Island (internet is tooooooooo slooooooowwwwwwww) so I am attempting to finally try to start getting over the grudge I have against Google over their mind numbingly idiotic real names policy that resulted in the nymwars (to their credit they have seemed to realise how stupid the policy was and how stupid it made them look and are now letting people call themselves whatever, and are now no longer forcing Youtube channels to be attached to G+ pages if you decide you don’t actually want to use your own name, I have decided I seriously can’t be bothered trying to recreate my old ryivhnn channel.
The Gold Box
My mum and my sister are the kinds of people that like buying presents. They like it when we come up as they go a bit nuts spoiling the grandkids rotten which makes for a nice full tree. Every year they ask me what I want for Christmas and every year I’ve told them the same thing: get something from Oxfam Unwrapped or contribute some money to the fyn’s New Cintiq fund (my Old Faithful 12WX is getting a bit jittery in its old age, but I need a replacement sometime in the not-too-distant future). So whenever I come home for Christmas I usually end up with a little pile of stuff.
Homeschooling stuff
We’re reaching the end of the year so it’s been a bit slack on the socially accepted learning front as everyone is a bit tired and over it. There’s been a lot of playing going on and in our usual fashion the 2015 program has already been modified before we could even think about starting it. Instead of doing bookwork every day, we’re alternating with cooking where the kids will choose a recipe, check we have all of the ingredients before commencing (and write out shopping list to be able to do something next session if they really want a thing we don’t have all the ingredients for) and do it themselves from start to finish. I will help with/supervise dangerous things (such as putting things in and out of ovens and anything that requires cooking on stove top) but they are otherwise on their own.
Setting up Wacom Cintiq 12WX on Ubuntu Studio 14.04
And on goes the love/hate relationship with Linux. Setting up my Cintiq is one of the things that makes me really loathe it and want to go jumping back onto my iMac and ignore the possibility of art on Linux forever. My first attempt was an abysmal fail (I blew up Unity and had to spend a bit of time fixing it and it never completely recovered, and due to the nature of the child who owned that particular machine it ended up with Win7 on it). If I didn’t need a Linux server for web dev (which is why I got the laptop) I would have just bought a MacBook.
Blender Adventures Part 5a - quickie expression test
At 8yo’s request: ‘Make him frown!’ (all the bases are gender neutral)
Seeing something mildly disturbing
Shock horror! I could have opened its mouth more but I was too lazy to go back to object mode to show the rig layer to be able to grab the jaw controller
Blender notes - resetting shape key value to basis
To get a point that was moved incorrectly for whatever reason in a shape key and needs to be reset to the “Basis” position, from Adhi on StackExchange:
Use Blend From Shape:
- Select all vertices whose positions you want to reset,
- Execute Blend From Shape, accessible from W, Ctrl-V or Mesh > Vertices menu,
- Set “Basis” as shape key to blend from (by default),
- Set blend factor to the maximum value 1.0 (by default),
- Uncheck Add, so only values from “Basis” will be blended in, effectively reverting all selected vertices’ position.
Kind of wish there was a slightly less arseabout way to do it but a way is better than no way.
Blender Adventures Part 5
Still shape keying. Base is partially amused.
So far I’ve got all of a left eye wink and a half smile. Once I got the left half smile right and figure out where the eyelashes go I’ll mirror those shape keys and then do some really basic expression parts around happy, sad, angry and surprise which generally use the entire face. Then make some phonemes with help from this useful phoneme shape guide someone had thoughtfully thrown at the internet.
Stuff the kids have said recently
7yo (about one of 9yo’s friends): He always chases me when I don’t want to be chased and doesn’t chased me when I do want to be chased! Boys are just like that!
me: It doesn’t get any better as you get older.
9yo (watching the Speed Racer movie): It’s really bad.
me: Why are you watching it then?
9yo: I’m just watching it so I can go “WHAT?!” at it.