technonaturalist

Or rather hang around the periphery of and watch.

I saw this on the front page of deviantART (hey the front page is good for something after all ;) when I went to log in:

[missing image]

Lightning La Buff Bust by mattj324

In my usual fashion after dropping in to leave a boring “wow” type comment, I went through the rest of the person’s gallery and then watched them.

8 hour freaking speed sculpt. I’d seriously be happy if I got something anywhere approaching that in a month (but more likely more considering the speed at which I work). I can run the usual excuses about how I generally don’t get 8hr sittings for anything (okay sleep but I’m generally lying down then) but it gets to a point where I wonder if the people I watch are prodigious or whether that’s a normal amount of time and I’m just exceedingly, agonisingly slow (my usual thought).

[9yo is playing one of the board games on Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag and is winning]

me: Careful, he may have something up his sleeve.
9yo: They’re pretty tight sleeves.
me: That’s coz they’re modelled on.
9yo: I know that!

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Just like that, he is in the last of the single digits.

He has three friends he considers besties (and occasionally categorises them according to favoured activities with those particular people), and finds it easy to play with other kids he has never seen before and may never see again (I suppose we can be less dramatic, we don’t live in the biggest city in the world). He does some rather scarily accurate trollfaces (do an image search, it’s not too traumatising unless you don’t like caricature). He still loves playing footy and following it (but prefers tv to going to games because that way he can wander off and play and then come back in to see how things are going). He likes to run, and run, and run. And build things with Lego. And play PS3 and PC games that declare us obviously bad parents who don’t care about their kids (because they’re MA15+ games). His favourite games are Minecraft and StarCraft. He likes playing Robot Turtle with function frogs (which is a bit above what his sister is capable of and way above what his brother is currently capable of. He wants to learn how to program and design and build robots to “help make the world a better place” and plan towns/cities so that humans can live with what they want and need without completely destroying the homes of other animals.

[7yo comes running inside, I tell her it’s bathtime]

7yo: But we found a grasshopper or a locust outside!
me: How do you know it’s a grasshopper or locust?
7yo: Because it looks like one!
me: Why don’t you look up pictures on the internet and see if you can tell the difference.

[We go to 7yo’s room, she grabs a small paintbrush]

me: …what are you doing?
7yo [holding up paintbrush]: Scientists have discovered it’s all in the power of touch! And they used a paintbrush!

15yo: Nothing is faster than a Lamborghini!
8yo: Except maybe a faster Lamborghini!

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

More Lightwave and Blender comparison

I was having a bad day yesterday and irritated because I couldn’t figure out Blender stuff quickly (on the bright side, thanks to Lightwave I at least have an idea of what I’m looking up) and told JJ that Blender was frustrating me and it was tempting to jump back into Lightwave but I didn’t want to give up yet because Blender had some stuff that Lightwave didn’t have like lattice deformation.

[8yo is playing Civilisation Revolution on the PS3, I glimpse a city I think is called Berlin but not sure whether it’s his or computer’s]
me [not thinking]: what race are you playing?
8yo [looking at me like I’m an idiot]: …humans.
{I kick pre-caffeinated brain into some form of gear]
me: what CIVILISATION are you playing?
8yo: Oh. Germans.

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

And as I said “done” and took and saved the screenshot, I went and made the knees less prominent. Roughly a month (~4 weeks) rather than one year which is much more betterer.

And now to Blender to retopo, add the tail blade (well kind of a paddle in his case) and the wing membranes, and texture and rig. This might be the first one I do in Blender as I haven’t done any more work on Twilight since finishing the subdivision. I don’t think it will mind too much. I am being optimistic thinking everything will just fall into place nicely and work, but I am really glad I can fall back to Lightwave if things get too maddening.

[7yo pats cat sitting on my lap]

7yo: I’m making Moulty moult on you!
me: Moulty? :)
7yo: Malki! But she is malking on you. [realises what she said] Moulting!

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

After all that experimentation, it was the antivirus after all (one of the first things I turned off to no effect because I’m not sure how the “web intelligence” bit is attached to the main part of the program).

JJ guessed “something” between the http and the transport layers and this makes sense as the “web intelligence” scans incoming file attachments and I think may also be checking websites for malicious scripts (which would probably never get executed because I use NoScript, unless it got injected by a website I use frequently that didn’t have it before).