Understanding the Universe through Lightwave 8 Bone Tools

I'm a sucker for tutorials, and the 3D community produces the best tutorial videos, particularly the individual auteurs, solo operators with crazy skills who've mastered the esoteric art of flying a particular application. The most richly funded applications, 3D Studio and Softimage, produce the least interesting tutorials . . . all corporate and buttoned down. Lightwave is the best for tutorial wisdom, and longtime guru Larry Schultz (aka "SplineGod") the most poetic.

Consider if you will:

"We move them [skelegons] into Layout, and they're invisible. . .we know that because we can't see them"

or

". . .so IK doesn't function in a local or a world coordinate system, it only works in a parent coordinate system. If you think about it, it makes sense. Or maybe not. . .but. . .er. . .it does to me, but I've been doing this a long time."

Yes, profound, quite.

But Larry doesn't have a monopoly on the CG observation which approaches the Zen masters. Focal Press "Easy Guide to Combustion 3" offers an insight equally profound:

"Reality doesn't have an alpha channel"

It needs one though, doesn't it?

But we can return to Lightwave for my current favorite, from a tutorial for Happy Digital's HD_Instance plugin:

"Now, all these elves need a workstation"

Yes they do.

More Power, Scotty!

The Captain needed power for phasers, photon torpedoes, the transporter room, the tractor beam . . . I need more power to drive the ATI FireGL 7600, a parallel processing supercomputer disguised as a video card. Because the world of those who own, or even aspire to own advanced video cards is necessarily exclusive and elite, I now direct my comments to those of you who qualify. The rest may wait for tomorrow's post, when we return to Earth.

The problem with this card is that it draws power, lots and lots of power. There's nothing green about it. . . its double wide, and its got an 8 pin PCIe power connector, puts out enough heat to fry an egg (150 watts fully loaded) Now, you may be thinking: "I don't have a PCIe power plug, but I do have a Molex plug, I'll just get a converter."

Won't cut it . . . life support will fail.

What you need is a converter plug that gangs two molex plugs to one PCIe, and this will only work if a) there's enough spare power in your PSU (I have 550 watts, which seems to be just barely enough) and b) if there's enough power on the 12 volt rail circuit that supplies each of the Molex connectors. It seems that that the Molex connectors do not each individually access the full resources of the PSU.

So my tip for the day for the graphics elite is: experiment with different combinations of molex plugs. Unless the manufacturer helpfully labeled them by circuit (mine didn't) there's no easy way to tell which ones are on which 12v rail, so you have to experiment.

Social Networking for the "Me" Generation

If the converse would be absurd, the affirmative statement is fatuous.

How Not to become Energy Independent

US leads the world in reactors operating . . . but reactors planned?

data from www.nationmaster.com

Bill Clinton, on being caught unawares

Bill Clinton offered a nifty defense of Jesse Jackson’s “I didn’t know the microphone was on” moment last week, when the civil rights leader took his crude swipe at Barack Obama.

At a Harlem news conference Thursday, Clinton said, “If all of us lived on live mics, 100% of us would be embarrassed.”

. . . but don't you think Bill Clinton would be just a bit more embarrassed than everyone else?

On not being offended by cartoons

A 1791 caricature by the brilliant Gillray; far more graphic and inflammatory than Barry Blitt's New Yorker image. The imputation about Charles James Fox (Whig leader, rival to Pitt the Younger) is precisely the same as Blitt's imputation about Obama-- that he sympathizes with a violent foreign revolution.

Notice the striking similarity in the use of "hope" to today's political language.

Comments & image are from David Francis Taylor's site devoted to Sheridan:

The Hopes of the Party, prior to July 14th - "From such Crown & Anchor Wicked Dreams, Good Lord Deliver Us."
July 19th 1791 (BMC 7892)
On a stage in the strand outside the Crown & Anchor tavern (a well-known radicalist haunt), an oblivious George III is about to be executed. The radical John Horne Tooke holds the king's legs while Fox, hesitant and muttering 'what if I should miss my aim', wields the axe. An impatient Sheridan holds the king's head in place and looks to Fox saying, 'Zounds! I wish I had hold of the hatchet.' The bodies of William Pitt, then Prime Minister, and Queen Charlotte, hang outside the tavern; their contortions, like the position of the king, are clearly and grotesquely sexual.

Eponymous introduction

Rumors that have no merit

Chrysler says bankruptcy rumor has no merit: report

NEW YORK, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Countrywide Financial Corp (CFC.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the largest U.S. mortgage lender, on Tuesday rejected market speculation that it was planning to file for bankruptcy protection.

"Any speculation about any kind of imminent bankruptcy filing is unfounded," AMR spokesman Andy Backover said, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Steve Johnson, president of Champ Car, was asked about the bankruptcy rumor on Monday evening and responded in an email: "I have not been informed and we have been hearing the bankruptcy rumor for 18 months."

DALLAS — The chief executive of General Motors Corp. is dismissing any notion that the largest U.S. automaker might soon seek bankruptcy protection.

Lehman was not alone in having a tough in an otherwise slightly positive market. Many financial stocks were driven down by worries about what may come out in second quarter results due this month. Insiders were insisting that the company was not a candidate for sale nor was it near bankruptcy.