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WEEK 11 2015

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Saturday 14 March 2015

Saturday - I had a terrible nights sleep, I'm not sure why, and got up very late. A little warm and humid I guess. So I didn't make it to yard sales.

Instead I did some yard work after a late breakfast.

Lunch with Roger and Sheryl for a late lunch at the Korean BBQ place. Before that we stopped and picked up a graphics tablet for S at Staples, a Wacom (Intuous) model. If we have to draw hundreds of frames a week it's best to get a decent tool for it. The learning curve isn't that steep. Draw with the pen, use the left hand to select the keyboard mode - pencil, select, erase, free transform, etc. And it doesn't trash your hands (at least, not right away).

Friday 13 March 2015

Friday - Nice weather again.

I tried to go over to the college graphics lab with S, but it turns out that they were closed until almost noon (the schedule is almost unreadable). Instead R, K, S and I all went out to lunch. Kirk wanted to get a couple of things before his leaving for school in a week, so we went to the Thai Cafe next to Target.

It was also next to Radio Shack, which turned out to be in the final days of their store closeout. Almost empty in there... Kind of sad, I've been going to Radio Shack since I was a boy, even built some Heathkit stuff that my Dad got there, but times have changed I guess.

In any case, S picked up a couple of HD antennas for her mom in San Diego, and that was about it. I think Kirk bought a big flash drive too, 32GB for $20.

When I got home the graphics tablet had arrived. I took some time to take out the old RAM from the PC, and install the new RAM. It seemed a bit stabler, and Adobe Flash started on the first try afterwards, rather than five or six tries...

The tablet works pretty well - I did another 50 frames or so. It isn't quite as nice as the Cintiq at school, but I don't have $600 to blow on a drawing tablet. I didn't try installing the drivers, word on the 'net is the versions on the install CD are junk, you need to download them - and the XP box isn't connected to the Internet. I'll get 'em, but stuff works ok right now.

Thursday 12 March 2015

Thursday - Back to more normal weather, cool, some clouds.

Not a lot going on, working on the app, doing some yardwork.

Wednesday 11 March 2015

Wednesday - It was gray and overcast when I got up. Weird. It's supposed to get massively hot by the weekend, but we have cool weather and clouds?

Did some chores in the morning, picked up a fitting for the downstairs commode, and some expensive cat food from the vet. I'd planned to go by the library, but there was so much construction and crazed driving by frustrated motorists that I eventually just went home.

I went over to AVC and spent about three hours in the lab, and got about 100 frames done. Fortunately a lot of the early frames are 'tweens', with nothing changing, so you can copy and paste. I checked out a tablet, and practiced drawing, and got pretty quick at it. But the next set of frames (100-230) have a lot of deliberate blurring by the artist, to suggest motion, so I'm not quite sure how to approach that. It's hard to trace a blur...

And by the way, what the heck is with Wile E. Coyote's cheeks? They're the size of his ears!

It actually started raining (sprinkling) on me on the way home. I'd walked, of course...

I really like the tablet, more than I expected. Since I have some credits left at Amazon I ordered a cheap one for myself - the pen seems a lot easier on the hands than the mouse.

Tuesday 10 March 2015

Tuesday - A nice day.

Didn't do much. Tried to work on the app, but was feeling kind of energy less. Bah.

There've been several interesting climate related papers out. One points out that the influence of the Sun in the models was done wrong, being off by 23 Watts/square meter. The total supposed influence of CO2 is 1.63 Watts/square meter, which gives you some idea of how bad an error that is.

The other paper reports that the difference in albedo between the Earth's north and south hemispheres is two-tenths of one percent. This is completely impossible without a very robust cloud buffering/feedback mechanism (the hemispheres are very different) - and such a mechanism isn't in the models.

So, the models are wrong...

The third paper was a couple of weeks ago, and contained a simple model of the Earth's radiation and feedback system. It suggests that even the current sensitivity used by the IPCC, itself much lower than it was a few years go, is still too high. The interesting thing about it was the vicious response by various parties. Embarrassed warmista's defending their (very profitable) turf is expected, but it got to the point where a US Congressman was sending letters to employers of climate skeptics, essentially asking "Are you now, or have you ever been a Climate Denier?" Pretty terrible stuff.

Monday 9 March 2015

Monday - Various chores in the morning, then off to school for class all afternoon.

I would say I was near the top of the pack, homework animation-wise. A lot of kids didn't finish, many only did part of the assignment, and many were obviously doing the very minimum the student thought they could get away with... Ah, junior college students. I did the assignment, "jump down, jump up" and even had my stick figure do a roll while jumping up, and the instructor was pleased and spent some time discussing how I could have improved it. But, small potatoes, because some were really good.

The lecture was on movement, specifically character action and energy, 'follow-through' and 'secondary animation'. Our assignment for next week is to trace 200+ frames of a Wile E. Coyote scene he gave us.

Two hundred frames? Urk.

Sunday 8 March 2015

Sunday - Another nice day. Went shopping in the morning for groceries, the cupboards were getting pretty bare...

Worked on homework for school, an animation of a character jumping down from a box, then up onto another. About 100 frames. It's a learning experience - I only got a few frames done in the college lab in a couple hours, but I figured out how to do it there, so the other 90 frames only took a few hours at home. Although PC crashed several times. I need to replace the RAM or Power Supply or CPU Cooler. Or maybe all three. Anyway, done...

Not actually doing much else in the evening, beyond minor household chores.

I did finish Book #11, Secrets of a D-List Supervillian, by Jim Bernheimer.

This is the third in the series, after Confessions of a D-List Supervillian (Book #91, 2011), and Origins of a D-List Supervillian (Book #33, 2014). It is mostly told in flashbacks to a time frame around the end of the second book. What can I say, the books are funny, and the prices right, $5.

Quote: “Being a supervillain means never having to say you’re sorry … Unless it’s to the judge or the parole board. Even then, you don’t really have to. It’s not like it’s going to change the outcome or anything.”

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Helicopter rivets.

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