(at Leigh Woods National Nature Reserve)
The Running Novelist
“When I think about it, having the kind of body that easily puts on weight is perhaps a blessing in disguise. In other words, if I don’t want to gain weight I have to work out hard every day, watch what I eat, and cut down on indulgences. People who naturally keep the weight off don’t need to exercise or watch their diet. Which is why, in many cases, their physical strength deteriorates as they age. Those of us who have a tendency to gain weight should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible. Of course, it’s not always easy to see things this way. I think this viewpoint applies as well to the job of the novelist. Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can write easily, no matter what they do—or don’t do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Unfortunately, I don’t fall into that category. I have to pound away at a rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of my creativity. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another hole. But, as I’ve sustained this kind of life over many years, I’ve become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening those holes in the rock and locating new water veins. As soon as I notice one source drying up, I move on to another. If people who rely on a natural spring of talent suddenly find they’ve exhausted their source, they’re in trouble.”
Making Mental Ray for Maya 2015 work with Macintosh OS Mavericks (10.9)
As you may be aware if you follow me on Twitter we’ve been having some terrible trouble with rendering on Mental Ray for Maya after upgrading to the Macintosh Mavericks OS.
There seemed to be a conflict with multiple thread renders and the new Macintosh architecture.
We so far seem to have cleared the issue.
We completely uninstalled all parts of Maya, on the problem computers by dragging the Maya folder in the applications to the trash and then finding the Autodesk preferences folder in Library/Preferences(Library appears when you Alt-click the Go menu), and removing that too. Probably best keep a back up of that one.
Then do a fresh install of the new Maya 2015 Sp3.
It’s easier than uninstalling Mavericks anyways.
We had this in place for 3 days now and the constant hangs seem to be over.
Fingers crossed.
Edit: Scrub that. Still having freeze problems. Thinking of now striping the Mavericks machines to take them back to OS 10.8, as we are having no problems with them. If anyone else is making progress on this please let me know.
Edit 2: I tried CGBeige‘s script in the render farm, but it didn’t seem to stop the issue. So I have reverted to enabling “Overtime Kill Ratio” on Smedge (the software we use to managed our render farm). I set this to 3, so that if the work for the chunk goes 3 times over the work unit time it kills the chunk and starts again., which is good enough to kick it into gear and means I can sleep, without looking over the render farm all night.
Oh, and I have raised an official case ID with Autodesk, in case you were wondering.
Edit 3: Just found this post on Inside Mental Ray, there is an SP4, and they claim to have fixed it.
“We are glad to announce that we were able to remove the cause for freezes and crashes on Mac OS X version 10.9”
So we’ll see.
Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming
“Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children’s books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It’s tosh. It’s snobbery and it’s foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn’t hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.”
Marilyn Myller by Parabella (2014)
Space sounds and meandering digression.
One of the perks of doing this often is that it takes away the stigma of it being a big deal. So with this being the first for a while, let’s get on with it
It’s very difficult to ignore the news at the moment, it’s on my mind a lot, as I am sure with many others. There are terrible things happening to many innocent people. Just so you know this rambling meaninglessness has the days events weaved into its substance, if it’s not overt.
Molly Crabapple wrote some journalism (with illustrations of course) on the people Caught between Isis and Assad.
I used to have these (I am that old):
Still playing with Photoblender, all though it does seem more late at night when watching YouTubes:
Loom bands are seemingly every where, even on my pencil. I also have a bracelet, which I wear with pride.
Making stop motion with an iPhone would appear to be living the dream, although I wouldn’t know because I live in Android. Would like to check out all those arty iPad apps though.
“Making films is all about—as soon as you’re finished—continually regretting what you’ve done. When we look at films we’ve made, all we can see are the flaws; we can’t even watch them in a normal way. I never feel like watching my own films again. So unless I start working on a new one, I’ll never be free from the curse of the last one. I’m serious. Unless I start working on the next film, the last one will be a drag on me for another two or three years.” — Hayo Miyazaki
This quote is completely robbed from a beautiful, beautiful picture essay by Victoria Ying On Sketchbooks, read it NOW.
Legendary animator who gave me life changing advice when I was a student continues to dish out the sermons when I find her on the Twitter many many years later.
Gove got the chop, which is mildly cheering, because he wantonly ground the education system into the ground. But you can still slap him for free, if you wish.
A stop motion trailer by Jim Batt for the supernatural thriller The String Diaries.
Been having a terrible time with the render farm and Maya, had the last PC die loudly in my face and decided to upgrade to Mavericks and Maya 2015, (with one of those new Mac Pro vase things supplied by my company). Anyways things are moving forward but still having a touch of trouble with hanging renders on the network. Getting a man to look at it, etc.
Friend and former colleague Jonathan Doe has, bold as brass, starting uploading his “sketches” to the twitter. Follow him.
Japanese childrens books that feature cut out shapes for the reader to cast as shadows to help tell the story:
Source here.
Fell in love with this when I heard it on the radio the other day:
Lord Josh Homme (above), made a lovley program for the First Time on 6Music, and perfectly so ended the show with this tune:
(I kind of occasionally co-curate a Rockabilly tumblr over there, btw).
Finally(ish). Andy Serkis being generally awesome on a podcast with the Nerdist people. I think a lot of what he has said about Mocap and animation and acting has been taken out of context in the past (particularly by me), the man is an artist and a visionary and any talk, inspired by work he has done, of either animation, or actors not being needed in the future, is largely conducted by idiots. Anyways enjoy.
Okey doke. That’s it. Children begin the (not as long as I remember) school holidays today, hopefully it will bring bigs things for us all. In a good way obvs.
Perhaps you could see your way to doing this.
365 Day Sketch Project Update: Days 23 – 37
Well over a month in. Quite chuffed. I had a few medical incidents during the course of this (see below) so there are a few rushed, but done.
“North Side Gal” by JD McPherson (2010)
Voyager Captures Sounds of Interstellar Space
“NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft captured these sounds of interstellar space. Voyager 1’s plasma wave instrument detected the vibrations of dense interstellar plasma, or ionized gas, from October to November 2012 and April to May 2013. The graphic shows the frequency of the waves, which indicate the density of the plasma. Colors indicate the intensity of the waves, or how “loud” they are. Red indicates the loudest waves and blue indicates the weakest. The soundtrack reproduces the amplitude and frequency of the plasma waves as “heard” by Voyager 1. The waves detected by the instrument antennas can be simply amplified and played through a speaker. These frequencies are within the range heard by human ears. Scientists noticed that each occurrence involved a rising tone. The dashed line indicates that the rising tones follow the same slope. This means a continuously increasing density. When scientists extrapolated this line even further back in time (not shown), they deduced that Voyager 1 first encountered interstellar plasma in August 2012. The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA’s Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. For more information about Voyager, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov .”
Paul Greer 