Lynda Barry: 2013 National Book Festival

Video | September 16, 2014September 12, 2018 | Paul Greer

“Cartoonist Lynda Barry appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Lynda Barry is a writer and cartoonist who lives in rural Wisconsin. She’s authored 19 books and received numerous awards and honors for her work, including two William Eisner awards, the American Library Association’s Alex award, the Washington State governor’s award, the Wisconsin Library Association’s R.R. Donnelly award and the Museum of Wisconsin Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Newsweek, Time, Salon, Mother Jones, Poetry Magazine and Tin House. She is currently assistant professor in interdisciplinary creativity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Discovery Fellow at the UW Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. Her new graphic novel is “The Freddie Stories.” For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://1.usa.gov/1shC4TC “

September 16, 2014May 21, 2018 | Paul Greer

Coaxing grumpy render farm into compliance with restarts, deleting preferences, reinitiating licenses, flute playing & beguiling folk dance.

The Running Novelist

Quote | August 8, 2014September 4, 2018 | Paul Greer

“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.”

— Haruki Murakami

Making Mental Ray for Maya 2015 work with Macintosh OS Mavericks (10.9)

Aside | August 7, 2014May 21, 2018 | Paul Greer

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.

Linear

Image | June 3, 2014May 21, 2018 | Paul Greer

For my sins I am finally try to wrap ny brain around linear workspace colour management. I may try and regurgitate my learnings on here once they have settled in some.