Wyocation...

Just one of the beautiful sites...

My wife and I were away in Jackson Hole this past week to celebrate our anniversary and for a little vacation - we had a great time. Learned a few valuable lessons as well:

• New favorite ski spot. Just as many slopes as Vail and half the peeps.
• Do not assume that someone else will know that just because you're standing next to a national park sign and ask them to take a picture of you that they will think to frame the entire sign in shot (go go Owstone Tional Park!)
• Vintage snow shoes work just as well as the new ones (and are stylish!)
• Do not tuck the gator of your snowpants inside your ski/boarding boots unless you want a painful morning on the slopes. Yay circulation cut off!
• D2D ski rentals are awesome. Oh, I don't have to stand in line to rent and turn in gear and not pay any more for that privilege? Yes, please.
• First Steven King book. Picked it cause it was it was thick and I read fast. Very talented story teller but a bit dark and unnecessarily explanatory on some especially dark stuff. 
• Pass bison on the right when snowmobiling. Also, they have the right of way.
• I am not ready for black diamonds.
• Whenever you're going to only eat someplace once it's never a bad idea to get the opinion of the waitor/waitress on what they think is good.
• Even with heated seats, the back of a tandem snowmobile is much MUCH colder than the drivers seat.
• There is way way too much sugar on the fruit and nuts in the classic snack box on United flights. I'd go far as to say an inedible amount.

With that, I have to get goin. Starting a gig today. It'll prolly be a light posting month as such. However hope to make some progress in the evenings on the python stuff.

jjb be gone.

From "Sunny" San Diego...

Actually it's pretty drizzly which my friends here tell me is an anomaly. Go figure. Got checked in at the gig on Friday and am gonna hopefully start pulling my weight come Monday. Great bunch of guys ("guys" includes the girls as well) here and looking forward to the gig.

Had a few emails on an issue with the Morphy scripts and wanted to provide some clarity there. In order to use the add mesh scripts you need to run the "tinkerers" qss script from the qss folder. I covered it in the vid but apparently wasn't as clear as I could have been. Again, I removed the qss's from the rig to keep the outliner clean. However, I got a tip from a guy on how I might be able to group qss's and so I'll give that a shot when I get back to the batcave. Keep your notes comin!

What else....

• Hodaddy's burger joint in San Diego is awesome. I recommend the single bacon cheese burger and chocolate shake. If you go for lunch you'll wanna skip dinner. Possibly breakfast.
• "Red" was a fun guy flick though I'd recommend a rental
• Don't walk on friends patio barefoot unless you check for charcoal dust first otherwise you'll spend the next 30 minutes with some paper towels and a bottle of resolve. :)
• Google maps isn't always right. My should have been 2 mile walk turned into 10. Ah well, needed the exercise.

That is all. Burton out.

An open letter to the creators of the Antivar Virus

Dear makers of the Antivar Virus,

Bravo.

I'm a very careful web user and you've successfully infected my computer twice now - my only infections in the last 12+ years of computer work. Still trying to figure out how you did it. You've successfully stolen several days of my working time with my own scanning and removal work for my computer and for that of some friends whom you've infected as well and aren't quite as tech minded.

I have to admit, you've put together quite an nice package - locking off access to the good stuff and blaring warnings signs that would certainly make my mom click it. Especially clever in mimicking a real product. I never click anything which makes my infections especially curious to me.

It's puzzling to me why you would spend your obviously talented minds and skill sets on a product that might land you in prison when you most certainly could be creating something useful to folks that they would freely pay for.

It just doesn't make sense to me why you'd spend so much time and effort which would likely get you punched in the face if you happened to share what you did at  local bar with someone you've infected when you might get a beer bought for you should you create something that very person might need and want.

I had hoped to work some on Morphy today but I guess it'll have to wait.

Knowing this is a pointless exercise,
-Josh

p.s. Should anyone else have problems with said infection - Here are instructions for removal.

Can't all you verts just get along?

Blendshape fun

So lesson learned here. At some point when I was sculpting Morphy at the end there I lost symmetry and in doing so made getting my blendshape targets symmetrical nigh to impossible. So I spent most of yesterday restoring symmetry to the base mesh and all the subsequent morph targets. Good times. Current count of morphs is 33 without and left right splitting on the main targets. Most of my facial rigs in the past have been bone based so I'm a bit new to the blendshaped facial workflow.

So new rule is: "When creating a blendshape based facial rig, before beginning to make your final morph targets, CHECK symmetry."

Should you find yourself in a similar predicament, here's some useful tools in this exercise:

• Silo - why maya doesn't have a calculate and restore symmetry function is beyond me. If it does and I don't know where it is. Don't hesitate to point out my maya modeling newbish self and laugh (preferably as you tell me where that tool might be).
• abSymMesh - Check symmetry of targets based off of base mesh and restore it
• Extractblendshapes - Great little script for exporting all the shapes of a blendshape node to new meshes

Now I'm SURE there are better ways to do this but here's what worked.

1. Make head fixed for symmetry.
2. Hook up all asymmetrical blendshapes to original asymmetrical head (baseHead).
3. Hook up symmetry head as blendshape to asymmetrical blendshape node
4. Turn on symmetry head blendshape channel
5. Manually duplicate the baseHead as you turn on the blendshape channels one by one (while leaving the symmetry head channel on).
6. Save all of these new exported shapes into a new scene.
7. Bring in your symmetrical head as your new base head and use abSymMesh to compare the various shapes to the new base head and restore symmetry to them
8. Use your symmetrical head as your new base and connect your now symmetrical shapes to this head
9. Delete all the blendshape meshes
10. Select the symmetrical base head and run Extractblendshapes to get your new final symmetrical blendshapes
11. Go look in the mirror and say to yourself, "Don't do this again."
12. Profit.

Have a nice Saturday all.

A Deflated Day...

In the grand tradition of lessons at my expense, yesterday was an interesting day to say the least. It started as a beautiful Austin day - slightly overcast and mid 60's. Great day for a bike ride. So I went out to grab my bike from the patio to find the back tire was empty. I rode about a month ago and found this puzzling. However not enough so to not air up my tire and call it good to go. I headed out into the glorious day. After a bit, the riding got tougher than normal. I hadn't ridden in a while so chalked it up to my wussyness. When I was about 8 or 9 miles out and was going down this hill on some trails at a park and something just really felt wrong. So, I hopped off my bike and took a look. My back tire was 3/4 flat. I had forgotten an extra tube. My bike pump. Or my phone to call a friend. Needless to say, I was quite pleased with myself. Jolly even. I asked around the parking lot for a few to see if anyone had a pump to no avail. There was a gas station a 1/4 mile away, but their air pump was out of service. Bracing myself for an afternoon of walking I set out. A couple miles down the road a kind employee of Apple was kind enough to stop and give me a lift. Apparently they have a call center here in town and it's literally across the road from my apartments. Thanks Don for the saved time. That's one more notch on my list of why I am probably gonna make the switch. Oh, I washed my wallet too. :)

Minor updates and more lessons in the life of Josh....

• Life Lessons - "That don't wash" - This morning I threw my laundry in the wash as I was heading out the door for work. Went home for lunch to throw them in the dryer and noticed something resting in the bottom of the wash as I was transferring the clothes. Apparently, cell phones don't like to be submerged in water. Who knew!? No, letting it dry didn't work. So I ordered a new phone (cheaper than the store - the guy at the store even told me as such. 2 points for honesty) but it won't be here till Monday or so. So, if I know you and you try calling, that's why I don't answer.
• An actual site update! - Yeah, I finally got around to updating my age and location, and adding some stuff on my most recent "published" game project at work - Blacksite: Area 51. It ships next week and a new demo will be on live in a couple of weeks. Check it out:)
• Started working on a new project - I'm very excited to be working on another of my good friend David Bokser's Personal Film Project. Looking forward to seeing it continue to take form. I first read the script a long time back and I'm pumped he's in production. AND it means I get to do some full body hand key animation. YAY!
• Recent games -
• Jade Empire - Fantastic ride. Great story, fun combat, though I'd have preferred a few more styles. Ready for some Mass Effect now!
• Halo 3 - Ton of fun playing with my cousins, brother and friends online. Team based combat is just a ton of fun. Discovered I have an odd propensity to finish people off with a melee attack rather than shooting them. Seriously, it's my highest killing weapon - at one point doubling any other weapon. Who needs guns?
• Orange Box - Portal is one of the best games I've played. Period. Episode one and Two were good, Two was better than One but they were both great. Team Fortress 2 has some of the best character animation and design I've seen in a game. However, I think I'd prefer to play it on the PC.

New things, new days...

• New(ish) job - Monday was my first day in Midway Austin. Things are going well and most importantly, my one way commute has gone from 38 miles to a fraction of that - 3.8miles. My small part toward driving less and stopping the world from blowing up because of mankind (see Al Gore's film for more information on that).
• Apartment living - Finding an apartment in a new place can be an absolute nightmare especially if you've never been to a town and have a day and a half in which to find one. I used a service called apartmentsnow.com which cost me nothing and I was very happy with. However, my new landlords are not starting off with a very good record. First of all, when I was looking here and they showed me the model, it looked great - nice new appliances, great color and great layout. What I didn't know and I discovered my first night here was that there is a rail line running directly behind the complex (far from the rental office or model I saw). My apartment just so happens to be about the closest in the whole complex to said railroad. Imagine my delight when trying to sleep. I reckon I'll get used to it. Sure will help me find a new place with my 6 month lease is up. Secondly, I got in a week ago Monday, dropped off the stuff from my car and went to the grocery store and got some milk and some Frosted Mini Wheats. My stuff wasn't to come until this past Saturday so on Tuesday I headed to Houston to hang out with my girlfriend. When I got back on Saturday and was waiting for the movers, I noticed some ants on the counter. I made a note of it and went down the rental office to request them have someone come out. I only thought it was a few ants and didn't think much of it. Further investigation found that the ants had quite a little conga line going. Right to my Frosted Mini Wheats. Flustered, I started calling the rental office as obviously the apartment had not been treated before I moved in. Wow. I have to hand it to them - they know how to give bad service. The first time I called and said that it needed to be dealt with that day as I couldn't unpack or buy any food till that ant problem was fixed. They said there was nothing at all they could do as the pest people only came on Friday. I explained that they could call their manager and said I expected to be called back with an answer in the next couple of hours. Nothing. I tried calling and I heard the line pick up, background chatter and noise, and then be hung up on. Confused, I tried again, same reaction (with new background noise). Now I've never really had any company I'm paying for service do that, so I was three parts surprised and one part irritated. Finally the phone went to an answering service which I left a message with them and was called back a little later. The girl said the same thing. My response was that either they were going to send someone out or I was going to buy the stuff to do it myself. Guess who won that one, eh? A trip to Lowes later, my ants are gone. I will say this - I didn't know they had it, but if you Google an apartment complex, you can see comments from tenants. If only I had known. Ah well, builds character, right?
• Josh the Car Body Banger! - In other news, I fixed my bumper. When I was in Houston last week, I grabbed a rubber mallet from my girlfriend's tool box and banged that puppy right out. Doesn't look too shabby, either. Well, actually, that's exactly what it looks like....:)

Clean Slates...

In the year 1914, Thomas Edison's "invention factory" (as he called it) burned to the ground. Of that disaster, he is quoted as saying, "All of our mistakes have been destroyed. In a new factory we can start our experiments with a clean slate." Several years ago, I had a hard drive die and I lost a good bit of work for a horrific few weeks. However, I had a good backup and at most lost a month of work. I've actually thought that my back up system I've been following for years now has been pretty sound. I usually have two back up drives backing up my main work drive. That seemed like a pretty good method. Well, after I finished school I let one of my back ups go and only had one. I thought that would still be plenty. Two months ago, I had a hard drive fail. My main work drive that is. I worked about a week on the main drive trying to get it back and it just wouldn't respond. I tried absolutely every diagnostic app I could find (windows or bootable) to no avail. I was in the middle of my freelance gig and didn't have time to mess with it, so put it aside thinking I'd get backup drive and be up and running when I had some time. So, when the project was done, I tried that. Come to find out, the back up drive didn't seem to wanna respond either. I figured I'd be able to fix em...prolly just a bad sector or something. This past weekend, I finally got a replacement drive and installed it and took a hard look at my backup. I ran some diagnostics and.... Dead as a doornail. Uh oh. So, it appears that I've lost the past 6 years of freelance, reference, school and personal work. The only things I have are my most recent project, The Potter and an assortment of 3d projects. Where this mainly sucks is that I've lost all the source files for all of the websites I've done. So, the next update to my site other than the blog is going to be a complete redesign. That's not such a bad thing, it's been a while. However, I did lose a few things I'd have rather not have. Now, I could pay some outlandish $1k or more to try and have a company recover the data, but I'm not gonna do that. It's just stuff and that's a lot of moola. So, like Edison (and pretty much only in this way as he was an absolute genius), I've got a clean slate. Not really all that bad of a place to be when you really think about it.

Another lesson at Josh's expense...

Saturday night I wanted to finish off the left over tacos I had in the fridge, so I warmed up the meat. I had a funny feeling in my gut that maybe I was pushing the safe time table in which it was safe to eat said left overs. But I said, what the heck, and ate it anyway. I got a stomach of steel. About 10:00pm, I sensed things to be amiss. My new roommate wanted to play some Mario Kart, so we played for about forty five minutes or so and my stomach was starting to do some funny things. After that, it seemed like bed time was calling loud. I heeded the call and was looking forward to a long night's sleep. However, my gut was not happy with my choice for dinner and it was about to let me know just how much displeasure it had. It proceeded to do so just about every hour on the hour until 5:00am. Two words - violently ill. Fun times. This morning my new roommate was so kind as to go get me some saltines and gatorade and then some meds this afternoon. I'm grateful for him being such a good sport after only two days here. Lesson - When your gut tells you not to eat something and you ignore it, your gut just may make sure you get the message in the end.

The importance of correct power supplies...

Did you know that even though two power supplies may have the same connector for the back of your electronic gizmo, they may not work correctly when interchanged? In fact, the same shape connectors can have two very different voltage outputs. This was apparently something I had missed somewhere in my electronic pilgrimage. The last week or so, I've been clearing out my second bedroom to make room for a roommate and i had disconnected my wireless router and modem in that process. Well, last night, I went to hook the net back up and plugged in my modem and my router. The modem started up fine, however, I quickly noticed a peculiar smell- burning carbon and plastic. If you've never smelled this before, I assure you it is an unmistakable scent. I picked up the router and felt the bottom getting rather hot so I unplugged it as quickly as I could. However, the damage was done. That little piece of electronics had served me well the past 4 years and it wasn't going to be routing anything anymore. It was probably time for a new one anyway, I just wish it could have gone out more gracefully - perhaps as a donation rather than in the garbage can. Alas. Lesson - Label any unmarked power supplies when moving things in the future.

I'm a lousy neighbor...

This morning, my rental office called and said the neighbors below me complained that it sounded like I was throwing weights around or something. The truth of the matter is that I've been clearing out my 2nd bedroom all afternoon and was setting some books on the book case in my bedroom when the shelf in the case suddenly shifted. That can't be good, I thought. All of a sudden, two shelves of books came crashing down on top of me and it was all I could to to hold the rest of the bookcase up. What I should have done was empty the rest of the case and taken care of it in the morning. However, I was tired and grumpy at having had some rather heavy art books fall on me and so my first instinct was to fix it. So I did. Tearing up some cardboard, I wedged it under the front of the case so it would have a natural back tilt. I then grabbed my hammer and stud finder and resecured the bookcase to the wall with a Thud, Thud Thud. I suddenly heard a reply of Thump, thump, thump coming from the floor below me. I figured it was a neighbor irritated with my hammering. I thought, wonder what they're so uptight about as I turned and looked at the clock. Oh. I had been so busy with the work that I had completely lost track of time. It was just shy of midnight. I, of course, felt like an inconsiderate dufus. In the future, should a shelf of books fall on me, I will look at the clock before grabbing my hammer.

Check those fluids...

You walk up to your car and start seeing little puddles of greenish fluid underneath. At first it's just a few drops here and there, however with time, it becomes substantial little patches. If you're a car mechanic genius like me, you just chalk it on the list of I'll take a look at that later. However, I'm here to testify that you let that go long enough and you'll have a morning like mine. I got up this morning, checked my email and on the back up restore of an old client's site who got hacked by some eastern European hacker group whose message was both incomprehensible due to complete lack of command of the english language and reprehensible due to a the graphic imagery of infanticide. I really don't understand hackers. However, back to the story. Got on the road at my normal time and headed towards work. I started noticing something funny was going on as my little civic was idling strange (jumping between 800 and 1500 rpms which even my mechanically challenged self knew wasn't right). It was sporadic and I thought I outa get that looked at sometime as well. About a third of the way to work I noticed smoke coming from the hood and took a peek at the temp gauge- it was pegged. Actually past pegged. Thinking it might be wise to pull off the road, I looked in the rear view mirror before changing lanes and saw that my car had a full Spy Hunter smokescreen in tow. Blinding the drivers following, I got off the road and shut 'er down. I thought I forgot my cell phone so didn't bother to look (how is it we know we've forgotten something without actually looking? But I knew). A cop showed up about 20 minutes later and said he'd call for a interstate help service to bring me some water for my radiator. I asked him if I could use a phone, but all he had was a personal one and I guess that's against regulations or something. I got back in the car to await some thirst quenching water for Sarah (my car's name, I've met enough people that do the same that I know longer thing I'm the oddball there). The guy finally showed up and poured water in and as fast as he poured it in it started pouring out. He said, "I don't think you should drive on that." I believed him. I thanked him and called the insurance company to arrange the tow. 'Bout an hour later, the driver showed up and had me pull the car up on the truck cause he couldn't work a stick. So Abdul from Palestine and I chatted it up all the way to the mechanic. My boss said I could just stay here as most of the day was spent but I got a meeting that my suggestions and requests were a major point in bringing about, so I gotta head in for a bit for that. That and so the rest of the guys can laugh at my story. In other news, my buddy Scott Englert from The Potter was up here last Friday for an interview and looks like he'll be starting in early October. So, grats to him.

A Frustrated New Mac Owner...

So I got my new mac laptop about a week ago. About a week later, Apple announced the upcoming release of Tiger. My friends who are mac owners told me I should get a discounted upgrade since I just bought the computer. Made sense to me. Most software publishers I've dealt with have had pretty generous upgrade grace periods- some as long as a few months. So I called up Apple and was surprised to discover that the cut off date for their "up-to-date" program that would have allowed the discount had a cut off of April 12. 3 days after my Mac shipped. I told the lady that seemed a little short for a grace period window and asked to speak to her supervisor. She transferred me directly and I asked her supervisor who frankly seemed to me more irked that her underling had transferred me than about my issue. She asked for the first girls name and I just said I didn't know because I didn't want to get her in trouble. She said she would transfer me to someone who would help which ended up to be a stupid phone message loop of, "Press 1, press 2, no, you can't talk to someone." So I hung up and emailed Apple my frustration. I've not heard back to any of my emails to them, so I'm not holding my breath. Lesson learned here- If you're thinking about purchasing a Mac and they're "close" to releasing a new OS. Wait till they announce the release date and you'll save yourself $120 bucks or so. Guess I'll wait a while to upgrade.