The Force Unleashed & Spore

With all the hype surrounding Spore, I was expecting a stellar game (no pun intended). From the reviews that have been circulating around the web, and the reports of extreme DRM, I have now shied away from making a purchase. I think I will wait a while to see if it matures over time.

Since Spore is starting to look like a disappointment, I have turned my attention to the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed countdown. I own a Wii and can’t wait to toss everyone around with my remote and nunchuck – should be an interesting game. Hopefully its debut will fare better than Spore’s did.

Getting Into Blender

I’ve known about Blender for a long time, and even tried it once, but the daunting interface kept me away. I have been watching some Star Trek and Star Wars fan films and liked how they added the CG to their movies. My curiousity (read obsession) of how they did this got the best of me and I started searching out how to do it myself. After much Googling and YouTube viewing, I found that there are many 3D modeling programs as well as many video compositing software packages.

Since my budget for things like this is small (read non-existent), I needed something cheap, affordable, and free. This is how Blender popped back into my life. It was still a bit daunting to get started, but I found a bunch of great online resources that helped me get my feet wet. I completed the Wiki Blender tutorial on creating my first animation (the gingerbread man) as well as the bezier curves tutorial which let me produce this:

There are also some great tutorials on YouTube that are worth checking out. A great series is the Bits of Blender segments as well as Super3boy’s tutorials. Getting back to why I started this journey in the first place… I finally did locate a few videos on how to add CG to live footage and will be tackling that in a bit. I noticed that there isn’t a complete (simple) tutorial about taking the process from the animation stage all the way through the live footage composition stage (unless you count commercial videos). Once I get the process down pat, I might try to produce something useful like that.

Snippy For Screenshots

I like simple and portable software. Snippy is both of these and does a great job at taking screenshots. Once it is started, the program sits in the system tray awaiting use.

A couple clicks later and you have a simple, clean, and useful screenshot that is perfect for a blog or image notation. It also supports simple borders, which makes spicing up a blog super easy!

Audible.com Disappointment

I listen to a lot of netcasts while driving and love my Sansa MP3 player. I have wanted to try Audible.com for a while to see what all the hype is about and got my chance today. They were offering a free Jules Verne audio book, so I said what the heck. I ran through their download manager setup and had the .aa file in my possession. It sounded great on the PC, but since I wanted to listen in my car I added my Sansa MP3 player (because it was supposed to be a supported) as an active device.

After many attempts (i.e. USB plugging, unplugging, and software restarts), the Audible manager couldn’t stay connected to my MP3 player (but my PC could) long enough to transfer the file over. I tried a second (generic) backup MP3 player I carry (not supported by Audible) and that didn’t work either. After some Googling I discovered that it is an extreme pain to circumnavigate the Audible DRM (to convert .aa files to MP3 manually/legally), so I gave up and deleted the Audible junk from my PC. I think I will try a competitor to see if they have a better structure/support for MP3 playback.

Crazy Busy Update #6

I finally completed my ethics course and have a little bit of free time before jumping into my final class. If I didn’t finish my story about my work computer, I will sum it up now… After a bunch of searching and tinkering, I discovered that it was Windows Explorer that was having issues. I installed IE7 and that corrected everything – what a sweet simple fix.

I am happy to report that my DVD LCD overhead projector is working as planned and it is awesome. Since I have young children, I have done a lot of testing with their videos. It is pretty neat to watch Blues Clues on an 83″ screen in the basement. What is even better is that the projector is capable of going bigger – I am hoping to get it to the 100″ mark. I will have to hook the Wii up to it and rock out with Guitar Hero!

CSS to PHP Programming

I recently read Charles Wyke-Smith’s Stylin’ with CSS book and loved it. If you are interested in CSS at all, and creating modern websites, I highly recommend it. I recently ordered his Codin’ for the Web PHP programming book.

If you have a basic understanding of programming (i.e. basics of code structure – variables/loops/arrays/etc.) and wish to expand on this into dynamic web development, you will get something out of Charles’ PHP coding book. As a supplement to this, I highly recomment the PHP video tutorials from the killerphp.com site. I have been watching them as I read the book and they serve as great concept reinforcements.

Crazy Busy Update #5

I am still here… I think. Life has been chaotic lately. Demanding school work, regular work, and a pair of sick children can make your head spin. Everything is slowly smoothing out – yea! I am still bouncing around the world of tech as well. I found a great Mac-like dock for Windows called RocketDock and it works awesome. I have been slowly working on my home projector unit and have it almost complete – just in time for football season! The case is fabricated and the internal air flow system has been figured out. I am going to give it a test run shortly. If it works as planned, a paint job will soon follow and then it will be put into full time service for the family (will post pics when I get a chance).

Outlook – Can’t Open Links

I booted into my work XP machine today and started up my Outlook email client. I opened a message and clicked on the link inside (it was a safe one) and was greeted by the following restriction message: This operation has been canceled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. A quick Google search netted me a long list of complaints about this issue.

The easiest fix is to go into Internet Explorer and reset the default settings (IE >> Internet Options >> Advanced >> Restore Defaults). I then went into Firefox (my browser of choice because my office machine is still using IE6) and went into Tools >> Options >> Advanced >> Check Now to set Firefox as the default browser. The next step was/is very important… you have to shut down and restart Outlook for the fix to work. Once I did that, all was good and the links worked fine.

Boot Freeze, Eventvwr, & Autoruns

At work I have to sign into the network like a lot of other cubies. Everything has been running smoothly on my desktop machine, but recently I have been having an extremely tough time linking up to the network and completing my boot sequence. I would get to my desktop, and then boom – the system would freeze. After like a bazillion attempts at logging in, I would finally make it. This went on for a couple days and I just couldn’t figure out what was going on.

It was time for some quick hardcore IT learning. I discovered the Windows Event Viewer (Run >> eventvwr.msc). When I looked at the system tab I found a couple big red warning entries. That is a bad sign. Upon further inspection, I discovered that the bluetooth software (service) I recently installed was not starting correctly. It was in turn hanging the system and not allowing my boot sequence to move beyond the error.

I found two interconnected steps to fix this problem. I first ran the Windows Services program (Run >> services.msc). I found the bluetooth service that was causing problems, shut it down, and set it to start manually. I then ran the Autoruns program (free and very useful) and found the registry key that was assigned to starting the bluetooth service that was causing problems. I unchecked the box next to the key and after a trial reboot my system sprange to life without any problems. I confimed the results with the Event Viewer and found that I was good to go.

Google SketchUp Goodness

I recently started playing around with Google SketchUp. It is a fun, intuitive, and free 3D modeling program for Windows and Mac (there is a more robust paid Pro version available as well). I was also able to get it somewhat working in Ubuntu with Wine.

Two great video resources to help you get started with modeling are available at the Google SketchUp Training Site as well as the Go-2-School website. Just for kicks I decided to try working on a floor plan. Here is what I have so far: