Messenger Live Beta

So I managed to snag an invite.

I have to say, this has got to be the shortest amount of time an app has ever survived on my HDD. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised at my impression of the app, considering my experiences with 7.5, but still. Wow. I mean, the main contact list window is huge. And the devs really need a lesson in UI implementation. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the primary purpose of a contact list is to display your contacts, ne? So how is it that I can size the window down such that only my own information, and a fucking adspace is visible?



Beyond that, I can size it down to miniscule proportions so that only my own avatar is visible. How utterly useful. And let's not forget the fact that it's still a goddamned resource hog.

They still don't have custom away messages, by the way. I recall a quote by one of the devs some time back on this, referring to that as a "power user feature." Yet, they have custom smilies, custom winks, custom every other fucking annoying thing. I mean, where the fuck are they finding these guys?

Trillian it is. I think total time from download to uninstall was about 5 minutes, maybe 10.
/me shudders

Happy Birthday!

So Tian Tian turned one today. Happy birthday, you crazy pup.

Formatting?!

I thought we left this sort of shit behind years ago. Newfangled file format, fine, I can understand needing a proprietary reader. But I can't even browse the goddamned CD. The only mention I've seen of this in a search said something about needing to install the reader for "legacy systems". Windows XP. Tablet Edition 2005. Legacy?

And of course, it requires a fucking reboot.

And naturally, after a reboot and a quick check of the programs list confirms it installed correctly, I get the same goddamned error.

Irony. Delicious.

The Motion Picture Association of America was caught with its pants down, admitting to making unauthorized copies of the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated in advance of this week's Sundance Film Festival. [read more]

Whether their argument holds up is moot. This is simply fucking hilarious.

Food for Thought

Stephan Baker of Business Week discusses the impact of a young woman's website (Friendster profile, to be precise) after her death.

The lesson here is that with every word we post, we're writing our own obituaries. Our blogs and social networking sites, so full of the jokes and banter of our lives, quickly become at our death the closest thing most of us will have to a shrine. [see whole post]

Thanks to Tracy Hooten of The Student Tablet PC for the link.

Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006

This is quite probably the most awesome thing I've ever seen (click for article and video link):



See, if that were actually a game, I'd have no qualms shelling out $60 for it.

Hmm.

Steak + Fireplace? Okay, so we don't exactly have an abundance of fireplaces here in sunny Singapore, but the article strikes a chord nonetheless.

Thanks to Praxis for this one.

Texturing

Right, managed to make some progress on the textures. The body is currently getting detailed and cleaned up (photosourced, with heavy hand painting), and most of the rest of the components have a base flat color thrown on so the bird doesn't look so naked.

Older pic

Update, 18 Jan '05:

Almost there...

Well unwrapping this bastard was quite the learning experience.

Anyways, optimized the hell out of the mesh, in particular finalizing the mesh and getting rid of the edges running down the centerline of most of the components and the main body. I think I'm at under 4100 tris without weapons, and 4900 with weapons. Most of it is unwrapped, aside from the cockpit frame (which is proving quite the nightmare), and still finalizing the layout.





Whoops, got a little too careful about the layout, evidently. :D



Ortho wires and UV for anyone interested:
Ortho wires
Ortho with UV overlay

I'm either going to reorganize the current UV layout to give some components more texture space, or I'm just going to stick the cockpit UVs in the same sheet. Wing-mounted weapons each have their own sheets.


In other news, orientation's in seven and a half hours. Might be a good idea toget some sleep.

.

More optimization, more crap modelled on, etc, etc. Unwrapping this fucker is proving to be one hell of a fucking nightmare.

Tiger update

Spent a little more time optimizing the mesh (though still several areas to optimize), and adding more stuff, reshaping inaccurate bits, and adding details. Started work on the cockpit, remodelled the wing stubs, and various other things done.



Ortho wires
Detail wires, various angles

Still to do:
Pilot's instrumentation panels and flight stick, gunner's stick. Weapon proxies. Optimize the main body mesh and reshape. Optimize, optimize, optimize. I'm already real close to my 4k tri budget and still have stuff to add. And I'm really not looking forward to unwrapping this thing. Though texturing might be fun.

More Art Spammage

Been helping out with a couple projects. One of them involves reworking the original head textures from OpFlashpoint to fit the new texture layout used by a new community-member-created head model. Since my own head model was developed to fit the new layout, I figured I might as well jump in. So after getting the textures laid out properly, and removing the seams, I decided to start upping the details on some of the major characters. Here's the main bad guy's texture on my custom head model:



And an updated shot of the journalist mesh:



I've also been helping out the ADF Mod (Australian Defence Forces) for OpFlashpoint. Textured a couple kangaroos for them before Christmas. And now I'm modelling a damned ARH Tiger. Being that I've never really ventured into complex mechanical modelling (since I primarily focus on organic modelling, or relatively simple mech modelling like firearms), I think this is turning out okay. This here's about 12 hours of work over the last two days:



Still got a bunch of optimizing and detailing to do, but all in all, I'm pretty damned happy with the progress. Texturing it should be interesting, but I'm not really looking forward to the unwrapping.

edit:
Got plugged again.

shitfaced

tonight reminded me of why i love alcohol. All the pain, all of the sorrow, all of the hurt, all of the anger, just sort of disappearsin a hazy cloud of i don't give a fuck. Fick ti, i need to get drunkmore..

Art Spam!

Wheee...