log 517

Went to watch that action flick "The Protector" tonight. The plot is thin, cinematography was amateurish but the action was great. Totally kick ass fight sequences. It looks all real (it’s probably real too, stuff you can’t fake with camera angles or special effects). I love how they pit Tony against fighters of different styles. Near the end of the movie, there’s a scene that’s somewhat like the matrix where multiple Mr. Smith fight Neo. It was much much better than the matrix. The baby elephant is cut and the Jackie Chan cameo was funny. I recommend this movie to any action lovers or just people who appreciate the art of Thai boxing.

Just received another one of the OPG career alert e-mail telling me about a computer science/graphics/animation co-op position.  That’s gonna be one sweet job…[smack]   stop thinking about it Tommy, you’d already learned all you can from that place…and there’s something greater waiting. Finish your deploma program and head out. Jobs like this is fun but it will only slow you down. Soar Tommy, Soar.

My car got bumped in the back today. It’s a rainy day but that’s no excuse for careless driving. Luckily, my can and I suffer no damages. Still I am not satisfy that the guy didn’t even stop to look at the situation. The car is a honda civic, license AMMT 045. If anyone see the drive, punch him in the head for me. Or let me know where he is and I will punch him in the head.

entering my second week of 5th sem. Nothing has been assigned so far, at least nothing that needs to be submitted. My second and third class today are of a huge contrasts. The first (dbj565), the prof is very passionate about the course. Eventhough he’s very close to shouting the lecture, I’m fine with it. You can really tell this guy likes to teach. The second(wsa500), is really boring. The prof talks in this flat tone voice which makes things so boring, not that it’s exciting to begin with. Anyway, the commonality of the two is that way too much time is used on explaining little things that doesn’t need explaining. In the end of each course, I can pretty much sum up the whole class in a couple of sentences.  (that of course is what’s in my notes.) This is my new note taking style. heh heh I still remember the old day(highschool) when I just copy whatever was presented to me and hope it is useful. Then came college when I write small blocks of summary and still occationaly copy what’s on the board. Now I don’t write any notes giving or presented, instead write down my understanding of what is being presented. The 4:30 sardine can…I mean bus just passed by. Gonna head out before the rush hour.
; )

Oh and today’s Antz’ birthday. Happy Birthday buddy!

Left brain and right brain are fighting over the control again. One wants to read and the other wants to continue with the platform house model. So I end up doing both. I read while waiting for the rendering to be done.
Several fixes, like moving the glass support pilars back so thare aren’t flushed to the exterior wall. Some changes in the lighting, mainly added a fill light. And since most of the structural modeling is done, no more crazy crane shots. All 6 shots are taken in human eye level. The top and bottom are merged with a real background. If the look at it carefully, the blue tint is way too strong because I’m a lazy editor. When you do a blue chroma key, you should always re-adjust the colour. e.g. blue screen, higher orange tint, green screen, higher red tint.

Finally had a class today where I feel overwhelmed, taught by a Prof whom I’ve never met before. Much of the pressure came from the fact that he have some students that are form his other subject and more or less expect everyone else to have the equal knowledge. Hope I wouldn’t have to drop this class near the end. It’s strange, coming out of a job where I was using java all day and there’s still plenty I don’t know about it. The prof gave out a test today(not for marks), and all 7 questions I had to answer by "educationed" guesses. With this weekend free of homework, I think I will read ahead and make sure I’m on par or if possible ahead of the class. Need to become even smarter.  o>.<o

Moving to another topic. I’m now coffee free for a week. Previously(during my work months), I have a cup of ovaltine mixed with coffe every morning, so I can stay awake the early half of the day. Also, I’m back to my 2 meals a day routine. Skipping lunch doesn’t affect me much. I don’t think I’ve even dropped any weight. Then again, it’s only been a week, too early to tell a thing.

I’m still working on the dream house model, but just did some slight modification. So far, I’ve unified the column size for the ones in the garden area(1st floor). Made the support column for the garden area the same size as the building support columns. That’s pretty much it. My desktop is probably finished rendering the first interior scene right now. I might have to split up the floors to build the interior though. Lighting the intrior was hell. I guess that makes sense, the interior lighting has more to do with …well interior design. Something I need to put more time on. For the outdoor light(which isn’t that great), I just used 3 area lights. Wish I had some spare time to work on it.

Technically it’s one image…but a composite of 2…anyway, that’s not important.  I just wasn’t satisfy with the renderings from yesterday. The glass walls and panels on the stairs just didn’t come out strong enough. Realistically, support columns are needed to hold up the glass, so I added those in. There’s still no intrior shots yet. The 2nd floor balcony might have some changes to it. I want to have some plants around the edge, so it smooths out the view when you are looking out from the house. Plenty to be done on the interior. Master bedroom will definitely be on the 3rd floor. Guest bedrooms ought to be on the 2nd floor, but since the 1st and 2nd floor are designed more for entertaining, I will need some sort of separation between the entertaining arear and the living area. Leave me commons and inputs if you have any, and I will see if it will go into this model. : )

As promised, the rendering of the dream house. A 4 car garage, glass covered stair pathway, lots of balconies. The top right image shows the long staircase to the entrance. The bottom 2 images showcase the 2nd floor deck to entertain friends. I do plan to work on the interior soon…if school work is not too much. Hopefully I have time to work on it this weekend.

My short short break consisting of 4 days of rest is over and school starts again. Started the day with the class which I don’t much like, taught by the prof I don’t much like. Good thing the un-natural entities surrounding me are at work again guiding me. The course co-ordinator, whom is also a prof is attending the class. This should push the teaching quality to a more acceptable level. My other class of the day is a database class. From what I can tell so far, it’s gonna be an easy one. Database courses is always easy for me. I was playing with SQL a year before I started taking CS, and even before that (when I was a designer), I started experimental method of storing data in plain text file, which turns out looking very simular to the history of the whole DB development over the years.

Anyhow, internet is still out at home. The new isp haven’t delivered the dsl modem yet. It’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen when decisions were made to leave rogers. Don’t get me wrong, rogers still suck. I just don’t like the idea of not having any internet connection in between the transition period. Luckily nothing from my classes required internet connection today. I’m not perticularly fond of working in the labs. It’s not just the equitement, it’s also the people. Just today in lab, the guy next to me have really bad BO. Not the kind that comes naturally neither. It’s that smell from a guy who didn’t have a morning shower and didn’t wash his sheet kind of smell. Quite sickening.

Oh and I don’t know who’s bright idea it was, but the york campus is undergoing road constructions. Smart move, doing it at the busiest day when all the student are back in school. They actually have traffic police on campus to keep things going.

I wonder what everyone did over the long weekend? I didn’t do much myself. Thought of going to CNE or Wonderland, but I don’t care much for those events. I cleaned up the house on Friday(super clean, hee hee). Shopped for groceries on Sunday. Build a model of my dream house on Monday which is looking more like a commercial building than a home. My original concept was to have 3 boxes on 4 columns with slight offsets to each box. Then strange ideas came about:
-I don’t like ground level, let’s raise the building 2 levels up, so I can have a baseketball court or a parking lot
-I want an in-door pool but somewhat out-door at the same time, and I want some good lighting, so I cut a hole in the 2nd and 3rd floor for extra lighting.
-I’d always dream of having breakfast on the balcony just outside the master bedroom, or invinting my friends over for bbq on a deck. So the build has deck/balcony on every floor with glass railings.
-I like the home to have a very grand entrance, so I made lots of stairs. Oh and double doors, always double doors.
-The garage has a long staircase to the 1st floor, because I don’t like walking in the cold to my car.
-I might replace the pool with a court yard instead, I’d always fancy a court yard. A place where you can enjoy the out doors while in the privacy of your own home.

That’s about it for now, I haven’t started doing the interior details. The home itself isn’t very practical in terms of Canadian weather. It has all glass walls and plenty of glass railings. ….oh well, it’s a dream after all. Will post images tomorrow. (unless I feel like grapping a coffee at the near by SB which has connection).

heading home! 

Finally a posting after 2 or more weeks…stupid rogers cut off my connection for no good reason, so I decided to play it their way and cut the whole damn service off. Should be on primus dsl very soon. (oh joy, they offer newsgroups) Anyway, it’s great that my laptop supports wireless, I’m typing this entry at GFT at the moment. : )  I could have gone somewhere closer, like the SB around the corner but …I wanted to eat out. So here we are.  Work ended yesterday. On my last day, there was finally a team lunch. I think of all the 4 months there, team/group lunch only occured 3 times…..well at least the ones I was invited to. Just glad it’s over.  So what’s next for me? 2 more sem at school then it’s decision time. Crap on the lease contract or work an extra year in TO. I truely have to leave this city/country. The working life is seriously boring. Work, eat, sleep, that’s about it. I want to be in a better place. I want to live in a city where there are things to do, event to be after work. I need to get started on my plans to make the jump to Japan.

Anyway, back to surfing sites and whatever.