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My Insignificant Life

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Recently I made a small app called "Pixel Counter" and let it loose on all the images Nukeation Studios has published. Each image's pxiels (height x width) were counted. The result came down to over 78 billion! That's 78 followed by 9 zeroes, ie, 78,000,000,000. If put in a straight strip with a height of 1 inch, this would go on for more than 390,000,000 inches - that's 32,500,000 feet!

To celebrate this, a cool, custom made Nukeation T-shirt is available here. Usually a price markup is added, but this shirt is available at the base price (we don't make a single penny on it).

Get yours now! Free shipping is available until Dec 6th!! Enter coupon "FreeShip".

Toys

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Okay, so I've gone far, but not far enough. This is gonna take me far enough. What you ask? A conversation with my best friend, Parvez, on MSN right now has convinced me that I should do this.

<drumroll>

I'm restarting the work on the long lost thesis on The Force. I started writing this a few years back. Now I intend to finish and publish it. I might even put it up for consideration for a literary or philosophical degree at some university even - not sure about that tho. But it will happen.

More to come on The Force: a thesis.

My Insignificant Life | Philosophy | Purely Idiotic Stuff | Star Wars

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Take a look at this baby! My first "real" animation with Vue 5 Infinite. The wind feature of Vue is kriffin' fantastic!

Check out the whole WMV file at: http://shrinkster.com/9ey 

Art | Graphics

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I tell my client that I mentioned him in a blog post (see Designer vs Developer post) and he writes me back saying:

I did see that and thought it was me!   --- out of all my witty and insightful comments/questions that's the question that get's me a blog post???

So, here I am trying to find one of those "witty and insightful comments/questions" to blog. Can't have good clients pissed at you, right? Right.

But the only problem is... I just went through like 20-30 emails ... and ...uhmm... can't seem to find the content with the specified criteria.

Seriously tho, I'd like to give a shout out to Andrew Eick - the cool dude who introduced me to SlideshowPro (which you will see in many of my upcoming sites) and told me that VS2005 was available for download on MSDN. He's also a very talented photographer. I will post a link to his site as soon as he updates it with the version I helped design.

My Insignificant Life | Purely Idiotic Stuff

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As technologies converge and new frontiers are born, so are new roles. WPF (fka Avalon) is creating a new role for the designer in world of software development. Previously, the closest a designer would get to programming was if he or she was a Flash artist (or "Flasher").

The couple of weeks ago, I was helping a buddy of mine learn Flash (remotely via MSN!). Now, this guy is a pure designer. You give him a piece of paper and a pencil, or maybe even tablet and Photoshop, and he's the best. Now he finds himself in a new environment that requires him to script. No GUI tasks in that. And if you have done Flash you know its pure coding that makes it work. Not to make fun of him, but he found having to write stuff like...

stop();

on(rollOver){gotoAndPlay("Over");}

on(rollOut){gotoAndPlay("Out");}

... difficult. He almost gave up Flash because of it! He's now getting better at it of course.

Let's go over to the other side. A client of mine likes to dabble with Flash now and then. We were talking and he told me how dull and unproductive the Flash IDE (imho, it's hardly a DE, let alone IDE) was. He was asking me if it was worth it to upgrade to Flash 8. I doubt any "true" programmer (or !=0 programmer ) would be comfortable in a IDE that has only 600x200 pixels worth of coding area.

If you're familiar with the fantasy genre (no I don't play D&D) there are mages and there are warriors. Warriors fight with their senses and the "physical" world. Mages work with the abstract and create wonderous as well as horrible things. Warriors = logic, and Mages = abstract or intuitive. And thus, software developers are like warriors, while designers are like mages.

And as we know the both don't get along too well.

This is a topic in which I'm quite well-versed. For you see, not to brag, but I'm one of the rare Warrior Mages. I've been programming since the age of 3 or 4. I've been designing/drawing since 3 or 4 - maybe earlier. There are others like Nathan Dunlap (www.designerslove.net) who used to be a designer only and is now getting quite good with .NET thanks to XAML and WPF.

I don't know if WPF (and /E) will be able to kill Flash or not, but it will certainly require all of us to learn how to better work with Designers. I suppose people who work in web development teams have a headstart on this.

As it will soon be announced on the official site, this month Nukeation passed the figure of 78 billion (that's 78,000,000,000+) pixels published. That is the count of pixels in the images we have used in projects. And it gives me great pride to say that more than 12 billion of those have been for software-based graphics. A few million from that figure belongs exclusively to Borg.

Software with great graphics are really more successful (provided they have actual functionality too). If you haven't tried XAML and WPF yet, go do it now. If you're a developer, start learning how to work with a designer. If you're a designer, start learning about logic.

In the game industry (which has the most active designer-developer interactions) there is a liason role - a person who knows about programming logic and design tactics. They help bridge the gap and help both parties work nicely with each other.

Unfortunately, this will not be probable or possible in the normal software development community, I think. Not at the budgets we (the "average" devs) work with - in terms of both time and money. Maybe Microsoft can afford it, but I think more than 90% of the industry would not be able to.

So the best thing for everyone is if they learned the "physics" of the other's work. If nothing else, just learn the limits of the technologies involved and what's possible and what's not. It migth save everyone a lot of time.

If you have any designer/developer stories, I'd love to hear 'em!

Happy cod(esign)ing.

Geek Stuff | Graphics | Philosophy | WPF

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I'm still trying to get the hang of this software. It's still better than Terragen at any rate. The EcoSystem and plants are the best! I might make a small animated video (2 minute max) around the holidays in my free time.

Art | Graphics

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I got a copy of Vue-5 from E-On Software. This thing boggles the mind. If you're into 3D you have heard of either Bryce or Terragen - or both. I have used both and am fond of them, but I didn't know about Vue about until a few hours ago.

This thing has a powerful renderer as well as a feature-rich set of tools. Bryce becomes too "plasticy" at a point, and Terragen is too technical-sounding and not really that much fun to use - not to mention it is still not a full release yet!

If you are not into 3D, you don't know what a pain it is to create natural terrains and scenes in normal 3D apps like 3D Studio MAX, Maya, or Softimage. Paramount used Terragen 2 (TGD) for the Romulus opening scene in Star Trek X: Nemesis.

Vue has a more standard interface (with a fantastic skin!) that is found in most 3D apps. It has the best of Bryce and Terragen, and not to mention some seriously cool stuff of its own. I'll be blogging more about Vue as I go through the trees and other cool animation stuff. In the meantime, check out this link for a visual feast.

My first render on Vue:

Graphics

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Yes, I am now finally moving a faster pace. I got 512k DSL! For most of you out there, it may not be a big deal, but I spent slaving over a 115k modem for the past few years, so I am happy.

My Insignificant Life

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A wallpaper fashioned after this image is coming soon! Just trying to get my hand set on 3D MAX again.

Star Wars

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As of November 8, 2005, I have read 117 Star Wars books - and retain over 80% of the material. As a side (or direct) effect, I now use exclamations such as "Sithspit!", "Sithspawn!", and "By the Force!". When subordinates don't work properly, I almost use a Force grip to choke them and say "The Force is with you, young one, but you're not a Jedi yet!"

A person I had delegated a project to said "If we don't deploy locally, we don't deploy at all." to which I replied "Only the Sith deal in absolutes!"

I even answered a client's IM by saying "What is thy bidding, my master?" Thankfully, he said "Rise, Lord Vader."

I even put an audio-clip in the Outlook alert for a particular powerful client that says on incoming mail, "I see you becoming the greatest of all the Jedi"

But even after all this, the Force still leaves me when I get up to find some snacks, sit at a different position, and forget that the remote is out of reach. I try to use the Force to reach the remote, but... well, the remote is too remote if you know what I mean. :-P

The Force is weird in this one.

Star Wars

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I've been wanting to make my own hand-crafted lightsaber for a long time. That time is coming near. After successfully defeating Tavion and the spirit of Marka Ragnos on Korriban, I think I am finally ready for my own ligthsaber. This blue-bladed "adept" lightsaber will complete my training as a Knight.

All I need now is a Sith lord to chop up!

Graphics | My Insignificant Life | Star Wars | Toys

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