The Gathering Storm...

Tor books has released the cover art for book 12 of the Wheel of Time series. Just like all previous cover art, this was done by Darryl K. Sweet. Just like all previous cover art, it sucks. But that's just my opinion.

What do you think?

My guess is if you're a fan, you are pretty disappointed with this highly anticipated book's cover art. But at the same time, you're not going to care much. Who cares what the cover looks like. All that's important to the average fan is how good the story is.

There is a good chance that if you are not a fan, you're probably not going to buy this book without reading the first 11 installments. However, if you're at the book store and you see this hardcover next to the paperback versions of all the previous books, I'm thinking you'll be put off from picking up book 1.

If I had never heard of the Wheel of Time and I saw this at Border's Books, I definitely wouldn't buy it. Who wants to read a story about a cross-dressing Bret Michaels who travels back in time to Little House on the Prairie and spends time with some firefighter with dragon tattoos who just lost his hand in a fire?

It's Very Cold In Space...

The other day, I decided to take a trip around the world utilizing a Low Earth Orbiting Vehicle. I took a couple of photographs. Enjoy...




Ok... I wasn't really in space. These are actually 3D renders that I made using 3DS Max and some earth images I found online. Believe it or not, these were rendered with Scanline instead of Mental Ray.

She's 1/4 Mexican...

Let me say right off the bat, Malia ate everything on her plate. This isn't necessarily proof that I'm a great cook. After all, she is just a baby. Have you ever tasted the puree peas in a jar?

Here's the lineup. Batting first is a hearty helping of home-made Spanish Rice. I didn't make a whole batch just for her. This is actually leftover rice from Mama and Dada's build-your-own tacos.

Second up is some home-heated up, canned pinto beans. Canned pinto beans are sooooo much easier and less time consuming than the home-made version. They are still a little time consuming because I have to cut each individual bean in half with some kid scissors we bought at Target.

In the hole... home-made quesadilla. This one is super simple to make. Pan on Medium. Tortilla, cheese, fold, flip... done. Of course, I also have a little more work to do there. I'm required by my wife to cut the quesadilla into 1/2 cm. x 1/2 cm. bite-size morsels. Fortunately, I'm a pro with the knife, drawing on my extensive experience in Veg-Prep on board the USS California (shout out to Addis, Shun & Jason).

Honestly, this is a pretty simple meal to prepare... and Malia absolutely loves it. Again, not a testament to my cooking ability. I just think that she feels the whole Mexican food experience is fun.

BTW, the drink container does not contain a Margarita. It is just water. She's a lot like me as far as the way she looks and acts but she's not addicted to Margaritas yet.

Three Dee Ess Max...

I just "Purchased" 3DS Max 2010.

It's weird. When I first started it up, I thought for just a second it was a cruel joke. The user interface was a big blob of gray shading. Fortunately, I was able to clean it up a little. After about 5 minutes messing with a custom UI, I made it somewhat visually appealing... at least enough to start working on something simple.


The good news is the lighting seems a little easier to figure out. The bad news? Nothing yet. More to come...

Loodacris Intro...

This was made back in 2006 for a fellow gamer. When she starts her game up, this is the intro that plays. Her talent was in defending the flag - by constantly spamming the flag base or anyone she sees, including her own team - so I thought it was fitting to have her defending the flag in her video.

Again, I made this with UT2004. The map I used was a custom map that I had made earlier the previous year. The music was taken from "Belgian Resistance" by Sharpside, which is the track that I use in the map.

Milk Math...

When I was in High School and Middle School, I drank a lot of milk. My Dad said when I moved out, he went from buying 1 gallon every two days to 1 gallon a week. I didn't believe him when he said it. Now that Malia's drinking whole milk, I could easily see how my Dad could be right.


Malia's Pediatrician told us to give her Whole Milk instead of formula after her first birthday. Before, I would buy a 1/2 gallon every five days. Now I buy a gallon every 3 or 4 days. She's only 19 lbs. and she's already drinking a bunch. If she's anything like her dad, I'll be buying a gallon a day by the time she's in elementary school.

Propellerhead Reason...

It's really hard for me to come up with something to design with 3DS Max. It's easier for me to just pick a logo and make a 3D version of it. Yesterday I decided to do a render of Propellerhead Reason's logo shown here:

This is what I came up with:

The orange boxes are just chamber boxes booleaned with a cylinder. The orange colored material is a high gloss ceramic and the black material is a two tone car paint. I used two white self-illuminated boxes to stimulate the center sphere. The stage material is a polished cement. All materials except for the self-illuminated white are standard mental ray materials.

The lighting was a little tough for me. I still haven't mastered lighting with 3DS Max 2009. I used two photometric target lights at 110K lm from each side to simulate relfected light. I also used a standard omni, with shadows enabled, from above and behind. Most of the ambient light was generated from a standard skylight directly above center.

More logos to come...

Big Smiles...

I work graveyard shift so I am by myself a lot of the time. The other day I was doing a Cold Check and I thought no one else was in the room. I was startled when, out of nowhere, one of my co-workers asked me why I was smiling so big. I didn't realize I was smiling but I knew why I was.

I was thinking of Malia.

My answer to my co-worker was that I told myself a joke I've never heard before. I learned almost right away that my co-workers are a little less appreciative of baby stories than most co-workers. I've learned to keep most of them to myself.

Part of it is my lack of story telling talent. I have a hard time expressing my experiences verbally. But, thanks to modern home video technology, if I have a story to tell, I can just film it.

So here's what I was smiling about...

Spades...

Here is a header design I made for my brother's poker blog. I actually made a lot of different styles but this is the one my brother likes the best.

The 4 suits were modeled with 3DS Max 2007. I used a chrome material for the edges and a checkered car paint material for the center. The surface is also a car paint material but I lower the reflectivity to lower it's presence.

My goal was to make it look as real as possible. After I finished, I felt it looked real but not real enough. I changed my goal to make it look a little abstract. I opened the file in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and added a plastic wrap filter.

Here are some other examples...