- The small Panavise that is simply awesome. I don't understand why they don't recommend these anywhere. Here it's about 40 EUR, but it's well worth it.
- A new soldering iron. I got a fairly cheap Velleman to replace my old iron. Works well but the stand is pretty useless and it doesn't come with a sponge.
- Some soder-wick and obviously some nice, thin lead-free solder
- #8 (50mm) torx. This will be your new best friend if you work a lot with Apple laptops. I got a Velleman which was cheap (3 EUR) and came pre-magnetized.
If you haven't soldered in a while (or ever), there's
a really nice tutorial over at
Makezine.com as well as a primer on using a multimeter.
The plastic on these old G3 PowerBooks is pretty
brittle by now from all the heat and long age, so you
have to be extra careful! The problem turned out be a
cold solder joint on the power connector. Works just
fine now.
Working with hardware can be really rewarding - both
in terms of fun and money. It's nice to work on
something that you can actually touch, for a change.
Sad that, in the long run, PC hw hacking is kind
of a dying art because of all the crazy
integration going on. I would not have been able to
pull this off with a MacBook, I bet. That thing's
just one big (actually small) logic board on the
inside. So it's nice that there's still things like
the Makezine.
My next hardware project's going to be building a RS
232 to USB adapter + some logging software for my
trusty and obsolete Protek 506.
- Define a shortcut for Power Search. System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Shortcuts > iTunes > Search… I set mine to Cmd -F (odd that that doesn't focus on the search field, by default)
- Wishlists. Just create a playlist and drag stuff from the store to it. Only works with individual tracks, sadly
- Don't forget to de-authorize computer before formatting the HD. It's OK if you restore from a complete backup (including the stuff under /Volumes).
- Use the Browse command (Cmd-B)
If the Mac was so great, why did it lose? Cost, again. Microsoft concentrated on the software business and unleashed a swarm of cheap component suppliers on Apple hardware. It did not help, either that suits took over during a critical period. (And it hasn't lost yet. If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.)
Excerpt taken from Paul Graham's excellent Hackers & Painters, published in 2004.
One thing I think could work better is the Taste-o-meter. It seems it's also the basis of the Neighbours feature. It could be a little smarter - instead of just counting the artists two users have in common, it could compare the relative "rareness" of that particular artist. Everyone listens to Foo Fighters or Tool or DJ Shadow or whatnot but that doesn't mean they actually have anything else in common. This creates the anomaly where someone with 40 000 played tracks is suddenly neighbours with everyone. Now if two people both listen to an obscure Finnish accordion-jazz ensemble, the chances are, they have a lot more in common as well and that they should definitely check out what other tracks they've played.
I thought this idea was pretty cool so I sent it in to last.fm but they never even acknowledged it, so I thought I'd stick it up here instead of just having it vanish into the ether.
The mobile phone market - 952 million units. Yeah,
but how many of those were actually smartphones? Hard
to find any exact evidence, but Symbian reports shipping 37 mil
units in 2006 and they're almost 73 % of the whole
smartphone market. In other words, smartphones
sell waaay less than digital cameras. Frankly, I'm
quite surprised they'd let this kind of bug slip
into the Keynote.
CalDAV support. One of the biggest reasons why
companies buy expensive Nokia Communicators with even
more expensive Exchange servers is they provide an
end-to-end "cross platform" solution. OK, you can
make Exchange email work over IMAP, but what about
collaborative services, ie calendards? Apple's
planning to put CalDAV support into Leopard server,
but to this day thre's not a single CalDAV client for
mobiles out there. Would've been nice if he'd touch
on this subject, or at least showed a glimpse of the
client running.
Good show otherwise. Apple TV looks really cool too.
Thinking of buying one just for the sake of trying to
make it work without iTunes (although I'm sure
someone will have had it figured out by the end of
this week).
One things's for sure - WWDC's gonna be awesome!
However, I found the Chrysler ad they run before
this story on time.com to be a little umm...
conflicting?
I have a fairly sarcastic sense of humour, but
even I don't get it. Are we or aren't we? Would be
kind of a downer if they ran that after the
story.
There's actually all sorts of goodies on their site. Like this Dashboard Widget that shows you how much music business there's out there or the realtime metrics visualizations. Plus, they look cool too!
> priceOfMembership=99
> priceOfHardware=1408
> newPriceOfHardware=1275
> echo 'Total discount: ' $(($priceOfHardware-$newPriceOfHardware-$priceOfMembership)) 'EUR (' $(($newPriceOfHardware/$priceOfHardware*100)) '% )'
Total discount: 34 EUR ( 0 % )
The percentage is 0 because Bash's arithmetic's only deal with integer values (it's actually about 10%), but it may as well be, because you should also factor in the 30 min on the phone. From some online reports, you get the impression that the discount should be around 20 %. Is Apple discriminating it's European customers... again? It's bad enough they don't state the discount percentage in advance.
I'm having a hard time hiding my disappointment. All the hassle of getting the school papers, faxing them in, solving problems (it took more than 2 weeks for my student status to be verified, finally was able to get the student certificate in through email thanks to the helpful people at ADC, kudos to them) and waiting on the phone for 34 EUR? I understand that it's more useful when you buy something really expensive, but you'd think that student members aren't necessarily the ones driving those shiny Mac Pros or even MBP-s. Most of them can't even afford a Mac at all!!!
This was the first time I ever bought an ADC product. May very well be the last as well.
Genealogy could be fun and educating at the same time. So I thought why not throw something together myself (having had some data modelling experience at school). The XCode project was called "Sugupuu" (Estonian for "family tree"). The model part was easy thanks to Core Data (you only really need one entity and a recursive relationship to get started), but the undertaking ground to a halt because of my lack of graphics programming experience. Life went on and the whole idea quietly faded into the background.
And then a few days ago it hit me - why not do the same thing, only for the web - as a nice Web.2 app. It would be heaps more useful like this as well! So I got back on it - first ported the data model to MySQL - which quickly turned out to be a dead end (flat tables != good for trees). Then I moved to a completely XML-based model
XML makes me want to smoke crack. On the one hand it's this wonderful, easy-to-use and approachable grammar that gets you high on thinking you can describe anything, but when you really get down to it, you notice that that's all it is - a grammar. Most practical "standards" just frustrate the heck out of you. XSLT is a perfect example - turning XML into an XHTML document - everything sort of works until you (for example) start using JavaScript. DTD's are awful and Schema, for all my purposes, total overkill. And then come the browser incompatibilities...
SVG is another one - looks fantastic on paper (still rooting for as the "swf killer"), has been "around" for quite a while, yet you still need an ancient discontinued plugin to take advantage of some of it's nicer features. Lame. It seems wherever you look in the XML-space you always wind up with weird and undocumented behaviour.
RSS is a nice exception to this - an XML application that's truly easy to use and behaves like you would expect it to. Maybe that's one of the reason's it's become so popular too (it's actually usable!).
If I had to make a list of technologies I've wasted the most time fussing with, XML would probably take the cake. Only to eventually switch to something else, or drop the project completely.
The problem is, I really like this idea of a Web.2 genealogy app, so I'm not giving up. I sincerely hope this doesn't turn into vaporware...
Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone). We've gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more.
I think this is a terrific idea. In this broadband world it's easy to assume that everyone knows exactly what to download and where, but it's not the case. At our school, there's plenty of people who don't have broadband access so burning something like this at school to install at home would be extremely useful.
No, wait, that can't be right. That little icon looks
just like:
...THE FRIGGIN WORKGROUP MANAGER ICON! And it doesn't just look like it - it is the same one. Converted to GIF and different filename. What the hell is wrong with M$?! I just can't understand why they still can't hire decent designers. You can get a fantastic icon set for less than 50 USD!!! I'm sure this is just another silly mishap, but given the company's track record in "such things", it's kind of a touchy subject. But maybe some people will never learn...
"In order for the Mac Pro to maintain a safe operating temperature of the FB-DIMMs, the AMBs for each FB-DIMM must provide a functional temperature sensor."
This is thanks to the SPD (Serial Presence Detect) chip that's on every DIMM that also supports the I2C protocol.
Second, the Mac Pro will spin up it's fans to maximum rev if it can't find the sensor:
"The Mac Pro will run the fans at full speed when detecting FB-DIMM's without a functional temperature sensor, which will maximize cooling on the FB-DIMM's."
My next plan was to build a knowledge base application. This was born out of a practical need for documenting experiences in the service shop I used to work for. The idea was great - make a Core Data -based app with an iTunes/Outlook Express-like UI that'd make entering information really simple and fast. Add tag support for indexing and automatic categorisation and a little check-box in the preferences that would allow you to share your knowledge to the local sub-net. And then I discovered Yojimbo. It's basically the same thing sans the sharing and cataloguing. Since I had already started to work on this, I decided to keep going and concentrate on the theory part. The subject is quite interesting and while there's a lot of info out there on ontologies, little (or actually none at all) practical P2P examples/applications exist. But then my greatest fear realised - I got bored. Being a geek, I'm used to and enjoy building things. I can't sit behind a paper for days and just write specs and explanations, knowing that this will all only work on paper... So I sent them my ideas and BareBones was kind enough to answer and analyse my ideas and give some insight into their design decisions. Thanks!
So I changed the topic once again. The working title is "Anatomy of Digital Video". It's a handbook for anyone dealing with the inner workings of video and file formats and I think it's pretty good and useful. I hope it was a good move - if nothing else, I've been able to write 10 pages in the first week, which is twice as much as I was able to conjure up in 6 months with my previous topic. There will also be a practical side to this. A QuickTime -based playback app that does playlists, batch-encoding and subtitles.
And the moral of all of this? Long-term projects are hard, especially for a "starter" like myself. Working alone certainly has it's merits, but it can also be very stressful and error-prone. If you do (or have to) take on a big project yourself, by all means, do it, but try to "keep it interesting" for yourself. Trust your instincts - if you feel that the topic is "hot", get a prototype out as fast as possible. Concentrate on the core idea and leave all the polish for a later time. Document as you go.
I was of course a little surprised. We have 3 Macs + 1 Debian box in our home network, none of which, I'm pretty sure, are spamming. But then it hit me. Because the IOXperts driver/old Orinoco card combo in my sister's Lombard PB doesn't support WPA, and WEP is pointless, I decided to just leave the wireless open. I called the network OpenWiFi and promised myself I'd keep an eye out for any suspicious activity, which of course I forgot to do and I guess this was the result.
Well, MAC ACLs are now in place. What's interesting is that we had just been discussing this over at #afp548 and so it turns out that some ISPs are in fact cutting spammers off. Nice, but it sure doesn't feel so when you're on the receiving end of it...
* Webpages. Painful to access links.
* IRC. Can't open links either.
I think LaTeX is mostly useful in two situations:
* You have to write a lot of math equations
* Your language can be written in 7-bit ASCII and you have someone else to do the layouts for you (like in books etc)
Why LaTeX is NOT suited for 99,9% of users:
* It's difficult and there's a ton of useless crap you have to remember to do. Want to add an image? Know which package to use? No?, too bad. With all due respect, this isn't 1978 anymore!
* There's no concept of a page. Say you're given a task to write a 5 page report. How long is that in BBEdit or TextMate?
* It basically has no concept of non-ASCII characters. Even with extended ASCII you have to import extra packages and write "ä" as "\"a" (or something else equally nonsensical
* Document exchange - to share a document with "the rest of the world" you have to export. Sure, LaTeX will have exporters to a bazillion different formats, but it's extremely tedious.Why not just write it as RTF in the first place? RTF syntax looks pretty much like TeX anyways.
* Separation of layout from content? Have you seen an even slightly more elaborate TeX document? There's style declarations all over the place! The only difference is the syntax is so insane you can't tell structure and style apart!
* What's all this "LaTeX output looks so beautiful - nonsense?" It's ASCII! It looks consistent! And that's because you can't experiment too much simply because it's just too damn difficult (to write AND preview) And let's be honest, if you keep changing fonts and spacings all over your document with Word (or whatever), then you simply have no sense of style and you shouldn't blame the tool. And I can concentrate on the content using Pages or TextEdit just as much and even more because I don't have to worry about if this is going to compile or not.
* The MacTeX distribution is more than 800MB (uncompressed) long!!! That's almost as big as Pages 2!!!
I almost fell into this "LaTeX lunacy" myself though. I think what happens is that if you invest enough effort into anything (like hours trying to understand how to create a table!) and you read all these wonderful things others are saying about it, that thing naturally will become very dear to you. It's basic human nature. Luckily, I was able to escape it.
Some things are hard to understand because they are inherently complex and you spend time learning them. Text editing should not be one of those things!!! I agree that there's a need for a text-based format that would work on any platform but it should also be easy to author. Anyone got any suggestions? DocBook seems kind of bloated.
scalable |ˈskāləbəl| |ˌskeɪləbəl| |ˌskeɪləb(ə)l|adjective1 able to be scaled or climbed.2 able to be changed in size or scale : scalable fonts.• (of a computing process) able to be used or produced in a range of capabilities : it is scalable across a range of systems.3 technical able to be measured or graded according to a scale.
It's becoming harder and harder to find a completely non-scalable tool. But let's use iMovie, for example. You start off at a certain level and you pretty much stay there no matter how much edit. You may become a better editor and use the software much faster, but the amount of things you can do with it - your creative options - remain pretty much constant.
QuickTime Player is a scalable tool. You start off with just a basic multimedia player, then let's say you want to rearrange a piece of video, or create a longer one out of many separate files. You can still use the same tool only you have to look it up how to do it. In other words, it grows with yout.
When I discovered LaTEX, I thought it was a the ultimate scalable typesetting system. You start off with a couple of basic commands and keywords (\documentclass, \begin{document}\section, etc) and learn more as your needs progress. There's very little overhead, as opposed to HTML. Then you want to add a table (the most abused data structure of the information age) - you whip out the manual, find the right commands and then spend the next two days wondering why the TEX file won't compile (something about ! Extra alignment tab has been changed to \cr.) What happened? The tool doesn't scale linearly.
So what I suggest is that, because all tools are becoming so versatile, we should stop talking about "scalability" in general and actually try and graph it. Because that's what it is, and I'm not talking about the learning curve. The scalability curve should tell us how much time it takes to fully realize the potential of any given tool.
And then there's of course the user element. It's amazing how things may start scaling in the hands of talented people. Is IRC scalable? I guess so (ie how many networks and servers you may have and what you can actually do with it), but then you see a presentation by Toni Alatalo, the TD of Elephants Dream and find out they used IRC to control their render farm.
The animation style itself was quite different from Pixar's though. Using much more mocap whereas Pixar's stuff is still a great deal hand-animated.
The mocap worked really well here because it didn't try to match human movement down to the slightest detail, choosing a more stopmotion-style instead. I've always thought of 3D CG as the next generation of stopmotion/puppeteering so I think it's a really good way to go.
I also liked the rendering style - the GI again reinforced the "stopmotion" feel.
Got to try the Wii controller which I must say felt quite odd and nonsensical. Probably one of those things that a "non-gamer" will just
pick up on the fly, but takes some time for an old gamer to adjust to (like going from Mac to Windows, or vice versa). It was more fun look at other people using it than actually using it myself. The good news are ofcourse that it can use the GameCube controller and the price.
The graphics were a little troubling. From the
titles they had there right now (the new Zelda,
Metroid, some driving game and a bunch of tech demos)
it really looks like GameCube 1.5. I know that you
should never judge the potential of a device by it's
first titles but if you look back, "next gen" has
always look like it too (compare going from SNES to
N64 or any other transition).
The PS3 is a perfect example of this. Even a Nintendo
fanboy like myself, I must say I was more impressed
by the PS3's visuals than the Wii controller. They
had 4 demo units, 3 of them running at 720p and one
1080p and it did look quite stunning. The games were
Lair, two obscure driving games and a shoot-em-up.
You could really see that the PS3 camp's behind by
the quality of the games though - for example the
physics and handling on both of the driving games was
practically non-existant.
All this HD glory will come at price, ofcourse. Not
only will we have to dish out close to 700 EUR for
the PS3, but keep in mind you also need an HD screen
to take real advantage of it. And those start at
around 1 000 EUR (?).
The XBox 360 was the most polished of them all
(obviously) and they had a lot of them out there. Got
to try NFS Carbon, which although undeniable
impressive in HD, didn't feel that much greater than
NFS MW running on the GameCube. In fact the sense of
speed is even better IMHO on the GC, but that
might've been because I had a crummy car. :)
Gears of War looked impressive. It's nice to see how
console makers have finally really figured out it's
all about the content. The games are the reason
people buy a console (and maybe the BluRay player in
case of the PS3) and so all of the platforms now have
their exclusive hit-games that aren't ported to a
competing platform. The result? I think more and more
people will just end up buying more than one console.
Oh, just for the record. I did buy something!
For future reference
Some words about the AV production. The whole show was done with 3 cameras + projector feed. In the main hall, we had everything running into preview monitors and a video mixer that was connected to a little JVC MiniDV cam for passthrough digitizing. That was then fed into a G5 running Wirecast which had two inputs (video from cam + still for fades) and two outputs: streaming (MP4 and raw DV (with AAC audio, wrapped in a MOV file)) the streaming was handled by Darwin Streaming Server, I still don't know what connection we were on.
Wirecast worked pretty well. I really like that you can define as much IO as you want. It did crash a few times and I think it's way overpriced (470 EUR), I'm pretty sure someone will come along soon and create something similar for far less money (eg next version of QT Broadcaster), 50 EUR would be OK.
For audio we had two mics in the main hall + presentation PC sound between which I tried to mix desperately (keeping all of them on would've been too noisy). Sound is hard in these little venues because there's little motivation for speakers to really make an effort and speak into the mic.
In the smaller room I just shot everything as DV (would HDV've made a difference?) off the screen with the Sony HVR A1E and recorded as much as possible onto a FireStore FS4 (I think this is the way to go for capturing, a bit too pricy at the moment though). The sound situtation was a little better here since we just had a lapell mic attached to the speaker and the onboard cam mic for ambient and questions. The FS-4 holds 3 hours of material which made timing difficult. Most of the sessions just ran back-to-back so I had no time to offload the material. This meant going to tape and that's a nightmare because you have to switch tapes (not fun with a bottom-loader sitting on a tripod with several addons in a room where you can hardly turn around).
The final compression workflow was kind of a positive surprise. We ended up using VLC's Streaming/Transcoding Wizard which, considering the circumstances, did a splending job. The main drawbacks were no scaling/cropping controls or exact choice for compression parameters.
There's a pretty big feature gap in VLC - it doesn't seem to support QuickTime reference movies. My plan was to store some of the shorter presentations as one big file and just create refs from each one and encode those into separate files but it didn't work. I think this could be a nice carrot for some VLC dev out there.
Finally Marco used rsync to send everything to the Blender Foundation server. I'm still in the final phases of getting the 3rd day and second room stuff online.
Some things that could've done better/differently:
- Wireless mics for all the speakers. Many engineers like to use their hands also away from the podium.
- Better room organization. Some really popular sessions were unfortunately put in the smaller room. It was also obvious that BC will need a bigger venue next time.
- Video metadata. I didn't have time to properly tag the MOV files before compression. VLC will preserve any MOV annotation you've added when going go MP4. Loggging in general was pretty hard because of the tight schedule.
- Nicer graphics. I assumed we'd have some readymade bitmaps to cut to during breaks/before a session etc, but I was wrong. To take the guesswork out, just bring your own graphics and make it general enough for them to work as titles as well (ie don't use "we'll be right back...").
- NO tape. Shooting to tape in these situations is pretty pointless. Sessions are always longer than 60 min and there's alot of them. A nice 120 gig FireStore would be wonderful next time.
- Better compression. Screencasts compress very differently from live action so it's hard to find a codec that would do both perfectly (there are many lossless ones that are, but I mean online distribution). H.264 and multipass encoding will be the way to go next time (?)). The quality in general is pretty good, but a little too soft for the screencasts.
- Proper image ratios. Something went wrong with those.
- A solid naming scheme. I had thought of one but it fell apart (no index). Here's one for next year: bc07-2014130-name.mp4 (dd:hh:mm-name)
- Lower thirds for download versions (so people know who's talking and what the subject is).
passwd username
Silly that Solaris comes with root enabled. And then says setting a password is *optional* (I thought it meant not enabling the account at all). Solaris is weird (and not very pretty either).
- A Scanner Darkly
- The Science of Sleep
- Art School Confidential
- Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
- Tonari no Totoro
For reference, here's my PowerBook CineBench 9.5 results:
Processor : 1,5Ghz PB G4 1,25GB RAM
MHz : 1500
Number of CPUs : 1
Operating System : 10.4.7
Graphics Card : GeForce FX Go5200
Resolution : 1024x768
Color Depth : 24bit
****************************************************
Rendering (Single CPU): 152 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): --- CB-CPU
Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 161 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 485 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 1015 CB-GFX
OpenGL Speedup: 6.32
****
Next we have the 1x1GB config 2.0 Ghz MacBook:
Processor : MB 2GHz 1x1GB
MHz : 2000
Number of CPUs : 2
Operating System : 10.4.6
Graphics Card : Intel GMA950
Resolution : 1280x800
Color Depth : 24bit
****************************************************
Rendering (Single CPU): 307 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 582 CB-CPU
Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.89
Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 336 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1068 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 969 CB-GFX
OpenGL Speedup: 3.18
****************************************************
I'll post the 2x512 Results soon...
The movie
First, the bad. Not all movies need a script to work but most do and that includes this one. At times it felt like the only thing keeping the story together was the fact that the characters were heading somewhere. You can also tell the absence of a script by the ending which in this case is very abrupt.
I think the random choice for a name is a bit sad and it just shows that the story wasn't really planned ahead. I can appreciate the fact that "Elephants Dream" isn't just another plot-driven "cartoon", but animation is a time-based art form and so it needs some kind of progression and a at least a hint of logic.
The voice-overs didn't do the rest of the movie justice and they are the biggest problem I have with the production. The acting seemed over-done and very fake. It was also too fast and difficult to follow. This "rushing" of things is I think a common "mistake" in first short films because you feel like there's not enough time to tell everything. The reality is quite the opposite and You'll notice that the best short films feel very "long" because they're "slow". Perception of time is totally subjective.
At times it was difficult to distinguish the main characters - it seemed as if they were acted out by the same person. I found Emo's voice irritating, almost as much as Proog's habit of mentioning his name in each sentence. Voices should give us hints into a characters soul and mentality which here are all over the map. We see Emo going from a timid boy to a crazed lunatic which makes zero sense. Proog sounds paranoid, which I guess is fitting.
The dialog in general I felt was mostly "filler" and did nothing for the story, at times feeling completely redundant - a lot of it could have been replaced with slower, expressive animation sequences (we can see hints that the artists could have pulled this off remarkably well), especially since the lip-sync, for the most part, didn't work.
Luckily the rest of the sound was brilliant - Jan Morgenstern, the composer and sound designer did a super job and deserves a standing ovation - it's not easy scoring a "scriptless" film. From the opening credits to the big finale, the score, sound effects and overall "soundscape" are very expressive and give a much-needed continuum to the whole story.
It's hard to critique the animation. On its own, it's stellar - there are some absolutely stunning scenes here, with the elevator scene with it's breathtaking culmination probably being my (and probably many others') favourite. Some very talented and dedicated artists worked on this, and it shows.
It's interesting that they managed to keep the animation relatively fluid and cohesive with each artist still having his own style. The art direction deserves credit for the consistantly captivating look of the film and the director for pulling everything together (although I have a feeling there was no strict division of tasks). However if you look at the animation in the context of a story, it becomes just a very well-executed series of movements and events. Overall, the animation was very nice which is just overshadowed by the voice-overs and script. I felt that, unlike the voices, the animation was also pretty well timed in each scene.
The modeling was intricate and imaginative and I can't wait to sink my (baby) teeth into the blend files.
I enjoyed the camerawork - the team managed to avoid the typical high speed zoom (except in the elevator scene, were it worked very well!) and DOF gimmicks. There are some really neat camera angles here which of course is one of the great benefits of 3D animation. I really liked the choice of wideangle shots towards the end. Would have like to maybe see more close-ups of the characters, just to establish more of a connection between them and the viewer.
The DVD
The box design is acceptable for a practically non-profit (?) project. What's of course really important is what's inside it and this must be the best-featured DVD I've ever seen: separate region-free PAL and NTSC discs, an HD version of the movie as an AVI file in 3 resolutions, 4 commantary tracks (!), an in-depth making-of (although next, time, please use a lavalier mic, the big "newsmic" just looked amateurish), subtitles in 33 languages (including Estonian!), a blooper reel, professionaly authored menus and transitions and finally...
Blender
... every single asset used in the film available under a Creative Commons License!!! And I can't stress the last part enough. This is (to my knowledge) a historical first and a landmark for future projects. I can't even imagine what kind of impact this will have in adopting Blender in media schools worldwide - having this kind of material readily available will be a fantastic resource.
I'm really glad that this turned out to be so much more than a technology demo for Blender. Although it most certainly works as such too. We're at the stage in computer animation evolution, where the viewer must be pushed beyond the technology and I think it was also the case here.
It was really interesting to notice how the software was openly developed while in production and I guess that just illustrates the awesome power of the Open Source and Blender community (not to mention Ton Rosendaal!). I can also see how putting Blender into such a tight, demanding project probably helps to make it even better.
This movie project will turn a lot of heads and my only wish is that the makers will still keep in touch with the community once the 6-figure offers start pouring in from the big studios. I have a feeling they will.
A huge thanks to all the people involved! You're talent and dedication is nothing short of inspiring.
Esimene laks on muidugi loodus - see lööb pahviks ja siis piilud iga hommik hotelli aknast välja, et kontrollida, et
vaade ikka alles on.
Ööbisime Casino Park - nimelises hotellis mis näeb nii seest kui väljast välja nagu mingi vanakooli NSVL-i aegne jurakas (ja ilmselt seda ta ka on) - teenindus oli laitmatu ja paremat asukohta oleks raske olnud ette kujutada.
Loodus on täiesti kreisi. Kesmisele Õikal elavale eestlasele on maastikud ja floora kirevus täiesti jõhkralt äge elamus ja praegu Helsingi-Tallinn kivist laeva aknast halli merd ja taevast vaadates tahaks ilgelt tagasi....
Meil joppas ilgelt ilmaga - terve nädal oli mõnus, kergelt pilvine, 22-26 soojakraadi. Ka öösel võib linnas mõnuga plätudes ja t-särgis ringi kolistada. Funchalis kolistamisest - väga kaua üksinda öösel näiteks linna arvukates parkides hängida ei tasu - võib rahast ja hammastest ilma jääda (ise ei kogenud aga kohalikud narkarid ütlesid nii, ei hakand testima)
Tähtsad sõnad
Madeiral räägitakse portugali keeles, mis on sõnavaralt väga sarnane hispaania keelega aga kõlalt meenutab pigem läti keelt. Funchalis saab päris hästi hakkama ka inglise keeles, kaugemates kolgastes läheb natuke keerulisemaks.
Kõige tähtsam sõna ilmselt obrigado e. tänan. Kohvisõpradele kõige olulisemalt ilmselt chinesa (suur kohvi kuuma piimaga, mandril pidavat see veidral kombel tähendama "väikest Hiina tüdrukut") ja garruto. Turismibrošüüre lugedes jääb mulje nagu oleks kohalik köök maailmatu rikas - reaalsus on veidi puisem. Espada on sügavas meres elav meetri pikkuna must kala mille maitse on suht ....umm... maitsetu.Espetada pole tegelikult midagi muud kui mõõdukalt maitsestatud šašlokk ega erine oluliselt mida kuskil Tallinnas leida võiks.
Joogid
Millest ilmselt kuulsaim Madeira vein. Esimene reaktsioon - peet. Peale pikemat maitsmist hakkas aga meeldima - eriti just poolkuiv (järelmaitse mõnusalt pähkline!) Kohalikku veini müüakse kõikjal, eri vanuse, maitse ja loomulikult hinnaga. Poncha on meremeeste oma peamiselt suhkrurooviinast, sidrunimahlast ja meest kokku segatud magus jook - võibolla mitte kõigi maitsele aga mulle meeldis. Vanasõna, et peale kolmandat ponchat oskad portugali keelt rääkida ei pea kahjuks paika (testitud).
Kuhu minna, mida teha
Enamus ajast kulub ilmselt looduse imetlemisele. Ringi võib loomulikult jala liikuda aga mäed on sedavõrd järsud ja saar suur, et soovitaks kindlasti mõne kohaliku taksojuhiga terveks päevaks diil teha (hinnad ca 90 - 100 EUR, Monumental Lido, küsige Jose Luis'i), või vähemalt turismibussiga saarel üks pikem tiir teha. Levadadel (niisutuskanalid) jalutamine on kah tegelt tore, ehkki üsna levinud matkaviis. KINDLASTI peaks käima 1860 meetri kõrgusel.
... panen varsti pildid kah üles