For those interested, when I do the watermarks on the images in this blog, I’m using
phatch. It’s a great piece of software for doing stuff like this in batches.
phatch
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Category Archives: computers
motion capture cheap…
http://freemotionfiles.blogspot.com/2009/06/cheap-motion-capture-with-free-software.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22cheap+motion+capture%22&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us&sa=2
Yes, Chris, and anyone else who cares to read this. I did post this and the last few posts. This is NOT a robot. I usually bookmark this sort of stuff with del.icio.us but since I don’t have the toolbar for that installed on this computer, I’m just posting it the stuff here…
Believe it or not (yes, you probably do believe since I”m a bit nutty sometimes), I had a jogging suit with pom poms sewed on way back 6 or so years ago when I wanted to get in to this d-sculptor, imodeler, and greenscreen junk. However, way back then the computers I was using were way too slow to do much… Aura 1 used to be in Newtek’s ftp site for free. Not sure if it still is. Newtek is the company that makes Lightwave 3d… There was some sort of a pixel tracking thing in aura that could be exported to lightwave… so you could record motion and create paths for it in 3d. Now that I’m starting to get back in to 3d and stuff mentally, a lot of this old knowledge is starting to flood back in to my brain… interesting stuff.
I have a couple of 1000 watt spotlights that are typically used for construction jobs in my basement. I was going to use them to make a homebrew photo studio, or greenscreen studio a few years back. Not sure if I will do that or not… never used the lights yet since I’m not sure how safe they are (warning label on the side of the box talks about lead)…
I might use them to set up as cheap homebrew strobes to shoot my portfolio in the basement someday.
Need to clean out the basement someday before all of that can ever happen though, or before I can convert the basement in to a descent painting studio like I envision it to eventually be… (assuming I can find some way to ventilate it).
It’s still got quite a few things in it that is a bit unorganized from last year, when mother-in-law moved and father-in-law passed away, and we inherited quite a bunch of odds and ends that are now in storage in the basment…
computers are a pain…
Computers are a major hassle for us creative types. I’ve spent the last 48 hours or so doing a re-install of the operating system, a bunch of software, and on another computer making lots of backups of some dvds and cds with lots of creative works, both 3-dimensional and 2-dimensional from about the last 10 years!… electronic forms of communication are cool, but it’s awful that you can loose it all in the blink of an eye if any hardware goes bad. Backups are something you need to do, but they can be a major hassle that takes hours to do the more stuff you get over the years. Back is hurting from sitting here so long. Neck and shoulders are too since computer is not really at an ergonomic height for keyboard and mouse…
Does anyone know if a cheap midi-usb adapter works in making a music keyboard work with a computer that has no pci slots? Thinking about getting back in to doing a few musical things and having the power to do both midi as well as audio files would be helpful.
SatelliteGuys: What does this mean for @DISHNetwork customers? Discuss it at http://tinyurl.com/ykfyngh
SatelliteGuys: What does this mean for @DISHNetwork customers? Discuss it at http://tinyurl.com/ykfyngh http://bit.ly/d2lwXm
TiVo Statement on Decision by U.S. Court of Appeals in Lawsuit Against EchoStar
ALVISO, CA — 03/04/10 — TiVo Inc., the creator of and a leader in television services and advertising solutions for digital video recorders (DVRs), offered the following statement today on the U.S. Court of Appeals decision to [ruling] in lawsuit against EchoStar.
“We are pleased that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit fully affirmed the district court’s finding of contempt against EchoStar, including both the disablement and infringement provisions. Additionally, this ruling paves the way for TiVo to receive the approximately $300M in damages and contempt sanctions awarded to us for EchoStar’s continued infringement through July 1, 2009. We will also seek further damages and contempt sanctions for the period of continued infringement thereafter. We will continue our efforts to protect our intellectual property from further infringement.”
About TiVo Inc.
Founded in 1997, TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO) developed the first commercially available digital video recorder (DVR). TiVo offers the TiVo service and TiVo DVRs directly to consumers online at http://www.tivo.com and through third-party retailers. TiVo also distributes its technology and services through solutions tailored for cable, satellite, and broadcasting companies. Since its founding, TiVo has evolved into the ultimate single solution media center by combining its patented DVR technologies and universal cable box capabilities with the ability to aggregate, search, and deliver millions of pieces of broadband, cable, and broadcast content directly to the television. An economical, one-stop-shop for in-home entertainment, TiVo’s intuitive functionality and ease of use puts viewers in control by enabling them to effortlessly navigate the best digital entertainment content available through one box, with one remote, and one user interface, delivering the most dynamic user experience on the market today. TiVo also continues to weave itself into the fabric of the media industry by providing interactive advertising solutions and audience research and measurement ratings services to the television industry. http://www.tivo.comTiVo, ‘TiVo, TV your way.’, Season Pass, WishList, TiVoToGo, Stop||Watch, Power||Watch, and the TiVo Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of TiVo Inc. or its subsidiaries worldwide. © 2010 TiVo Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Prizes worth €20,000 up for grabs at this year’s invaZion 2010
PRESS RELEASE
Brühl, Germany, March1st, 2010: One of the most prestigious competitions for creative film makers and with a top Hollywood jury, is hotting up. The invaZion 3-D Short Film Challenge (www.invazion.org ) is taking place for a second time…
http://bit.ly/bR9jlh
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3d Short Film Items on Amazon
Studio Tip – Get Rechargable Batteries – And use them!… Also get organized…
If you have a digital camera, mp3 player, voice recorder, or even a cell phone, you probably already realize how important it is to have batteries that work on hand at all times. If you ever get in to creating stock photos or just using a digital camera or video recorder to give you source material to work with in whatever form of art you work with, this becomes even more important.
I can’t tell you how many times when shooting digital stock photos that I was out clicking away with a camera in a park or downtown somewhere and the camera I had on hand quit working because I ran out of battery power. That is a huge annoyance, especially if you like shooting clouds like I do, and you are in a time when the sun is either rising or setting, so each second lost that you did not get a shot of is gone forever because the clouds shift on you constantly and/or the “magic hour” changes dramatically as your big lightsource, the sun, is moving quickly under or over the horizon. “Magic Hour” really is not an hour. Twilight hours of sunset can cause dramatic changes in the light and way that things look on the horizon, and everywhere else outside in literal minutes or seconds.
My advice is that you have a lot of rechargeable batteries on hand and a couple of rechargers for them, and use the rechargers often. Some people say that rechargeable batteries have some sort of memory thing in them and remember how long each recharge took, so it’s bad to put the batteries in to the recharger before the battery is completely worn down. For some batteries, that may be true, but for most regular AA and AAA rechargable batteries, I don’t think that’s really quite the truth. I typically recharge my batteries when the camera shows that they are about down to one quarter power and have never really had a lot of problems. Of course, I am constantly recharging some batteries, so it’s hard for me to tell if that is an issue…
I have two rechargers. One of them holds a lot of batteries and I keep it at home, the other only holds four batteries, but it has a plug in that folds down. I keep that one in my camera bag, and carry it with my camera so that I can plug in at any time, anywhere. The bigger recharger is too large to do that with. However, I keep the bigger recharger full a lot of times and rotate out batteries from there often. I basically try to keep a handful of batteries charged at all times. If some of the the batteries sit unused for a few weeks, I go ahead and recharge the pile anyways so that they are ready when I need them.
Storing a bunch of batteries in a camera bag is a major pain, especially since most of the time, when you buy batteries they come in boxes that are meant to be thrown away after being open. For storage at home, I keep the clear plastic part of the boxes that the batteries came in, and might cut that down to size, and fit it inside of a Altoids box. Those little metal boxes that Altoids come in make fine battery holders since they are just big enough to hold a few AA or AAA batteries and still allow the lid to close. You would think the metal boxes would shock me since I’m putting batteries in them, but so far, I’ve never had any shocks or anything, so I guess the paint or ink they use on the box must not conduct electricity. Even if it does, I’m putting plastic liners from the boxes the batteries came in between the actual battery itself and the metal of the box, so that makes it all work well. To keep the Altoid boxes closed, I simply rubber band them shut.
I used to keep at least one of those Altoid boxes in my camera bag, but lately, I’ve gone to not keeping those in the camera bag since they are a bit of a hassle to mess with out in the field, especially as the rubber bands age, get weaker, and break, leaving the batteries to roam free in the camera bag, where all sorts of potential problems could happen if the acid ever did leak…
Now, in the camera bag, I keep the two batteries in the camera that the camera requires, and keep two batteries in each of the two voice recorders I carry in the bag, for a total of four spare batteries, or two battery swaps between the voice recorders and the camera in case the camera battery charge runs down. I find this ideal since the batteries are stored nicely away in the recorders, and if I do feel the need to use the recorder to record my own voice for notes or just feel like recording something out and about, like a bird chirping, a motorcycle whizzing by me, or whatever, I can just pop out the recorder and it’s ready to go. The reason I have two recorders is that I bought one, thought I lost it, bought a second one, and then a few months later, discovered where I had put the first one… It’s funny how that happens sometimes with little gizmos and gadgets.
If you don’t have a vocie recorder, but have some other tiny gadget that uses the same sort of battery as your camera, you might look in to getting something like that to hold your batteries so that you don’t risk having the batteries just jubmled in the camera bag or case, ready to give some nice acid burns to your camera or whatever else is in there. I’ve only seen a battery leave an acid burn on something one time – it was an old plastic mug that I used to store non-rechargeable batteries in many years ago before I started using rechargeable batteries. The marks it left as the acid dug in to the plastic of the cup were horrible looking. It’d really suck to see something like that happen to a digital camera.
Other things I keep in the camera bag other than the camera, the voice recorders, and the little battery recharger are the top part of a big tripod that actually attaches to the bottom of the camera, and a mini-tripod. I also keep a couple of thumb drives and spare digital camera chips in there to make it easy to store things. The thumb drives are attached via a little stretcy cord that the casino gives out with it’s cards for people to use to remember to not leave their casino cards in the slot machines. I like that because it keeps me from loosing the thumb drives as they are attached to the camera case.
I actually have 3 camera cases. The first one is a little one that holds my little bitty camera itself and came with the camera. It’s very flimsy, but I keep it on there to cover the lens. I put the camera and that little case in to the second case, which is a big bigger and is what I mainly use to carry the camera around my neck when out and about. The third is a Polaroid camera case that I keep the other case in. I use it because it’s big enough to hold the littler case and a few other odds and ends – the tripod top and voice recorders, mentioned above.
I have an entirely seperate bag that I use to keep color pencils and sketch books in the car. At one point in time, I tried to avoid using the Polaroid case, and just put the little camera case in that bag, but that got to be too much of a hassle. Now I just leave the color pencil and sketchbook bag in the back seat of the car, and take the Camera in and out of the car, and with me wherever I go so that it’s handy, and does not get left in the car during hot/cold temperatures that could damage the electronic equipment inside.
At home I have a few toolboxes that I use to keep other things around the house/studio organized. I love the big tool boxes with different slots in them – nice way to organize pastels, pencils, ink pens, etc.
When I was in college, I used to haul a lot of big sketch pads, drawings, and some paintings in a plastic portfolio that I carried around campus to class. That was a major hassle since the classes were in various buildings scattered around campus and my apartment was several blocks away. Carrying big portolios is a tough enough job by itself since they are big and bulky… That only gets worse as you get more and more things in there to carry. You would think paper, being as thin as it is would not be heavy in big bulks, but you would be wrong… especially on humid days when the paper absorbs a lot of moisture just to make itself heavier for you. To make that walking around campus more handy, I ended up taking a duffel bag strap and attaching it to the portfolio handles. That made it much easier to handle the bag and still carry other things like books that I needed to take to class. I have NO idea why porfolio making companies have not made it an industry standard to put shoulder straps on portfolios yet. It’s something that really is needed to help make it easier for all those art students and aspiring artists everywhere be able to carry their stuff. Some Art Directors might like the neat little polished look of the little bitty handles on portolios, but I suspect that they would like the portfolios a lot more if the artists were more comfortable actually walking around with the portfolios so that they could bring them in more often, and have a descent amount of work in the portfolio to show off. I know a lot of artists aching backs and shoulders would be thankful if big art portfolio started getting made with shoulder straps.
Getting organized, and able to transport your art making supplies, is one key to creating great art. A tool such as a camera, voice recorder, pastel, conte crayon, paintbrush, or color pencil is not very useable if it’s buried in the back of a closet in a box underneath of a lot of other things. Each individual artist has to come up with their own organizational strategy that fits their own personalities and needs. If you are not organized yet, you might look at ways that you can start getting that way in the near future. It really can help you be creative when you have tools that are handy that you can grab any time and just start using. Digging around for stuff is a major hassle.
N122OU Scanner Problem…
Has anyone found a way to get a Canoscan N1220U Scanner to work under Windows Vista yet? I’ve been trying various google searches for this and am seeing websites and forum info on it that says that there is a fix in the works, but no actual fix yet. Surely there is some way to make this work… If nothing else, maybe there’s a way to get cygwin to do it with some linux driver or something. I would have tried XP or 98 under Virtual Box or some other virtual solution, but I don’t think that sort of thing is workable since usb connections on virtual stuff is pretty slow, and/or might not work at all?…. Need to get my scanner working so that I can actually try scanning some stuff small paintings, and sketchbook things…
=====EDIT=====
I have a found a temporary solution – I’ve hooked up my scanner to a second computer that is using XSane in Ubuntu Linux to do the scanning… but if you folks do find a solution to the Vista problem with this scanner, please do leave a comment with your solution, because I’m not sure this temporary fix is doable for the long term.
To Do list after installing Ubuntu…
http://theindexer.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/to-do-list-after-installing-ubuntu-904-aka-jaunty-jackalope/ – Nice list of stuff to install after you install ubuntu. It also works for Kubuntu if you ignore the stuff that is only relevant to gnome… installing gnome related stuff on Kubuntu can massively screw things up… computer system will still work, but may act bizzare or look very bizzare as gnome and kde are two very different things and some software that works on one does not always work on the other – or may work, but will call some functions and things that don’t exist on the other….
Long List of 3d and 2d editing software
This space will is reserved for a list of 3d and 2d editing software that I’ll drop in here in the near future, and/or build over time. I don’t have time to list it all right now, but am putting this here as a sort of reminder to myself to come back here later and add more. There’s tons of great 3d and 2d freeware and shareware out there as well as higher end stuff. I’ve played around with quite a bit of it and will post my comments on each one I have some experience with here.
…
Blender – http://www.blender.org/
Gimp –http://www.gimp.org/
Wings 3d – http://www.wings3d.com/
Project Dogwaffle http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/free/index.html
cinepaint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CinePaint
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_vector_graphics_editors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_modeling_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_raster_graphics_editors
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Multimedia_and_Graphics/Graphics_Editors/Wood_Workshop.html
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Shell_and_Desktop/Wallpaper_Tools/flooring_contractors.html
http://wareseeker.com/free-popular-seamless-texture-generator
http://www.brothersoft.com/texture-generator-download-283505.html
http://software.informer.com/getfree-how-to-create-seamless-brick-texture/
http://www.bricksntiles.com/download/
http://www.3d-rekonstruktionen.de/de/download/
I’ll add more to this list over time… You might want to book markt it! 🙂
=== note to self – http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=6717946#post6717946
Also add more like it.. other lists have been in various forums before.. but forums disappear over time. Blogs can too, but not as easily all the time.
Jeff Thomann's Blog 