SevenDead » people

Photo I posted over on Tumblr

Dave — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:42:21 +0000

Like the way this came out, wishing I would have posted it here, but brain was not fully engaged.

First attempt at organic modeling

Dave — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:22:00 +0000

This was modeled for school using Blender 2.5 (and some 2.49 here and there). I took a couple of passes at UV texturing and can not take credit for the image I finally used. Our instructor provided a great image to work from , but once he demo’d the creation of it I am confident I can replicate that process. There are some obvious flaws in this, (OMG the ears) but over all I am quite happy with it being a first attempt at Organic modeling of any kind. Props to our instructor for getting me out of my comfort zone.

Parking Fail

Dave — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:49:39 +0000

This person parks in the same spot every day. They also fail to get more than the trunk in the parking spot every day. Of course I could not resist tiltshifting it.

Firefox Plugins, My Must Haves

Dave — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:33:09 +0000

Firefox has a boatload of plugins. As with most open programs that support plugins, some rock and some are a complete waste of time. I’ve got a few that have stayed the test of time, getting installed on all my machines and are missed when I realize they are not there.

Delicious Bookmarks This is usually the first thing that gets installed, not much to say about it. Either you use Delicious or you don’t.

StumbleUpon I don’t do a lot of browsing (stumbling) with StumbleUpon, but I do use it to save things I would rather not clutter up Delicious with. Usually it is just an image or a site that I know I want to hang on to but do not want to be bothered with tagging the link when I save it. The other really nice feature is the thumbnail view of your saved sites. Great for a visual reminder without having to click through to see what the site is.

Shareaholic This is a fairly new addition to my Firefox toolbox. Joani turned me on to this and it comes in quite handy. Basically a super url sharing pluggin, the thing that gets the most traffic from me in it is bitly, but also facebook and twitter once in a while.

Firebug This one adds a whole suite of programming tools into Firefox, pretty much letting you edit or view code live in any web page. There are several addons to the plugin for specific situations like Drupal or additional resources like CodeBurner

ColorZilla An eyedropper plugin, it also adds some bonus features like page zooming.

Aviary I use this just for screen captures which i save locally, however there is a web based component to this as well. When right clicking in a web page you are given an option to capture the visible portion, a region, or the entire page.

Adblock Plus It is a fairly customizable add blocker. Nuff said.

Not so much anymore – BookBurro I used to really like this plugin, when browsing books on Amazon, it pops a little floater you can expand listing a bunch of other online book sellers and their price on the book you are looking at. This used to be a lot handier, however most of the sellers now already offer books through Amazon. So the lowest price on a used copy of the book is right there. I still check it from time to time, but it just isn’t as useful.

TiltShift, iPhone and a nice day

Dave — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:02:57 +0000

TwitSketch

Dave — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:34:30 +0000

My first post to the #twitsketch hash tag on twitter. Glen Southern came up with an idea on twitter to post an idea as inspiration for a daily doodle to twitter. Then folks who like to doodle run with the idea, post a scan or photo of their sketch to someplace like twitpic use the #twitsketch hash tag and everyone else gets a chance to see what came of it. He also popped up some forums for the “project” or group, whatever you wanna call it . TwitSketch

I loved the idea as a way to work on getting my creative juices flowing and finally doodled something that fit :)

Optimum Wound Comics

Dave — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:12:29 +0000

This is one of the things I really like about twitter. Today I gained a new follower, I am sure he found be from some tweet I made or from one of the other comics related people I follow. However he found me, new follower and now I am following him. Jumped over to his website and find out he is part of a small independent comics publisher. They have a new book coming out soon, a black and white anthology, looks like it will be fairly strong in content which may turn some off, but I wish them all the luck. It looks like Diamond has opted out of distributing them so they will be selling it themselves and it will be available on Amazon.

Not sure if I have the funds for it right now, but it will be on my list of possibilities for sure. Thanks for the follow on twitter and good luck with the book! They also have a few web comics on their site. Check them out.

Optimum Wound

Studio Voyuerism

Dave — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:44:27 +0000

I am fairly sure most artists and wanna be artists are into this. Taking a look at other artists studios is just interesting. You often get a glimpse of the tools they have laying about. The toys and books on their shelves. Works in progress on their desk or drawing surface of choice. Here is an example, Glenn Southern has posted some pics tagged Studio on his flickr feed. On his info page he actually goes into the construction of the room he had built for his studio. If you are not already into checking them out that will get you started.

ImagineFX has a feature (not sure if it is regular) they spend a page on with a shot of an artists studio, some notes and a short bit by the artist on their process (or just a rambling, depending on said artists temperament). Many artists books like Mechanika: Creating the Art of Science Fiction with Doug Chiang use this as part of the process of teaching.

Finally, Studio Space is an entire book on just this subject. This book in particular covers quite a few great folks and allows you to get inside the head of the artists in a fairly revealing way. It may have not been the intention but it reveals quite a bit just the same.

Help Desk

Dave — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:38:16 +0000

Working on a help desk, you hear all sorts of stuff. We’ve had people call who obviously have gone off their meds. Others call you and then refuse to listen to or let you finish what you are saying. Most of this will roll off your back after a little venting once the caller is either off the phone or on mute. This post is not about that, however you may find some of the more outstanding examples in the future. This post is about language. Just a couple of examples today. The caller will say something and I either have to get them to repeat because I did not understand or just am not sure I really heard what they said.

When spelling, how the heck do you mis pronounce a LETTER of the alphabet. Example.

R – pronounced aarrr-ruhhh (sometimes two syllables are not enough and a third slips in there somewhere, I just don’t quite know how to squeeze it in for you to appreciate it properly.

When repeating a password provided to a user, this punctuation mark “!” is called an “explanation mark” instead of an “exclamation mark”. Not sure what to say about this, but adults should know their punctuation….

Cthulhu challenges ingnorance?

Dave — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:10:35 +0000

A counter protest to idiots who showed up in our town once. Odds are none of the people carrying the other signs this was a praody of even knew what the heck was going on.