Long Weekend

This weekend, I'm getting a rather good impression of the old saying; "Distance makes the heart grow fonder." My girlfriend, along with most of our mutual friends, have set off on the annual school band trip. They left last night. I'm having a hard time believing they've only been gone for a day. Even though last weekend had 3 days, I have a feeling this will be the real long weekend. They'll all be back on Sunday. I hope they're having a ton of fun. I should really look at this with a more positive spin. My girlfriend is off having a blast in Disney with her friends, and I've got a weekend completely free of distraction. Maybe I'll be able to start some kind of project, although I'm not sure what kind at the moment. The website I was working on has teetered off for the moment, as my dad hasn't had time to further the business plan upon which the whole site will be based. I do have an updated version of it that needs and upload though. I also felt inspired enough to do a fairly run-down looking version of my logo. I really like how it turned out.

I got a new camera today, a Jazz DV179. I got a really good deal on it, and am happy with it so far. I just wish I could get its webcam mode working in Linux. I did manage to get a ridiculous picture of my brother. I guess he didn't know that when someone points a camera at you, you shouldn't make a face you wouldn't want them to take a picture of, because they can and will.

Next week, I get to drop my history class, move my spare to third, and get a first period Communications Technology class. I'm pretty happy about that. I've been spending my spare in that class anyway, and never wanted history in the first place. I just wish I would have found out that Communications and Animation are no longer the same credit earlier in the semester, as this would have been much easier.

It seems I've become a bit of a tech support person since march break. I volunteered teaching seniors computers for that week, and am doing it again this week. I got my picture in the paper, and another lady looked me up in the phone book and asked me to come help her. I also found myself at my brother's friend's house helping his mother with a problem. It's amazing how well people insist on paying you for this kind of service. I have never once stated a price, or asked for payment, I've even said, "no, really, that's a bit much" a few times. Despite this, the going price for my services seems to be ten dollars an hour. I am in need of a job, maybe I should send out fliers...

Well, this post has exploded a bit from what I originally meant to put here, and I should probably be getting to bed. Until next time...


Maybe now would be a good time for that "CSS attack" on my blog that I've been planning...

Film Festival

In my last post, I may have alluded to the fact that my school was putting on a small film festival type event. I've been working on a clip in blender since mid march, and was planning on submitting it to the festival. The Actual event is tomorrow, and my video was not submitted. I hid some snags at the last minute which meant I missed the submission deadline. Which isn't a big issue in and of itself, but it was the final straw. I wasn't to happy with the way the clip turned out. I had to leave it rendering overnight at my school, and eventually cut it short before it could finish rendering the last 60 frames or so. I had to cut it short so that I could bring it home that night so I could put it on disk in order to meet the deadline. Unfortunately, I failed to remember to actually copy the video onto my thumb drive.
So the video got cut down from 24 seconds to 22, (from 720 frames to 666, freaky, huh?) I have no real sound figured out for it, other than that the main background was going to be a Shepard tone. I was going to put some kind of music over that, but never got around to it. I didn't end up putting any real plot or anything into it, and none of the scenes I had pictured ever made it into the clip. To top it all off, I forgot to adjust one of the textures, and the position of a object, so it's glowing in a way it shouldn't, and is all glitchy where it meets the ground.
Lets run through that again: 22 second clip, with no sound or plot, and wasn't anything how I wanted it, and looked bad at points. I don't think that exactly qualifies as film fest material.
Of course, I'm not letting it go to waste, no siree. I've added a title screen, the Shepard tone, and replaced the missing frames with a preview animation of those same frames. It may not look all that great, but here it is:

And special thanks to our schools communication teacher for letting me use a school computer to render

Motivation

I'm at school right now. On my spare. I probably should be doing something other than blogging. I'm suprised this site isn't blocked, actually. I have some history work I could probably be doing right now. Actually, not could, should. I just have a total lack of motivation for all things school-related at the moment.

Today's a Friday that was almost a snow day. There are really three things that have to happen for the busses to be cancelled:

1. It has to start snowing late the night before, or at least be snowing hard.
2. There has to be a lot of snowfall over the course of the night
3. It has to still be snowing in the morning

The weather reports were calling for all of these. Snow starting and midnight, continuing into the morning, about 15cm (6 inches). They were wrong. It started snowing around 6pm, stopped, started again around 10, was still going when I went to bed. When I got up there was maybe 5cm of snow on the ground, and all precipitation had ceased.

So there was school today after all. It's a shame because my girlfriend and I were planning on getting together, as her house is on route to my mom's work, whilst the school is 10 minutes out of her way. Either way, I'm at the school today. I don't really want to do any work. In calculus, we're working on these questions that aren't particularly difficult, but take 20 minutes to solve, and have a ton of places where you can mess up. History is being as boring as ever. I never wanted the class in the first place, but I needed one more to fill the schedule, and it was the best of the availiable choices. It's also my least favourite course this semester, holds no interest for me, and is not relevant to the feild I'm getting into. Computer Sciences, which should be a fun and interesting class, has also been rather dull. We haven't done any programing since February. Two days ago, we actually opened the java editor, because we needed the help files to do the API scavenger hunt; basicaly looking up what commands do and filling in the chart. Today we have another career study due. Almost the same assignment we do in every computer class. So basicaly, nothing interesting going on, but still lots of work to do. As I've said, I'm having trouble getting motivated enough to do any of it. What't the motivation? If I work really hard on all this stuff I really don't want to do, then in a couple months, I will have a somewhat higher number on a piece of paper. I have trouble finding any motivation in that, I just can't make the whole "your future depends on that number being higher" connection on a daily basis.

I have other stuff I'm working on, that has much more of my attention, and provides more motivation. My school's putting on a little film festival, for the fun of it, and I'm trying to put together an animation. The communications teacher is being nice enough to let me use one of the school computers for rendering. I need the clip done for wednesday, and was planning on doing a test render, but it seems my thumbdrive wants to keep losing the file. I double checked that it was on there when I saved last night, and it's gone today. I also have that webpage I could be working on, as that needs to get done soon. I need to get up to speed on php first though.

To top it all off, I had a run in with a zip-tie on a stair case yesterday . I'll have to post a picture of my hand when I get home. A note to anyone using zip-ties to repair railings: The sharp, cut-off end, should not be sticking up in the middle of the top of the railing. My hand felt like it was on fire for most of history class yesterday.

EDIT: Here's the pic:

Well, it seems I have done another somewhat complaint-ridden blog entry, so I need to end it with some good news. On the plus side, today is Friday, and if I can make it through today, I have the weekend to relax. Saturday I get to go hang out with my girlfriend, and that will be a major plus. Well, my first period spare is almost up, time to face the rest of the day. I'll be posting a copy of the film festival clip when/if I get it done. Until next time.

Darn... Internet Exlorer doesn't have spell check... Maybe I should look into getting Fire Fox on my thumb drive...