well, found out firsthand why shorter rather than longer posts would be the norm for a blog: it does take a bit of work (and a fair amount of editing) to post -- and of course, if you're busy with something else; well, that takes precedence.
this week has been a case in point. happened to make a suggestion in a meeting about the upcoming rendering project about theoretically using the dual-proc mac g5s as part of the render farm in their off hours. suggestion received warmly -- naturally, guess who gets to prove the theory's feasibility...
boy, that took a fair bit of work -- and we're not out of the woods yet. first order of the day was to get the render management software to work on the mac. the installation instructions didn't work as advertised, and there was something that prevented the mac from being seen by the license manager for the render system. next step was to get the mac to connect the server's shared resources so as to appear as a folder in the root of the mac's hard drive (in similar fashion as we used on the linux/xeon render boxes).
i was trying to do both at the same time -- in hindsight, perhaps not the best way to go about it, but i had a deadline to come up with an answer.
and there were just so many variables. the mac itself, the render management software, the render license server on win2k, the main fileserver on linux, and our main 3-D software.
imagine the possibilities where the communication between these disparate packages would, could, and did, fail.
several times i gave up and handed the machine over to others and walked away. our future prez took a shot, and gave up. then came the resident troubleshooter of our umbrella company. to his credit, the troubleshooter managed to get the mac to be seen by the license server -- it was a deeply hidden setting on the mac side. the filesystem mount he ran out of time for -- it was already six-thirty on friday night; and there are problems with staying over beyond closing time...
saturday morning, i attacked the problem on the linux server side. lo and behold, it worked. so: license server visible, render management system daemon up and running, filesystem mounted; then the 3-D package wouldn't run. reinstalled that, and ready to fly.
go back to my machine, run the submit script... ...nothing. i'm almost out of time. ok, worse comes to worst. decide to run the render manually, off the command line. render running, and i begin to get some rendering statistics off a test scene i've been using as a benchmark for various machines.
...the results later.
later that day, paul and his fiancee wed. i had new leather shoes, and they were killing my feet severely. so i was somewhat distracted during the wedding proceedings themselves, and walking around church was a challenge.
however, the reception made up for the discomfort -- the food was great, and i overate (actually woke up at three am the following morning in some pain -- happens when i indulge overmuch in food).
anyway, to paul and rowena, congratulations! hope you enjoy our gift of 'light'. (",)
thus was the week.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
the mind wanders / my very own titanic adventure...
...except for the part where the ship sinks, else i wouldn't be here to tell the tale.
jose's post yesterday in his blog about being in cebu got me thinking about island-hopping days of yore. other than luzon, the only islands i've ever been on in this archipelago are palawan and mindoro (for puerto galera's white beach -- an excellent place for comet watching).
i'd like to see the famed beach-y perfection that is supposed to be boracay; but the reputation also has it's own reputation to be quite dear on the wallet. so that's a pipe dream... ...at the moment.
anyway, my first trip to palawan was engendered by the encouragement of paul, a friend and officemate. his fiancee was working at the legend hotel in puerto princesa, palawan; and his trip had been in the offing for a while. i, on my part, took a while to decide. so it was very last minute that i ended up booking a berth on a negros navigation ship scheduled to leave the weekend before the holy week observations that year. paul had taken a flight -- i could've too, short of the indecision.
besides, it would be an experience. what could go wrong?
...nothing went wrong. it went weird.
before the weirdness: it would be a literal voyage of firsts for me. previous travels had been with family and/or friends. this time, i'd be on my own. also first time on an inter-island vessel larger than the scaled-up bancas that ply the batangas-puerto galera route. and longest trip, too. 12 hours. that's just an hour less than a non-stop mnl/lax flight -- at a huge speed disparity. i'm sure that the ship i took is a perfectly swift vessel in it's own right -- and the operator certainly wouldn't operate it at maximum velocity... ...of course, that would be an experience too.
got to the port early, boarded with little fuss. (this is pre 9/11, of course. don't know how it is these days. have never taken another similar ship trip again). am in a room with two double-deck bunks flanking the door, with a diner-style table under a fixed picture window; benches attached to the walls in line with the bunks. just before departure, a couple came in; talking to one of the crew. the crewman went away and came back with news that a suite was available. away the couple went...
...and that meant that the cabin was all mine. (",)
to the weirdness:
passing corregidor. hm. take glasses off, and use binoculars. ship-shaped islands. concrete. whatever for? door opens. turn to look, nearsightedness allows me to see blur in doorway. door closes. what was that about?
later, lying in a lower bunk, reading a book. door opens, person walks straight in and sits by the window. door remains open.
hmm. i close the door. cliches about strained silences apply. i don't remember who speaks first, but the story: he's on his way to puerto princesa to do something about a show his mom is putting on at a hotel. his companions are workers for his mom, and they've gone gallivanting about the ship, locking the cabin, and he didn't have a key. so, he asked, kinda belatedly, if he could sit here for a while.
...
oookaaay... ...anyway, be nice, chitchat, etc. he leaves after a while, saying he'd be back to
accompany me to dinner, and never comes back. which is good.
after dinner, head out on deck for some fresh air. i had watched the sunset earlier, and it was quite picturesque. the night was breathtaking. there were a lot of small, puffy clouds about, and the moon was full. the 'jesus rays' one commonly associates with the sun behind clouds were in abundance, but this time the moon was powering them. great splotches of moonlit water with wavelets twinkling in that light, connected to the sky by vast columns of moonbeams. and in the shadows, darker patches in the water -- not sure what they were, but the boat seemed to be navigating an obvious path of lighter shaded water among these. the water is also rather calm. there are no swells, so the boat just seems to hang in space while the scenery floats by. quite peaceful.
look in on the bridge, and it's dark. all of the light in there was coming from the intruments. everyone was standing; no one was saying anything, and about five of them were at the forward windows, peering into the night.
decide to call it a night. sleep was fitful -- kept waking up to a bright light in the window that would move erratically. thinking about it, it was probably a planet or a star...
breakfast. i was early, hoping for better pickings than the night before... food still not good. scrambled eggs are cold. ah well.
...and then he shows up. with nothing better to do and only a couple more hours before we get to the port, i decide to accompany him around the ship. we end up at the bridge -- lo and behold, there are rungs leading up to the roof. up he goes. what!?
...don't know why, but up i go too. next thing, he hands me his camera, and i take a picture of him doing the 'king of the world' bit at the front of the roof. next thing, a crewman pops up and tells us it's forbidden to be up here... ...picture's taken, so that's an accomplishment for leo.
...why leo? i don't remember when, but sometime during the trip, he confided that his girlfriends have suggested that he resembled the titanic star... ...i may post a picture sometime, and you get to decide.
trip over, boat docks. paul and his fiancee are at the port, and as i go to meet them, leo shows up.
!!!
paul has made plans already, and we're discussing these -- and leo pipes up to the effect that he'd like to hang out with us for a while; he'd ask his mom to excuse him from the show or something like that...
...and the saga continues.
next time.
jose's post yesterday in his blog about being in cebu got me thinking about island-hopping days of yore. other than luzon, the only islands i've ever been on in this archipelago are palawan and mindoro (for puerto galera's white beach -- an excellent place for comet watching).
i'd like to see the famed beach-y perfection that is supposed to be boracay; but the reputation also has it's own reputation to be quite dear on the wallet. so that's a pipe dream... ...at the moment.
anyway, my first trip to palawan was engendered by the encouragement of paul, a friend and officemate. his fiancee was working at the legend hotel in puerto princesa, palawan; and his trip had been in the offing for a while. i, on my part, took a while to decide. so it was very last minute that i ended up booking a berth on a negros navigation ship scheduled to leave the weekend before the holy week observations that year. paul had taken a flight -- i could've too, short of the indecision.
besides, it would be an experience. what could go wrong?
...nothing went wrong. it went weird.
before the weirdness: it would be a literal voyage of firsts for me. previous travels had been with family and/or friends. this time, i'd be on my own. also first time on an inter-island vessel larger than the scaled-up bancas that ply the batangas-puerto galera route. and longest trip, too. 12 hours. that's just an hour less than a non-stop mnl/lax flight -- at a huge speed disparity. i'm sure that the ship i took is a perfectly swift vessel in it's own right -- and the operator certainly wouldn't operate it at maximum velocity... ...of course, that would be an experience too.
got to the port early, boarded with little fuss. (this is pre 9/11, of course. don't know how it is these days. have never taken another similar ship trip again). am in a room with two double-deck bunks flanking the door, with a diner-style table under a fixed picture window; benches attached to the walls in line with the bunks. just before departure, a couple came in; talking to one of the crew. the crewman went away and came back with news that a suite was available. away the couple went...
...and that meant that the cabin was all mine. (",)
to the weirdness:
passing corregidor. hm. take glasses off, and use binoculars. ship-shaped islands. concrete. whatever for? door opens. turn to look, nearsightedness allows me to see blur in doorway. door closes. what was that about?
later, lying in a lower bunk, reading a book. door opens, person walks straight in and sits by the window. door remains open.
hmm. i close the door. cliches about strained silences apply. i don't remember who speaks first, but the story: he's on his way to puerto princesa to do something about a show his mom is putting on at a hotel. his companions are workers for his mom, and they've gone gallivanting about the ship, locking the cabin, and he didn't have a key. so, he asked, kinda belatedly, if he could sit here for a while.
...
oookaaay... ...anyway, be nice, chitchat, etc. he leaves after a while, saying he'd be back to
accompany me to dinner, and never comes back. which is good.
after dinner, head out on deck for some fresh air. i had watched the sunset earlier, and it was quite picturesque. the night was breathtaking. there were a lot of small, puffy clouds about, and the moon was full. the 'jesus rays' one commonly associates with the sun behind clouds were in abundance, but this time the moon was powering them. great splotches of moonlit water with wavelets twinkling in that light, connected to the sky by vast columns of moonbeams. and in the shadows, darker patches in the water -- not sure what they were, but the boat seemed to be navigating an obvious path of lighter shaded water among these. the water is also rather calm. there are no swells, so the boat just seems to hang in space while the scenery floats by. quite peaceful.
look in on the bridge, and it's dark. all of the light in there was coming from the intruments. everyone was standing; no one was saying anything, and about five of them were at the forward windows, peering into the night.
decide to call it a night. sleep was fitful -- kept waking up to a bright light in the window that would move erratically. thinking about it, it was probably a planet or a star...
breakfast. i was early, hoping for better pickings than the night before... food still not good. scrambled eggs are cold. ah well.
...and then he shows up. with nothing better to do and only a couple more hours before we get to the port, i decide to accompany him around the ship. we end up at the bridge -- lo and behold, there are rungs leading up to the roof. up he goes. what!?
...don't know why, but up i go too. next thing, he hands me his camera, and i take a picture of him doing the 'king of the world' bit at the front of the roof. next thing, a crewman pops up and tells us it's forbidden to be up here... ...picture's taken, so that's an accomplishment for leo.
...why leo? i don't remember when, but sometime during the trip, he confided that his girlfriends have suggested that he resembled the titanic star... ...i may post a picture sometime, and you get to decide.
trip over, boat docks. paul and his fiancee are at the port, and as i go to meet them, leo shows up.
!!!
paul has made plans already, and we're discussing these -- and leo pipes up to the effect that he'd like to hang out with us for a while; he'd ask his mom to excuse him from the show or something like that...
...and the saga continues.
next time.
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
hidden gems among the rugby
yes, that rugby -- the contact cement that's the reputed mood-enhancer of choice for the non-jet-set who're into recreational pharmaceuticals.
not that the inhalation was exactly by choice, mind. our pantry's vinyl wood-plank-look tiles suffered from, shall we say, a failure to bond with the concrete flooring due to some, ahem, septic seepage, in turn due to old, easily clogged pipes (or so we were told). fancy that -- refurbished building, old pipes...
the liquid event was barely a week into our occupancy of this floor -- and immediately after the tiles were laid in the first place. well, today, a week or so later, some brilliant type decided that now would be a good time to re-acquaint the tiles with the floor -- so in treads a worker and dutifully introduces the rubber cement into the tile/floor equation... ...in a room with completely recirculated air courtesy of the air conditioning.
anyway, can't say whether the side-effect to the contact cement's solvent has taken hold of the others -- all i have is yet another headache.
speaking of headaches, now may be a good time to give a code name to the mocap software, so there'll be a simpler reference to it. i dub thee 'reyna'. close enough to the real name -- and a terrible pun to boot. (",)
mocap, as i've encountered it, is about markers. these markers are placed in, well, places on the body of the mocap model. various technologies exist to take the markers' position in 2-D space (the multiple camera ccds) and turn it into movement in 3-D space -- and it gets saved into a file for me (and any other hapless mocap cleanup person) to load and analyze and so on and so forth.
now, by themselves, the markers are for all intents and purposes tracking their individual destinies in some virtual space within the mocap software. playing the file, you can just barely make out the humanoid arrangement of the marker constellations. here's where connecting markers -- much like plotting constellations in the sky -- makes divining movement easier.
last week, i had managed to make a little program in reynascript that fairly automated this constellation process. it was, though, quite straightforward and brute force.
where do the gems in rugby come in?
well, solvent-laced air notwithstanding, i cut some code from the un-commented, un-documented pre-built reynascripts and folded it into a more elegant thing that did the same thing as before -- with the exception that i didn't have to manually include the group marker names in the script itself.
now i'm wondering if there's a way to catch errors. turns out that the improved constellation script just ups and dies when (predictably) some predefined marker names are modified or lost.
still, a good thing.
hmm. maybe there is more to this rugby bit...
...i'll never know.
not that the inhalation was exactly by choice, mind. our pantry's vinyl wood-plank-look tiles suffered from, shall we say, a failure to bond with the concrete flooring due to some, ahem, septic seepage, in turn due to old, easily clogged pipes (or so we were told). fancy that -- refurbished building, old pipes...
the liquid event was barely a week into our occupancy of this floor -- and immediately after the tiles were laid in the first place. well, today, a week or so later, some brilliant type decided that now would be a good time to re-acquaint the tiles with the floor -- so in treads a worker and dutifully introduces the rubber cement into the tile/floor equation... ...in a room with completely recirculated air courtesy of the air conditioning.
anyway, can't say whether the side-effect to the contact cement's solvent has taken hold of the others -- all i have is yet another headache.
speaking of headaches, now may be a good time to give a code name to the mocap software, so there'll be a simpler reference to it. i dub thee 'reyna'. close enough to the real name -- and a terrible pun to boot. (",)
mocap, as i've encountered it, is about markers. these markers are placed in, well, places on the body of the mocap model. various technologies exist to take the markers' position in 2-D space (the multiple camera ccds) and turn it into movement in 3-D space -- and it gets saved into a file for me (and any other hapless mocap cleanup person) to load and analyze and so on and so forth.
now, by themselves, the markers are for all intents and purposes tracking their individual destinies in some virtual space within the mocap software. playing the file, you can just barely make out the humanoid arrangement of the marker constellations. here's where connecting markers -- much like plotting constellations in the sky -- makes divining movement easier.
last week, i had managed to make a little program in reynascript that fairly automated this constellation process. it was, though, quite straightforward and brute force.
where do the gems in rugby come in?
well, solvent-laced air notwithstanding, i cut some code from the un-commented, un-documented pre-built reynascripts and folded it into a more elegant thing that did the same thing as before -- with the exception that i didn't have to manually include the group marker names in the script itself.
now i'm wondering if there's a way to catch errors. turns out that the improved constellation script just ups and dies when (predictably) some predefined marker names are modified or lost.
still, a good thing.
hmm. maybe there is more to this rugby bit...
...i'll never know.
Monday, October 25, 2004
monday meltdown
the arc of the day was rather short. a discussion and two meetings in the morning -- and i was spent.
oh, yeah. woke up with a headache -- maybe that had to do with having some milk the evening before, to help me get to sleep. milk, after all, is rich in calcium -- and my hypertension medicine is technically a 'calcium channel blocker'. so, to my layman's mind, those are probably not good things to mix. milk, much as i like the stuff, is nowadays a double-barrel of problems. lactose intolerance and the hypertension medicine... ...ugh.
when it rains, it pours: the long awaited project that saw the group's assembly is now on the cusp of finally arriving. although not quite in the form expected. two hurricanes, a brain cancer(?) and some money matters have resulted in the latter part of the production reaching us. rendering, compositing and, unless i'm mistaken, the soundtrack. still, it's a ton of work. 44 minutes of rendering and composite -- in a month and a half. the company will have to seriously up the render farm units to make that deadline.
then we have the other stuff.
one of which is the motion capture cleanup software. an oddly named software at that. then again, they're all oddly named. our main package is named after an extinct civilization -- and its main competition (which i hold an irrational bias for) is a three letter non-acronym. our compositing package is one in a family of products that could safely be categorized as a full-blown conflagration... ...about the only thing that's honestly, if somewhat unimaginatively, named is the editing software. and that's called -- and i paraphrase here -- "the end" professional. hmm. maybe that hit the nail on the head. imaginatively (or not) named.
back to the mocap peeve. i've been wrapping my mind (however unwilling -- it's that 'old dog new tricks' saw) around it for a couple of weeks now. it's made all the more, shall we say, challenging, by the fact that the documentation/tutorials are almost a version and a half older than the evaluation software we have. talk about lost in translation. they changed some syntax, they deprecated some functions, and they left no documentation of either. so slogging through the tutorials strikes me as being somewhat akin to archaeology. you could also think of it this way: you've a recipe written in language version 1.7. but your food replicator is version 2.3 and is not 100% backward compatible. imagine the joyous food you'd get out of that combination.
ok, so that's not an accurate picture, but it'll suffice... hehehe
anyway, after much progress over the past week, somehow the day's meetings left me in no state to interpret the hieroglyphs of the mocap tutorials. not that i was really feeling well to begin with. by the afternoon, my hands were colder and wetter than normal, and i was feeling very hot...
...but not as heated as when i have to confront the works of, i'm told, an ex-contributing-editor of the local version of a british car mag. that, then, can be considered good news. leastwise, i can now peacefully buy the next issues without fear of encountering strangeness like 'over productive wedding vegetables' in reference to the volvo hybrid station wagon/minivan/suv. granted, that quoted line didn't make it to the magazine (yay!) -- it is, however on the website. read it and weep. (isn't it ironic how much advertising i'm giving the site?)
(",)
at any rate, the rest of the afternoon was a lost cause insofar as the mocap was concerned. made very little headway.
and thus ended the day. odd, no? i began the post noting a short arc of the day -- and look how long this got.
oh, yeah. woke up with a headache -- maybe that had to do with having some milk the evening before, to help me get to sleep. milk, after all, is rich in calcium -- and my hypertension medicine is technically a 'calcium channel blocker'. so, to my layman's mind, those are probably not good things to mix. milk, much as i like the stuff, is nowadays a double-barrel of problems. lactose intolerance and the hypertension medicine... ...ugh.
when it rains, it pours: the long awaited project that saw the group's assembly is now on the cusp of finally arriving. although not quite in the form expected. two hurricanes, a brain cancer(?) and some money matters have resulted in the latter part of the production reaching us. rendering, compositing and, unless i'm mistaken, the soundtrack. still, it's a ton of work. 44 minutes of rendering and composite -- in a month and a half. the company will have to seriously up the render farm units to make that deadline.
then we have the other stuff.
one of which is the motion capture cleanup software. an oddly named software at that. then again, they're all oddly named. our main package is named after an extinct civilization -- and its main competition (which i hold an irrational bias for) is a three letter non-acronym. our compositing package is one in a family of products that could safely be categorized as a full-blown conflagration... ...about the only thing that's honestly, if somewhat unimaginatively, named is the editing software. and that's called -- and i paraphrase here -- "the end" professional. hmm. maybe that hit the nail on the head. imaginatively (or not) named.
back to the mocap peeve. i've been wrapping my mind (however unwilling -- it's that 'old dog new tricks' saw) around it for a couple of weeks now. it's made all the more, shall we say, challenging, by the fact that the documentation/tutorials are almost a version and a half older than the evaluation software we have. talk about lost in translation. they changed some syntax, they deprecated some functions, and they left no documentation of either. so slogging through the tutorials strikes me as being somewhat akin to archaeology. you could also think of it this way: you've a recipe written in language version 1.7. but your food replicator is version 2.3 and is not 100% backward compatible. imagine the joyous food you'd get out of that combination.
ok, so that's not an accurate picture, but it'll suffice... hehehe
anyway, after much progress over the past week, somehow the day's meetings left me in no state to interpret the hieroglyphs of the mocap tutorials. not that i was really feeling well to begin with. by the afternoon, my hands were colder and wetter than normal, and i was feeling very hot...
...but not as heated as when i have to confront the works of, i'm told, an ex-contributing-editor of the local version of a british car mag. that, then, can be considered good news. leastwise, i can now peacefully buy the next issues without fear of encountering strangeness like 'over productive wedding vegetables' in reference to the volvo hybrid station wagon/minivan/suv. granted, that quoted line didn't make it to the magazine (yay!) -- it is, however on the website. read it and weep. (isn't it ironic how much advertising i'm giving the site?)
(",)
at any rate, the rest of the afternoon was a lost cause insofar as the mocap was concerned. made very little headway.
and thus ended the day. odd, no? i began the post noting a short arc of the day -- and look how long this got.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
there's always a first time...
...isn't there?
at any rate, the 'x' instead of 's' for singularity -- the latter was already taken, hence the somewhat similar sounding 'x' in place. well, if you believe the pronunciation posted on hyperdic.com for 'xavier' anyhow: zey'vyer -- unlike those idiots who dub x-men who pronounce it ekszey'vyer. but hey, it's a free world (and not that i watch the x-men cartoons on tv, just running across ads while channel surfing can get my goat).
besides, i happen to like x (think what you will. hehehe). x marks the spot, etc, etc. besides, in physics, what is a singularity except the ultimate full stop to the universe as we know it -- a point of infinite density or somesuch. odd, isn't it -- if current views of physics and cosmology are to be believed, the ultimate fate of the universe might likely be a cloud of infinitely dense points embedded in an ever-expanding emptiness, all in darkness; with naught but a distant memory of light in the form of microwaves (could be wrong on the microwave light-memory, though). makes for an interesting mind-picture, nevertheless (if you happen to go for those things, anyway).
so, why singularity (other than being my ostensible civil status)? well, i have this habit of concentrating on a given task almost to the exclusion of nearly anything else (does that make me single-track-minded?). so what will most likely happen in this blog is what could be long stretches of posts on the current item of study and/or pet peeve about current item of study. or something to that effect.
then there's the debate on the writing skill (or lack of it) of a certain ulysses ang of motioncars.com (god, what a name for an automotive website. imagine it.) whose 'work' is also published by the local version of the bbc magazine top gear... (much to the hair-pulling of his editors, no doubt). don't get me started... ...oh, but i already did. hehehe.
hmm. make sense? oh well.
so here we are, first faltering steps into the world of the blogosphere.
wish me luck.
at any rate, the 'x' instead of 's' for singularity -- the latter was already taken, hence the somewhat similar sounding 'x' in place. well, if you believe the pronunciation posted on hyperdic.com for 'xavier' anyhow: zey'vyer -- unlike those idiots who dub x-men who pronounce it ekszey'vyer. but hey, it's a free world (and not that i watch the x-men cartoons on tv, just running across ads while channel surfing can get my goat).
besides, i happen to like x (think what you will. hehehe). x marks the spot, etc, etc. besides, in physics, what is a singularity except the ultimate full stop to the universe as we know it -- a point of infinite density or somesuch. odd, isn't it -- if current views of physics and cosmology are to be believed, the ultimate fate of the universe might likely be a cloud of infinitely dense points embedded in an ever-expanding emptiness, all in darkness; with naught but a distant memory of light in the form of microwaves (could be wrong on the microwave light-memory, though). makes for an interesting mind-picture, nevertheless (if you happen to go for those things, anyway).
so, why singularity (other than being my ostensible civil status)? well, i have this habit of concentrating on a given task almost to the exclusion of nearly anything else (does that make me single-track-minded?). so what will most likely happen in this blog is what could be long stretches of posts on the current item of study and/or pet peeve about current item of study. or something to that effect.
then there's the debate on the writing skill (or lack of it) of a certain ulysses ang of motioncars.com (god, what a name for an automotive website. imagine it.) whose 'work' is also published by the local version of the bbc magazine top gear... (much to the hair-pulling of his editors, no doubt). don't get me started... ...oh, but i already did. hehehe.
hmm. make sense? oh well.
so here we are, first faltering steps into the world of the blogosphere.
wish me luck.
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