No secret that I'm a big fan of Blender (see these previous articles, for example). Really happy, then, to see yet another open movie project about to kick off.

This will be the third one, after Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny. Two completely different styles of art and story in those ones and I'm looking forwards to the third instalment. By the way, if you have children in the 3 - 10 year old range, show them Big Buck Bunny and watch the child watching the animation. It seems to really appeal (small caution: watch it yourself first to see if one early very short moment of off-camera butterfly squashing is something your child will be able to handle).

There's an explanation of why these projects are done and what the goals for this one is over on the Durian project's about page. At this early stage, there are a few technical aspects that have been targeted, which is one of the goals: improving some aspect of Blender itself. And a couple of story goals. This time, action scenes and a female character.

In a few weeks (July 10 is the schedule), pre-sales of the final DVD will begin, which is one of the ways the project raises funding. Donors buy a copy of the final DVD before anything much is created and, in return, get their names in the credits and copy of the final result a couple of weeks before the movie and asset files are made available on the internet (under a Creative Commons license). I've been very happy in the past to make the small donation to support projects like this.

Topics: software/graphics/blender

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I'm a big science fan. I'm also a big fan of education and how to make it interesting and effective. This clip from last night's Rachel Maddow show caught my eye. The sheer enthusiasm of both interviewer and subject really comes across.

(Really wanted to embed that video, but it didn't seem to work and I don't have time to chase down if it's my browser or something else. It works on the MSNBC site, so that's where the link goes.)

Topics: science/astronomy

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Public service announcement: my pointy-stick.com email account has been getting a bit out of control lately. I haven't kept up with the incoming flood. Today I triaged my inbox in that account. I've still got a bunch of mailing list stuff to read or nuke at some later time, but I've responded to all the personal stuff that I found.

If you've sent me email at pointy-stick.com in the past couple of weeks and have been expecting a response and I haven't replied today, it's time to resend. Thank-you.

Topics: life

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OK, who put these cobwebs in here? Hasn't been dusted in weeks.

When last I wrote to you, it was early April and I'd just started a new job. Apparently under the influence of hallucinogenics, or, more likely, naivety, I mentioned that nothing much would change on this blog. Except, apparently, for posting frequency. Seriously, the last couple of months have been an exciting ride at work, but extremely busy. The Chinese have it right: "may you live in interesting times" is not wishing the best for somebody.

Still, can't avoid blogging forever. I like writing here and, based on traffic numbers, there are some people who like reading. A brief update, then...

(Read more...)

Topics: life

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Yesterday was my first day in a new, full-time job. I've started work at Friendster, working out of the Australian office. Still have a couple of consulting loose ends to tidy up, but I'm officially out of the freelance consulting arena now.

Right now the US-based side of my readership are perhaps surprised that Friendster is still a going concern, while the South-east Asian side are saying something equivalent to "oh, nice". The latter perspective is correct. Friendster is very Asian focused these days and has a huge presence in a number of countries in that region. For me, that's a large part of the attraction: I'm working on something that has high visibility in my part of the planet, with all the cultural and localisation challenges that go along with that. The other good parts include lots of technical challenges and working closely with a group of senior management people whom I've worked with in the past in other circumstances and respect greatly.

Nothing much will change on this site. I don't talk about specific work-related issues on this blog, anyway, as it's always hard to know what's permitted and what is accidental leakage. I'm not stopping any open source development or advocacy or going anywhere. Have to manage my time differently, but having a little more structure to things is probably a net plus.

The big change is that I'm no longer unemployed and life might start to be a bit more stable going forwards. This will make Malcolm a much happier boy.

Topics: life

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A friend on Twitter just asked me for some pointers to information helping with "how the hell am I supposed to do anything in Blender". The answer in 140 characters would only be a terse list of short URLs, so here's a potentially more useful version.

I'm knocking this out quickly as an answer to a realtime question, so it's not going to be comprehensive. Still, here are some resources that immediately spring to mind for helping somebody wanting to get started from a "knowing nothing about it" stage.

(Read more...)

Topics: software/graphics

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A very quick tip today, but one I think is under-appreciated by organisations rolling out a Django-based product.

Suppose you've created a useful web-based product, some portions of which are managed via Django's admin interface. All administration work is done from machines on an internal, trusted network and you don't want to expose the admin site via the external web server. This configuration is surprisingly simple to set up and maintain.

(Read more...)

Topics: software/django/tips

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I use git all the time for my local version control needs. My first experiments were in late-2005, which seems a ridiculously long time ago now. Spent my fair share of time using cogito and stgit and have, like most people, gravitated back to using purely git as things have improved throughout the 1.5 and 1.6 release series.

Amongst my friends, I'm seeing some useful usage patterns being overlooked. There are plenty of git tutorials around, so I'm not going to cover the basics, but here are some workflow improvements that aren't mentioned often enough.

(Read more...)

Topics: software/version control

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You know what yak shaving is about, right? Well, here's an example of how it made an appearance in some recent Django work. In order to finish something that looked relatively simple on the exterior, so many other steps had to take place that it seemed like I would never finish.

(Image by LiminalMike)

So, the (long, technical) story of deferred database field loading in Django and how five other problems were fixed along the way. It's a "week in the life of an open source developer" brain dump. If you're not interested in implementation details, best to move onto the next web page.

(Read more...)

Topics: software/django

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A bit too exhausted by life to write anything decent today, so I'll just throw out something I bookmarked the other week.

Apropos my piece on writing about sound, think about the challenge of writing about a taste. Scott Westerfeld wrote down some thoughts about that, wrapped up in a larger piece of writing advice.

Topics: writing

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