Christmas Pictures

Christmas vacation in Germany, Day 7.
After visiting the cathdreal in Cologne, we go to a good, old-fashioned brewery to drink some Koelsch. The same brewery we should have been a day earlier to celebrate Thomas’ birthday, in fact. Well, at least we went there!

GDC 2006 Talk

GDC. And Me. Thursday morning, 9:00am. This will be a sponsored session by Softimage and the talk description hasn’t been updated yet on the GDC page, but I will be doing another talk about asset creation for next-generation (Playstation 3) games this year. And this time I get to use lots of Lair assets for examples! Hope to see you there.

Another New Addition To The Bird Cage

I already have five budgies, and I didn’t think that I really needed another one. Victoria on the other hand doesn’t have any budgies, and I thought that she very much needed one. So yesterday morning we went out to Pet Arcade and Victoria picked a bird from a cage of five remaining budgies, all of which seemed to be brothers and sisters. We think it’s a guy, he called him Jeremy (after the Raven in Secret of Nimh). Six birds, will it ever end? I’d love to post a picture, but my camera -> computer drivers are busted and I can’t seem to read out any photos. Hopefully soon!

Dear Apple

Why is it that every time I start up iTunes 6 it has forgotten the fact that my music library is stored on the i:\ drive, not the default Documents And Settings location? It has been there for ages, and before iTunes v6 I never had any problems. Bah, annoying! Anyway. Happier news soon!

Sushi in Nevada City for Victoria’s Birthday

Vritten by ze girlfrend, Victorria, ja?

Hi Everyone,

Matthias and I are both Aquarians and for about 2 weeks a year we are the same age. Last week, on January 26, I turned 29. I told the students that I work with that “29 sure makes 30 sound young!” About a few years ago I decided that I had spent too many birthdays away from my parents, who only live 2 hours away. So I organized a visit home and the chance to have dinner with my elementary school amazing friend Kristina who I had not seen since I met Matthias; and my best college friend ever, Marta. Kristina brought her boyfriend, Stephen, who I had not met either (finally, Kristina are dating at the same time ) All of us met up in Nevada City, which is right above Grass Valley and one of the coolest places in California, for Sushi at Sushi Q and tea at my favorite café, Café Mekka. Kristina and I always met up at Mekka. Over the years, many great conversations have happened at Mekka. I loved having dinner, conversation and catching up with old friends and Matthias. Wish we could it do it more often.

Matthias was awesome as always. Kristina said in a post e-mail “Matthias is super nice and so sweet…he actually helped put your coat on!

Back at my parents’ house, Matthias sat in the go-cart my Dad was building. Dad said Matt can drive one of the carts whenever he is ready. Mom was in great spirits, enjoyed Matt’s German potato pancakes and LOVED watching the “Lair” video. She is ready to buy the game.

To top off my 29th birthday, Matthias bought me the complete season of “Sex and the City” along with finding my all time (really the only video game I know how to play) Super Mario Brothers. Yahoo!

Life is good!
Victoria

XSI GUI

I spent the last day or so customizing my XSI 5 interface to something that I really want to use for modeling again. I had a custom layout for 4.0, but it was ugly and didn’t shuffle around any of the existing elements. I’m pretty happy with the new design – it borrows heavily from the Maya layout, but I have to use that a lot at work anyway, so it’s not a bad thing.

I figured that with the new top-screen menus for Model/Animate/Render/etc. there was no reason to duplicate those menus on the left side. So I moved the weight and color panels to the right side. The upper toolbar might get some panels later if I run out of space (very much like the predefined Main Shelf), but for now I don’t have enough buttons and don’t need them.

Click on the image for a bigger version with descriptions. I might pack this up and release it later if there’s interest. For that I’ll have to create/replace a few more buttons, though.

Update: Download here!

It’s Dead, Jim

Nothing says “Welcome home!” from a weekend trip (we went to Grass Valley for Victoria’s birthday) like a dead wireless router and a mad scramble to CompUSA to get a new one – 10 minutes before they close. 80 bucks later I got everything working again. Too bad we missed Heathrow’s big outing in Mill Valley while we were in Grass Valley, but at least there’s a report on Wolfi’s page. And the trip was a lot of fun, we got to meet several of Victoria’s old friends. I might have to write a report about it later.

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

I wasn’t planning anything for this year (my proposed level design panel got turned down), but another visual Arts GDC 2006 lecture is looking like a distinct possibility now. More details soon.

Christmas Pictures

Christmas vacation in Germany, Day 7.
Somebody⁽¹⁾ posing at the entrance of something old, big and towering⁽²⁾. We had tried to go to Cologne the day before to attend Thomas’ birthday bash, but got snowed in badly enough to not even try. At least we visited the same brewery once we got to Cologne, pictures to follow. The drive back was “fun” – the GPS/mapping system I had borrowed from my dad fell down during the trip and somehow the option “Avoid highways where possible” got set. So all of the sudden the thing sent me on a wild goose chase through the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason, and it took an additional 45 minutes to get home. Stupid really, especially because I didn’t need the GPS in the first place. The drive from Essen to Cologne is about as straight-forward as it gets, I just didn’t know downtown Cologe well enough.

Obviously I didn’t get around to updating the page over the weekend, our deadline dragged out. I’ll start updating more regularly again now that we’re done, though. I promise⁽³⁾!

⁽¹⁾ Victoria, ⁽²⁾ Cologne Cathedral, ⁽³⁾ Not a promise

Moving

Worch.com is moving registrars this weekend and that url and email might not work for a bit. All the other addresses still work as usual, of course.