90 saturday

Had a great time with the rellies last week, but very little done towards activities. The easel pc was popular, and Alex seems to have added it to his routine pretty easily, I usually have it left on "paint" so he can draw what he wants. So far he seems to have almost figured out the colour changer, but I need to fix up the screen location just a bit, it is off centre.

82 Friday snow

Yesterday we picked up my sister and her family from the Oslo bus terminal, the highlight for today was playing in the garden. All the kids are great on the akerbretts.

80 wed rest day.

(still sick) stayed at home today, made beds for 2/4 rellies, and finished the rest of Alex's first computer. (pictured). Sure it would have been a lot easier and smaller with a laptop in there, but this one was put together totally from bits I had lying around in the basement, so total cost for this project is effectively only a couple of hours work, small price to pay to get the hardware in use again, and hopefully to give Alex something he will enjoy. Will find out tomorrow I guess.

79 tue Xmas shopping

Not much more to say, doing my bit for the economy, even bought myself a 500 kr gift voucher from ikea. To get the 100 kr back of course ;). Building project in basement going well, hopefully first big bang test cycle tomorrow. If it works I will show some pics.

78 Monday new pc.

Went in to work today to get a i5 dell , looking forward to playing with it a bit, but no time likely short term. I have been working a little on a present for Alex, hopefully will get it finished enough before Christmas. Not much study related happening due to preparations for Christmas. Hopefully tomorrow I will get a little time to do some blender reading.

74 sickie

No progress today at all, but I collected about 3 grand worth of things from the tip so not a total waste. We now have a new tv table and a cupboard for Alex's room. Recycling is great, the funny thing is that the free to take garage seems to be unique to our local depot, I have friends on the other side of Oslo that told me the equivalent service at their place is delivery only. On a funny slightly technical note... The round plugs here mean active and neutral are not guaranteed to a specific terminal, unlike Australia. I was taught that can be dangerous, I wonder if there are any numbers on the relative accidents.

73 animation

Animation is a huge subject, and not really one I see myself spending all that much time on in the immediate future, but I am finishing the basic tutes on it for completeness anyway. Unfortunately the info in my now old blender book has a lot of gaps, but thankfully there are some great resources out there. I found http://www.freemovies.co.uk/ for example that has a lot of blender tutes based on 2.5. Using the ones on NLA and snowflaking I was able to get a basic walk cycle completed for hank. Now it's on to rigging tomorrow. As mentioned I can't see myself doing too much with full humanoid body work, but I would like to be able to animate a vehicle toon such as Thomas, Elias or Budgie.

72 tue animation

Hank was waving whilst walking on the spot today, I didn't get much time to do much else, as terese working a night shift tonight, one of her last. Tomorrow she will be around as well, so we will probably get up to something Christmassy, but I should be able to finally finish the first chapter on animation, then there is a chapter on how to actually build the models.

71 mon animation

Huw came over today to have a catch up, first time we've seen him since the wedding. 360 looking more likely.
In the evening I worked a bit on animation with hank( pictured) hank is not my creation, but getting him to wave and hopefully walk tomorrow is part of the process. My HTML 5 research is also going well, but no code to show for it yet.

Day 69 Saturday Progress Report

I did the count today finally, you will notice that the daily count is back in the subject.

We are almost at the half way mark of my Flex Leave, after which I will begin training on some software I am likely to use at work. This week I will try to get back into the daily updates, even though they are a pain in the ass, I think they are needed to make sure I keep motivated each day. 

Since last time I have worked a little more with Blender, I have been sculpting simple faces, and learning about topology of a good animatable mesh. I need to get back into the regular diary updates, but have been fighting off a cold, which is enough to kill my motivation. We had first snowfall on Wednesday Night, while Terese and I were out at a friends Doctoral Dinner. Mormor and Arve were kind enough to look after Alex, which meant that we were out till 11:15, a novel experience. Thursday night we had friends that are leaving Oslo for USA soon. Again we realize that we need to work harder to keep in contact with some of these guys while they are in Oslo. Nice night.

As a bit of a deviation, I had a meeting with a friend yesterday that gave me an idea for an application, which he wanted to implement in HTML5. I researched it for a few hours last night, and I will be trying to put together a prototype and some design documents for him over the next few days so he can investigate taking it to developers. As I got the specs and investigated possible ways to implement the app last night it felt awesome to be working on something solid again.

I believe HTML5 and web based services are good candidates for technologies to learn for work in the coming months, so it will be fun to put the sample together for my friend.