Bad Withanar

Irony | Barry Manilow

2011-06-02T22:57:00.001-07:00

Barry Manilow - Is an accomplished composer and songwriter who wrote and performed the music to his own hits.

Naturally, his most well known hit, "I write the songs" was written by Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys.

WTF? | Kasparov Never Saw it Coming

2010-05-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

Kirk | Lucy in the Sky

2010-03-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

I apologize for only posting links to videos lately. I hope to get some actual writing done this weekend. In the meantime, here's a classic that I feel deserves more attention. Please watch carefully, there are a *lot* of jokes hidden in here, and for what it is, the attention to detail is stellar!

Cool Ad | Reversed Thinking

2010-03-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

I quite like the following advert, not only for the cleverness in its execution but also in the message. As one who appreciates original ideas, after more digging I discovered the creative was copied from someone who copied from someone else. Still, it's impressive. Have a see for yourself:

Propers to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish

Historical | My Brother Plays the Saxophone Because of My Childhood Obsession With Hurricanes

2010-01-08T15:28:00.000-08:00

My younger brother plays the saxophone and he's pretty damn good at it. It's something I had always wanted to master, but sadly my high school jazz ensemble had a plethora of woodwinds and I was nudged by the conductor into playing the trombone instead. This is one of many deep, life regrets for me, as music composition is a hobby of mine and I am in love with the sax sound for the lead in my instrumental pieces. Moreover I find it ironic that my saxophone savvy sibling does not compose or play professionally beyond weekend weddings and Bar Mitzvahs . Instead, he spends his days selling industrial pollution control equipment at the family business and slowly going insane. It was while listening to a recording Charlie Parker's take on "Groovin High" I realized that my brother plays the saxophone because of my childhood obsession with hurricanes. At first glance, this may seem like a ridiculous juxtaposition, which it is, but in a moment it will make complete sense.

My fascination with hurricanes and other severe weather phenomena is rooted in the history of the region where I grew up, South Florida. Any young child interested in the world around him ends up learning about local lore from school, museums, television shows, tourist attractions, everything available in his sphere of influence. As it turns out, the modern history of South Florida, from the perspective of Europeans and settlers is a relatively short chapter in the book. Sure there were a few bullet points with regards to its being the home of both a WWII air base and Flipper, but at that point even compared to the short history of the US, nothing had happened there. Keep in mind, this is my childhood, a time prior to Scarface, Hurricane Andrew, and Elian Gonzalez. Thanks to the overbearing dominance of mosquitoes and sub-tropical humidity, until the invention of air conditioning, mangrove demolition, and a regular dosage of DDT delivered en masse by airplane, South Florida was mostly unihabitable to humans, save for the original natives and Ponce de León. Most people fail to realize the fountain of youth was actually a naturally occurring well composed of cool, soothing, Deep Woods Off™.

Fountain of Youth

The other aspect that stands out about the short history of South Florida is the frequency and severity of death and destruction doled out by mother nature in the form of hurricanes. Fortunately, Henry Morrison Flagler, a 19th Century railroad and real estate tycoon (AKA the original Godfather of South Florida) was oblivious to this fact. The first in a long line of New Yorkers to relocate to South Florida, Flagler was so enamored with the idea of not freezing to death (he preferred drowning), he was willing to risk his fortune in a swampland. He built railroads, hotels, and critical infrastructure and initiated the development and expansion of the entire region, from the Florida Keys, up the east and west coasts through West Palm Beach.

Oddly enough, every three to five years during the development, sometime during the summer, it would begin to rain and then suddenly the waters would rise up, the winds would howl, and Flagler's burgeoning empire would fragment and fall into the sea. But Henry Flagler was no quitter, no sir. Rather, he was under the influence of the harsh, unregulated, arsenic-based insecticides of his day. When his hotels were uprooted and then knocked over by a tropical storm, he rebuilt them bigger and better. And when they were finally completed, and subsequently, along with his railroad, smashed over by a 20 foot storm surge the next season, he rebuilt them, bigger and better still, this time atop stilts. And when they opened for business, and the walls exploded during a sustained 130 MPH wind, and the escaped staff expired from having the flesh and muscle sand-blasted off their bones as they ran in small circles, blind and screaming on the beach, Flagler took another hit of Paris green from his citronella bong and ordered another set of hotels. His resilience to recover and rebuild is the reason the name Flagler is found on many of the decaying buildings, crumbling institutions, and collapsing, overburdened roads and bridges of South Florida today.

Metro Rail

Hurricanes were the dominant force appearing over and over in the history of my locale. Meanwhile, during the summer seasons we went about our days with the occasional eye watching towards the seas, waiting for whatever might be brewing out there. Even our regular cycle of afternoon storms would be considered severe compared to most places on Earth, with frequent lightning strikes, high winds, water spouts, tornadoes, occasional hail. I didn't think it was unusual that I had probably witnessed more than a dozen water spouts before the age of ten, for example. So it should not be surprising that I grew fascinated with severe weather phenomena: storms, hurricanes, and tornadoes. I recall with fondness the time when I was maybe four and my parents hired workers to repaint the Spanish ceramic tiles on our roof. Part of the process had them taping strips of newspapers all along the roof, perhaps to mask parts of the wall, or maybe to protect the fresh coats from the elements. One night during the process we had a nasty thunderstorm with high winds which resulted in newspaper strips fluttering and flapping against the roof near my window, amplifying the sound and effect of the storm. It was the worst wind noise I had heard up to that point, and I was convinced the sound was from a tornado. I'm pretty sure my screaming kept everyone awake that night.

As I got older, I read books about hurricanes and the impact of severe weather. During storm season, I listened to NOAA weather radio and charted the course of tropical storms from the coordinates given out by the droll voice announcers, not an uncommon hobby in my area. Give me a break, I mean, check out this map that shows a history of all the tracks of Atlantic hurricanes:

Get out of the way, Florida!

See that piece of land on the south east of the US that dangles into the ocean, as if the bible belt unzipped, whipped out Florida, and started to urinate on Cuba? You might notice it's hard to make out on that map BECAUSE IT'S COVERED BY HURRICANES!!! So it was not unreasonable for me to expect any year we would get another one. So naturally, during the entire two decades I lived there as I watched and waited, not a single hurricane came our way. It wasn't until I left Florida and went elsewhere to college that Hurricane Andrew struck two years later, followed by, Opal, Charlie, Floyd, Wilma, etc.

By the time I was in high school, weather radio had been supplanted by cable television's The Weather Channel and during storm season 45 minutes into every hour they ran my favorite segment, the Tropical Update. Not only could I get an up to the minute satellite picture and forecast on storms that might affect my area, there was footage of winds and waves and destruction from any area unfortunate enough to lie in the path of this month's natural disaster. It was of course, impossible to tune into The Weather Channel just in time to catch only one segment. As everything else on The Weather Channel, the Tropical Update was book-ended by the local forecast, a series of computer-generated pages of scrolling and static text blocking out temperatures, tides, barometric pressures, and weather predictions for your local region as well as major travel destinations. There was something horribly comical about the stark contrast between the cold, computerized, emotionless template of the local forecast, immediately cutting to the Tropical Update, which, when a storm was making landfall consisted of intercuts between panicking meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center, and their sad, on-location storm chaser; some poor bastard, drenched from head to toe in a tattered yellow slicker shouting incomprehensible panic into a microphone over the roar of wind and stinging rain, standing knee-deep in rising water and tethered to a shaking telephone pole on a street somewhere in Cozumel. Moments before he is swept away into the Gulf of Mexico and eventually devoured by schools of starving, Portuguese man-o-war jellyfish, it switches back to the local forecast; serene, calm, deep blue background, sunset hues, white geneva font, Pat Metheny Group's "Last Train Home" playing gently in the background as we learn that tomorrow will bring us 85 degrees, winds from the northeast at 8mph, with a change of afternoon thunderstorms.

There you have it, the first inkling of the incomprehensible link between music and weather. My region-born obsession with storms resulted in a lot of hours watching The Weather Channel for Tropical Updates over the course of my teenage years, where I ended up getting a Silkwood exposure to their selection of music during the local forecasts, including the likes of the aforementioned Pat Metheny Group, Spyro Gyra, Rippingtons, Andreas Vollenweider, and others. It's not as if I had intended to discover fusion jazz and I didn't go out of my way to hunt down the music from The Weather Channel local forecasts, but a kid can only listen to a mixture of the Steve Miller Band, REM, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, and UB40 so many times before ejecting and tossing the mixed cassette tape out of the window of the moving vehicle. Granted, it wasn't my car, nor was it my cassette, nor was I the driver, but the girl my parents payed to chauffeur me back and forth to school had only the one and seemed content to repeat it endlessly over the course of the entire year. I found myself searching up and down the dial for something, anything else to listen to, which is when I stopped for a moment on a station called LOVE-94, smooth Jazz and adult contemporary, and there was a song playing that I somehow recognized, but couldn't place where I'd heard it before.

More songs poured over the radio, songs I shouldn't have known, and yet they were familiar, where had I heard them before...? Thwap!!! The sound of palm slapping forehead... The friggin' Weather Channel! I'm convinced the popularity of fusion jazz in the late 80's early 90's in certain populations of the US can be entirely contributed to the musical taste of whomever produced the local forecasts. So I had started to develop a taste for fusion jazz, by accident, and in an era where CD's were a new format for listening to crystal clear, digital music, instrumental modern jazz found it's way into my library. In the same way I was a passive victim of the musical selection on The Weather Channel, my little brother, six years younger than I, was forced to listen to what I did, and his taste in jazz developed earlier and deeper than my own. When his time came to select an instrument for band class, he chose the saxophone and has never looked back, except in mockery at my failure on trombone.

So there you have it, the full story of why my brother plays the saxophone and how it pertains to hurricanes growing up in South Florida. While that may have been the main gist of this parable, it occurs to me that at this point, anyone who knows and appreciates music is terribly concerned for my well being, since modern jazz includes the likes of Kenny G, Yanni, and John Tesh. I thank you for your well wishes, but can assure you that I am safe and have adeptly avoided musical oblivion. While I still enjoy listening to Pat Metheny, my tastes have evolved and refined into the realm of the respectable. The way a recreational drug such as whippets can be a gateway into more illicit usage, such as huffing drag racing fuel, or injecting liquid heroine directly into the tear ducts, fusion jazz was a gateway for me into discovering the likes of Michael Brecker, Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, Stan Getz, and then eventually Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, etc. I was even able to take a jazz improvisation course for piano back in my college days, for me the most difficult class I have ever attended. As for the sax, I have a little boy of my own now, and one of my hopes is he eventually takes up that instrument. If so, I will take lessons concurrent with his, and then my compositions will feature live harmonies.

Mashup | Make It So

2009-12-24T19:13:00.001-08:00

Mashup | Acting Explained

2009-12-21T12:18:00.000-08:00

Language | Nonsense English

2009-12-21T00:25:00.000-08:00

We always knew that the only thing being butchered by John Belushi in his famous SNL samurai sketches was the Japanese language. But after watching such performances by the likes of Robin Williams issuing forth a stream of fake Italian or Chinese, I've had a desire for years to hear what nonsense English sounds like from the perspective of non English speakers.

Recently, I've seen this topic arise on other blogs (Today's Big Thing) and have finally found an example. Nonsense English from the perspective of Italians as expressed through a music video

See more funny videos and Music Videos at Today's Big Thing.

genetics | mnemonics for codons

2009-12-10T00:04:00.000-08:00

Start and Stop Codons
transcription starts in AUGust
U Are Good Amber
U Are An Ochre
U Got An Opal

Simple Wobble Rules (for E.Coli)
C->G = CG (as in computer graphics)
U->AG = U Are Good
G->UC = Gee, U Cee?
I->CAU = I See A U (or IG doesn't work)

Looping | Star Trek The Random Generation

2009-12-07T21:55:00.000-08:00

Conservatism | Frank Zappa on Crossfire

2009-12-04T16:28:00.000-08:00

You don't have to be a fan of Frank Zappa's music to appreciate the following clip of his appearance on Crossfire in 1986. The debate took place a few weeks after Zappa's testimony in the famous "porn rock" hearings at the US Senate which ultimately lead to the recording industry's placement of parental advisories on music albums.

It is difficult for me to think of Zappa as a conservative by the current day definition, but listening to his arguments and then reading more about his personal and professional history, his family life, management of his musicians, and work ethic, it becomes clear. What is also clear is how striking the difference is in the tone of what was considered heated political discourse compared with today.

FX | Hollywood Vs. New York

2009-12-02T16:57:00.001-08:00

Child Development | Beyond Object Constancy

2009-11-23T22:23:00.000-08:00

It has been a wonderous journey watching my son transform from an immobile, newborn infant into a precocious toddler, passing through various phases of development the way a race car passes checkpoints. He is beyond 30 months now and while I had not been specifically tracking his landmarks relative to Piaget's cognitive development theory, it's hard not to recognize events that offer definative proof of his progression. For example, I don't know precisely when he developed a sense of object constancy, but the fact that he tends to always find my car keys regardless of where I attempt to safely store them demonstrates his mastery of this concept.

At this point it has become obvious he has been developing an imagination. He invents games and attempts to coax his peers and elders to play along, not a trivial matter when they involve concepts and actions beyond his vocabulary. This new imagination, unfortunately, also manifests iteself in the form of nightmares. How cruel that the ability to retain memories and impressions of dreams into a waking state coincides with the brain's ability to invent monsters. Whatever images and fears are interrupting his sleep, they are enough to rouse him, then alone in the darkness of his room, he works himself into a panic, running to the door and crying for parental intervention. All that is required is a hug and gentle caress from a parent to bring him back to reality, back to calm, and ultimately to sleep.

After recovering from such moments, a parent has to wonder about the phases of development of a child, of the specific measuring points devised by the developmental cognitive researchers, child psychologists, and therapists. There are so many to categorize, how arbitrary it must be to determine which ones are the important ones. Of course it is a landmark when a child realizes object constancy, illustrated by his determination to relocate my car keys despite our best attempts to store them out of sight. What I haven't seen yet, and what I am hoping for is the development of emotional constancy, the awareness that his parents still love him even when they have left the room. It would make it easier for them to return to sleep once he has.

On the other hand, if young children ultimately develop emotional constancy, what about all the adults who don't?

Interesting Ctd. | Faith vs. Reason

2009-09-22T13:55:00.001-07:00

A couple of nights ago, my wife and I had one of those long, interesting conversations about life, the universe, and everything, the kind of conversation you are more likely to have at the beginning of a relationship and not 15 years in.

While we've had our share of philosophical exchanges, this one was brought on by her own recent personal examinations and the realization that her ideologies have been changing and maturing with her own life experiences.

The following clip is dedicated to her pursuit:

Words Fail | Placement Is Everything

2009-09-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Failblog for the inspiration.

Ceremony Fail | Symbolic Dove

2009-08-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

Vid of the Day | Poodle-cise

2009-08-20T13:08:00.001-07:00

Muppets | Pushing the envelope with tits?!

2009-07-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

In the following Muppet sketch, an obviously uncomfortable Sam the Eagle performs the Gilbert & Sullivan song "Tit Willow" from The Mikado. Try and imagine Sesame Street, or any other kids show where the main gag is getting a character to say the word "tit" repeatedly:

The subject matter of the Mikado's Titwillow song is actually quite somber, and as someone who is familiar with the works of Gilbert & Sullivan (thanks mom!) I understand it isn't hard to do a rendition without any innuendo. After all, the subject matter is a heartbroken bird who considers suicide by drowning himself in a river. But Henson and crew intentionally converted the song into a comedy skit, pushing the envelope in only their first season. There is enough evidence in the skit itself that their intention all along was to repeatedly say "tit" on a children's show and see if they could get it passed censors, and they were successful due to circumstance of location.

The first season of the Muppet Show was shot in Elstree, England just north of London. And while many Americans are aware of the different meaning of British words like flat, telly, and rubber, most aren't aware of the local British fauna. In England, the word "tit" doesn't immediately bring to mind a part of the female anatomy, but rather one of a variety of common birds. During casual conversation, one could mention the word "titmouse" without so much as batting an eyelash or smirking, and your average Brit is likely to see the following mental image:

Say "titmouse" to any American and expect the following reaction:

a) surprise
b) questioning stare
c) uncontrolled giggling
d) all of the above

Even if the American you are conversing with is an experienced ornithologist, bird watcher, or board member of the National Audubon Society, the word "titmouse" invokes the following mental image:

My first experience with the British version of the word "tit" was Junior year as an undergraduate student when I purchased a textbook for my behavioral ecology course. I did a quick flip through of the book, as any student would, to see what was in store for the next semester. The very first image I stopped on was a chart entitled "Distribution of Great Tits in England." After a double take, I decided I was probably going to enjoy behavioral ecology a lot. Of course, the great tit (Parsus major) is another song bird related to the titmouse, and blue tit, and a google search about them (in protected mode, of course) reveals many informational web pages pertaining to ornithology and ecological research, though you wouldn't know that from the page titles alone:

Great Tit Photos
Great Tit information
Definition of great tit
Different responsiveness of Indian and European Great Tit
Variation in the number of spermatozoa in Blue Tit and Great Tit
Glimmering great tit

As it would turn out, great tits are a common research bird for their wide distribution and ease of identification (NOTE: The great tits of England are not related to the boobies of North America, such as the blue-footed boobie found in the Hawaiian islands). Therefore, looking through the search results can be as entertaining as the web page titles themselves. From the first five pages of google search results, we learn the following important facts, all from ornithology and ecology research sites:

"most Great Tits do not migrate"
"Great tits usually come out at the first signs of spring"
"Great tits in Britain seem to be adapting to climatic change, scientists report,"
"In Great Tits, males sing vigorously at dawn in the vicinity of the female's nest hole"
"Great tits stay away from conifer forests"
"great tits might be useful biomonitoring tools"
"Great Tits and Blue Tits are common wherever there are trees in Berlin, which is pretty much everywhere."

I could go on, as like most males of my species I am fascinated by Parsus major (great tits), but I digress from my original argument re the Muppet Show and coincidence of location. Being in England and a children's show, you get the benefit of the doubt that a tit willow is a bird and nothing more.

There are two more obvious points of evidence in the intention of the Muppet creators. The first is in their reconstruction of the song itself. The Gilbert & Sullivan version of the song is always performed as a solo. The version in the Muppet sketch has been hacked, not only to remove the middle verse about suicide by drowning which might not go over well on a children's comedy, but more importantly to be set up as a call-and-response style duet where Rowlf does most of the song, and Sam the Eagle must recite in response all the bits about "tits" and "dickie birds."

The other and more damning evidence is their placement of Sam the Eagle as the personality opposite Rowlf. During the first season of the Muppet Show, many of the characters were still in development. Even Miss Piggy ping ponged between different voices for a number of episodes before she settled into the Frank Oz character we know today. Until the Tit Willow sketch, Sam the Eagle was only used in two regularly occuring scenarios: to introduce the wholesome singing pair of Wayne and Wanda, and as the conservative voice on the Muppet parody of Crossfire, where Sam was essentially portraying William F. Buckley. At the beginning of the sketch, Sam has to ask, "is this cultural?" to which Rowlf replies "It's light opera!" And then over the course of the sketch, Sam looks around, nervous and suspicious at each mention of the word "tit".

I already had immense respect for Henson and crew, but discovery of this sketch raises that respect to a new level. Not because of the childishness of "tit" humor, but because of their willingness to take an obvious risk. Also in their ability to add layers of wit and sophistication to something that would have been good enough for the intended audience had it merely been colorful and loud puppets. There is something for everyone, of every age to find and cherish in their work. It can be enjoyed one way, the way my two-year-old son enjoys watching them now. It can be enjoyed another way for the nostalgia it kindles in someone like myself. And it can be enjoyed on the devious level, where my sense of humor resides, above and beyond anything I was conscious of when I first experienced the show as a child.

Chemistry | Balancing Redox Reactions

2009-07-21T21:30:00.000-07:00

I was catching up with my friend Scott on the phone the other day... to be honest, friend is a huge understatement. Scott was my college advisor, developmental biology professor, summer employer, mentor, helped me get my first job out of college, and helped me get my first Softimage license so many years ago. My son's middle name is Scott because the real Scott is such a mensch, so let's call him my mentor because no friend ever did so much while asking for so little. Scott knew my mind when I was a student, and he knows me now, so I have been asking his advice about returning to school after all these years.

Scott brought up an old routine by Father Guido Sarducci called the Five Minute University, the gist of which is in five minutes you can learn everything you would remember from school five years after graduation. For example, if you took two years of Spanish, five years later you'd most likely have forgotten all the vocabulary and conjugation rules, so for Sarducci's FMU, all you need to learn is "Como esta usted" and "Muy Bien." Want to take the FMU economics class? Supply and Demand. Buy Low, Sell High. The cost of tuition at FMU is $20.00 per student, which might seem like a lot, but also includes snacks, photo of cap and gown, and diploma.

While the FMU approach might be acceptible for most job applications, it's not going to suffice for my personal ambitions. So in the spirit of the contrarian that I am, I decided to go back and review General Chemistry, and more specifically to see if I could rekindle the process of balancing Redox reactions, something I remembered from AP chemistry in high school. Coincidentally, in my experience AP chemistry was a class where students frequently asked the question, "Do we have to know that for the test?" The teacher was fond of replying "Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle." Most of us could tell that the meaning of that quip went over the heads of the intended targets. It was only years later I noticed that same line in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations which was attributed to Robert Anthony Newton, a famous accounting professor at the Harvard Business School, and not my high school chemistry teacher. Bummer.

The art of balancing chemical equations in general is called "stoichiometry", and for real basic equations you only have to make sure the number of atoms on the left side equal the number of atoms on the right side. That's easy enough to qualify for FMU status. I remembered Redox reactions being much more difficult, because they have hidden attributes dealing with electron transfer and balancing charges and water molecules with acids and bases.

Talking about oxidizing and reduction agents, double displacement reactions, titrations, molarity, and molality, that may sound obscure to 98% of the laypopulation, but those words can strike terror into the minds of anyone taking general chemistry, and they are definitely out of the scope of the FMU curriculum. I've spent many hours of the past few weeks practicing stoichiometry and balancing Redox reactions (sorry Father Sarducci) and here's my recipe:

1) Break the reaction into two half-reactions.
2) If the oxidation states of the non Oxygen, Hydrogen atoms are obvious to calculate, figure out which species is being oxidized, which one is being reduced, then add free electrons to that half-reaction.
3) If the oxidation states are not obvious, balance the charge with H+ for acidic reactions, or OH- for basic reactions, then balance the Oxygen and Hydrogen in the half-reactions with H2O. Balance resulting charges with free electrons.
4) Using multiplication of all half-reaction species, equilize the number of electrons in each half -reaction so they can cancel out when the two half reactions are added together.
5) Add the two half reactions, canceling out the extra H2O's, H+'s or OH-'s

Coming up next? The chemistry of gases. The FMU part of my brain only remembers the words "Boyle's Law", the phrase "Standard Temperature and Pressure" and the formula PV=nRT.

Word of the Day | Pareidolia

2009-07-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

From the wikipedia definition:

Pareidolia (pronounced /pærɪˈdoʊliə/) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.

Random water stain? Or blatant Toys R Us Advert?

Random Thoughs | Continued...

2009-06-29T07:15:00.000-07:00

In the comment section this blog entry, AndyN queries:

Another question for you... In space no one can hear you scream. What's sign language for "Aaaargh, I have a xenomorph errupting from my chest"?

Start with the back of the hand pressed against the chest, fingers pointing outward. Push the hand away from the chest as the fingers are wiggled in a tentacle-like fashion. A look of panic and extreme pain also helps to convey the sign for: "Aaaargh, I have a xenomorph erupting from my chest."

If the xenomorph is erupting from a different region of the anatomy, the hand may be placed and pushed forward from there.

If the creature is not a xenomorph, but rather a morph with which the person is familiar, replace the sign for xenomorph with the sign for that creature. For example, if a gerbil is erupting from your chest, place the back of the hand on the chest, make the sign for gerbil, and then push the hand out from the chest. Don't forget to convey the look of fear and panic. This is very important in order to signify an actual eruption of the creature, rather than a casual, relaxed escape.

AndyN also asks:

Does NASA train astronauts in sign language in case their comms fail?

No, Andy. Now you are just being silly.

Random Thought | Signing and Sunroofs

2009-06-28T23:44:00.000-07:00

We had finished dinner with some friends and decided to drive a few blocks away to get some high quality ice cream (aka Coldstone). They weren't sure where the ice cream place was, so we agreed they would follow us... my wife, the baby and me in our silver sedan, and the two of them in their blue convertable sports car.

They tailed me through the parking lot without a problem , but from there, turning onto a main thoroughfare I was able to shake them. By the time they found a break in the traffic and were able to follow again, I had left them in the dust by at least a quarter mile.

Despite my point of view, that there would be more ice cream for us if the others didn't find their way, my 2-year-old convinced me to slow down and wait for our pursuers to catch up. "Wan kooh doh in deh cah!", he said. His logic was flawless, so I eased off the gas.

As we were rapidly approaching the stoplight where we would have to turn left, our pursuers who were only a few car lengths behind us at that point, were still 2 lanes over to the right despite the fact that we were in the far left lane, with the signal on. Thinking quickly, I turned the dial above me on the car ceiling and the sun roof slid open. A moment later, I thrust my arm up through the frame above the car, like Dino from the Flintstones, and began to make voracious gestures in the air, including the international symbol for "GO LEFT, DAMMIT!!!"

It worked! They saw the sign, gave me the international symbol for laughter and made the turn in time. But it also lead me to an epiphany. People who speak sign language can have full conversations on the highway, just so long as they have an open sunroof. This is in far contrast to the rest of us, whose highway sign language is typically reserved to a one sign vocabulary.

Questions:

How do you yell at someone in sign language? Does it involve a rapid, angry thrust of each sign towards the target of anger, resembling when someone tries to flick moisture off his fingertips, or does it just involve tossing in a middle finger exclamation point at the end of each sentence?
Are there people who stutter in sign language?
What about a lisp?
If a deaf person injures his hands in a bar fight, does he just use his voice for a while until his hands heal enough to sign again?

Poem | Battle of Kismet

2009-06-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

The Battle of Kismet
withanar ©2009

I was resting happily, been hypnotized by my TV, when
Walking slowly, steadily, my cat, Kismet came up to me.
I had little else to do the clock read AM, after two
The cat purred, and began to mew. She wanted something,
This, I knew.
“Feline Siren, let me be!” but Kismet called, she beckoned me.
I scratched her head and then did see the struggling movement of a flea.
“A flea!” I shouted, “I despise!” and then I looked in Kismets eyes
And said to her “You realize, to leave it there would not be wise.”
As I reached out towards Kismet's head she tiger-rolled upon the bed
And I could see, much to my dread, "More fleas upon your back!" I said.

I clutched Kismet and headed out, prepared to fight an insect bout
Before the cat had time to pout I made sure to secure her snout.
We reached the kitchen in a click, I sprayed her coat to make it slick
With stuff to kill both flea and tick that smelled so bad we both got sick.
The purring ceased, and Kismet cried. She didn’t like it, she implied.
I held her down and worked with pride, not yielding ‘till each flea had died.

But Kismet cared not for my cause, and quickly swung her razor claws,
When in my arm I felt her jaws, the flea removal
Came to pause.

I muscled through and tried again, she hissed and writhed and meowed and then
She clawed and bit me all the same, as if my work were all in vein.
“Kismet, stop it! would you please, for I must rid you of these fleas!”
But Kismet I could not appease, she treated me like a disease.
Yet once again the task I tried, and once again she screamed and cried
Injecting nails and teeth inside my arms, which now felt
Petrified.

Scratched and bleeding I could see the basis for a parody
Of battle between cat and me because I noticed that first flea.
Of how my feline detainee had rendered me an amputee.
I would not yield
Neither would she.
So who’s more stubborn?
The cat
Or I?

Query | Apiary

2009-06-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

If bees are kept in an apiary, where are apes kept?

A beestiary?

Zen Moment | An Image Appeared In My Wall Today

2009-06-11T10:31:00.000-07:00

Whenever the face of a deity manifests itself in the burnt pattern on some toast or a water stain on the side of a building, I am a bit of a skeptic. Anyone who has ever marveled at optical illusions is aware that our brain takes a lot of shortcuts and makes a lot of assumptions in order to supply us with the perception of sight.

There are also other brain processes that convert the borders, lines, and shapes we see into patterns and objects, and even more functions that connect these patterns and objects with meanings. In a nutshell, they help us quickly sort the patterns of light from the world we see, into perceptions of the familiar and unfamiliar, safe and unsafe, so we can make split second decisions that are more likely to enhance our survival chances or at least win that bid on eBay.

The concept of taking shortcuts when we convert patterns of light into the objects we perceive is easy to demonstrate and anyone can experience it by looking at various optical illusions. Thus it isn't as controversial and easily dismissed. There's more fuzziness when it comes to the next level, the brain processes that convert the visual stimuli into patterns and patterns into meanings. That is something with no easy equivalent to just looking at images. Our evidence and understanding for those processes come from the combination of neurological tests on lab animals, and humans who have suffered brain damage, from car accidents, strokes, tumors, etc. There are people who can make out shapes and name what they are, but not describe them. There are people who can recognize that a pattern is a face, but not associate that face with a specific person or name. There are people who completely ignore the left half of their body... putting on only one pant leg, one sleave, one sock, one shoe. Such observed behaviors lead researchers to conclude that if a person can do A but not B and C, or B but not A and C, etc, then each aspect must be part of a separate function.

Combine these well-founded concepts into an understanding of how we perceive the world, starting from the input of lights, darks, and colors into the retina of the eye, and through the brain processed by various, separate systems designed to recognize things and sort them into preconceived patterns and understandings, and it becomes much clearer why we can see animals form in the clouds and faces in the random patterns of wood grains. We see what we are pre-programmed to see.

But even so, when it happens to you, it's still pretty damn cool!

After our big tornado warnings of last night, I was rewarded today with more nasty thunderstorms while at work. A longstanding, pesky water leak on the wall next to my desk decided to manifest an icon in a stain:

I present to you, Geoffrey The Giraffe!
Somebody contact Toys R Us to get in here and get some pictures before Geoffrey fades into oblivion.

Texas | Fun Weather

2009-06-10T17:52:00.000-07:00

I grew up in South Florida, where our daily, summer thunderstorms would be considered severe weather in most other places. We certainly had our share of close lightning strikes and a dozen or so tornado alerts. When out fishing, it wasn't unusual to see waterspouts churning over the ocean on any given day.

For the time I lived in California there were no thunderstorms or severe weather alerts of any kind, I started to miss the drama. There's a nice adrenaline rush when the sky turns that particular shade of gray-green, the wind kicks up, and a bolt of lightning hits out of the blue, close enough for the thunder boom to catch you off guard before you have time to prepare for the sound.

We just had our first Texas tornado warning. This time, it was more than a red bar on the weather channel; it was the radio bleeping with the emergency broadcast alert, followed by our local air raid siren going off and screaming into the darkening evening.

Other than a few large branches scattered on the street, our neighborhood was spared. In celebration of our return to the threat of severe weather, here's a picture of our full national weather service glory.

Taxes | Where Does the Money Go?

2009-04-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

In blated celebration of tax time of year, from WallStats.com, here's an informative, visual representation of where our tax dollars go.

Interesting | A video lecture about Open Mindedness

2009-04-13T09:49:00.000-07:00

This should be required viewing for everyone:

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for posting the link.

Random | Best Philosopher Name Ever

2009-04-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

Sextus Empiricus

Over the years, I have become a connoiseur in the sound of crickets chirping. When my jokes fall flat, as they often do, I can hear them singing to me gently in imaginary meadows. Warm, soft focus dandy lion seeds drift gently in the wind, a subtle scent of flowers and pollen, a sense of peace and familiarity wash over me as another idea is launched into the air, only to drift away into the ether. The phantom chirping is the only reply that echoes across the void.

I was doing a search on "Inductive Reasoning" because my pregnant friend was a week past her due date. The doctors decided not to allow the baby to release itself on its own recognizance, so they scheduled a time to induce childbirth. I warned that it wasn't safe to trust the doctors in this case because they arrived upon their decision using inductive reasoning.

Silence.

And then the chirping. But in this case it wasn't the bucolic, cathartic chirping. The meadow in my mind turned gray and ominous with a distant hum. The hum grew louder, and in a moment the meadow was engulfed in darkness, the hum becoming a rumble, a roar, as a swarm of locusts rolled in and stripped the meadow bare to teach me an important lesson. Using humor in attempt to diffuse a stressful situation can be risky. Specifically, any joke about childbirth is going to be a stretch.

Chirp. Chirp.

When the locusts of failed humor left the area, they hadn't stripped the meadow bare after all. In my search for information about inductive reasoning, I stumbled across perhaps the greatest philosopher name in all of history.

Inductive reasoning, simply stated, is what we do when we generalize. We assume our personal experiences with elements in the world can be attributed to larger sets of the same elements. For example, every elephant I have seen is quite large. Therefore I assume all elephants are quite large. Inductive reasoning has a long and rich history. It's the kind of reasoning that supports prejudice, allows police to racially profile, and generates excellent ratings for Bill O'Reilly.

Historically, there are two names that are instantly associated with inductive reasoning. An eighteenth-century British philosopher named David Hume, and a second-century Greek philosopher named Sextus Empiricus. If you are like me, you had to go back and read that second name again, the equivalent of a literary double take.

If you had never studied philosophy and heard those names for the first time, you might think David Hume was the host of a British talk show. But you would actually be confusing yourself with Brit Hume, who is a talk show host, and also not British. David Hume helped develop a system of natural philosophy, which was quite influential for many new, secular movements of the time, leading to revolutions in philosophy, science, and mathematics. Hume was even close friends with Adam Smith, the father of modern day economics!

Sextus Empiricus, on the other hand, sounds like a Greek porn star, the original inventor of the missionary position in 200 A.D., or a gladiator who, in front of a silent, gaping crowd, defiantly slew 100 lions with his penis.

You know how Pedro translates from Spanish into English as Peter, Guillermo translates into William, and Guido becomes Penelope? Well Sextus Empiricus translates into Empirically Sexy. That's right, this guy's name declares to the world, to history, to posterity, that it's not a matter of opinion or debate. By any measure, he is sexy. A little more investigation reveals what might be completely expected (or completely unexpected because of the size of gonads required), Sextus Empiricus was not his original name. His original name was probably something boring like Jorgos Bacillus, or Sofronio Rastus. After graduating from ancient Greek medical school and becoming a famous philosopher, he either wasn't getting enough attention from the ladies, or was getting plenty of attention from the ladies but wanted more. So he did what any rising celebrity does, changed his name to something stupid.

The reality is, even if he wasn't all that, he probably managed a number of conquests based on his name. Imagine the scene at a Greek night club; minstrels playing Funky Town on the lute, candles blinking as strobe lights on the walls, people dancing and drinking from glowing green sheep bladders. In the corner at a table, in a seductive supine position surrounded by grapes, olives, and adoring women, Sextus Empiricus is explaining that only by suspending judgment can we truly reach a state of ataraxia. A seductive, strong-willed Greek chyck strolls up to the table, "So you think you are empirically sexy?" she interrupts the conversation. "That's what it says on my sports chariot, beba," He replies winkingly. "Well prove it!" She blurts out. At which point, Sextus begins to construct a logical proof using the predicate language to establish a first order truth. The lesson being, you have to be careful when you ask a professional philosopher to prove anything.

There is also a sad side to this whole story about philosophers changing names for publicity purposes. Alas, David Hume was not that man's original name either. He had changed it from David Home. While the change probably didn't win him any female conquests, he did get to spend valuable time with Adam Smith's Invisible Hand.

ICE | Tutorial 2: Custom Particle Emissions

2009-03-30T01:51:00.001-07:00

Introduction

The supplied factory compounds provide a good, generic starting point for many particle simulations. Since ICE was developed to replace the original XSI particles, the factory emitters follow many of the conventions for emission controls already established in the old paradigm. Anyone who has needed more precise control over emission parameters (e.g. emitting one particle from each vertex point of a source mesh), or something outside the box (e.g. emitting particles from only the edges of a mesh) has discovered quickly that the ICE factory emission compounds are somewhat limited in their powers.

Early advice from the developers and online community was to rely on the [Filter] and [Delete Point] nodes in tandem with the factory emission nodes as the primary solution for non standard emissions. While this technique provides more opportunities than default emissions, it is possibly bad advice. By exploring the workings of the factory emission nodes, one discovers that building emissions from scratch is actually quite simple since it requires only a few critical nodes. What's more, it is also possible to precisely construct a cloud by controlling exactly where and how new particles are created, which is more efficient than creating a huge cloud and filtering out unwanted chaff.

The following tutorials will walk step-by-step through setting up custom particle emissions in ICE. Please note the following conventions, established for the sake of brevity:

1) Instructions on building ICE Trees will refer only to node and compound names such as [Delete Point] rather than listing the explicit address in the node library such as Tool>Point Cloud>Delete Point. This is done under the assumption that the user can quickly find the nodes by typing their names in the node search field.

2) A sentence describing the creation and connection of nodes will be written in the following shorthand:

Connect a new [3D Vector]:Result→ ¤Port1:[ICETree]

Square brackets denote the name of a node, such as [3D Vector]
A colon after the node bracket is used to denote an output port, such as [3D Vector]:Result
A colon prior to the node bracket is used to denote an input port, such as Port1:[IceTree]
The "→ ¤" symbols are used to denote a connection line

Lesson 1: Emitting a Single Point Per frame

In a new XSI scene, do Get>Primitive>Point Cloud>Empty
Open an ICE Tree window and do Create>Simulated ICE Tree
Connect a new [Add Point] :Add → ¤Port1:[ICETree]
Connect a new [3D Vector]:Result→ ¤Positions1:[Add Point]

Your resulting tree should resemble figure-1

Figure-1:ICE Tree

Advance the playback ahead to frame 2, and if you look carefully, at the origin of your scene, you should see a tiny black dot.

Figure-2: A single black dot visible at origin

This ICE Tree is as simple as particle systems can get. It emits a single particle per frame where each particle has no properties other than a 3D vector for the point position, which we left at the default setting of (0,0,0). The particles are represented as a static black dot at origin because they have no color, size, shape, or velocity.

Let's add some animation to the [3D Vector] so we can see each particle that gets emitted:

Set the Play Control frame to 1
Double-click on the [3D Vector Node] and set keys on the X and Y parameters
Set the Play Control frame to 100
Set the X and Y parameter values to 10, and set keys on both
Play the animation

Figure-3: Single particle per frame from animated input

Based on this very simple ICE Tree, we can start to see how the [Add Point] node works for a simulated ICE Tree. It uses input position information to add new points to the cloud at each frame of animation. We can add more particles per frame by adding more [3D Vector] nodes and expanding the Position inputs on the [Add Points] node (see figure-4).

Figure-4: Additional [3D Vector] nodes with different animated values create more particles per frame

We can also input an array of point positions or locations from any source into a Position input of the [Add Point] node (see figure-5).

Figure-5
A custom array is constructed using the original animated [3D Vector] node. Additional members of the array are created by adding values to the original vector and feeding them into the [Build Array] node

Keep in mind, without any additional information, the created particles represent nothing more than a location in space. They will not render, they will not react to forces, and they won't stop generating new points at every frame. Gaining control over these other aspects requires the addition of more nodes to the tree (Of course, not every particle sim we create needs to be rendered, or react to forces, so it's good to know by creating an emission setup from scratch we can leave out extraneous information).

Lesson 2: Adding Basic Particle Attributes

Start with the results from the above exercises
Insert an [Emit From Surface] node into the ICE Tree
Mouse over the [Emit From Surface] node and you should see an 'e' in a circle pop up at the top left of the node. Click on this button to explore inside this factory compound. The insides will look like figure-6.

Figure-6: The [Emit From Surface] node internals

Select the two brownish nodes in the upper left of the compound, [Init Particle Data] and [Init Force and Velocity] and copy them into the memory buffer (CTRL-C).
Exit the inside of the compound by clicking on the little x in the box on the upper left of the compound interior interface.
Delete the [Emit From Surface] compound node.
Paste the two nodes copied from the inside into the ICE Tree (CTRL-V).
Connect [Init Particle Data]:Execute→ ¤On Creation1:[Add Point]
Connect [Init Force and Velocity]:Execute→ ¤New (On Creation 1):[Add Point]
Double-Click on the [Init Particle Data] node (notice the PPG has many of the attributes you would set for a default factory particle emission. This is not a coincidence considering that's where we just grabbed it from!)
Set the shape attribute to sphere.
Run the Playback.

Figure-7
[Init Particle Data] and [Init Force and Velocity] nodes salvaged from factory [Emit From Surface] compound

From Figure-7 we can see that our particles now have color and size, along with all the other attributes that were set by the [Init Particle Data] node. From the [Init Force and Velocity] node, our particles also get all the necessary attributes for using factory forces in simulation.

This would be a good time to explore what's inside both of these compounds.


Figure-8: [Init Paritcle Data] node internals	Figure-9: [Init Force and Velocity] node internals

The internals of both nodes aren't very complicated at all. In fact, they are made up almost entirely of [Set Data] nodes. Both compounds set particle attributes, along with a partner Init_attribute. The Init_attribute stores the values at creation time, while the rest of the attributes are used during simulation to evolve over time. Keep this technique in mind when you need to create your own custom attributes. It can be important to know, for example, what your original orientation was, since you might need your particle to wobble but not get too far from its original rotation.

Notice that things are starting to look more like the default emission controls? We're already at a starting point for simulation work, and it required very few nodes and very little work to get here.

Lesson 3: Controlling Emission Timing

Start with the ICE Tree from the end of Lesson 2.
Add an [If] node into the ICE Tree.
Connect [Add Point]:Add→ ¤If True:[If]
Connect [If]:Result→ ¤Port1:[ICETree]
Add a [Test Current Frame] node into the ICE Tree.
Connect [Test Current Frame]:Result→ ¤Condition:[If]
Double-Click on the [Test Current Frame] node
Set the Test Frame parameter value to 50
Set the Compare Type parameter to Less Than or Equal To
Run the Simulation

Figure-10
Frame Test switch added to graph to control particle emission timing

Controlling when the emission should start and stop is as simple as adding a simple switch using an [If] statement. In this case, we are testing that the current frame is less than or equal to 50. When this condition is true, the [Add Point] node executes. When false, it sits idle. For certain kinds of emissions, we will want to emit all points on a single frame, often the very first one of the animation. This same setup works nicely for that. Keep in mind, however, that points are generated at the end of a frame, so you may need to add an extra frame at the beginning of your scene. For example, if you want to create points only on frame 1, make sure to set the scene start frame to 0.

Of course, you can use any test you like to control the switch for adding points. You could add points every other frame by testing the remainder when you divide the current frame by 2, or using boolean logic([And] nodes and [Or] nodes), emit particles between multiple frame ranges.

Lesson 4: Emitting Particles from Vertex Points

Start with your ICE Tree from Lesson 3
Set the Test Frame parameter on the [Test Current Frame] node to 100 so that particles are added for the entire animation
Model>Get>Primitive>Polygon Mesh>Torus
Set keys on translation and rotation at origin, at frame 1
Set the frame to 100
Translate the torus to the upper right side of the view, store the keys
Rotate the torus 2-3 full times in a couple of axes. Your resulting animation should resemble figure-11

Figure-11: Simple animation of torus

From an explorer view, drag and drop the torus into the ICE Tree. This should come into the tree as a [Get torus] node, which is just a Get Data node that is pointing at the torus.
Add another [Get Data] node to the ICE Tree
Connect [Get torus]:Out Name → ¤In Name:[Get Data]
Double-Click on the [Get Data] node and click on the Explorer button. Expand the Polygon Mesh node in the pop up explorer and select PointLocation. The node should change its name to [Get..PointLocation]
Connect [Get..PointLocation]:Value→ ¤Positions1:[Add Point].
If your ICE Tree looks like figure-12, go ahead and run your simulation.

Figure-12: ICE Tree and resulting simulation

Remember from the first lesson that a single 3D Vector or location creates a single point per frame when connected to the [Add Point] node. Next, we built an Array from individual 3D Vector nodes, and the [Add Point] node created points for each of the Array items on every frame. In this lesson, we are using a torus as an Array source, feeding the Point Locations from the torus into the [Add Point] node. The result is, our animated torus is emitting a new particle from each vertex point, per frame of simulation.

Lesson 5: Emitting Particles from Edges, Polygons, and other Data Sources

In Lesson 4, we used PointLocation data from an input torus to emit particles for our cloud. When pulling PointLocation information into an ICE Tree, it automatically converts its SRT space relative to the SRT space of the ICE Tree host node, in this case the particle cloud. If we were to pull PointPosition data from the torus instead, [Add Point] would still add new particles to the cloud, but they would all be situated around the origin. You can try this by going back to step-11 of Lesson 4 and selecting PointPosition instead of PointLocation. You can also try EdgePosition, PolygonPosition, PointNormal, and any other attribute from the torus that is a 3D Vector data type. [Add Point] will work with any of them.

However, in order to emit the points relative to the torus, we have to do a little more math. We need to get the global SRT from the torus and multiply it by the data we are pulling from the torus. The result will be reflected in global space relative to where the torus is:

Starting with the ICE Tree from Lesson 4, double-click on the [Get Data] node connected after the [Get torus] node and select the EdgePosition attribute. The node will change names to [Get ..EdgePosition].
Run the simulation to see that particles are all emitted around the origin
Add a new [Get Data] node to the ICE Tree
Connect [Get torus]:Out Name → ¤In Name:[Get Data]
Double click on the new [Get Data] node and set the reference parameter to "kine.global" (without the quotation marks). The node name will change to [Get .kine.global].
Add a [Multiply Vector by Matrix] node to the ICE Tree.
Connect [Get ..EdgePosition]:Value→ ¤Vector:[Multiply Vector by Matrix]
Connect [Get .kine.global]:Value→ ¤Matrix:[Multiply Vector by Matrix]
Connect [Multiply Vector by Matrix]:Result→ ¤Positions1:[Add Point]

See Figure-13 to check your node Tree and expected results

Figure-13
ICE Tree for emitting particles from Edge Position data. Results on the right. Image links to an enlarged view.

You may now change the data set pulled from the torus to any of the other 3D Vector sets, such as PointPosition and PolygonPosition, and they will emit particles relative to the center animation of the torus in the scene.

Lesson 6: Emitting Particles From Surfaces and Volumes

Start with the ICE Tree from Lesson 5
Delete the two Get Data nodes that are connected to the [Get torus] node, [Get ..EdgePosition] and [Get .kine.global].
Delete the [Multiply Vector by Matrix] node.
Add a [Generate Sample Set] node to the ICE Tree.
Connect [Get torus]:Value→ ¤Geometry:[Generate Sample Set].
Connect [Generate Sample Set]:Samples→ ¤Positions1:[Add Point].
Double-click the [Generate Sample Set] node and set the Rate Type to Number per Frame.
Run the simulation and check the results against Figure-14.

Figure-14
ICE Tree for emitting particles from random points on surface. Results on the right

Notice the options inside the [Generate Sample Set] node. They allow you to set the rate of sampling per frame, second, or density. The resulting particles added to the point cloud are sampled randomly from the input geometry per frame. At this point the functionality of our simple node tree is almost identical to the factory [Emit From Surface] node, and our tree isn't very complicated at all.

We can drive a dynamic particle sim from here by simply adding forces and a [Simulate Particles] node to the input ports of the [ICETree] node (See Figure-15, 16).

Figure-15: ICE Tree with simulation nodes added

Figure-16: Resulting Simulation

Lesson 7: Emitting From Custom Geometry Queries

We know how to emit from vertex points and other data sources from geometry input. We also know how to sample sets of random points using [Generate Sample Set]. So we can do what the factory emission nodes already do. The main point of this tutorial was to take us step-by-step until we could match the power of the factory emission compounds and ultimately move beyond them. Here we go.

Start with the ICE Tree from Lesson 6.
Delete the [Get torus] node and the [Generate Sample Set] node from the tree.
Delete the torus from the scene.
Double-click on the [Test Current Frame] node and set the Test Frame to 2 and the Compare Type to "Equal To".
Model>Create>Text>Planar Mesh
Type some text in a font you like at 48 points in size, and create the mesh
Drag and drop the mesh node from an explorer into the ICE Tree. This will come in as Get Data node named [Get polymsh].
Model>Get>Primitive>Point Cloud>Grid
Rotate the Point Cloud grid by 90 degrees in x, then size it to fit over the text (see Figure-17)

Figure-17: Text mesh with Particle Cloud Grid

Translate the Particle Cloud Grid slightly forward in z space to position it in front of the text mesh.
Increase the subdivisions of the Particle Cloud Grid for more coverage of the text.
Drag and Drop the Particle Cloud Grid from an explorer view into the ICE Tree. This will come in as a node named [Get grid].
Hide the Particle Cloud Grid.
Add a new [Get Data] node to the ICE Tree.
Connect [Get grid]:Out Name→ ¤In Name:[Get Data]
Set the reference of the [Get Data] node to PointPosition. The name will change to [Get ..PointPosition]
Add another [Get Data] node to the ICE Tree and connect [Get grid]:Out Name→ ¤In Name:[Get Data].
Set the reference of the new [Get Data] node to ".kine.global" (without the quotation marks). The name will change to [Get .kine.global].
Add a [Multiply Vector by Matrix] node to the ICE Tree.
Connect [Get ..PointPosition]:Value→ ¤Vector:[Multiply Vector by Matrix]
Connect [Get .kine.global]:Value→ ¤Matrix:[Multiply Vector by Matrix]
Add a [Raycast] node to the ICE Tree.
Connect [Get polymsh]:Value→ ¤Geometry:[Raycast]
Connect [Multiply Vector by Matrix]:Result→ ¤Position:[Raycast]
Connect [Raycast]:Location→ ¤Positions1:[Add Point]
Double-click the [Raycast] node and set the Direction Z to -1.
Step the Play Control frame from 1 to 2.
Adjust the size of the particles and density of the Point Cloud Grid to taste. See Figure-18 for the Tree and results.

Figure-18
ICE Tree using Raycast from a Point Cloud Grid onto a text mesh for particle emissions

There are many more steps in the tutorial above, but most of them pertain to setting up the text mesh and the Particle Cloud Grid object. Looking at the node graph in Figure-18 you can see that it isn't very large or complex at all. The source for the emission data are points from the Particle Cloud Grid wherever they successfully raycast onto the text mesh.

There are some distinct advantages to setting up a Particle Emission using a point cloud primitive. You can see the density and location of the emission distribution prior to particle creation. You can also move or delete points on the Particle Cloud that is being sampled, or apply other deformation operators to that cloud such as point randomization. Ultimately, you have a very visually precise source for your emissions.

The same basic technique can be used, for example, with a Point Cloud Cube, shrink wrapped onto a spherical mesh. Instead of using the [Raycast] node, you can use [Get Closest Location]. This is one way to generate an even distribution of particles on a surface mesh (see Figure-19).

Figure-19
A Primitive Point Cloud Cube is shrink wrapped over the man's head, and then used as a Point Position source for a [Get Closest Location] node. The resulting particle distribution is on the right.

As with the text example, the density of the sampled Point Cloud can be adjusted after the fact, along with editing point positions, deleting unwanted points, applying randomization, etc.

Conclusion and Summary

Once understood, setting up custom emissions in ICE are a simple prospect. The critical nodes are [Add Point] along with initializing particle data, which can be quickly salvaged from the existing factory emission nodes.

[Add Point] will accept input from any source for PointLocations or 3D Vector data which is used as PointPosition data.

PointLocations automatically convert their coordinate space to the SRT of the ICE operator, but often we need to use input data from sceneobjects that have been transformed. We can convert these data sets to global space by multiplying their global SRT matrices by their input point vector data using a [Multiply Vector by Matrix] node.

Lastly, some of the types of distributions shown simply cannot be achieved easily or efficiently using the combination of factory emission nodes with filters. Building a new emission from scratch allows us to filter data before it enters the cloud, rather than emitting a massive cloud, then deleting unwanted or filtered points.

=================================================
[EDIT]
Thanks to those who have tried out the tutorials and provided feedback. You guys have taken the information and pushed it to an advanced level very quickly, which is quite encouraging!

Some things to take note of, there are a few settings provided in the factory compounds that were missing from the tutorial which will affect simulation results. These nodes can readily be found inside the factory emission compounds, so they are as easy to poach and use as the initialization compounds from Lesson 2.

The first compound is [Jitter Emission Location Along Velocity Vector] which will help to break up any stratified-looking emissions. You can usually find this compound near the [Init Force and Velocity] compound in the first level of a factory compound.

The second compound, [Randomize SimulatedFrameFraction] is usually found embedded in a [Generate Points] compound one level deeper. This one randomizes a particles place in time.

The other thing to note, which I did not provide more details on in the tutorial is the difference between feeding 3D Vectors versus Point Locators into the [Add Point] cloud to build the cloud. When possible, try to use Point Locator data first, and use 3D Vectors as position information when there is no way to build your cloud with Point Locators.

The reason for this is that when you add points with Point Locator information, the [Add Point] node initializes a few more attributes, such as EmitLocation. Some of these attributes are important for some of the other factory compound nodes to function, such as [Stick to Location] when set to the Emit Location.

For the most part, as long as you are aware that for many simulation nodes to function, they require certain data to initialize at particle creation. When those nodes don't function, you can go inside them and see which attributes they are calling. If you are missing those attributes from your custom emission, you can try to add them into your custom emission's initialization, and that downstream compounds will start functioning properly.

Lastly, if for some reason you can't find the right attributes to initialize, or you just can't get a factory compound to function with your custom emission, take heart that there should *always* be some kind of workaround. Often, you can feed a custom emission into a brand new cloud via Point Locators, even though your custom emission was based entirely on 3D Vector input. The new cloud will get all the auto initialization working when the old one didn't.

Bloviation | Super Power Genesis

2009-03-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, a good friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer, and while he is presently finishing up his round of treatments and doing well, at the onset he was searching for silver linings in order to maintain a positive attitude (To protect his privacy, I have scrambled his name and will refer to him as moT). It didn't take long for moT to realize that due to his treatment he was going to have direct exposure to high doses of radiation, thus he looked forward to developing super powers.


Figure-1: Amazing Spider Man	Figure-2: Dr. Manhattan

As logic would follow, what worked for the Hulk, Dr. Manhattan, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Joan Rivers, etc, should work for him. Why not? We speculated on when and what those powers would be, and whether to expect him to use them for good or evil. I've known moT for many years. At my wedding, he shared best man duties with my brother. MoT has the kind of personality that would be effective in either alignment; an acute sense of justice, inability to hold grudges, adept at instant pun derivation, deviant sense of humor. One day he might rescue kittens in from the cold, and the next he would vaporize a dozen cars and their occupants, one-by-one, for driving too fast through his residential neighborhood. If the universe should grant powers to anyone, this is our person. The entertainment value alone should move his probability up a few ticks. Meanwhile, moT has had many radiation exposures, and super powers have yet to manifest. And while his friends and family have moved on to dealing with other issues, I have remained focused in my research, working out why his super powers never arrived.


The Figure-3: Incredible Middle Aged Hulk	Figure-4: Joan Rivers

I have divided my subjects into two groups as part of a double-blind placebo-controlled experiment, and sent out pills that are either packed with sugar (placebo control group) or cosmic rays (experimental group). For the sake of accurate statistics, if you have already developed super powers, please notify me off line so we can remove you from the list. Otherwise, continue to take the pills each morning with breakfast. Three placebos should be enough to sweeten your coffee. The other half of you may enjoy a refreshing burst of protons (please ignore the RDA warnings on the bottles).

Figure-5: Double-blind placebo-controlled experiment

So far my data support the hypothesis that direct exposure to radiation is not the proper procedure for super power genesis (SPG). It turns out, radiation cures cancer, then causes it, then cures it again. So if you must be exposed to it, make sure you get the timing just right as you'll want to shut down your rads during one of the good moments. For successful SPG, as seen in the case of the Hulk, Spiderman, Fantastic Four (Lee, Ditko, Kirby, et al) a subject must be indirectly exposed to radiation, exposed during moments of intense, emotional stress, or exposed via or in combination with a secondary agent. Case Studies:

Bruce Banner's gamma radiation exposure occurred during a bomb test while under high emotional duress (he was busy flinging Rick Jones into a trench). The stress of the moment, in combination with other elements used to control the bomb explosion parameters are the likely cause of Banner's successful SPG.

The case of The Fantastic Four involved cosmic rays (80% proton, 10% helium nucleus, 10% heavier elements from solar matter in the storm. Not by coincidence I use the same ingredients in your pills, if they don't sweeten your coffee). However it is suspected that exposure outside the Earth's magnetic field in combination with proton interference from the aluminum in the space suits and hull of the experimental craft were the causal agents in this successful SPG.

The cases of Jon Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan (Moore, Gibbons, Higgins, et al) and Joan Rivers (Hoefflin, Fisher, et al) require too much suspension of disbelief and must be rejected as outlier data for this experiment.

Peter Parker was bitten by a spider that was exposed to radioactivity. Thus, secondary exposure via the spider, combined with the spider's venom as transport agent were causal agents in his SPG into the Amazing Spiderman.

Based on my experiments and from our case studies, it can be concluded that moT cannot, in fact experience successful SPG, given that his direct radiation exposure does not involve any of the required secondary elements. Therefore, I must do the responsible thing and return all the pairs of donated sweatpants we were collecting in anticipation of his eventual metamorphosis.

However, while moT should not expect to develop his own super powers, based on our case studies (specifically Peter Parker's) he may be able to play the role of catalyst in the SPG of another. If moT were to himself, bite a spider, there is a strong probability of the spider developing human characteristics, undergoing SPG and becoming The Amazing Manspider. This would be a spider that has the following power characteristics:

Rational/Abstract thought
Usage of tools
Bipedal Locomotion
"My man-senses are tingling"
Comprehension of traffic signs/signals
Upward Career Mobility Potential
Navigate the World Wide Web (It is likely Al Gore is a Manspider)

Figure-6: The Amazing Manspider (Artist Rendition)

Before committing himself to arachnid mastication activities, it is recommended that moT should engage his own powers of rational abstract thought to be certain he is willing to endow his attributes to a spider. With great power comes great responsibility, after all. While a human with spider abilities gains tremendous advantages in our world, human characteristics on a spider are more likely to be a handicap in the arachnid world. Only moments after gaining sentience and pondering the meaning of the life, our Friendly Neighborhood Manspider is likely to be stung, paralyzed, and dragged off by a parasitoid wasp (such wasps, like the Hawk Wasp, are quite common in the animal kingdom, where they lay their eggs to incubate inside the body of a paralyzed victim. The developing wasp larvae consume the victim from the inside out!).

Even if he survives long enough to develop his man powers, is there even a point to heroism for Arthropods? What behavior constitutes a crime in the violent, no rules, no-holds-barred insect world anyway? Stealing a bug from someone else's web? Not devouring your mate after intercourse? Laying eggs into the wrong larvae? Perhaps moT would be better off keeping his radio active venom safely outside any spiders for fear that this might result:

Figure-7: The Amazing Manspider (Case Study Photo)

Manspider Theme Song
by withanar ©2009

Manspider, Manspider,
Ineffectual crimefighter
Uses tools, walks upright
Chickens out when it's time to fight
Oh Noes!
There goes the Manspider.

Is he strong?
No he's not!
He's got rational/abstract thought.
Tries to swing from a thread
Opts to take stairs instead
Hey, there
There goes the Manspider.

In the chill of night
He goes out and gets lost.
Like a streak of light
He gets killed by a wasp.

Figure-8: Oh Noes! There goes the Manspider :-(

More Psych Out Names

2009-03-24T18:52:00.001-07:00

Sherry -> Sheremy
Greg -> Greginald
Larry -> Larold
Garry -> Gawrence
Ricky -> Richolas, Richole
Molly -> Moliver
Sam -> Samanda, Samela
Ron -> Ronathon
Bill -> Billiam, Bilbert, Billip
Ralph -> Ralphonso, Ralfred, Ralfredo
Jerry -> Jerrence
Zack -> Zaxwell, Zaximillian
Abe -> Abriel
Gabe -> Gabraham
Stan -> Staniel, Nastaniel, Standrew

Little Known Fact | Who wrote the Banana Boat Song?

2009-03-19T15:39:00.000-07:00

Day-o, day-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day, me say day, me say day, me say day
Me say day, me say day-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home

We've heard it in commercials. It's on the radio station at the supermarket. They play it at football games to get the crowd to cheer "Day-o" back at the loudspeaker during a timeout. If you are like me, you've always thought the Banana Boat Song was the creation of this guy:

And to remind you why this song has so much stay power, and how much fun it can be, here's the first television broadcast of the Banana Boat Song:

According to wikipedia, the song was first recorded by Edric Conner and his band "The Carribeans" in 1952, on the album Songs From Jamaica. But another source I found claims the song was actually written by Alan Arkin when he was a member of The Tarriers, a folk group that included Arkin, Erik Darling, and Bob Carey. Alan Arkin? This Guy?

And to remind you why Alan Arkin has so much stay power, and how much fun he can be, here's a scene from Little Miss Sunshine:

Picture of the Day | Birthday Turtle

2009-03-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

Language | Emoticon Translator

2009-03-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

Try the following experiment. Enter this emoticon into the google language tool found here:

:-)

Then set the translation to go from English >> Japanese. Does the translation come out like this?

^_^

If not... keep spamming the folks at google until they add proper translation of emoticons to their language tools.

ICE | Tutorial 1: Local versus Global Space for ICE calculations

2009-03-17T14:55:00.001-07:00

Many Objects, Many Different SRT Spaces

When performing calculations in ICE, there will be times you want to pull in data from many different scene elements, including geometry surfaces, curves, nulls, etc. Each one of these objects may have a unique global SRT setting. Furthermore, the mesh or point cloud you are trying to drive with an ICE operator may have its own unique SRT settings.

For the person new to ICE, or the artist attempting to build a new custom operation to supplement the factory compounds, it can be difficult to sort out how to deal with SRT space. The following simple examples should help in this regard.

1. Coordinate space is always relative to the scene object hosting the operator
This is true not only for ICE operators, but for scripted operators, and point position array data on geometry. Incidentally, it is also true for particle rotation and scale values on clouds.

Whatever values are set in the array of point positions, they are multiplied by the SRT matrix of the host object. For example, if you get a sphere with radius of 1, and scale it up uniformly by 5 units, the radius will be 5.

The same would be true if you were controlling the positions of the points from inside an ICE Tree. You could place all the vertex points, mathematically, at a distance of 1 unit from center. But if the object has a different scale in it's center's SRT, the global position of those points will be modified accordingly.

How do you deal with different objects, each with potentially different SRT settings inputting data into a single operator?

When working in ICE, luckily, many of the Factory compiled nodes do this for you automatically. For example, if you use a [Raycast] node, or [Get Closet Location], or [UV to Location], it doesn't matter what the SRT's are for the objects driving the Geometry input for those nodes. The result coming out of that node is processed relative to the SRT of the object hosting the ICE operator.

1. Processing Point Positions from two objects with different SRT's using a factory ICE node

The following Jscript builds a simple ICE Tree where a sphere is hosting the ICE operator, and using a [Get Closest Location] node with a NURBS curve as Geometry input. Both the host sphere and the curve have been transformed away from origin.

//BEGIN SCRIPT
CreatePrim("Sphere", "MeshSurface", null, null);
Translate(null, -7.79244806469314, 7.23979894153846, 0, siRelative, siParent, siObj, siXYZ, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, 0, null);
CreatePrim("Circle", "NurbsCurve", null, null);
Translate(null, 7.4199007468592, 5.15796834461538, 0, siRelative, siParent, siObj, siXYZ, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, 0, null);
ApplyOp("ICETree", "sphere", siNode, null, null, 0);
AddICENode("GetDataNode", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode.reference", "circle", null);
AddICENode("GetDataNode", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
AddICECompoundNode("Get Point Position", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\GetClosestLocationNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.GetClosestLocationNode.geometry", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode.value");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.GetClosestLocationNode.position", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Get_Point_Position.Value");
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\GetDataNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].source", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.GetClosestLocationNode.location");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].reference", "PointPosition", null);
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\SubtractNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.first", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].value");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.second", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Get_Point_Position.Value");
AddICECompoundNode("Set Data", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Value", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.result");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.port1", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Execute");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Reference", "self.ICEopVectors", null);
DisplayPortValues("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Value", true, 1, true, "", 0, 0, 0, 1, false, true, 0.62, 1, 0.62, 1, false, 0, 10000, 1, false, false, 0, 10, false, true, false, 100);
DeleteObj("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[1]");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Name", "ICEtoCrv", null);
//END SCRIPT

Scene Result

ICE Tree

You can see in the scene result that the vectors from each point position of the sphere successfully point to their closest locations on the curve. This shows the point positions in the ICE tree have been calculated in the same relative SRT space.

If you run the script, you can see interactively that the relationship remains funtional, even if you scale, rotate, translate either the sphere or the curve.

Because the [Get Closest Location] node, and all the other factory ICE nodes deal with SRT space automatically, many users will go pretty far building custom effects in ICE without ever being aware of the SRT issue. Problems will only appear the first time they try and use the global position vector of a null.

2. Using a Null's Global Pos as Input (A Common Mistake)

What happens if we need to use a null to draw vectors relative to our point positions? Typically there are no problems if the operator host object is at scene origin, but as soon as the node is transformed away, things start to break.

A common example of this is the eyeball. We might build an operator for pushing eyelids off the cornea geometry which works fine when our rig is in rest position. But as soon as we start moving the character around the scene, the eyelid deformation goes crazy.

The next example demonstrates why:

//START SCRIPT
CreatePrim("Sphere", "MeshSurface", null, null);
Translate(null, -3.35968115523466, 4.58529230769231, 0, siRelative, siParent, siObj, siXYZ, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, 0, null);
GetPrim("Null", null, null, null);
Translate(null, 4.72511306859206, 3.09282461538462, 0, siRelative, siParent, siObj, siXYZ, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, 0, null);
ApplyOp("ICETree", "sphere", siNode, null, null, 0);
AddICENode("GetDataNode", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode.reference", "sphere", null);
AddICENode("GetDataNode", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[1].reference", "null", null);
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\GetDataNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].inname", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[1].outname");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].reference", "kine.global.pos", null);
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\GetDataNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[3].inname", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode.outname");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[3].reference", "PointPosition", null);
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\SubtractNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.first", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].value");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.second", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[3].value");
AddICECompoundNode("Set Data", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Value", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.result");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.port1", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Execute");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Reference", "self.GlobalKineVectors", null);
DisplayPortValues("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Value", true, 1, true, "", 0, 0, 0, 1, false, true, 0.62, 0, 0, 1, false, 0, 10000, 1, false, false, 0, 10, false, true, false, 100);
//END SCRIPT

Scene Result

ICE Tree

Our intention was to draw vectors that originate at each vertex point and end at the null. So we do what has always worked before, we pull in the global position of the null and subtract the point positions of the sphere.

The problem here is, the sphere has been transformed away from origin and so has the null to somewhere else. So their point positions exist in completely different SRT spaces. There is no factory ICE node resolving spatial differences for us here, therefore the results don't do what we were hoping.

3. Using a Null's Global Pos as Input (Converting SRT space)
This last example builds an ICE Tree that resolves the difference between object space.

In order to get our math to work, we have to get our position data all into the same SRT space first. As long as our results are set to the SRT space of the operator's host object, everything will function.

//START SCRIPT
CreatePrim("Sphere", "MeshSurface", null, null);
Translate(null, -4.03161738628159, 5.52392861538462, 0, siRelative, siParent, siObj, siXYZ, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, 0, null);
GetPrim("Null", null, null, null);
Translate(null, 4.59216311913357, 5.09237169230769, 0, siRelative, siParent, siObj, siXYZ, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, 0, null);
ApplyOp("ICETree", "sphere", siNode, null, null, 0);
AddICENode("GetDataNode", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode.reference", "sphere", null);
AddICENode("GetDataNode", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[1].reference", "null", null);
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\GetDataNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].inname", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode.outname");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].reference", "PointPosition", null);
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\GetDataNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[3].inname", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[1].outname");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[3].reference", "kine.global.pos", null);
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\GetDataNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[4].inname", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode.outname");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[4].reference", "kine.global", null);
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\InvertNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.InvertNode.value", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[4].value");
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\SubtractNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
AddICENode("$XSI_DSPRESETS\\ICENodes\\MultiplyVectorByMatrixNode.Preset", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.MultiplyVectorByMatrixNode.matrix", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.InvertNode.result");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.MultiplyVectorByMatrixNode.vector", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[3].value");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.second", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].value");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.first", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.MultiplyVectorByMatrixNode.result");
AddICECompoundNode("Set Data", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Value", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.result");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.port1", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Execute");
SetValue("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Reference", "self.ConvertedVectors", null);
DisplayPortValues("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.Set_Data.Value", true, 1, true, "", 0, 0, 0, 1, false, true, 0.62, 1, 0.62, 1, false, 0, 10000, 1, false, false, 0, 10, false, true, false, 100);
DisconnectICENodePort("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.second");
ConnectICENodes("sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SubtractNode.second", "sphere.polymsh.ICETree.SceneReferenceNode[2].value");
//END SCRIPT

Scene Result

ICE Tree

The solution for this graph is to convert the point position data from the input null to the relative SRT space of the operator host object.

The formula for this is:

Multiply the global point positions of the data you want to convert from
by the inverted SRT matrix you want to convert to

There may be other times you want to convert everything to global space to do your vector calculations, then back to the relative space of the operator's host object. But the above formula should work most of the time, plus it's the more direct route, since the final output needs to be in the SRT space of the operator host object anyway.

Muppets | Bale or Frog?

2009-03-16T08:38:00.000-07:00

More Bale/Frog images here

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish for the link.

Surrealization | Toddler has strange taste

2009-03-15T15:53:00.000-07:00

Only moments ago, my wife pointed out that our 2-year-old was sitting on the floor of the den, snacking on edamame, while watching Mel Brooks get stabbed in the shower during the Psycho parody scene of High Anxiety.

Video-1: Psycho scene from Mel Brookes'High Anxiety

(Sorry, I could only find a youtube of this scene in Italian)

Figure-1: Plate of edamame
(Sorry, I could only find a picture of edamame in Japanese)

We realized the moment was kind of surreal (thus my usage of the portmanteau, surrealization in the title). Yet the Psycho scene was followed only moments later by the first entrance of Madeline Kahn, playing the role of Victoria Brisbane. Surreal morphed into coincidence, because our Son recognized her from one of his favorite Sesame Street segments, something he watches almost daily, where Kahn sings the Echo Song to Grover.

Naturally, our child is doomed. His parents are simply too eccentric for him to rely on nuture overriding nature with respect to his development of likes and dislikes. But it's still fun to catalog the damage.

WoW | The Blue Proto-Drake Equation

2009-03-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

One of my hobbies, outside of working on crowd simulations or virtual explosions, is playing World of Warcraft. For me it covers a few needs in one, horribly time-consuming package:

Escapism
Cheap entertainment (I watch little to no television anymore)
I get to hang out with old friends from college
We form small gangs, go out into the World of Warcraft, kill things, and take their loot as reward (Sometimes we kill a bard and take his lute as a reward)
Then we continue to kill things
Lots of things
Things with teeth

The other night, as a consequence of killing lots of things with teeth we witnessed an extraordinarily rare event (See equation below). We met up with a dungeon boss named Skadi the Ruthless, who, due to a minor disagreement with four out of five members of our party, had to be gently euthenized. After seven intense mintues of stabbing him with swords, charring him in the face with roaring streams of fire, and repeated electrocutions by firing lightning at his groin (I did the lightning), Skadi was kind enough to drop the reins to his personal flying mount, the blue proto-drake.


Figure-1: This guy	Figure-2: gave us one of these

This would be the real life equivant of gathering into a small group, showing up at Michael Bay's house, waiting for him to walk outside, say, to get his mail, and then beating the living crap out of him, Clockwork Orange style, for seven minutes straight; And when he finally expires, with his last gasp he folds over and slumps to the ground. In a bloody heap, he extends his arm and unclenches his fist to reveal a set of keys; the very keys that enable access and operation of the real Optimus Prime. Because of the code of chivalry, you have earned the right to drive Michael Bay's personal transformer vehicle down Ventura Blvd, turning heads. At every stop light, people run over to you, or roll down their windows and shout, "Is that Optimus Prime?!" And you shout back, "Yeah, that's right beeoches!" as you transform into a robot and leap over the intersection, then back into a truck, skipping every impediment all the way back to Canoga Park. Your vehicle, your prize. A symbol of mortally defeating the director of such hit projects as Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, and the Meat Loaf: Bat out of Hell II Picture Show.


Figure-1: Real life: If this guy	Figure-2: gave us one of these

NOTE: I do not condone, under any circumstances, the actual, violent attack of Michael Bay. Everyone I know who has successfully killed him claims he never drops the keys to Optimus Prime and the best loot you can expect from him would be the Michael Bay Box Set, which includes The Rock, but not The Island, or The Lionel Richie Collection. Plus he respawns like every 15 minutes, and isn't even an elite. And hurry, before he finishes remaking A Nightmare on Elm Street!

The Blue Proto-Drake Equation

So how rare of a drop is the blue proto-drake in World of Warcraft? The odd's can be accurately determined using the following equation:

where:
N = the number of people flying around on blue proto-drakes
R* = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per planet-forming star

fℓ = the fraction of life supporting planets that successfully develop life

fi = the fraction of life-bearing planets that successfully develop intelligent life
fWoW = the fraction of intelligent life that advances in technology to develop World of Warcraft
l = the length of time these lifeforms play World of Warcraft

fhUP = the fraction of WoW players skilled enough to run the Heroic Utgaurd Pinnacle instance

fK = the fraction of successful kills of Skadi the Ruthless
fPD = the fraction of times Skadi the Ruthless drops the [Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake]

fNP = the number of people in your party who are rolling against you

Based on real world, scientifically-measured observation (which can be verified by the four other people in my raiding party) when plugging in the probabilities of the first nine terms from the above equation, the result is 100%:

fp X ne X fℓ X fi X fWoW X l X fhUP X fK X fPD = 1.00

Unfortunately for me and 3 other people in my raiding party, that last term has a much lower probability of only 20%:

fNP = 0.200

We all rolled dice, ranging from 1-100:

One person rolled a 90.

I rolled a 93.

My friend rolled a 94.

He got the drake.

All those terrible odds, and it boiled down to a single percentage point. So much for intelligent life in the universe.

Maybe next time?

Picture of the Day | Jason Kills a Gong

2009-03-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

It's Friday the 13th today, and for those not huddling under their blankets in fear suffering from triskaidekaphobia, it's been a tpical day. My workplace usually does something special, such as hosting a murder mystery. Today there were no pretend slaughters in the office, but the sales department made a figurative killing.

Our executive producer always bangs a gong whenever a job is officially sold, which typically means a contract is signed and a deposit is made. The frequency of gong rings is usually 1 per week, occasionally more, sometimes fewer, but today we had 3 gongs in a minute.

I've asked about the reason for his gonging on a sale, and we ended up discussing the binary nature of such things. In my line of work (special effects and graphics) you often do a lot of test and proof of concept work as part of the effort to land a project in the first place. One day you might find yourself animating space ships blowing up, and the next simulating twirling bubbles from a dancing woman, and the next project that actually lands ends up being some boring tracking or matchmoving job. So a lot of potential projects come and go, and some are more desirable than others, either in the subject matter or in the problems that need to be tackled to pull them off. After a while, you learn to not really get excited over anything... that is, until you hear the gong. Then it's official.

In memorandum of today's record breaking, 3-gong-minute on Friday the 13th I present the picture of the day:

Psych Out Names Ctd

2009-03-13T09:30:00.001-07:00

Idea | Rock n Roll!

2009-03-13T07:56:00.001-07:00

Band Name: No Moss
Members:

James Jagger
Marlon Richards
Seraphina Watts
Tyrone Wood

Guaranteed Hit Song:
Cover: Papa Was A Rolling Stone
by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong

Product Idea | Unsure

2009-03-11T13:56:00.001-07:00

Product: Unsure
Tagline: Tastes like healthy!
Purpose: When your doctor has no idea what might be ailing you, but feels the need to pad the bill.

Picture of the Day | Double Uh Oh Seven

2009-03-10T16:19:00.001-07:00

Bloviation | Gerund-Body Part-Animal

2009-03-09T18:45:00.000-07:00

Gerund-Body Part-Animal

I had stopped at Microcenter on the way home from work today and while waiting on the checkout line, something odd caught the corner of my eye (and dragged it fifteen feet, Emo Philips would say). Someone had brought a cockatoo into the store. I'm not talking about the small, white, parakeet impersonaters wearing the white ski masks (figure-1), those are cockateils. This was a full sized, albino macaw with a showgirl hat (figure-2).

Figure 1 - Cockateil

Figure-2: Cockatoo

Figure-3: Emo

Back where I grew up, in the sub tropical South Florida, macaws and large parrots were not a rare site. There were flocks of wild blue and gold macaws living in Coral Gables that would occasionally fly over my school football field during afternoon practices. You could literally hear them coming and going from a half a mile away, their loud squalking echoing off the bay. Every outdoor mall and theme park in Miami had macaws on branches, waiting like predators for the hapless snowbird tourists to pause for only a moment; so the macaw could, in a flash, leap up and frantically fly onto any outstretched appendage. Once firmly attached, flapping and squaking, the trainer could snap a picture on his instant Polaroid™, and offer to sell it to the tourists for a mere $20 US, or $100 to destroy any photographic evidence in the event of an accidental pooping ($50 if it was only the bird that pooped).

Video-1: Squaking Macaws

Here in Texas however, it never crossed my mind that I would ever see a macaw again. In fact, I fully expected never to see a large tropical parrot within the Lone Star State. But there it was, in the electronics store, pacing restlessly back and forth on the push handle of an empty shopping cart. Its owner was nearby, a white-haried, grizzled old gentleman with a full white beard, weathered yellow straw panama hat, in khaki shorts and stained white teeshirt. He reminded me of the type of people who resided in the Florida Keys, people from anywhere USA who took a driving trip to Key West some time long ago, slipped into a margarita and never went home. Anyway, he stood out like a sore thumb in an electronics store in Dallas.

I had to wonder if maybe the man was blind, and perhaps the parrot, which was very well behaved, never making so much as a peep during my 20 minute stint in the store, was a seeing-eye-parrot, or some other kind of guide parrot. A quick search on the internet revealed that parrots are indeed trained as guide animals. It makes sense. A seeing-eye-dog can only stop and go to pull his person around. A parrot can fly in front of its person, tugging at a leash. And parrots can talk! A seeing-eye-parrot can yell "Stop!" and "Go!" or "Gimme a Godamn cracker, Rah!" Whereas we all know that via barking, dogs can only convey the status of Timmy with respect to irrigation.

Apparently, there are many different types of animals that are trained as guide animals. And they do more than help the blind, they help the deaf, and people with other disabilities. The formula for naming a guide critter is Gerund-Body Part-Animal, so whatever ailment a person might suffer from, there is a potential guide animal to help fill the void.

Other, Less Well Known Guide Animals:

The Seeing-Eye-Parrot
The Smelling-Nose-Dog
The Hearing-Ear-Rabbit
The Feeling-Hand-Monkey
The Tasting-Mouth-Ferret
The Echolocating-Lobe-Dolphin

Figure-4: Baby Cockatoo

Picture of the Day | Salvadore Dalai Lama

2009-03-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

Word of the Day | Hypocorism & Psych Out Names

2009-03-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

Hypocoristic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A hypocoristic, hypocorism, or hypochorisma (from Greek ὑποκορίζεσθαι hypokorizesthai, "to use child-talk"^[1]) is a lesser form of the given name used in more intimate situations, as a nickname, term of endearment, a pet name.

So the question is, why do we need a word like hypocoristic when abbreviation, or nickname , or term of endearment were working just fine? Because the concept of the hypocorism covers all of the previous situations with no exceptions, in a single, hard to remember word.

At least, it's been difficult for me to remember because the definition has been open in my internet browser for a week now. At least 10 times a day for the last 4 days, I would go to check email and see the word "Hypocoristic" sitting on a firefox tab, wedged between Pandora and Beaker's rendition of the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Last night I was explaining the concept of the hypocorism to my wife, along with the idea of Psych Out Names (see below) and by the time I finished, I had forgotten the word again:

ME
I remember a 'cori' sound was in it

WIFE
What, like the Two Coreys?

ME
No, more like Cori-olis, or Cori-ander.

WIFE
...Or Corey Hart?

Luckily, it was still there in my browser tab today and I was able put it into the blog and save a draft. Now I can find it quickly the next time I need to explain Psych Out Names to someone.

So, back to explaining why we need to commit a long word, hypocoristic, to memory. There is something we consistently do with language, such as convert dog into doggie, fat into fattie, and Alfredo into Alf which all falls into the same category. Yet it can't always be called abbreviation, because doggie has more letters than dog. Also as with doggie it's not always a nickname the way Alf might be for Alfredo. And of course the endearing nature of using the word fattie is usually inversely proportional to the loudness at which it is directed at the target. For example, a whisper in your ear of "That's a nice fattie you've got going there" can be quite endearing. Whereas hearing someone shout across the beach at you, "Hey fattie, you're blocking the sun!" is less so (I would also like to point out, sadly, that the more one experiences the second usage of fattie, the less likely he is to enjoy the first). So we see from these examples that hypocorism succeeds where the short, easy to remember descriptions fail.

Where things get interesting is in the case of hypocoristic names. For example, we all know someone named Mike who has been lying to us. His name is really Michael. We also know a deceptive Phil (Phillip), a mendacious Jen (Jennifer), and a stinking rotten lying bastard of an Ed, who is actually a direction (e.g.: Forward, Backward, Edward).

I must confess some hypocrisy in this area. For years, since we met, dated, got engaged, married, etc, I thought my wife's name was Trish. That's how she was introduced to me, that's what I've called her all this time, that's the name she has always responded to (when she doesn't have a headache). One Thanksgiving, visiting her family back East, I started to get suspicious because the whole time everyone else there kept referring to her as Patti. "Pass the gravy please, Patti." "Would you like more green beans, Patti?" "For the love of God, when are you going to give us grandchildren, Patti? At first I was confused, because I didn't know who this Patti person was they were allegedly speaking to, but when I realized they were all staring directly at Trish and accusing Patti of being barren, I was taken aback. Angrily, I stood up at the table and in front of her family proceeded to call her out on years of deception. "WTF!" I said (not the words, but literally the letters W. T. and F) "...Trish, err Patti, or whatever your name is! What else have you been lying about?" And get this, her family laughed at me. "Haha!" They all laughed in unison, pointing at me, mockingly, "You thought Patti was Trish!" But then my wife stood up and announced that her name was actually Patricia, she was not having children to spite her rotten family, and no she didn't want any more green beans. Her family immediately stopped laughing at me, because it turns out we had all been deceived. In complete silence we finished our turkey, gravy, and badger droppings (the bad kind). "She'll get hers!" I thought to myself, because she doesn't know my name is actually "Bradley".

Psych Out Names
I have a friend named Will. At least I thought his name was Will, until one day at a house painting party at his place I noticed a letter addressed to Willard (This was after the notorious Thanksgiving event when I discovered I'd married a Patricia, so I had no problems dealing with another deception). I told him I had always thought his name was William, and I apologized if I had ever accidentally called him William in a formal situation in the past, which I know I had. Will, who is 3.2 units higher on the cool person scale than I am just smiled and said, "No worries. It happens all the time, and to be honest, it's an advantage to be a Willard when everyone thinks you are William."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, for one thing I get to mock offense when somebody calls me William."
"Mock offense?"
"Sure. If somebody calls me William, I can look at them with anger or disappointment and fire back. My name is not William, it's Willard! But if they are a friend or, say, my boss, I just let it go."

And Will had an excellent point, which made me realize that having the kind of name like Willard, that is bound to be shortened, and then likely to be expanded again to the wrong name is actually empowering!

I imagined Will as a child in grade school, perhaps sent to the vice principal's office for accidentally seducing his attractive, young, female grade school teacher:

VICE PRINCIPAL
(angrily)
Come in, William.

Will enters the office looking shameful.

VICE PRINCIPAL
Sit down, William! It has come to my attention, William, that you have committed a rather despicable act.

Will sits down, looking at the Vice Principal, confused.

VICE PRINCIPAL
So now it is my task to decide what to do with you, William. Do I call your parents and suspend you indefinately, or should I phone the police and make this incident into a public spectacle? Tell me William, what would you do if you were me?

WILL
(with mocking anger)
That will be enough out of you, ma'am! Please stop calling me William. My name is Willard. It has always been and always will be Willard. If you intend to ruin my life, at least show me the proper respect.

VICE PRINCIPAL
(caught offguard)
Willard? And this whole time I'd been calling you William. Oh goodness me, I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry. Oh no, I feel so ashamed. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?

WILL
(Eying the Vice Principal seductively)
Well... there is one thing

Cue wah-wah pedal music

What Will made me realize is that his parents gave him a gift, the gift of the Psych Out Name. As we can see from Will's experience, having a short name that people will get wrong when they expand it can be advantageous for the anointed person. In fact, in situations where a person of authority is addressing someone with a Psych Out Name, they are more likely to get the person's full name wrong, providing said person with an opportunity for a surprise retort, like an amazing parry and counter thrust in fencing, or a surprise return of service in tennis. The server gets just the right toss on the ball and slams it, full force, over the net, into the box expecting an ace, and instead WHAM, Willard slams the ball back even harder, cross court, no chance for the acer who has become the acee.

But every now and then, someone might stop and ask Will if his name is short for William or Willard, like Willard Scott, and thus Will loses out on his advantage. So to remedy this, I have decided to compile a list of more effective Pysch Out Names, names that, after they have been hypocorisized, provide almost no opportunity for someone to recover the full name on assumption.

Effective Psych Out Names:

Tim → Timberly
Kim → Kimothy
Matt → Mattrick
Pat → Patthew
Dick → Dichard
Bernie → Bernald
Ted → Tedward
Alf → Alfrick
Sandy → Sandrew
Fran → Frandy
Ken → Kenjamin
Sue → Sewis
Bart → Barthur
Rudy → Rudith

So make sure to name your future children one of the psych out names if you want to give them a head start. In the mean time, report to me any more pysch out names you come up with, or better if you know someone who has one.

Interesting | Spaces Between Written Words

2009-03-06T13:24:00.000-08:00

Interesting discovery today, while skipping around links I happened upon a post (in Nicholas Carr's "Rough Type" blog) that was celebrating the pronouncement of "realtime" as an official compound word. We no longer need to separate them as "real time" (Are you listening Bill Maher?).

Carr's post was about twitter culture, but I was far more fascinated with the source that inspired him to write about the spaces between words, "Space Between Words The origins of silent reading" by Paul Saenger. From the book, we learn that spaces between words were a convention originally decided by some anonymous monk, around 1000 years ago. Considering the earliest writing:

"Ancient reading was usually oral, either aloud, in groups, or individually, in a muffled voice."

This makes sense, since (prior to Evelyn Wood) literacy was a rare commodity. And with reading abillity being quite rare (one literate knave per erstwhile dyne), I suppose it makes even more sense that ancient writers, who were even rarer, could afford to be divas and not be bothered with any sense of sympathy for their target audience. And, since books were assumed to be read aloud, it should also be the job of the reader to decide on punctuation, sentence structure, inflection, and if the sentence, "ishouldprobablyseekthehelpoftherapists" would result in the desired psychological aid, or a mistaken brutal attack (go back and read it again if you didn't get it).

"The greater part of this book describes in detail how the new format of word separation, in conjunction with silent reading, spread from the British Isles and took gradual hold in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The book concludes with the triumph of silent reading in the scholasticism and devotional practices of the late Middle Ages."

This makes me wonder about the chicken and egg nature of such feedback loops. Did more people develop literacity and learn to read silently to themselves because writers went out of their way to make it easier? Or did writers make it easier in attempt to compete for the attention of a growing audience of personal readers? I suspect it more likely that the people who had the resources to become literate were simply growing less popular. And with fewer people showing up at their medieval reading parties, eventually they found themselves reading to empty rooms. I wonder how many centuries of reading to nobody passed before the readers, who were looking quite old and grizzled at this point, decided to stop with the formalities, and just read quietly to themselves. One thing is for certain, with the invention of new conventions such as capitalization, punctuation, and of course the spaces between words, it made it a lot easier for the readers to work in realtime (My first official use of this new word... in context!).

regardlessiwouldliketoraiseatoastinappreciationforthatmonk
andforalltheotherwriterswhoovertheyearstookthetimetocreate
andexpounduponalltheliteracyconventionswetakeforgrantedtoday
keepthisinmindthenexttimeyouhearsomeonecomplainingabouthow
itsjusttoomuchworktoreadanymoretherealityiscomparitivelyspeaking
wehaveitprettyeasynowadays

Ad Fail | Tom Landry Open

2009-03-06T07:57:00.000-08:00

Driving to work this morning , I passed a billboard that said:

"Tom Landry Open"

Since there was only a picture of the legendary football coach, and no reference to any golf event I could only assume the worst. I wonder what they expect to find inside him?

Bloviation | About the Comment Section

2009-03-04T15:15:00.001-08:00

This is my very last first blog posting.

Getting a blog started, at least for me, was far easier than losing my virginity. In both cases, it seemed to me that everyone else got into it 2-3 years before I did. Also, in both cases I was at a loss for words, but this time it's taking me more than a minute to finish the job. I'm also expecting more groaning to result from my labors now, but enough about my writing style, what I want to talk about is the concept of the "comment section", like the ones you see attached to the end of online news or opinion articles, or blog posts like this one.

One of the whole points of blogging is to get feedback. For example, the comment section for this very post can be conveniently found to the left, right, top, or bottom of the page, depending on how I set up the layout at the time you are reading this. Assuming I convince enough people to come here and read this (so far, just you... SUCKER!), I can expect that eventually someone will be kind enough, and brave enough to tell me what they think of my writing. Keep in mind, I may have spent hours (~4.5) pouring over every detail of every word of every line of a post, deciding if "or" is funnier than "but" in a given instance (it was "or" this time), but in mere seconds, an anonymous parent or spouse (of mine) can derail my humorous intent by pointing out a typo (I friggin' HAT typos!). And as a blogger, it is expected that I will think nothing of the fact, that I will just accept it as normal, that someone compared the results of my personal life experience, blood, and tears to badger excrement. Keep in mind, I am not referring to the good kind of badger excrement, which is awesome with peanut butter!

There is, of course, a risk to getting too comfortable with the meme of comment sections. You may have noticed by now that things we accept in one area of life, over time, meander and squeeze themselves into others. For example, there was a time (circa 1977) when it was considered rude to call someone, anonymously, at dinner time. And then... telemarketing was invented! If we are to believe the PR department at National Geographic, telemarketing was invented by Time Magazine as an effort to get more people to commit acts of violence, thus increasing their subscriber base since more people are apparently interested in pictures of man-made gore than viewing rhinos on safari.

The first few years of telemarketing sales calls were met with confusion and hostility, such as the following re-enactment:

TELEMARKETER
(matter of factly)

So you can see that you will save almost twenty dollars a month using our family plan long distance service.

ME
(suddenly confounded)
Whuh, long distance service? Wait a minute, you're not my wife!

ME hangs up the phone in anger

And then after years and years of more telemarketing calls timed to coincide exactly during Norm's opening joke on Cheers ("Hi Sam. Vera's a bitch." -Norm), eventually we relaxed and warmed up to the telemarketer's charms, and learned to embrace the sweet sweet values of their wares.

TELEMARKETER
(with pauses, as if poorly read from a script)
Joining... the Fruit... of... the... Month... club has many... residual... advantages.
(beat)
Besides all the money you will save... on your produce purchases... You'll get the obvious health benefits... of eating more... fruit.

ME
(dreamily)
What are you wearing?

Today, telemarketing has, of course evolved into email spam, one of our most cherished forms of communication. In fact, according to many linguistics experts, the art of the telemarketing/spam advertising pitch has gone on to replace iambic pentameter in modern Western culture. And because we have accepted this intrusive marketing with such aplomb, we have no problem when web-browsing, for example, with accepting cookies from every corner of the internet, including web sites hosted in Germany.

Now, in your mind [cue harp glissando] try to project faaaaar into the future, to when our children are a couple of years older than they are now. Try to imagine... wait, what? You don't have any children? Fine. imagine my children, or better yet, someone else's children, like those annoying brats you wanted to kill on line at the supermarket last Saturday (fine, those *were* my children). Here's the mental image of the future I'm getting: Classified ads! And zippers. And more chains and piercings per square inch of exposed flesh. I mean, why waste a good piercing when you could be selling ad space?

At this point, you need to be asking yourself, "Where *is* this guy going with his argument?" The answer is, to take a quick break for some delicious badger excrement. You know, the good kind.
Okay, back...

So what I am saying is, the bloggers of today accept and relish the concept of the "comment section." But just like with intrusive advertising, as we get used to near-real time feedback on our writing output, it is only a matter of time before we find the "comment section" meme intrude into other parts of our lives. For example, the workplace.

Many of us work on computers all day. The rest of us sit at our desks and work with the computers (see what I did there?). It is well known that our supervisors are already tracking our internet usage, reading our emails, micromanaging our work output, and dating our sister. It is simply a natural extension for them to place a comment section onto our monitor desktops, easily located to the left, right, top, or bottom of our actual work application (depending on the layout they use that day). This way, while they are watching us work, they can comment on everything we do from one moment to the next. It won't be long before we see our work comment box fill up with critiques like:

"Please use thicker border outline around cells F4:J23" -Your Boss
"I'm afraid you just misspelled the word "homunculus" in the second paragraph of the quarterly report." -Your Boss's Boss
"Holy crap! Was that a Paper Clip with eyeballs!?" -Mario The Janitor

And just as telemarketing evolved into junk mail, and then spam, our work "comment section" will eventually find its way into our homes, into our bedrooms, where the same anonymous spouses and parents will rate our performances, practically in real time. With the invention and proliferation of digital, pocket web cams, (thanks to National Geographic, and Time Magazine!) they will broadcast us in X-rated, digitally-streamed data packets over the internet, to web sites hosted in Germany. How will we handle the advice and criticism (almost typo'd circumcision there... but that makes sense) for that? You know in your heart of hearts this is the future we're likely facing, so you may as well practice now. Will you handle the criticism for *those* comments the same way a blogger is expected to handle her own?

"You need to workout more!" -Your Wife
"Your foreplay is noobsauce" -Your Wife's Girlfriend
"Holy crap! Was that a Paper Clip with eyeballs!?" -Mario the Janitor

Anyway, welcome to my blog, a mix of humor, topics relating to my industry (special effects), things I find interesting, and the ever-relocating-comments section