A good way to understand 3D and animation is to look at a scene using the following five aspects. Understand how these work in any animation and the construction picture becomes clear.
Shape - What is the outline when viewed from all angles, how does the shape change over time ?
Size - What is the object size in relation to the environment and other shapes in the scene ?
Surface - What is on the surface and how does it handle the light ? Does the surface bend curve, grow stretch ?
Steps - Animation is movement. How does the movement break into steps ?
Space - What's in the the space around the object and how does it interact with its space ? What happens when the space around the object changes ?
Look at an animation or 3d scene using the definitions above. Study each aspect and separately and together and soon you will have insight.
Try it ...
Gannett
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
What's broken with 118800 ?
I had an scare raising email about the new 118800 mobile directory service and problems that might arise. It was incorrect in a number of ways but lets start with this anyway ...
" THIS MAY SAVE YOU MONEY IN THE FUTURE. IT WILL STOP UNSOLICITED CALLS/TEXTS FROM ADVERTISERS (WHICH YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY FOR TO RECEIVE IF YOU ARE ABROAD, FOR EXAMPLE!)
You may already have heard about this but early next week {11 July 2009} all UK mobiles will be on a directory which will mean that anyone will be able to access the numbers. { This is not what the service does } It’s easy to unsubscribe but it must be done before the beginning of next week to make sure that you are ex directory. You may want to suggest it to all your friends and family who have UK mobiles or they could be swamped by unsolicited messages and calls. Removal is recommended by the BBC.
How to remove your mobile number from the directory
To unsubscribe, you can either click on the ex directory button on the their web homepage
Going to the src we see on the service FAQ that might be lies but lets see.
"Will I get sales calls via 118 800?
We do not sell or pass data to any commercial organisations. So we think it’s unlikely you will receive many sales calls via our service. But we will monitor call patterns for any suspicious activity, investigate complaints thoroughly and de-list anyone we feel is abusing the service.
….
When someone is searching for me on 118800.co.uk, can they see any information about me?
No. All searches on 118800.co.uk are via our secure application that doesn’t show mobile numbers or names and addresses of individuals. Neither do we give prompts that could disclose personal information. We simply say whether we’ve found the individual and, if we have, we forward the enquirer's contact details. "
I would say that most unsolicited sales calls are made via random number diallers, some times from abroad, that will not be altered by either a new directory service or the TPS. A more likely problem with this service is when the directory information is insufficient information for the service to identify a person. I would not like to be the first “Jack Smith” or “Thomas Jones” listed for London.
Gannett
" THIS MAY SAVE YOU MONEY IN THE FUTURE. IT WILL STOP UNSOLICITED CALLS/TEXTS FROM ADVERTISERS (WHICH YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY FOR TO RECEIVE IF YOU ARE ABROAD, FOR EXAMPLE!)
You may already have heard about this but early next week {11 July 2009} all UK mobiles will be on a directory which will mean that anyone will be able to access the numbers. { This is not what the service does } It’s easy to unsubscribe but it must be done before the beginning of next week to make sure that you are ex directory. You may want to suggest it to all your friends and family who have UK mobiles or they could be swamped by unsolicited messages and calls. Removal is recommended by the BBC.
How to remove your mobile number from the directory
To unsubscribe, you can either click on the ex directory button on the their web homepage
Going to the src we see on the service FAQ that might be lies but lets see.
"Will I get sales calls via 118 800?
We do not sell or pass data to any commercial organisations. So we think it’s unlikely you will receive many sales calls via our service. But we will monitor call patterns for any suspicious activity, investigate complaints thoroughly and de-list anyone we feel is abusing the service.
….
When someone is searching for me on 118800.co.uk, can they see any information about me?
No. All searches on 118800.co.uk are via our secure application that doesn’t show mobile numbers or names and addresses of individuals. Neither do we give prompts that could disclose personal information. We simply say whether we’ve found the individual and, if we have, we forward the enquirer's contact details. "
I would say that most unsolicited sales calls are made via random number diallers, some times from abroad, that will not be altered by either a new directory service or the TPS. A more likely problem with this service is when the directory information is insufficient information for the service to identify a person. I would not like to be the first “Jack Smith” or “Thomas Jones” listed for London.
Gannett
Sunday, 5 April 2009
The first shall be last and the last shall be first ( in Excel )
I had a need in Excel to swap the words round in a field. The was for address book processing where I wanted to change a "Last,First" name into a "First Last" combination. The address book has been exported Both names were in the same column and the output was needed in another column.
Three are three parts to this formula each separated by &.
The first part takes the characters from cell A1 from the comma for the next 100 characters "First"
The second part is a Space character " ".
The third part takes the characters from cell A1 from the first character up the comma. "Last"
The result showing in cell B1 is the parts joined up, the action of the & between the parts. "First Last"
The second column is a formula like this from cell B1.
=REPLACE(A1,FIND(",",A1),100,"" ) & " " & REPLACE(A1,1,FIND(",",A1),"")
Three are three parts to this formula each separated by &.
The first part takes the characters from cell A1 from the comma for the next 100 characters "First"
The second part is a Space character " ".
The third part takes the characters from cell A1 from the first character up the comma. "Last"
The result showing in cell B1 is the parts joined up, the action of the & between the parts. "First Last"
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Uk Tivo Compared against a Humax Foxsat PVR
I used to have a Uk Series 1 Thompson built Tivo with Sky subscription and now I have a Humax Freedsat-HDR.
Lets compare some features.....
See http://www.spikynorman.dsl.pipex.com/posted/Humax_PVR_V_Uk_Tivo.pdf
Conclusions
The series 1 Tivo developed over the years since its release in 2001; the vibrant user community and speciality dealers helped modify the box with new hard drives up from twin drive 40GB to single 320GB, Ethernet, Cache card for faster EPG searching, Web browsing, Mode 0, remote access etc, all helped keep interest alive.
The Humax is a great box and wins on its HD capability and ease access via USB port and slim light form factor. The Humax could still learn a trick or two from the highly evolved Tivo. The most pressing areas for improvement for the Foxsat is the way the menus are accessed, a single menu access point and ability to play, delete, rename and examine from the same list of files are desperately needed. Tivo also has a single menu access and far, far better search the EPG functionality. The Freestat service needs more channels of course but pound for pound for me the Humax is now the way forward.
Gannett
Lets compare some features.....
See http://www.spikynorman.dsl.pipex.com/posted/Humax_PVR_V_Uk_Tivo.pdf
Conclusions
The series 1 Tivo developed over the years since its release in 2001; the vibrant user community and speciality dealers helped modify the box with new hard drives up from twin drive 40GB to single 320GB, Ethernet, Cache card for faster EPG searching, Web browsing, Mode 0, remote access etc, all helped keep interest alive.
The Humax is a great box and wins on its HD capability and ease access via USB port and slim light form factor. The Humax could still learn a trick or two from the highly evolved Tivo. The most pressing areas for improvement for the Foxsat is the way the menus are accessed, a single menu access point and ability to play, delete, rename and examine from the same list of files are desperately needed. Tivo also has a single menu access and far, far better search the EPG functionality. The Freestat service needs more channels of course but pound for pound for me the Humax is now the way forward.
Gannett
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Credit crunch alternatives
Cash is tight the economy is in the crapper so everyone is looking to save some cash. Lets look at some econo versions of popular ways to spend money.
TV tax. In the Uk your paying GBP 156 per year just to have a TV set and with that comes all the BBC channels and radio for free. So why pay another GBP 50 every month to get an advert laden set of repeats and dodgy US sitcoms ? Go for Freesat or Freeview and pay nothing more. Theres is HD for the big panel ( before the bailiff takes it ), and nothing more to pay. At GBP 50 a month savings will pay of that TV by next Xmas.
Good looking Fish. Just how much does that tank of fishes cost every day. There is the heat, the pump and the chems for the water tests. They needs replacing when they croak, and don't say that doesn't happen way more than you wished. All those medicine, special foods and plants will empty the bank. Get some gold fish they will use the same infrastructure but don't need heating in the house and will get by on a changed bucket of tap water ( with just a drip or two of tapesafe) now and again. They are colorful, active an just once in a while line up like chorus girls.
Great Malt A good quality dram and be froun from GBP 25 to GBP 2500 but these days cheaper sippings are in order. For just about GBP 16 there is a range of singles ( Speyside, Isley, Highland ) that can be bought from Morrsions supermarket. Believe me after a couple only the snobs can tell the difference, and a blind tasting will fool them most times..
Pension pot Dont' keep those insurance cats fat when the house is on the line. A paid for shack will keep you warmer in old age than any amount of paper junk bonds.
Cheep media entertainment The council Library, the library of friends and ebay will have better offers than Amazon. A books lasts longer too.
Keep trim out there.
Gannett
TV tax. In the Uk your paying GBP 156 per year just to have a TV set and with that comes all the BBC channels and radio for free. So why pay another GBP 50 every month to get an advert laden set of repeats and dodgy US sitcoms ? Go for Freesat or Freeview and pay nothing more. Theres is HD for the big panel ( before the bailiff takes it ), and nothing more to pay. At GBP 50 a month savings will pay of that TV by next Xmas.
Good looking Fish. Just how much does that tank of fishes cost every day. There is the heat, the pump and the chems for the water tests. They needs replacing when they croak, and don't say that doesn't happen way more than you wished. All those medicine, special foods and plants will empty the bank. Get some gold fish they will use the same infrastructure but don't need heating in the house and will get by on a changed bucket of tap water ( with just a drip or two of tapesafe) now and again. They are colorful, active an just once in a while line up like chorus girls.
Great Malt A good quality dram and be froun from GBP 25 to GBP 2500 but these days cheaper sippings are in order. For just about GBP 16 there is a range of singles ( Speyside, Isley, Highland ) that can be bought from Morrsions supermarket. Believe me after a couple only the snobs can tell the difference, and a blind tasting will fool them most times..
Pension pot Dont' keep those insurance cats fat when the house is on the line. A paid for shack will keep you warmer in old age than any amount of paper junk bonds.
Cheep media entertainment The council Library, the library of friends and ebay will have better offers than Amazon. A books lasts longer too.
Keep trim out there.
Gannett
Thursday, 18 December 2008
Alleyne how great are they ?
Just once in a while a surname pops up and you wonder how great are people with that name ?
Robert Alleyne - Dog training guru as seen in uk TV prog Dog Borstal. http://www.thedogownersclub.co.uk/home.html
Mark Alleyne - Techno guru in VERITAS tech support.
Ian Alleyne - Car mechanic - South of Reading, trustworthy and on top form.
Fantastic all of them.
Gannett
Robert Alleyne - Dog training guru as seen in uk TV prog Dog Borstal. http://www.thedogownersclub.co.uk/home.html
Mark Alleyne - Techno guru in VERITAS tech support.
Ian Alleyne - Car mechanic - South of Reading, trustworthy and on top form.
Fantastic all of them.
Gannett
Saturday, 6 December 2008
Don't come a CROPA with illegal drugs.
Criminal record - Get on, be jailed and forever unemployable.
Raped - Roofies, GHB, spiked drinks or just sinking into a hookers life, Rape is part of the drug scene.
Overdose - and die.
Poor - Spend what you have and what you won't have for just a small patch of snow.
Addicted - and suffer forever.
CROPA - the 5 ways to break your life with illegal drugs.
Gannett
PS: There is medicine and drugs please don't become confused.
Raped - Roofies, GHB, spiked drinks or just sinking into a hookers life, Rape is part of the drug scene.
Overdose - and die.
Poor - Spend what you have and what you won't have for just a small patch of snow.
Addicted - and suffer forever.
CROPA - the 5 ways to break your life with illegal drugs.
Gannett
PS: There is medicine and drugs please don't become confused.
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
HPC and parallel processing - 2 fave quotes
From HPC wire
Posted by Michael Feldman - November 27 @ 9:04AM
Clever software can make even great hardware humble. D-Wave CTO Geordie Rose, the panel's quantum computing advocate, argued that new algorithms can have a much bigger payoff than more powerful silicon. He noted that using Pollard's rho algorithm from 1977, it would take 12 years to factor a 90-digit number on a modern-day 400 teraflop Blue Gene supercomputer. But using the newer quadratic seive algorithm, it would take just 3 years to perform the same operation on a 1977 Apple II computer. When you consider the multi-million dollar investment that went into the Blue Gene supercomputer compared to the probable investment that went into developing the new algorithm, you can get some sense of the industry's misplaced priorities.
From Slashdot ..
By acidrain (35064) on Thursday March 22 2007, @08:00AM (#18441773)
Look guys. There is no multi-processing silver bullet. It isn't even such a hard problem, *if you stop trying to solve it at such a low level*. Break your application into separate pieces that, *don't need to communicate very often.* Then this is the same kind of problem scalable websites like Google, MySpace, Hotmail and so on, have already, just without having to factor in the reliability issues. Finer grained multi-threading just leads to deadlocks and is really hard to debug. If you *really must* render the same sphere on 100 processors at the same time, then you need the speed of a custom coded solution. But you don't so let it go. The main loop of your program will be just fine as a single threaded implementation, 1 processor will do, and farm the 10% code / 90 % heavy lifting out in big clean chunks to other processors. If you find yourself writing some bizzare multi-threaded message passing system so that you can have 100s of threads all modifying the same live object model at the same time -- you are fucked, just forget about it 'cause you will never be able to debug that one killer bug that you know is going to get you right as you go to ship.
Pure genius from the net
Posted by Michael Feldman - November 27 @ 9:04AM
Clever software can make even great hardware humble. D-Wave CTO Geordie Rose, the panel's quantum computing advocate, argued that new algorithms can have a much bigger payoff than more powerful silicon. He noted that using Pollard's rho algorithm from 1977, it would take 12 years to factor a 90-digit number on a modern-day 400 teraflop Blue Gene supercomputer. But using the newer quadratic seive algorithm, it would take just 3 years to perform the same operation on a 1977 Apple II computer. When you consider the multi-million dollar investment that went into the Blue Gene supercomputer compared to the probable investment that went into developing the new algorithm, you can get some sense of the industry's misplaced priorities.
From Slashdot ..
By acidrain (35064) on Thursday March 22 2007, @08:00AM (#18441773)
Look guys. There is no multi-processing silver bullet. It isn't even such a hard problem, *if you stop trying to solve it at such a low level*. Break your application into separate pieces that, *don't need to communicate very often.* Then this is the same kind of problem scalable websites like Google, MySpace, Hotmail and so on, have already, just without having to factor in the reliability issues. Finer grained multi-threading just leads to deadlocks and is really hard to debug. If you *really must* render the same sphere on 100 processors at the same time, then you need the speed of a custom coded solution. But you don't so let it go. The main loop of your program will be just fine as a single threaded implementation, 1 processor will do, and farm the 10% code / 90 % heavy lifting out in big clean chunks to other processors. If you find yourself writing some bizzare multi-threaded message passing system so that you can have 100s of threads all modifying the same live object model at the same time -- you are fucked, just forget about it 'cause you will never be able to debug that one killer bug that you know is going to get you right as you go to ship.
Pure genius from the net
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