October Orange

Hello October!
In which we discuss
- 10 reasons why Halloween is better than Christmas
- Lenore the FCG
- More on the Video Rocket
- Eat'n grapes and ridin' scorpions Yeee-Hah!

September Blues

I am not a big fan of September. Oh, sure - my birthday, which always seems to fall on the first day of school (or last day of summer) - either way, there's always a little too much tension to enjoy it properly.
This September particularily, to use an apt metaphor, sucked donkey balls. Holy crap I haven't been so stressed since I can't remember. Too much, too soon, heavy rains of bad craziness. Bleurgh.....
Which is why my posts have been erratic and few. I have a few planned, but first I need to take a few deep breaths ( in through the nose, out through the mouth ), have a stiff drink ( a little more of the Yellowtail Shiraz, if you please...), watch another episode of Invader Zim annnnnnnnd.......

Video Cam Rocket - the beginning

Junior Space Cadet #1 holds my Estes Canadian Arrow, specially equipped with custom hacked video camera. First videos can be seen here
Windows Media
Mac Quicktime

Laser Show - I wanna be ILDA

This is a club I would join. How cool would this look on a resume? "Member International Laser Show Designer Association".
There are actually standards for laser shows which is interesting. I suppose the most significant is "do not look into laser show". Or possibly "do not use laser show to dissect spies".

I needed to do a little research on the ILDA mainly for the file format. Laser shows are basically vector art. Think "Asteroids" or "Tempest" if you recall your 80's video games. Or think Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator or AutoCad if you know your computer graphics. The rest of you remember high school geometry - two points can be joined by a line. OK... think "connect the dots"...

A laser show is a picture created by defining a set of points (vertices) and drawing lines between them. The data for the show I've built is created in Pangolin Laser Show Designer. It's pretty basic, and hard to use on the Amiga (I need a new mouse, or a digitizer). It also stores the points data in a binary file using the .LSD format.
Most laser shows now use the .ILD format, which is slightly different and allows the more sophisticated gear laser shows are packing these days.

I wanted to create shows using software I knew how to use, or software that I could get for cheap-as-free ( as opposed to buying a copy of Mamba Black which would set me back E299 -what's a Euro going for these days?).

Fortunately I stumbled across someone's attempt at building a laser show controller in Visual Basic, which gave me some of the file formats. I've been monkeying with the program for some time now, but I can now say I've kludged a very nice system:

design a show using Rhinoceros

animate the show with Rhino plugin Bongo

export the show as a series of .DXF files with a custom script

import the files into the VB laser show

export the files as an animated .LSD file from VB laser show

port the files from the PC to the Amiga using a serial interface.

"If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it off at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe"

I think this qualifies....

Fermodymanics

The 5 year old has discovered the second law of thermodynamics - "When you put more cold water with hot water the cold water surrounds the hot and makes it cold BUT when you put more hot water than cold the hot water surrounds the cold and makes it hot! the hot water is the good guys and the cold water is the bad guys"


I'm so proud...

That Darned Trogdor

Cleaning out the filing cabinet today in a futile organization exercise (entropy strikes quickly here) and came across my brother's cartoon work. Me and the family (pre sub-urchin) and our pesky dragon. Brian keeps a very meticulous blog of his life at Liverspot, but he's never published a cartoon as far as I know. Check 'em out here:

Trogdor Title Page

Trogdor in Train Wreck

Trogdor in Ice Follies

I said consummate "v"'s !

Laser Show - Irony

A short in the system causes a blown fuse. Where's the short? In the fuse. One of the tabs was brushing up against the case. Can I still say D'OH!?