No, you didn’t miss anything. I did not post anything last week. My apologies to anyone who might have been looking forward to the post.
The last few weeks of 2018 where actually kind of full. Not so much with a lot of going places and things to do. My family is scattered and I and those nearest me tend to keep things a bit low key. Yes there was dinner with family, and the way we can talk it meant it was an all day thing, in spite of our best intentions. Other than that, the time I had off from work was spent doing things that I don’t seem to get around to doing.
The biggest thing I did was to finish up this year’s Christmas card. I did have it done before Christmas Eve. So that is a plus. I say this, at least to myself, every year, I’ll try to do better next year. I’ve got a few ideas already and I’ve been doing some experimenting with bits and pieces to see what I can make happen. I’ll share some of that in a moment.
One thing led to another one day while paying bills and I started a technology update and refresh. I was able to increase my internet speed for less than I was paying. That’s a no brainer. When I did that, I realized that my router that was about 8 years old, probably wasn’t going to make the best use of the new speeds. Especially for wifi. I’d purchased a new router about 2 years ago and had never set it up. With the new internet speed I figured it was time. It wasn’t a short project. For a variety of reasons I think the whole process took me about 3 hours. Thus the reason I had not done it yet.
About the same time I purchased the router, I also purchased a network storage device. I was intending to purchase an external drive for backing things up and some how didn’t pay attention and didn’t realize that it wasn’t really intended for that until some weeks later. I didn’t feel like taking it back and I wasn’t ready to set it up yet. Then, I set up the new router and did some moving things around and finally decided it would be the perfect way to handle files that I might want to be able to share across devices. So another two or three hours later and that was all setup as well.
That’s three big things done. I was on a roll. As part of the technology refresh, I finally did what I had been thinking about doing and got me a tablet with LTE. They aren’t easy to find if you want something other than an iPad. I have nothing against iPad or Apple products. It wasn’t really what I wanted. So I was pleased to find something that would do what I need and turn out to be pretty flexible. When I took it in to swap the SIM from the device that I was ready to retire to the new tablet, I went ahead with the phone update.
My cell phone was approaching four years old. I’m really good at using things until I no longer can. That was definitely the case with the last two phones. This time I decided to be a little proactive since I was already seeing signs that it might be time to upgrade. So a new phone, a new tablet, a new router, and network storage. What else could I get into or need? Really? You want to ask that? Grab a fresh cup of coffee or tea.
I was gifted a year of Masterclass. You’ve probably seen them on Facebook and maybe on television. It’s a cool concept. I was asked first if I would be interested and when I went to the site to see some of who was offering classes, all I could say was ‘Thank you’. There are several people for music, which is great for what I’ve been doing so much of this last year. There are also people for writing, directing, acting, photography and other things. I was stunned and thrilled and couldn’t wait to get started. I have started with the course from Carlos Santana on guitar and so far, I think it’s going to be a really good thing. I’ll have to let you know more once I get a bit farther with it.
Once I finished the Christmas card, I decided that maybe I’d stick with the theme for a while and do some more modeling. I like the topic, I like to model things related to it so why not. I also wanted to give the new Blender beta a try. So I downloaded the beta build and started working in it. The interface is quite different and takes a little to get used to. But the only way I was really going to do that was by actually making something in it. So I made a Christmas Stocking.
I’m still watching the videos from the Blender conference and one of the ones I came across showed a new tool in Blender, or new to me, maybe it was always there. And yes, I do think it is already in 3DS Max and Maya. It’s a spin tool. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but I can say that it would let me take half and outline of a bottle and spin it around a center point and create the bottle from it. It is quite a cool tool. So I had to find it and figure out how to use it. I would guess I spent easily two hours working with it before I finally figured out how to get it to do what I wanted.
I was scrolling through the Blender Today site and found a tutorial on hair, or fur, in Blender. The person was making a fluffy ball for a background for something. It was really interesting and though he was using an earlier version of Blender I decided to try to follow along in the beta. I didn’t follow completely as I sort of wandered off on my own about mid way through the materials part. I still learned enough to do some experimenting on my own. Since I have a few things to model that I’m going to want to look fuzzy and a few others that I think a hair modifier might work to get the effect I want, any experimenting and testing I did was going to be time well spent. So I played with the hair for easily another couple of hours. Later there were several more hours experimenting with the particle emitter setting in the particle effects instead of the hair setting.
I had one other project that I finally finished up. That was getting some of my guitars hung on the wall in the music room. I had two of them hung and needed two more hangers. I was intending to make a trip to the music store to pick them up and just hadn’t got to it. I finally just ordered them and had them a couple of days later to install. And that project is complete.
I didn’t watch any of the New Year’s Eve stuff. Nothing really interested me. I did watch the Kennedy Center Honors the week before and was quite impacted by them. I sat down to watch them because Cher was being honored. As fabulous and fun, and amazing, as that part of the show was, it was the other honorees that I found to be eye opening, inspiring, and reminders. The work of Walter Shorter and the performance by Esperanza Spalding. The works by Philip Glass that though described as classical reminded me of electronic music. And I very much appreciated that one of the groups performing in honor of Cher were Little Big Town, a country music act.
So it has been a full few weeks with so many things of impact, that trying to decide what to write about has caused a jam between my brain and my fingers. It all wants to be shared. And yet, how to do that without making a post as long as a novel. Especially with some things could be much longer posts with a more in depth or detailed discussion. For this week, I’ve included a variety of pictures. A little about some of them. The bunny picture is a sketch I did on my new tablet with the corresponding pencil/stylus. The furry, or hairy, arch shaped things were the culmination of four or more hours of experimentation in Blender. The fuzzy balls were part of the Blender experimenting as well. I think the stocking and guitars probably speak for themselves.
I’ve got more things in the works and with schedules and life settling back into a more regular pattern there should be many more things to share coming up. We’ve got another jam in a couple of weeks. And I’ve got lots of guitar learning and Blender modeling, and learning, in the works. It’s difficult to say what will be the topic of the week next.