Hobbies and Storage

Just saw a quote that was too good to not rsshare for posterity in case the original source (or at least the one I saw) goes away: 

"Every hobby starts with curiosity and ends with storage problems"

-- @vinterkarusell@saga.garden

https://saga.garden/@vinterkarusell/116868965992798187

Pixar 40 Years - Into the Archives Official Clip

Wow, it's hard to believe that Pixar is 40 years old this year!

I just stumbled across the following look into their archives!  A very neat look into a bunch of interesting stuff!

February Music Recommendations - Interesting New Additions from An Impromptu Hour of Classical Music Radio

Just added two new additions to my rotation/library of classical-music for re-listening this morning, after first hearing them earlier this week on Wednesday on RNZ Concert when tuning in for a while to cope with the annoying roadwork noise that's been foisted on us for the next few weeks (!)

1) Kaija Saariaho - On Fire  (From Notes on Light)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ugRbOUdao

Admittedly not something to everyone's taste, but was quite appropriate "grungy rage against the intrusion" type music 

(And also reminded me of watching movies on a plane with a cheap headset for some reason - Maybe given that I had to do that very thing, as that's the sort of headset I have hooked up for use with my work laptop to get acceptable mic-input for all the Teams calls that we inevitably need to make)

2) Doreen Carwithen - Suffolk Suite
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXKJuZ2kaS8 

This "most English" of pieces (i.e. with similar echoes of the general style employed by Vaughn Williams / William Walton [1][2] / Benjamin Britten) caught me by surprise, especially with that lush sweeping opening movement, and became an instant "must add to good music list".

To then hear that it had apparently been written for "a school orchestra" is even more surprising!  (Then again, comparing the standard of orchestras I was involved in "back in my day", and the equivalent ones you hear now... eh... *ahem*)

Scott Jenson's Talk At Ubuntu Connect 25.10

Quick post that I'll probably expand upon in followup posts eventually, but this is one of the more inspiring talks I've heard in a long time! 

"Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? | Ubuntu Summit 25.10" -- Scott Jenson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ

It's been a while since I've been reminded of what got me into HCI research in the first place. *THIS* is the type of stuff that I love doing TBH. It's really refreshing hearing such a senior industry figure talking about trying to get innovation in these areas happening again.

 

Another interesting point:  The following interesting link from the end of the talk to some folk doing some very interesting stuff!

https://www.inkandswitch.com/

Ooh... now we're cooking! I've got a few project ideas that overlap quite heavily with some of these headlines on their landing page 🤓 

(The main challenge currently is just finding the time + energy to actually work on these things... not to mention that fundamentally, making the prototypes I want to make is currently constrained by the tools I want not being in place)

 

Tiffany Poon's Vlog on Visiting Ravel's House + Playing His Piano

 What an interesting mashup of two artists I quite like!

1) Ravel is one of my top 5 (maybe top 3 even) favourite composers. The others being Tchaikovsky and Thomas Newman.

I certainly went through a phase a few years ago of listening to his works while plugging through some rather tricky stuff at work (i.e. a "JSON diffing/patching/rebasing engine" *ahem*).

 

2) I've also loved watching Tiffany's vlogs for a long time now. Among other things, I've gained a *much* more thorough understanding + appreciation for piano music and the nuances of piano-to-piano differences + effects of playing technique. (Also, finally seeing how/why people always about spending time "practicing"... yeah, there are some things I could've done different in the past LOL).  Gotta also love the random squirrel / chipmunk sightings too!

 

3) Wow, it's very interesting seeing Ravel's house! That mix of an idiosyncratic little cottage filled with so many little interesting trinkets + art, surrounded by a nice garden with some colourful trees + water features. 

 

4) Also, it's always special getting to see talented artists getting to bring to life the instruments of historical figures. There's always something special about getting to experience a composer's music in the spaces they once inhabited, as they may have first heard them.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWvV62BAhd

Blender Addon - Hand Drawn Timing Chart Paths to Animation (3rd-Party / Not Mine)

It's been a while since I've posted about any Blender or animation related stuff on here, having moved onto other pursuits these days. But tonight, I'm going to briefly break my silence to link to the following demo clip for an addon that I've gotta say is pretty awesome looking!

  

Well done to everyone involved in making this happen! Very nicely done! Simple yet effective  😍 

 

Introducing... "WhioDoc" (formerly "Quack!" / "QuackDoc")

I guess this weekend can be considered somewhat successful on the projects front (even though I only really got around to 1 of the 3 projects I'd wanted to work on, though it *was* the most important one I wanted to knock off too)

Following a few sessions of toil, I have successfully put up an initial attempt at formalising all the conventions I've been using for writing inline code docs for all my projects over the years!

While there are still a few small loose ends to tack on, at least I can finally point to this thing and say: Here's the spec!

(And eventually: "Here's all the docs-compiler tools + editor plugins everyone asks for these days")

 

https://github.com/Aligorith/quackdoc

https://github.com/Aligorith/whiodoc

 

Mozart's "Magic Flute" Opera - Papageno - YouTube Rabbithole

For anyone who needs a bit of a cheer-up on this grey rainy day, here's a bunch of clips of a fun duet from a Mozart opera. 😍

1) The clip that started this rabbit hole, featuring (Huw Montague Rendall & Elisabeth Boudreault) 

This was the first time I'd ever heard this piece. I really loved the energy of the performers and the chemistry they had. (Also have to say that Elisabeth's little dance there at the end was quite cute LOL ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP9V7_fevgQ

2) Trying to find out what this song was about / the context for it, I came across this next clip from The Royal Opera (feat. Christina Gansch and Roderick Williams). 

This one had subtitles, and between these + the staging (i.e. all those kids), the meaning of the song suddenly all made sense (besides bringing back memories of the portrayal of Mozart in Amadeus) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q0ZDZB-AnM

3) From a comment on that one, I learned that the following is apparently a famous performance by Detlef Roth and Gaële Le Roi.

The key highlights of this were seeing the matching costumes along with a bit more of the context leading up to this scene, along with watching the actors' snuggly expressions as they performed the scene. Personally though, I thought the soprano's singing in this one sounded a bit "soft" compared to the others, and didn't really like it that much TBH.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87UE2GC5db0

4) This final one (a "children's version" from 25 Feb 2024 in Vienna apparently, featuring Rolando Villazon and unknown soprano) takes the cake!

I love the staging of this - particularly how it's this really fun + playful setting within a gigantic opera theatre (seriously... look at all the tiers of seating/boxes in this thing) that looks like it was put on specifically to expose kids to classical works in a much more intimate and less intimidating setting. 

Also this one comes with a lot more context, along with the matching costumes, and everything...

All in all - I thought this was just  SO. MUCH. FUN! 😍

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaldPP44oas

LOL... The "Genius" Developer Who Created Grease Pencil?! 😂

Was pretty chuffed to get sent a link to a YT video the other day with a pretty fun title LOL 😂😂😂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6XqricCPPY

2017 Kickoff - Holiday Inspirations

We're a week into the new year now, and as most of us return to work from our holidays, I'd like to mention a bunch of interesting stuff I came across in the second half of my holiday (i.e. the stuff that came after alternating between lounging around like a vegetable and running around going to exotic locations for fun). I've gotta say, it's been great having a break!

Microsoft's Revamped "Paint"

This evening, it came to my attention that Microsoft has been working on an updated version of their classic "Paint" app, but "Windows 10-ified" and with support for basic 3D drawing/sketching...





Woah... this is an interesting move, though not completely unexpected, with the other basic 3D creation tool they bundle by default (IIRC) that's aimed more at people interested in 3D printing simple objects. Having begun my digital art journey with MsPaint in Windows 98 (I like to think I got quite skilled at drawing using a 2 button mouse on a pixel-by-pixel scale, "graduating" on to animate my first characters using MsPaint + MsAgent), it's interesting to see what the next generation of budding artists playing around with a "vanilla" PC will be able to start from.

Siggraph '16 Paper - Fish Swimming Simulation

This video just popped up on my Youtube feed this morning:

It's the video accompanying a paper that was presented at Siggraph 2016 last week (pity I couldn't be there... there were quite a few talks/production sessions I'd have liked to attend), describing a system they build for simulating how different types of fish swim. They also discuss how this method can be used for simulating schools of fish swimming and interacting to various forms of shaping controls (e.g. for art directing the results), including doing so interactively!

Pyne Gould Building Collapse Simulation Video - Blender Bullet Addon Demo

What strange times we live in: I just came across a video for a Blender addon for simulating building collapses using the built in Bullet (rigidbody simulation engine) tools.  What I didn't expect though was to open the video link, and be confronted with was this:

Woah... I know this place...

This is the Pyne Gould Building, that collapsed during the Feb 22 2011 Christchurch Earthquake. It was one of the two worst hit buildings that collapsed that day, killing and trapping people. The other one was the CTV building (also in the CBD), where over 100 people died (including the mum of a classmate from primary school) when it pancaked. In other words: not really something us Cantabrians want to remember/dwell on...

CHI2016 - Sketching Papers, and General Discussion of Interesting Research Directions

The annual CHI (Human-Computer Interaction) conference is on this week in San Jose. As one of the "big + important" conferences in Computer Science research, it's always interesting/important to keep an eye on what's happening there to see if there any interesting things come out of it. So, I duly started checking out the accepted papers, before stumbling across the "sketching" section.

My first thought was, "woah... they have a section on interfaces for sketching tools?!", followed quickly by, "I wonder if there's anything of interest there...?" It turns out that there are two papers here, both of which fall quite squarely into the frame of the type and style of research that I love doing most (i.e. the "fun stuff" I'm doing with Grease Pencil + Pose Sculpting/Sketching, vs the empirical work I currently do for my PhD).

So, what were these papers?
1)  "Skuid: Sketching Dynamic Illustrations Using the Principles of 2D Animation"
2)  "Storeoboard: Sketching Stereoscopic Storyboards"

Pixar's GTC 2016 Talk - Viewport, Workflow, and Hydra

If you haven't already (and have 45 mins to spare), it's well worth watching Pixar's recent talk at the GPU Tech Conference (GTC) 2016, where they discuss some very juicy and interesting topics.

 http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2016/video/S6454.html

These include a very detailed look at their in-house animation tool Presto, and all the GPU/OpenGL4 viewport magic, workflow stuff, and the announcement that they're open sourcing their fancy viewport renderer (Hydra) as part of the USD (Universal Scene Description) release later this year. Exciting stuff!

Elephants Dream - 10 Years of Open Movies

What a neat mashup - the Cycles renders look gorgeous!  (I have to say though, that the more you think about the dialog in this little shot and the rest of the scene, the more confusing it gets, and the less it all makes sense... hahaha)

EDIT: On rewatching again a few days later, a new interpretation that somewhat makes sense does come to mind... hmm... 

LinkDump: DIY 3D Printed Orthodontics

It is with a mixture of surprise and mild horror that I came across a blog post today where the author went and made his own set of 3D printed clear-plastic-teeth-adjusting-things to self medicate his crooked teeth.

 Source: http://amosdudley.com/weblog/Ortho

My reaction to this post (and in particular, the screenshot copied above) can be summed up as follows:
* Surprise at the audacity of being a human guinea-pig for doing this DIY (with what appears to be no medical supervision), but also that to create the sequence of 3D printed inserts, he not only used Blender (eek!) for his 3D needs, but used the animation tools in Blender to generate the sequence of progressive steps needed to perform the teeth adjustments (double eek!).

* Mild Horror - It's one thing to work on animation tools for animating fluffy bunnies bouncing around on screen... it's another though to find that these tools were used to generate medical molds (*gulp*)...

Seminar Summary: "From Nand to Tetris"

This morning, I attended a fascinating seminar by Shimon Schocken about a CS course he co-developed called "Nand to Tetris". Over the course, students develop a full working computer system from the ground up, component by component from first principles.



There are some concessions though (if you could call them that) - instead of physically building these components, the students work through the exercises using a special software-based hardware simulator. As a result, students can through the course in a very modular way, and can experiment with how each of these components works.

OUI-Blendish - An interesting widget toolkit based on Blender's UI

I was just looking through one of my newsfeeds just now, and stumbled across a rather interesting little ui/widget toolkit that seems to have slipped under the radar till now. For everyone who's been whining about wanting about a Blender-styled widget toolkit they can use in their own projects, this may be what they've been waiting for!

Presenting:   Leonard Ritter's (Duangle)  "OUI-Blendish"

Favourite Composers List - January 2016 Edition

I've been having an amazing amount of fun over the past few days working on a personal dev project over the past few days. Progress has been great - it's really exciting to see it really take shape this time... I can feel it... it's almost there... so tantalisingly close this time... just a little bit more tweaks and I think I'll have it working properly this time :D

Even more awesome is working on this while listening to some of my favourite awesome music from some of my favourite composers. So, I thought I'd post an updated list of my current favourites as they stand: