Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Bread
Wax paper (not shown) sits between each jelly/bread layer to avoid soggy conditions.
(The whole loaf is PB&J’s. I just didn’t draw them all.)
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Loading ...Sideshow Characters
Some sideshow freaks that could have an adventure together. The bottom 4 were contributed by a person who is not me. Submit a comment if you’ve got a good idea for a sideshow freak. There are no rules.
Direct link to the Google spreadsheet since it’s all cramped here.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...3DS Max / Mental Ray animated opacity tutorial
If that title is gibberish, move along.
The tutorial describes an effective way to get around Mental Ray’s lack of support for 3DS Max’s “visibility” object property. This is a huge problem (for me, anyway, because I need it like every day). Sadly, doing many things in 3DS Max is painful and it must be beat it into submission to do even the simplest tasks. The fact that this rather involved tutorial had to be written is heart breaking if you think about it.
Animating the transparency of groups of objects in 3DS Max (using the Mental Ray renderer)
Other concepts covered in the tutorial:
Assigning Material ID’s to objects
Compound Multi-sub-object/Blend (what?!) materials
Custom Attributes (like sliders)
Wiring attributes together
Adding Bezier Float controllers to properties/nodes that are not keyframeable by default (<-- that you have to do this is nuts, too!)
Suggestions/Comments are good, too.
This tutorial is also posted in CGSociety.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Diet Jail
A weight loss program that is a jail. You pay someone to lock you in a prison for a fixed amount of time. They feed you a fixed amount of food. You go crazy and demand more food, better treatment, just as if you were in a regular prison. Maybe they force you to do manual labor, too.
When they let you out, you’re skinnier and in better shape.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Nature-Walk Cell Phone application
How it’s used: take a snapshot of any plant you come across, and the application tells you what it is.
How it might work: plant database would be kept of all types of plants. Using technology like Apple or Google’s face-detection, the software would compare the shape/color of a leaf, for example, and compare it to all of the images in its plant database. Then it’d take you to its own website or Wikipedia page about the plant.
The database and application would exist in some puffy white thing. The phone application would simply snap the picture, and send it to a server somewhere where all the analysis would be done.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Instead of working…
Loading ...Here’s how it’d work:
The rich person: their lifestyle wouldn’t be affected, they’d just be annoyed.
The poor people: you’d get some money from each poor person, but still leave each of them enough to live on; but JUST enough. If you took all of their wages to create your income, they’d starve and die pretty fast, then you’d have to find a job.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Electric Bowl
This might exist already, but I make it a point not to do any research.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...The resurrection!
So, I broke the website a while back. And when I went to fix it I found I was missing all posts newer than June 2007.
I found all of the posts in an RSS cache, but had to paste them in one at a time. While I was at it I decided to self-critique all of those old, forgotten posts. Kind of like a director’s commentary. It was fun.
The first commentary starts on October 3rd, 2007. Then I work my way up to THE PRESENT DAY (September 28th 2008, actually).
Check em’ out!
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Soft Rocket
Oh, hello. Found this sad little rocket in an old sketch book. Was meant to be a t-shirt design. T-shirt design is kind of boring, though. Maybe the cleverist t-shirt has nothing on it?
updated 01/09: looking back: love the idea. The commentary is kind of lame, though. A t-shirt with nothing on it would be stupid! Only YOU would get the joke…the very same problem the average conceptual art piece has.
In all truthfulness, my problem with tshirt designs with a “message” is the same problem I have with bumper stickers (and all types of social affiliations, religious or political). The hazard is giving the impression that your entire existence can be expressed through one particular sentiment, idea, or membership. The mere act of CHOOSING a symbol is an act of exclusivity of all other ideas, because you chose THIS symbol over THAT symbol. Any kind of choice results in an oversimplification of reality, and oversimplification of your experience of the world.
You have CHOSEN to misrepresent and oversimplify yourself, and why would you want to do that? You are thoughtful and fair, and carefully weigh and balance all sides of an argument, listen carefully, and clarify facts (as you know them) and misconceptions. You try to be honest, but not brash. You believe in truth and justice, but know the world is a complicated place, and not everyone can see eye to eye. So, why would you put a one-liner on the back of your car, or the front of your body? Are you a one-liner?
The message of this particular design? War is an ineffectual way of achieving peace. And there’s nothing wrong with that idea. And a rocket shaped like a flaccid penis is funny. The “problem” with the concept is that it excludes the legitimacy of a country needing to defend itself (with a rocket for example). The soft rocket negates that possibility, because the concept expressed isn’t “war is bad when it’s not justified according to my calculations, but it is totally justified when I feel it is so”. It is simply, “War is unjustified.” Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t, but all you know by looking at my shirt is that I believe there is no such thing as a justified war.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...12-Step Program alternative
I have an idea for a much simpler program. It has only one step.
Step #1: stop drinking.
udpated 01/09: looking back: maybe that’s why there’s so much recidivism with recovering alcoholics: none of the twelve steps is “stop drinking.”
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...The 6 Million Dollar Man’s cost if built today?
Using 1974 (when the show first aired) dollars and adjusting for inflation, about 26 million in 2008 dollars.
updated 01/09: looking back: there’s no idea here. Just a boring fact. However, I based the calculation on actual inflation data, so if you want to actually build the 6 million dollar man that is how much it will cost.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...New York vs. Los Angeles : who’s smarter?
Let’s consider fashion sense as a gauge of intelligence. To do that we’ll begin with some broad generalizations, but we may need to define some new stereotypes as well.
New York fashion ranges from classy 5th avenue to the cringingly painfully hip, and everything inbetween. The worst dressed in Manhattan are the tourists, who’re either decked out in their new sweat pants and 5-sizes-too big (but we still know you’re fat) t-shirts or LL Bean trail shoes, fanny pack, and zip-off pants.
Los Angeles fashion is just varing degrees of trashy, where most of the “well-dressed” look like they just stepped into or out of a tattoo parlor (which they in fact just did). There’s the late-30’s sloppy rockabillys, half-assed punk rockers (blue mohawk and studded bracelets and pumping gas into my mini-van), thrift store cannon-ballers with 80’s style hairsprayed bangs, and hipster wanna-be’s with ironic ring-neck t-shirts (ie. a classic Nintendo game pad) and white socks.
The differences in fashion-intelligence between New Yorkers and Los Angelesers(?) are real, but does it have anything to do with basic intelligence? Are New Yorkers smarter just because they dress smarter? You be the judge, but the answer is yes and yes.
updated 01/09: looking back: I really want to delete this one. So negative!
I had just moved to LA and it was really getting on my nerves, so this outburst was a tiny catharsis. Curiously, though, my general take on LA fashion hasn’t changed much in 5 months. There’s something about the way people assemble their outfits…so desperate to stand out, often resulting in a costume quality. In fact there is a store on Melrose that specializes in leather, and all of their outfits look like costumes from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
The other problem with this post is that it isn’t an idea. It’s an arrogant observation.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...LAVA life
LAVA life is a type of life that originated from molten rock. If water is the key to life simple because of its fluidity, then maybe life could originate in lava if there were different type of molecules that stayed intact at high temperatures. These hot molecules could eventually coagulate into life-stuff. Like lava amoebas, lava fish, lava dogs, and lava people who eat lava sandwiches.
update 01/09: looking back: pretty good idea. Why couldn’t life develop from any neutral fluid? Isn’t that all water is? ISN’T IT?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Star Chair
updated 01/09: looking back: truth be told, it’s a star and a chair.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Soda and Pants
updated 01/09: looking back: just some silly stuff.
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