Often the biggest gripe people have about CDs is that they are two or three hit singles packaged with a bunch of crap to justify selling it to you for $12 or more. I’ve felt that way many, many times. The phenomenon is a large part of the reason behind models like iTunes. In fact, the record companies STILL don’t get it - that’s why they offer you a discount if you buy the whole album vs the singles. One day they’ll learn that artists should only release their good songs. People will buy them a la carte.

" Wikipedian Protester" from the great mind behind xkcd.

Every time politicians speak, I want to question their numbers, to force them to quantify where it came from. No one has the balls to do this out there other than Colbert and John Stewart who will play back to back quotes of politicians contradicting their selves. Seriously, does the rest of the news industry work for the Ministry of Truth?

I don’t like posting too many videos because they could be removed at any time, leaving this post worthless. However, here are some neat cartoons I found. The first one, “Wanted”, I found because it was featured in issue #92 of 3D World. It was the final project of some German film students. It took them 6 months to complete.

“Bath Time” is a cute CG short I found on youtube after watching “Wanted”:

Live near a big city with mass transit? Need to know how to get somewhere? Then use the RandMcNally of trains, HopStop.com. Also available on my blogroll, under the links category.

System76, which sells customized Ubuntu laptops allows you to write in an get a free set of “Powered by Ubuntu” stickers. Thanks for offering this service! It was annoying me that my computer said it was perfect for Windows Vista Basic, when it’s running Ubuntu! So, I now have my Ubuntu stickers.

is out!

The good news is that it looks slicker. That bad news is that I no have no idea where the heck anything is!

Check my stuff out at: http://www.vimeo.com/djotaku/videos

I’ve heard about Yafray so much and I’ve seen that it can deliver VERY photorealistic shots. The Blender internal renderer is not bad - as a matter of fact, it’s awesome. However, for all the really realistic stuff people tend to use Yafray. I tried to use it before, but all I got was a blank screen. Today, doing some research, I found out that, for some reason, the lights need to be jacked up in order for Yafray to work. Click on any of the pictures to see a larger size.

I’ve spent a pretty good amount of my free time to try and finish Jose’s Dinner. Now that I’m done, I am taking a bit of a break from animation to do some of the other things I like to do, such as play civ4. The new expansion pack is coming out and I’m extremely excited. It has all kinds of great improvements like colonies, popes, and corporations. So I wanted to play one last game, Eric XI of the Chinese is probably going to be my last game before the expansion pack comes out.

Thanks to my wife, Danielle, and my brother, Danny, for providing voice talents for the film.

What are you waiting for? Go see it here.

And check back over the next few days, I have some stuff I’ll be adding there.

Their food may or may not be worth the price, I’ve never been there for dinner. However, I do know that their club is crap. I would have to say that tonight was definitely the worst experience I’ve ever had in terms of going out for a night of fun. First of all, I got to the Powerplant Live area and no one knew how to get into Babalu Grill. The people blocking the area told us to go down the block, the people at the end of the block told us to go back to the original people. When we finally get in, the bouncer said it was $5 per person, but the person taking the cash said it was $10 per person. It was so loud outside from a concert going on that it was impossible to reconcile. Perhaps I was just tired from a long day’s work, but had the concert not been going on a mere 20 feet away, I would have disputed this.