Slashdot Mirror
CmdrTaco Visits Pixar
A couple of weeks ago I scored a visit to Lucasfilm and half jokingly challenged the Slashdot audience to invite me to other cool places. Two brave Pixar employees took me up on my offer and showed me around for Slashdot T-Shirts. It's an amazing campus. Thanks to Mark Harrison and Ralph Gootee for showing me "0% of the render-farm" and making me wish that I was talented enough to have a place in such an amazing world. Soon I'll have a cool story to post about the crazy work Mark is doing with mind boggling volumes of data, but for now I have a picture of me next to a giant Luxo Lamp. Also thanks to Heidi Parmelee who gave me a Woody doll to give to my son and made me a hero. So now the gauntlet has been doubly thrown: Who out there in Slashdot-land works somewhere super cool and can give me a tour in exchange for a T-Shirt?
New plan: Create internet phenomenon and use ensuing "cred" to live my dreams!
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
"What I Did on my Summer Vacation by Commandor Taco" D----
I'm glad to see that the "Invite CmdrTaco to your cool place" campaign has went a lot better so far than its predecessor, the "Come kick kdawson in the balls" campaign.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Google.
Show us the photos. If you are shy, you could photoshop your face with a Ghost In the Shell logo, or a V for Vendetta logo.
-Woof woof woof!
"Also thanks to Heidi Parmelee who gave me a Woody" ...niiiiiice
Nice! Another reason to live my life vicariously through CmdrTaco!
Any übergeeks out there that could get Rob into NASA for the Atlantis launch?
Whew! This water sure is cold!
Is the summary all there is here?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm self employed, but you're welcome to come on over and tour my basement mancave* + office. You can even skip the T shirt.
*Somewhat Surprisingly, said basement is nowhere near parent's house
What do you think this is? Your personal blog?
(And for those who don't get the joke, yes, i know ;)
CmdrTaco if you're in the Seattle area within the next two months I can give you a tour of the Microsoft Redmond campus ;-)
Can't really see that being your scene though!
The light is obviously pointing in the wrong direction. It's a fake!
I can give you a tour of where they clean out port-a-potties. You'll never forget it.
If you're in Kentucky I can show you around the Buffalo Trace Distillery. We make bourbon and organic vodka from scratch.
Well hey now, guys, look. I do not want to do anything illegal here... but I would kill somebody... in front of their own mama... to get a /. T-shirt. And if any witnesses testify against me, I'll gouge their eyes out.
Otherwise you could come visit the Skype office in Palo Alto.
Of course that means having to be in Houston.....
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Also thanks to Heidi Parmelee who gave me a Woody.... Got my attention!
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I can give you a tour of the Quantum building and you can look at our lab with our nifty-keen tape and disk libraries! Even more importantly, afterwards I can take you to awesome pubs here on the Eastside!!!
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Wanna come visit Virgin America?
Does "0% of the render-farm" mean that he didn't get to see the render-farm for some reason? Or that the endless racks of render-farm that he got to see only amounted to approximately 0% of it?
dom
I can give you a tour of the ghetto.
Don't worry. They love white, nerdy people there. Be sure to bring your expensive gadgets so everyone can see how cool you are.
Nothing particularly interesting here - mostly old tech crap - but there isn't any heat, and in the midst of a minnesota winter 'cool' is an understatement.
Can I upgrade my tee-shirt to a /. parka?
i could offer you a tour of the construction of the third set of locks of the panama canal.
http://www.pancanal.com/eng/expansion/
I literally live right next door to your sister in law Mary cmdrtaco. I hung out with your brother a few weeks ago when he was visiting. You should come down here and give me a tshirt just because I know some of your family personally ;)
If you're out San Antonio way, I can give you a tour of Rackspace's Headquarters. Can't claim to be as cool as pixar, but got quite a few people who'd probably want to meet you.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
Dear CmdrTaco,
Feel free to stop by and we will be happy to give you our extended tour.
Best Regards
Greengairs Landfill
Airdrie
North Lanarkshire
UK
I can arrange a tour of the 300+ acre SAS Institute headquarters here in Cary, NC if you would like. It's beautiful - and SAS was Fortune's #1 best place to work in the USA two years in a row - last year and this. I think it's a cool place to work! http://www.sas.com/company/
It's going to be painful. The bandwidth costs will come right out of the lube budget.
I can show you around Google's main campus and get you a free lunch, if you're in Mountain View.
I work as a Software Engineer at Facebook and I would be happy to give you a tour of our campus(es). ;o)
You can see Alan Cox in his natural environment, here’s a bit feral, but you can coax him out with a rump of steak, that has a picture of Linus taped to it.
I can get you into some interesting places...
You got invited somewhere awesome by a member of the /. community, and all we get is a thank you and a request to be let into more awesome places? It would've killed you to snap a few pictures, or to have set up an interview, or to have given us something, anything, back in return?
Either make a big deal out of it when this happens and do some actual, experiential blogging, or keep quiet about it, but this story is just...a smirk.
I work nowhere remotely interesting these days, but if I did, after this story I wouldn't be inclined to help yo
Never commented ... but we could bring you out to Boise ID. You will be disappointed at first but we are revamping and balling hard out our workspaces/site so you could do a renovation tour and shed tears for those who have come and gone from such a company. The entrainment we will show you will be ... awesome. BTW, we are both from the same good old state of Michigan (very close ... (distance) ... growing up) and that means something, ya?
MTU Programmer
I can give a tour of all the excitement that is the Defense Media Activity, American Forces Network Broadcasting Center in lovely Moreno Valley, California... We broadcast tv and radio programs worldwide for service-members and their families.
Cool story man! Keep 'em coming! I liked the part where you visited Pixar and took the picture with the ball and there was that lamp right beyond you omg lookout lol hahaha anyway man keep in touch would love to read more on that trip to Lucasfilm! Take care! BTW have you seen my bong? Can't find it anywhere, I'm thinking it's either you that put it in your bag mistaking it for the darker one (yours) or Amanda... you know how she is! LOL ok take care Taco peace out
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
High comedy, my friend. Well done.
While PNG is a great format for digital artwork, and maybe even archiving, it's a terrible format for distributing pictures on the web. JPEG, while lossy, still looks good at high resolutions, and compresses down to smaller image sizes for distribution of photography on the web. It's the difference between FLAC and high bitrate MP3... while the FLAC is "technically" superior in terms of quality, most people aren't going to be able to tell the difference between 256kbps MP3 and FLAC.
Saving that photo as a JPEG cut the size by 75% without trying very hard, and I can hardly tell the difference at a glance (small differences, but not that important).
Not only is it a big ass PNG, it's also in AdobeRGB colourspace - so probably about .1% of the readership is actually able to see it correctly.
and never mind cutting file size by 75%, try 90 or 95%, and that's without even touching the resolution. The only question is why he didn't go the whole hog with a 32-bit image instead of the paltry 8-bit option. (that last bit was sarcasm, or should I say the last 24 bots were sarcasm)
Leading technology web site, eh?
Remind me again of the relevance of slashdot, with stories regularly appearing a day or two days behind other sites, slashvertisements, and little in the way of original content.
And I agree with the others, taking advantage of users' good will and giving nothing back is pretty weak.
I wish this fuckbag would just give up the torch to someone who actually gives a shit about the quality of the content here.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
You're welcome to visit Kisko Labs any day, with or without t-shirts. We don't have a render farm, but we compensate by having a sauna.
Heck, we'll even throw in some Frozen Rails conference passes.
We actually met up at the A2 slashdot tenth birthday celebration, so I already have a t-shirt. But, I'm also the admin for Yankee Air Museum , home to a flying B-17, B-25, and C-47. I offered then, and it still stands. I think something can be arraigned.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
...*I* have to put some effort into ensuring *YOU* get as many "away from the office" jollies as you can.
How about you go check out an office chair company on your next expenses-paid trip out? Then when I tell you to go "sit & swivel", I can at least gain some pleasure in knowing you will have a fairly good chance of carrying out my orders.
Incidentally, I'm thinking of taking a sickie from the office on Wednesday next week? Can you call my boss and make up an excuse for me?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
If you happen to come to Geneva let me know, might show you around CERN :)
as a free lunch. Especially from Google!
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I'm GLAD he used PNG. With modern highspeed being what it is, you shouldn't complain about the size difference, and the quality difference is substantial.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I can give you a tour of a government three-letter agency if you would like. The only caveat is that you can't ever leave.
Been there. Done that. Have a picture of my son next to the 6' Lego Buzz Lightyear
-- QED
As in, big shiny toys.
Of course, you'd have to get yourself to Hawaii...
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Check your personal email from your /. profile page. Legit offer to check out the ol' Rocket Factory.
No, I'm not Elon.
No, it really is not substantial. It's there, but you really have to be looking for it.
Besides, this attitude of "with modern X being what it is", we create this computing culture of throwing hardware at the problem when there are performance issues, rather than trying to solve the root issue at hand.
PNG vs JPEG is a lot different than FLAC vs MP3. With sufficient VBR settings, an MP3 can be made to sound indistinguishable from FLAC, while even at the highest quality setting JPEG still produces very visible artifacts and banding.
For example, look at the following image in both PNG and JPEG (100% quality setting):
PNG
JPEG
Note the smooth gradient of the sky in the PNG and the horrible banding present in the JPEG. Also note how the silhouettes look sharper in the PNG.
File sizes are 231KB for the PNG and 221KB for the JPEG.
a. have a temporary background check and polygraph (previous employer, still have connections for tours).
or
b. willing to sign an NDA (HINT: you may have already did from your last visit. Think parents...).
Also, did they show you the hideouts (i.e. must be 21yrs or over) and did you get to play drums?
TFA has tag: brag written all over it... and hopefully this post does not. FYI, I don't exist.
Then come to Malaysia.
Malaysia is the only country in the world where Apartheid is LEGAL.
Come visit Malaysia !
Care to visit the R & D facility of the world's largest chipmaker? If I twist the right arms I might even be able to get you a 6 core i7 990X Extreme to try out. If not I'm sure we can find a t shirt.
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/corei7ee/index.htm
http://www.intel.com/?en_US_01
The truth shall set you free!
@Glendale, CA.
But it must be before Jun 18 that I go back to Argentina. I am a the "website factory" and it is very cool, but there are also a lot of different sections in the same block and the block in front of that. Email me at sbassi gmail if you like the idea.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
You're missing the point, entirely. The problem with the picture is that it's a photo of Cmdr. Taco touching a giant ball in front of Pixar's HQ, underneath 4 lines of text (on my screen) about his trip. At the least, post a gallery of something, anything and write more about... other things... am I asking too much?
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
Taking a look at the image of the same location on Wikipedia, I see that they've added "Do Not Climb" stickers on Luxo.
I wonder who was the moron that caused that to happen?
a douchebag
Come hang out here and I'll introduce you to one of this generation's most prolific children's book authors.
8==8 Bones 8==8
... says it all.
Quote: "Also thanks to Heidi Parmelee who gave me a Woody" ... is it just me... or that sounded funny?
I don't work there any more, but I can arrange for a tour of the CIT and Comp Sci offices and maybe a student computer lab at Hope College!
Slightly cooler, I more recently did tech support work for Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, and still have friends there....
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
If you ever find yourself in West Texas/Southern NM, I could probably give you an insider's tour of a 3.5 meter telescope. If the timing and weather is right, you might get to see an Apollo run when we bounce a laser off the moon. They have some pretty cool computer equipment, including a Dec Alpha running VMS and Lisp to control the telescope motors. I also rather like the 6-8 parallel DAT drives that recorded the streaming take from the SDSS 2.5 meter telescope.
Apache Point Observatory is about 100 miles N of El Paso above Alamogordo, NM. We're next door to White Sands National Monument and near Carlsbad Caverns. The Trinity Site where the first atomic detonations took place is nearby and open for tours the first Saturday of April and October.
I love being married to an astrophysicist!
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
For example, look at the following image in both PNG and JPEG (100% quality setting):
PNG
JPEG
Would the results have been better if both pictures had been based off of the same source picture, rather than the second being made from the first? I was always taught that creating a lossy image out of a lossy image yielded poor results..
If you're in the LA area I can give you a tour of the SpaceX facility and show off awesome rockets and spaceships.
PNG is not lossy.
At CERN, the http protocol was born, the Grid Tier0 is hosted, open access publishing was organized, the LHC is operating, other mind-boggling experiments take place every day, and there are free tours.
What are you waiting for?
I was trying to be mildly sarcastic, but I was tired and could've done better.
The image type in question doesn't even benefit that much. A line art drawing sure does, or a traditional cartoon, but a fully rendered high colour scene is best done in JPEG.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
CmdrTaco, I'm in R&D at Dreamworks Animation (Redwood City campus) and we'd love to show you around! :)