Why do people think these things are some kind of 'stealth' devices that can just sneak in and drop off the goods? These type drones are loud as hell and, unless the prison is staffed completely with the deaf, any guard is going to hear the thing coming.
I had a thick paperback book called "The Internet Yellow Pages" which was sort of like a print version of the original version of Yahoo! (back before Yahoo was around I think). It categorized websites by subject in a handy desk reference format hehe.
I have been getting a *ton* of spam emails the past couple of days from some of the following domains which appear to be handled through Yahoo...
.
bellsouth.net
swbell.net
att.net
snet.net
sbcglobal.net
ameritech.net
It's basically a random message with a URL attached... many of them.ru domains. They're being sent to the.mac account that I've had since whenever it was.mac was originally started. There were a one or two initially starting back around Wednesday and it's become about 10 a day the past couple of days. All from different email addresses from the domains listed above.
If you're using them strictly as a business tool, I wouldn't worry too much about photos -- I do think it's helpful to have a photo of yourself, especially in a one-to-one business like freelance photography. You can set your Facebook account so other people can't tag you in their photos.
Agreed... people are more likely to choose your business when they can connect the business with a face.
What are your other options for self promotion? Ad in the newspaper? How many people will see it let alone act on it these days? Ad on TV? Is the Return of Investment worth it for what you're trying to do?
Really, for better or worse "social" media is the best way to reach a target audience.
I also wondered, is there any way to know if a design will print out correctly? For example if I designed a pencil balancing on its tip with no supports, does the software, or somebody at shapeways, alert me that I'm being stupid?
Yep... they check your models before they print it and will notify you of problems like that. From their FAQ:
When a product is ordered for the first time a manual check will be done to make sure the object is printable. Now, factors like wall thickness and detail thickness are tested, which sometimes leads to the rejection of the design. Sometimes products for sale (whether it is your own or not) can be uploaded but turn out not to be printable.
Unfortunately, we do not have an automated way of checking every single design rule, which is why we optimize and only do a thorough (manual) check for designs that are ordered, not just designs that are uploaded.
The amount of detail all depends on the material you're printing in. IIRC, some of the metals can be really detailed. They have full details on what the specs are for each material on their website. http://www.shapeways.com/materials/material-options
There was a spoiled, bratty kid who lived in my neighborhood growing up. Whenever the rest of us didn't want to do what he wanted to do or play by the rules he wanted to play by he would go running home "WHHhhaaaa... I'm telling my mom."
Some people in the United States have participated in as best of a democratic process as we can muster here and didn't get their way.
Really... just how much more are we going to infantilize our society? Does mummy & dada need to make sure their sweet wittle muffin gets their gold stars for doing WHAT THEY'RE BEING PAID TO DO?
"Period" - such a strong statement, but you're wrong. It's digital, and you can low pass filter (average) adjacent frames to get the effects of longer exposures at higher rates. "never, ever" - ugh.
Averaging adjacent frames is not the same as getting longer exposure rates than the frame rate.
You could, in theory, do the same thing staying completely in film with an optical printer. Take frames ABCDE and project them onto new frames 12345 on an optical printer. Project ABC onto frame 1, project BCD onto frame 2, etc., etc. Still doesn't make the exposure rate longer than the frame rate... and this is the same process only in a digital post realm that you're talking about.
Yes.. there's a lot of tricks that we can perform to make it *seem* like the exposure rate is longer than the frame rate, but the original source image is still going down at an exposure rate no longer than the frame rate.
Exposure time is always related to frame rate even in digital. You can't exactly have an exposure time of 1/20th of a second if your frames are going by at 1/48th of a second. The slowest possible exposure for 48fps is 1/48th of a second. Period.
In theory, the shutter speed (e.g. exposure time) could be faster than the frame rate, but the same holds true in film cameras as well by adjusting the shutter angle. Most films shoot with a shutter angle of 180 degrees. (think of the shutter as a circle, half of it is open and half of it isn't) If you decrease the shutter angle, you get less motion blur and a shorter exposure time. This was used to great effect in the D-Day storming of the beach scene at the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan."
Unless you know of some way to warp time, the exposure length will never, ever be longer than the frame rate in film or digital!
Very true. I wish people would stop believing that a court's decision is always correct. People escape conviction all the time.
And vice versa unfortunately.
The poor are more likely to get convicted and serve jail time as they can't afford the expensive 'good' lawyers and must rely on the overworked, under-budgeted public defenders.
Ugh 1&1... I received a number of emails from them trying to transfer one of my domain names away from Dreamhost. These weren't fake/phishing emails either. Fortunately my domains at Dreamhost are locked down tight.
1&1 is one of the worst web hosts out there... cheap yeah... but terrible. Good luck if you need any sort of tech support!
The whole 'prison for profit' thing disturbs me greatly. No private company should profit directly from the incarceration of of individuals. I can understand companies making some profit off of selling food and supplies to prisons, but *definitely not* from the actual imprisonment of people.
As we've seen from Wall Street in the past, shareholders apparently expect not just profits, but ever-increasing profits every quarter. How are prison corporations going to meet those expectations? Increase the number of people going to prison by lobbying for heavy handed 'justice' to assure that every little infraction has at least some jail time to it.
I don't want my software to start instantly when I get in to work... I need time to pee and go get some coffee from the kitchen. If my software starts right away, I'll be expected to be productive right away!
If only Hollywood would learn to move with the times and adapt instead of stubbornly trying to cling to the past. Back in the day, the MPAA fought tooth and nail against consumer video decks considering them the death knell of the industry. When they finally accepted that video decks were here to stay, they adapted and home video became a major source of profit for them.
Now the industry is fighting once again against the internet. Another pointless battle. They need to learn to adapt and incorporate the internet into their business model rather than continuing this losing battle.
Given the choice, most consumers will go the easiest, most convenient route to the content in the format they would like. Netflix streaming has taken off like gangbusters because it's relatively inexpensive and very convenient. Make it easy and inexpensive and most people will not pirate your content! It's far, far easier for the regular consumer to just go to a Netflix type site than to find and download a torrent client, navigate through Pirate Bay, wait for the torrent to download, and hope they don't get plagued with viruses.
People like the convenience of watching movies via the internet. That ain't gonna change. Hollywood needs to embrace the internet and make their libraries available via Netflix like services. Until then, people will continue to follow the easiest path to get the movies they want to watch in the format they want to watch them.
I actually did the same thing for some projects I was working on... used Amazon's EC2 as a Maya/3DS Max Backburner renderfarm. I posted some tutorials on how I set it up on my website: http://www.judpratt.com/tutorials/ec2-renderfarm/
EC2 let me render in 5 hours what would've taken my own computer about 110 hours to render. The cost came out at about $.06 per core hour. The commercial cloud renderfarms charge about $0.75 core hour for comparison.
Hey! Just realized that the good old US Postal service could be aiding and abetting terrorist organizations by allowing them to use their network. And unlike Twitter... the USPS knows where you live and isn't afraid to use that knowledge to deliver right to your door.
We must fear such organizations and ban them by congressional edict immediately!
I've been super-happy with Dreamhost. They are are pretty inexpensive and have great, fast, US based tech support. I'm using them for both domain name and hosting.
1&1 is terrible. I had a site go down for about a week due to crap on their end. Initially, their tech support would say that there was nothing wrong. Then I would get 'bumped up' and the only response they would give me is "our technicians are aware of the situation and are working to resolve it." Can you give me an estimate on how soon it will be fixed? "I do not have that information." What is the problem? "I do not have that information, sir." That was all after about a 2 1/2 hour wait on hold.
I switched to Dreamhost after that and haven't had any problem since. Once when I did submit a trouble ticket, the tech responded to me BEFORE the automated responder saying "your trouble ticket has been received and someone will be with you shortly."
Plus... there's the added benefit that their US based tech support is an hour south of me in Orange County just in case if I ever did have any real problems, I could take a drive and do some, uh, encouraging.;-)
But you can die from "Water Intoxication." Case in point, a 28 year old woman died from a radio station "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating.
The parent post is essentially right though...
At the onset of this condition, fluid outside the cells has an excessively low amount of solutes (such as sodium and other electrolytes) in comparison to that inside the cells causing the fluid to shift through ( via osmosis) into the cells to balance its concentration. This causes the cells to swell.
No matter how fast a computer is, it is not going to speed up how long it takes an animator to animate.
The animator still has to consider the movement they want to achieve, move the rig, adjust keyframes, etc., etc. This will always take time to do.
I'm not sure that rendering is necessarily the thing that most needs sped up for the artist. What would help the artist more is speeding up of things that require simulation such as hair, particles, fluids, physics, etc.
Rendering is just the button you click when you're all done and ready to move on to the next shot.
Any cinema of repute would refuse to show material sourced from a VHS.
I used to be of this 'THX' mindset, but now I see it as folly to deny content over technical concerns. These theatres apparently agree - the content must be compelling enough that people will pay good money to see it, and the quality sufficient to not get in the way of the content.
Yep... also, Landmark theaters are an "art house" chain so they are quite used to a wide range of technical quality... some intentionally rough, some not.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do people think these things are some kind of 'stealth' devices that can just sneak in and drop off the goods? These type drones are loud as hell and, unless the prison is staffed completely with the deaf, any guard is going to hear the thing coming.
I had a thick paperback book called "The Internet Yellow Pages" which was sort of like a print version of the original version of Yahoo! (back before Yahoo was around I think). It categorized websites by subject in a handy desk reference format hehe.
Here's the 1995 version on Amazon: New Riders' Official Internet Yellow Pages
It's basically a random message with a URL attached... many of them .ru domains. They're being sent to the .mac account that I've had since whenever it was .mac was originally started. There were a one or two initially starting back around Wednesday and it's become about 10 a day the past couple of days. All from different email addresses from the domains listed above.
If you're using them strictly as a business tool, I wouldn't worry too much about photos -- I do think it's helpful to have a photo of yourself, especially in a one-to-one business like freelance photography. You can set your Facebook account so other people can't tag you in their photos.
Agreed... people are more likely to choose your business when they can connect the business with a face.
What are your other options for self promotion? Ad in the newspaper? How many people will see it let alone act on it these days? Ad on TV? Is the Return of Investment worth it for what you're trying to do?
Really, for better or worse "social" media is the best way to reach a target audience.
I also wondered, is there any way to know if a design will print out correctly? For example if I designed a pencil balancing on its tip with no supports, does the software, or somebody at shapeways, alert me that I'm being stupid?
Yep... they check your models before they print it and will notify you of problems like that. From their FAQ:
When a product is ordered for the first time a manual check will be done to make sure the object is printable. Now, factors like wall thickness and detail thickness are tested, which sometimes leads to the rejection of the design. Sometimes products for sale (whether it is your own or not) can be uploaded but turn out not to be printable.
Unfortunately, we do not have an automated way of checking every single design rule, which is why we optimize and only do a thorough (manual) check for designs that are ordered, not just designs that are uploaded.
The amount of detail all depends on the material you're printing in. IIRC, some of the metals can be really detailed. They have full details on what the specs are for each material on their website. http://www.shapeways.com/materials/material-options
There was a spoiled, bratty kid who lived in my neighborhood growing up. Whenever the rest of us didn't want to do what he wanted to do or play by the rules he wanted to play by he would go running home "WHHhhaaaa... I'm telling my mom."
Some people in the United States have participated in as best of a democratic process as we can muster here and didn't get their way.
"WHHhhaaaa..."
Really... just how much more are we going to infantilize our society? Does mummy & dada need to make sure their sweet wittle muffin gets their gold stars for doing WHAT THEY'RE BEING PAID TO DO?
"Period" - such a strong statement, but you're wrong. It's digital, and you can low pass filter (average) adjacent frames to get the effects of longer exposures at higher rates. "never, ever" - ugh.
Averaging adjacent frames is not the same as getting longer exposure rates than the frame rate.
You could, in theory, do the same thing staying completely in film with an optical printer. Take frames ABCDE and project them onto new frames 12345 on an optical printer. Project ABC onto frame 1, project BCD onto frame 2, etc., etc. Still doesn't make the exposure rate longer than the frame rate... and this is the same process only in a digital post realm that you're talking about.
Yes.. there's a lot of tricks that we can perform to make it *seem* like the exposure rate is longer than the frame rate, but the original source image is still going down at an exposure rate no longer than the frame rate.
Exposure time is always related to frame rate even in digital. You can't exactly have an exposure time of 1/20th of a second if your frames are going by at 1/48th of a second. The slowest possible exposure for 48fps is 1/48th of a second. Period.
In theory, the shutter speed (e.g. exposure time) could be faster than the frame rate, but the same holds true in film cameras as well by adjusting the shutter angle. Most films shoot with a shutter angle of 180 degrees. (think of the shutter as a circle, half of it is open and half of it isn't) If you decrease the shutter angle, you get less motion blur and a shorter exposure time. This was used to great effect in the D-Day storming of the beach scene at the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan."
Unless you know of some way to warp time, the exposure length will never, ever be longer than the frame rate in film or digital!
Very true. I wish people would stop believing that a court's decision is always correct. People escape conviction all the time.
And vice versa unfortunately.
The poor are more likely to get convicted and serve jail time as they can't afford the expensive 'good' lawyers and must rely on the overworked, under-budgeted public defenders.
Ugh 1&1... I received a number of emails from them trying to transfer one of my domain names away from Dreamhost. These weren't fake/phishing emails either. Fortunately my domains at Dreamhost are locked down tight.
1&1 is one of the worst web hosts out there... cheap yeah... but terrible. Good luck if you need any sort of tech support!
The whole 'prison for profit' thing disturbs me greatly. No private company should profit directly from the incarceration of of individuals. I can understand companies making some profit off of selling food and supplies to prisons, but *definitely not* from the actual imprisonment of people.
As we've seen from Wall Street in the past, shareholders apparently expect not just profits, but ever-increasing profits every quarter. How are prison corporations going to meet those expectations? Increase the number of people going to prison by lobbying for heavy handed 'justice' to assure that every little infraction has at least some jail time to it.
I don't want my software to start instantly when I get in to work... I need time to pee and go get some coffee from the kitchen. If my software starts right away, I'll be expected to be productive right away!
If only Hollywood would learn to move with the times and adapt instead of stubbornly trying to cling to the past. Back in the day, the MPAA fought tooth and nail against consumer video decks considering them the death knell of the industry. When they finally accepted that video decks were here to stay, they adapted and home video became a major source of profit for them.
Now the industry is fighting once again against the internet. Another pointless battle. They need to learn to adapt and incorporate the internet into their business model rather than continuing this losing battle.
Given the choice, most consumers will go the easiest, most convenient route to the content in the format they would like. Netflix streaming has taken off like gangbusters because it's relatively inexpensive and very convenient. Make it easy and inexpensive and most people will not pirate your content! It's far, far easier for the regular consumer to just go to a Netflix type site than to find and download a torrent client, navigate through Pirate Bay, wait for the torrent to download, and hope they don't get plagued with viruses.
People like the convenience of watching movies via the internet. That ain't gonna change. Hollywood needs to embrace the internet and make their libraries available via Netflix like services. Until then, people will continue to follow the easiest path to get the movies they want to watch in the format they want to watch them.
I actually did the same thing for some projects I was working on... used Amazon's EC2 as a Maya/3DS Max Backburner renderfarm. I posted some tutorials on how I set it up on my website: http://www.judpratt.com/tutorials/ec2-renderfarm/
EC2 let me render in 5 hours what would've taken my own computer about 110 hours to render. The cost came out at about $.06 per core hour. The commercial cloud renderfarms charge about $0.75 core hour for comparison.
Hey! Just realized that the good old US Postal service could be aiding and abetting terrorist organizations by allowing them to use their network. And unlike Twitter... the USPS knows where you live and isn't afraid to use that knowledge to deliver right to your door.
We must fear such organizations and ban them by congressional edict immediately!
I've been super-happy with Dreamhost. They are are pretty inexpensive and have great, fast, US based tech support. I'm using them for both domain name and hosting.
I would mod this up if I had points right now.
1&1 is terrible. I had a site go down for about a week due to crap on their end. Initially, their tech support would say that there was nothing wrong. Then I would get 'bumped up' and the only response they would give me is "our technicians are aware of the situation and are working to resolve it." Can you give me an estimate on how soon it will be fixed? "I do not have that information." What is the problem? "I do not have that information, sir." That was all after about a 2 1/2 hour wait on hold.
;-)
I switched to Dreamhost after that and haven't had any problem since. Once when I did submit a trouble ticket, the tech responded to me BEFORE the automated responder saying "your trouble ticket has been received and someone will be with you shortly."
Plus... there's the added benefit that their US based tech support is an hour south of me in Orange County just in case if I ever did have any real problems, I could take a drive and do some, uh, encouraging.
The parent post is essentially right though...
At the onset of this condition, fluid outside the cells has an excessively low amount of solutes (such as sodium and other electrolytes) in comparison to that inside the cells causing the fluid to shift through ( via osmosis) into the cells to balance its concentration. This causes the cells to swell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
Yes... drinking water in excess can kill you.
No matter how fast a computer is, it is not going to speed up how long it takes an animator to animate.
The animator still has to consider the movement they want to achieve, move the rig, adjust keyframes, etc., etc. This will always take time to do.
I'm not sure that rendering is necessarily the thing that most needs sped up for the artist. What would help the artist more is speeding up of things that require simulation such as hair, particles, fluids, physics, etc.
Rendering is just the button you click when you're all done and ready to move on to the next shot.
Any cinema of repute would refuse to show material sourced from a VHS.
I used to be of this 'THX' mindset, but now I see it as folly to deny content over technical concerns. These theatres apparently agree - the content must be compelling enough that people will pay good money to see it, and the quality sufficient to not get in the way of the content.
Yep... also, Landmark theaters are an "art house" chain so they are quite used to a wide range of technical quality... some intentionally rough, some not.
Since everyone's asking... I might as well too ;-)
I'd certainly appreciate an invite...
illumnat(at)gmail
Thanks!!