Anotherblog

Fraud

I have received a vitally important letter from the anti-fraud branch of the Nigerian government. It talks about the many victims of the email scams, and then kindly requests that I send them my contact details so they can refund my money…

Cubology

I can now solve Rubik’s cubes. I did it properly for the first time this morning, and then to prove to myself it wasn’t a fluke, once more, and then to prove to Mr McLeish that it wasn’t a fluke, once more. When I say “properly”, I mean “without consulting an external source and following the magic algorithm they show for solving the last two or three corners”. The solution entirely consists of steps that I can understand. Hooray!

Awesomeness

I’m very, very pleased with something we just did for Darths and Droids. But it won’t be visible until next month. So I’ll just note now that what we did today and yesterday was awesome, and I’ll talk about it more later.

Darths & Droids

Another review! And it’s very positive. I got a big thrill from having one of my lines quoted, too - “long floppy bunny ears and a tongue like an anteater.” We’ve been compiling traffic statistics for a while now, and the comic is *still* growing in popularity. Our writing sessions have really settled into a healthy dynamic - everyone cares, and is willing to fight for what they like. Nothing gets through without being justified, in one way or another. It’s easy to dismiss committee writing (as I had) until you’ve seen what it has to offer.

Time Rift

Did some more filming and scouting for Time Rift with Jon on Saturday. Time Rift is a Doctor Who film Jon did in the early ’90s. He’s putting together a DVD copy now, and while he’s at it, is trimming out chunks of dialogue, and consequently needs a couple of cutaways. It’s interesting trying to find geography that roughly matches the original locations (taken in the USA) and matching Jon’s current appearance to how he looked back then. The original was on VHS, which makes things a little easier - after downgrading the footage to VHS quality, pretty much any dark green vegetation is indistinguishable from any other dark green vegetation.

I took Friday off work to relax, and ooooh yeah this long weekend felt good. I did a little work on Secret Project #17, shot ten ends at archery (mostly without pain - I’m getting back up to strength at last!) including two “all gold” ends, played a whole lot of classical guitar, and got in some good quality time with Veronica. I spent a good amount of time working on Lotus, too. The Cars short film unfortunately fell of the end of the project list, which is a bummer because it’s beginning to get urgent.

Cubology

Dr. Leanne Rylands, the very cool head of CS at the University of Western Sydney, gave a talk at work a couple of weeks ago. It was about her experiences as a woman in science/engineering, and was very interesting (apparently the University of Western Sydney has about 30% women undergraduates, which is about the level when a minority group stops feeling as much a minority) particulary as it reflected Veronica’s experiences and concerns.

At the end of the talk, she talked about her abiding fascination with Rubik’s cubes (nothing to do with her talk, just something she was interested in, and something people wanted to hear). She conveyed her enthusiasm so well that I subsequently gushed about it to Veronica and Kat, and Kat bought me a cube for my birthday.

So, for the past two weeks I’ve been messing about with a cube. Mr. McLeish is a rather skilled cubologist and has been helping me out. What fascinates me is that there are methods out there that use almost no “programmed” sequences - you can solve the entire thing using logic. When I was growing up, I had a cube or two, and I always got frustrated with them and pulled them apart. It seemed to me when I read about solutions that they tended to be magical solutions, algorithms that people have worked out through trial and error, such that when the cube is in such-and-such a state, you apply such-and-such a series of moves. Boring. And not true! While there are many techniques that are the aforementioned, the Heise method is quite cool, though not terribly well explained on the linked website.

Worst ever case of the Uncanny Valley

http://cubo.cc/

It probably wouldn’t have been so bad without the terrible case of redeye. But as it is - that’s genuine nightmare material.

The Chorus Rhymes With Fire

Here’s Ev performing the Spit classic song “The Chorus Rhymes with Fire” in Brisbane recently: