How I got started with Blender

When you first look at Blender I feel as though you are totally forgiven for feeling intimidated by it. In fact that was exactly my experience, yet I decided to press on anyway. Really I was determined to cast my fears aside and enter a brave new world.  One that I have wanted to  be a part of since high school. Thanks to this wonderful website for being one of several sites to inspire me to do this.

Well, over a decade later I finally got a piece of the pie for I am at long last in a position to follow the dream and thankfully it would be no simple fantasy

Yet, at long last I was able to go ahead and make something. Since then I have done the tutorial several times and each time I changed some of the details of it.  I also did renders on my x201 laptop and even on my Fujitsu Lifebook 4215.  It did pretty well on the x201 but the Fujitsu was well, I’ll tell you later about that.

I guarantee it!!

Of course, I prefer using my PC with my 30 inch Apple Cinema Display connected to it to work on Blender as it has much more kick than either of my laptops

No way i was letting that nice monitor go to waste!!

Then I decided to do it again and this time change the thickness of the cup to 0.9 vs. 0.7 and I know I know you are like…….Big hairy deal. And that’s perfectly fine, because I was just going for a minor difference before I completely lose my mind and make more drastic changes.

Just to be clear this is #3 and changed the roughness to 2 instead of 1. Changed the color, but decided to keep the original thickness of the cloth. The material I chose was silk instead of the regular cloth so don’t start with the whole “but silk is cloth moron!”.

LOL!! Well….duhhhhh!!!

Lamp strength doubled to 4,000 and I think that is why the cup looks as if its textured. Believe me I was just as surprised to see that effect as you are. Speaking of surprises, I thought the rendering process was going to be 20 minutes. Frankly I’m just glad they didn’t go by like hours to be honest with you.

Well, it was 17 minutes so not that far off really

Well, there you have it. Another bad creation by yours truly. Be on the look out because more are coming soon. Also, I am strongly considering doing more videos on You-tube so I’ll talk more about that later. Now, if I could just convince the Linux Mint guys the next time that the letter “I” comes around to name the version “Iesha”, that would be just great.

It sure would!!

Hidden Washington: Tiber Creek

Veru interesting information about a forgotten waterway

Park View, D.C.

Tiber Creek (or Goose Creek) is not something many people talk about much any more, much less know about, despite its importance to the early development of Washington. When one does read about the Tiber, the area most frequently referenced is the downtown section that eventually became part of the canal and was finally entombed as an underground sewer beneath Constitution Avenue along the Mall.

In the early days of the city, the Tiber’s banks were covered with large trees and bushes. The creek also provided anglers with shad, herring, eels, pike, catfish, perch, and other fish as far upstream as Pennsylvania Avenue and Second Street, NW.

According to Garnett P. Williams in his study on Washington’s vanishing springs and waterways (1977), the Tiber was a “formidable stream that drained about half of the original District of Columbia area. The headwaters began as little rills about 3 1/2 miles north…

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Getting started with Simcity BuildIt

 

humble beginnings

I started playing SimCity Buildit a few weeks ago and already it’s my new favorite game.   In fact, I haven’t loved playing a game so much on my iPad since I got started on Jurassic Park Builder. But this game has an ability that the other one lacked. The ability to play without needing to be connected to the internet, this is great since I don’t have to worry about not being able to connect to a server for some reason.  Which is why I have this to say:

Finally its happened to me and……you know the rest.

Thank you CeCe.

Now, I told you I just got started playing SimCity Buildit, but already I have some things to share with you that will help you much along the way.

1. Be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your city be either.  So enjoy the journey along the way and be happy you don’t have to worry about someone dying because of a bad decision on your part.  You also don’t have to worry about other people trying to take over something you have spent time building.

2. Give the people what they want for you will receive bounteous bounty if you do.

3. You got to spend money to make money. But don’t be a moron, also be cool about fire safety, otherwise your sims will become rather hot with you.

4. Same as #1

5. Repeat steps one, two, three.

That’s all folks…..

For now.

 

Other side of town

Thanks Apple, you made me upgrade

At last I have upgraded my Ipad 3 from iOS 6 to iOS 8.  I had procrastinated about it for quite some time but finally decided to make the jump.

Actually, to be completely honest with you I did it because one day I turned on the iPad and got a weird image on the screen.  It looked like a power connector that was supposed to charge the iPad and the word “iTunes was above it.  I tried turning the iPad on and off multiple times to no avail.

I was like…”say it isn’t so!!

Doing some research on the matter, I came to find out that I would need to restore the iPad with iTunes.  Fortunately for me I had already backed it up on my old beat up bestie of a laptop the Fujitsu Lifebook 4215,  That proved to be a rather Capital Idea becuase I was going to need iTunes with an internet connection in order for my baby to come back.

I was wrong, and I just can’t be without you!!

So, after a few days, I went to the library and started the restoration process.  One of the reasons that I had procrastinated about upgrading to a new version of iOS in the first place is that I already had games that I had played for a very long time on it.  I also was concerned about the many pictures and videos that I had accumulated over time and I really didn’t want to start over.

That would be a real bummer!!!

Goodness, it did take forever and a half to do the restoration process over wifi and the whole time i was anxious that some error message would show up on the screen, strategically once I got to 90% finished.

Considering that this had taken roughly two hours I would have shouted a rather loud D’oh! ala Homer Simpson style.

Gratefully the test of my endurance came to an end and finally I had a device updated to the latest version of iOS.

Yippee!!!

Unfortunately, nobody’s perfect so I came across some problems that I will likely rant about later.