... for life

I always knew Panasonic's slogan was "Ideas for Life," but there are so many "for life" slogans out there.. and from large companies too..

Panasonic - Ideas for life
Abbott - A promise for life
Genentech - In business for life
XTENT - The right size. For life
ITT - Engineered for life
Biotronik - Excellence for life
and.. likely more.

Just a random thought.

Vase

This next tutorial I did can be found here. Their server seems to be down and I couldn't get the texture files for the floor and vase, but besides that I think I had some issues replicating what they had. I still managed to play around with it, and am overall satisfied with the result even though it was kind of exasperating. The render actually took quite a while... like all of dinner time... after I added some ambient occlusion or whatever.

Blender N00b

Instead of working I was up til 5am fighting through Blender tutorials. I've always wanted to step into the 3D realm of art but have not had the chance to really tackle through the nettlesome interface. This time I started slowly with the basics: Noob to Pro tutorial. Then I went back to do some stuff that I looked at before but either failed to complete or didn't even try: A Simple Winter Scene and Dolphin. Before those I actually tried this head modeling tutorial, which let me familiarize with some of the million shortcut keys but I think it's a bit more advanced than the others. I hope one day I can post my original art online... For now I'm posting my tutorial-generated pieces.

Something about the vocal cords...

To add on to the collection of electronic goods that is no longer functional, I've taken apart my Victor (JVC) headphones [HP-S82F]. I got this a while back.. maybe 5 years or so.. to go with my Sharp MD player. It fit nicely with not too much long-term pain on the ears, and it has an extraneous feature - the rotating color wheel to match with your clothes... or something.

Anyway, since then I've switched to a Panasonic pair that has doubly retractable cords, but for some random reason I decided to take this one on a little trip up to SF. Too bad one of the sides didn't emit any sound. My friend tested it and confirmed that it was something inside, not just the connections. Since it wasn't likely that it would be fixed easily, I just took it apart.. just like this guy, and learned a little about speakers. Kind of like tympanic membrane and vocal cords? Ehem, it was fun while it lasted.

Hayabusa

I miss those days I made a bunch of plastic models from kits. I was a fan of those snap-in non-glue kits that required less effort and resources like paint. A few years ago I actually got a Tamiya model of a random Suzuki motorcycle that I thought looked pretty awesome. I actually bought cheap blue and black spray paint and did my best to color everything I could. Turned out pretty nicely, in my opinion. Unfortunately parts of it like the mirror broke off when we had to move...

I wonder when the next time I'll make one of those models.. My next one was supposed to be a Nissan Fairlady Z in the same color that my family had, but too bad I messed up the spray paint (this is why you don't buy cheap ones) and I guess we no longer have the car :(











Wallpaper (1280x800) adaptation from deviantART here.

Ideas for Life

Yes, I am still alive, if anyone even accessed. But my camera of 5 years has a dead LCD... :( Not sure why I have bad luck with LCDs... I try not to abuse things, but it's definitely at least the third substantial thing I owned with a nonfunctional LCD (others including an electronic dictionary and a NEC laptop). I busted this camera out at the 4/17 Rilo Kiley concert in SF but found the screen shattered internally. Still takes pictures but not as useful anymore.

This Panasonic D-Snap camera is one of the earliest multicameras they released, with a 2.0megapixel camera with rotating lens (useful), mp3 player, video, and sound recording functionalities. It's so old that apparently the proprietary software I bought doesn't work with my computer anymore so I can't get any music on it now... and I stupidly deleted the music that was already on a SD card. It's so light and compact that I'd have it anywhere I go.. and I guess I still kind of carry it around like a phone. In fact people seem to think it's a phone.

Anyway, I'll think about getting a new slim camera... when I have money...