IZation Labs

So I spent an hour on the phone with various repair centers and official Apple tech support today. I’ve got to hand it to them, Apple’s tech support handled it rather well. I was treated gingerly by the man on the other end of the line until we saw eye to eye on the fact that I actually knew what a Hard Drive failure was and how to identify it. In the end I saved a lot of time because I already knew what the problem was, and only had to do a little checking for him booting from the OS X installer discs.

After a 20 minute or less conversation with him, we had agreed that the hard drive would need to be replaced, and that it wouldn’t cost me a cent, as it is still under warranty. I settled for somewhere between option one and two. Rather than send it to Apple and wait 2 or 3 weeks and never see the broken drive again, I took it to a Apple certified store in Columbus, Ohio, called Computer Site Columbus, or CSC.

CSC was very professional and informative, I was greeted by an open room and multiple people where they took down all of my information, serial number, and Apple support ticket number. The bench time should only be 5 or 6 days, which means I should have it back by mid week. As an added bonus, since I took it to a privately owned store instead of sending it to Apple, I will also get to have my broken HDD returned to me when I go to get my laptop. Possible data recovery, anyone? All’s well that ends well, I suppose.

On a side note, hopefully in a day or two I’ll post a picture of a car model that College-Now grad Matt Spring has been working on in Blender!

–Lace

That’s right, you heard me. Today, to use the words most favored by my College-Now class, “The Macbook’s bust.”

Dead. Came home from a nine hour work day, and the system is frozen, the little spinning umbrella staring insistently at me, as if to say, “Just two more seconds, I promise I’ll start working again soon!” I let it sit for awhile, eventually become frustrated, and then hard reboot (hold the power button for 5 seconds).

First sign of trouble:

“Uh-oh. What’s that sound? Oh crap. No, I know that sound.” *smacks forehead* “No! NO! Come on!”

What was it I was hearing? It was the hard disk drive. Making the same sounds as a floppy disk drive out of the 80’s and 90’s. (I’m dating myself with that comment, but still.) A few loud crackle/scratch/grind sounds followed by the sound of a short, thin piece of metal ‘pinging’ once or twice.

“Well,” I think, “at least the screen is blue, like it’s going to boot. Wait. Oh no..”

Second sign of trouble:

This is it. This is all the Mac had to say? Not even a cryptic error message? I can just IMAGINE the confusion that would ensue if a typical, non techy Mac user (such as one portrayed by the…ahem, person in the Mac commercials) came across this image, blinking incessantly on screen where they expected their beautiful background and dock to be.

So I rebooted, knowing already that I was most horribly, utterly, (again, to use a common College-Now phrase,) hosed.

Third sign of trouble:

Upon reboot…
Oh well now we’re talking! This is much better! So informative and explanatory!

So the system is kaput, and I’m not sure what my next move is. I figure that I have two options, however.

One: I fix it myself. Who says Macs are inaccessible? I remove a (good few) screws and pop out the hard drive, then give data recovery a shot on my own, replacing the dead one with a bigger, hopefully more hearty MBPro compatible one. The con, however, is that it will void my warranty, which would be a shame, as the fans already need replacing because I’ve run them on full all the time due to the heat generated by rendering in Blender.

Two: I send it in to a (cr)Apple repair center. They fix it under warranty and two weeks later I get my system back, with no idea if the data would have been recoverable, or the security of the data that was on the hard drive, or really any information or guarantee that it won’t happen again. Great. At least I only lost about 2 weeks worth of data, the rest was backed up. Unfortunately, that two weeks included ALL the work on WNBG, as well as a bunch of daily models. :/

Opinions?

–Lace

As is the norm, I’m up late, blending. A College-Now grad (and good friend of mine), Matt Spring, is passed out on the sofa next to me. He and I have been hanging out just about all weekend. I’m too tired to be too talkative tonight, so instead, here are some late night renders that I’ll post while I’m waiting for my newest one to crank out.

The sword pictures will be explained in the next post, when I have the final image rendered. Night, all!

–Lace

Normal mapping is quite possibly THE coolest thing I have ever done in Blender. I absolutely love it. I just can’t describe how awesome it is. But I did come up with a decent way to help one visualize it.

Imagine you have a regular piece of white printer paper as well as a pencil at your disposal. You sit down and scratch out a decent, well shaded drawing of whatever you like, say, a house, for example. Now, that well shaded house has light and dark sections that make it look much more realistic than if it were just a two tone sketch, right?

Now imagine that when you hold the paper in front of your face and turn it left and right, the shading changes! As if it were a 3d object, the ‘lighting’ of the scene you scribbled on paper magically changes, and it’s only a drawing, on a flat piece of paper! I know it’s not perfect, but that is in a sense a good visual way to describe what Normal Mapping can accomplish, at least in the case I am describing.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

This video depicts a flat plane. Four corners, and a image mapped to it. That’s it. There is no high level of physical detail, no bumps to make the light shine differently. But it sure looks like it, doesn’t it.

Here’s the blend file if you want to see for yourself, or play around with normal mapping. The texture and tutorial I followed to get the concept down can be found at tutorialsforblender.com

–Lace

I’m writing this at 12:50 in the morning, and I need to be up in 7 hours for work, so I’ll try to keep it short and sweet.

The newest build of WNBG is working for both Mac and Windows now. Primary updates include a scrolling cautionary opening, an audio test, and some UV Mapping tests on background textures. I’m getting close to the point where I need to start coding in python to keep up with the game logic. I’ve got a good friend of mine who should be able to give me a jump start, though. Make sure to leave your constructive criticism and comments below the post!

(Don’t forget to right click and save.)

05-04-2009

Mac Build — [Build 0.2]

5.7 MB

Windows Build — [Build 0.2]

8.1 MB

–Lace

Today’s post is a double whammy. Not only did I find a nice old animation of water falling into a ceramic bowl that I have never posted on IZL, but I decided to post it without going through Youtube, Vimeo, or any external hosting site! Great thanks go out to the mac-dev.net for creating such a nicely little flash video player plugin for Wordpress! So here it is, in all it’s glory. The first totally independent IZationLabs video.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

–Lace

I finally started doing some reading, and some playing around with the Blender3D Game Engine, and this is the output of a few hours worth of learning experience. This Game is Alpha. Pre-pre-release. Read, “were this an actual attempt, the game would probably never be shown to the public on this level”, so no need to tear it apart, it’s a work in progress. I’ve already learned a lot, and I hope to have a nice little game developed when it’s all over.

The game is being produced under the codename WNBG. At this point, there is only one rule. Knock down the green one! Post your comments on bugs (there will be tons) and constructive criticism in the comment section of this post.

(Make sure to right click and save.)

05-01-2009

Mac Build — [Build 01]

8.8 MB

Windows Build — Not up yet

?

Blend File [Build 01]

3.4 MB

– Lace