IZation Labs

Blender 2.49 has been released, and the updates look promising. Hit Blender.org for the details and download. Next stop, 2.5!

Expect an interesting post in the near future, as my most recent (and most expensive) project has nearly been completed!

Here’s a neat video that was posted a few days back on BlenderNation. It had ‘steampunk’ in it’s name, so of course I had to post it. Nice use of Blender!

Steampunk Mousetrap from Ben Dansie on Vimeo.

Personal Note: The Macbook Pro has been back in my possession since last Thursday. Unfortunately I was unable to have the repairs made AND maintain possession and security of my own data, as Apple has to have the old hard drive back. Upon emailing them, they assured me that data on hard drives are properly expunged before the drives are destroyed or refurbished, so I should have nothing to worry about. As long as I trust Apple. :/

–Lace

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

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.

–Lace

My Shapeways model has arrived! The King model from my chess animation has shipped, and I’m very pleased with it. It has the texture of relatively fine sandpaper, close to 300 grit if my memory serves me. The detail is rather incredible, it wouldn’t take much work at all to smooth it out a bit and paint it. Sanding is barely even necessary, it was printed at such a high resolution. Wow. I never though I would see the day when I could talk about the resolution of real world objects. Click on a picture to view them in higher resolution.

Anyway, I’m really happy with how the model turned out, and would suggest to anyone reading this that when they are happy with a 3D model they have been working on, if they want something tangible they can hold in their hands, head on over to Shapeways and consider printing it out. Ten days later, you will be holding a solid embodiment of your work in your hands, and it’s an incredible feeling. And if you aren’t into modeling but still find yourself intrigued by the concept at hand, they have tons of printable premade models that others have uploaded, so what’s stopping you? Check it out! Heck, start by looking at the Shapeways page for this very model!

–Lace

It’s that time of year again. The time when a (relative) site overhaul is a necessity! Okay, so it was more like a face lift. Not that much was changed, at least when it comes to site mechanics. Visually, on the other hand, long time viewers should see a big difference. (I hear one young woman even found it necessary to gasp at the difference a simple theme can make!) I’ve been toying with a few new ones that I downloaded from WordPress, and this one seems to keep the clean feeling that I like without being so bland. Now for the customization. At any rate, the full change list is below.

Changes:

• Blendered a custom header!
• Upgraded WordPress to Version 2.71
• Changed themes
• Added a sticky plugin, for announcements and sticky posts.
• Activated the ScratchSpace (think Facebook Wall) feature. This one is pretty cool. It’s over on the top of the right hand column. Type something, and it updates automatically. You can just type simple things like comments on the blog or site in general, or you can use it to chat with other users who are currently viewing the site. (Hint, Hint. Use it to let me know what you think of the new theme!)
• Cleaned out some old plugins that had become outdated, were taking up space and memory, or just didn’t serve a purpose any more.
• Reviewed, cleaned up, deleted, and updated the information on some of the pages.
• Toying with the idea of a single ad placement. It currently resides in the side bar, and I don’t think it takes away from the site any. This site costs a decent chunk of change to keep running on a yearly basis, so if you could find it in your heart to click an ad once in a while it would be much appreciated.

–Lace

I’ve been toying with the idea of modeling a quality… something, using Blender, with intent to go ahead and print it using the services presented by shapeways.com, where I have been a member for some time now. Maybe If I get the right spark of inspiration (and some cash) I’ll give it a shot!

Until then, check out this 3D printer. We are well on our way to some interesting changes concerning just how much physical effort is involved in the prototyping process. If we can get the quality of prototypes printed by 3D printers up to that of standard injection molding, the production world is going to be flipped upside down.

–Lace