#except I can rotate around them 360 degrees

[humblemooncat]

*hands you a couple catboys*

I just really love snow leopards.

[cloudsontherainbow]

Vox Tickle Headcanons!!

Because my art has been making itself at a very slow rate, have some Vox headcanons that rot my brain while you wait

These are mixed up with lee and ler because I was just going on a rampage

my lil guy @hype-blue-fixation was most of my inspiration for this

WARNING: Some might be a bit intense for some viewers so keep that in mind!!

———————————————————————————————

Can NOT say tickle when in a lee mood, replacing it with “tiggle” or “tword”, however in a ler mood he’ll be sure to make the lee crumble by just that word

Absolutely bullies the lee if he’s the one wrecking their ass, there will be zero mercy

He’s a evil teaser, that is his weapon 

“Ohohoh look who just found a bad spot~”

“Let’s see how loud I can get you..that way I don’t have to tell everyone how ticklish you are, you’ll be doing it yourself~”

Will not stop till safe word is said, he wants to saver every single second he has to drive the lee crazy

Instead of “soft to rough” tickles, he likes doing “rough to soft” tickles 

When in a ler mood, he likes scratching his claws on anything (ex. On his desk, edge of his sleeves, running them on the walls)

When in a lee mood, he will hang around his pet sharkies a lot, getting subtle cuddles from them<3

He’d rather burn in hell twice than ask for tickles.

In a lee mood, he’ll be extra sensitive to any sort of touch; flinching away from hugs, pat on the back, even handshakes

He’s a runner and will try to escape if even a mention of him getting tickled is said 

Bratty.

Even while getting his ass wrecked, he’ll say bratty comments 

“Is this all you got??”

“And here you said you were gonna have me breathless, where’s all that talk?”

Except once you really get him cackling, he will be begging for his life 

He’s a stomper

And of course, a squirmed too, this man WILL NOT stay still no matter what you do

The back of his head/tv panel is his worst spot. No one will convince me otherwise.

You can very much trick him to admit to wanting tickles; teasing him the whole day with slight touches, subtle teases, anything that resembles tickling will drive him insane to the point where he will burst

“STOP IT with the stupid fucking teasing, you’ve been fucking with me the entire day. Just t-t-t-…fuck-“ Just imagine the ler smirking down at him, getting the tv man flustered as fuck and realizes it was a trick all along~

“I don’t want it anymore. Get AWAY from me!!-“

Has ticklish palmmmssss

He actually doesn’t mind when Vel/Val just trace his palms, using him as a fidget toy

He rants to his sharks about the tickle scenarios in his head, and it’s a lot

When he gets too flustered, he has to release it in some kind of way; whether that be punching the floor, kicking his feet, insulting (with no real heat) to his ler, and etc, anything you can think of

When he wants to cover his face, he just rotates his tv head 360 degrees and lays it on the ground

But that exposes his tv panel so it’s a big gamble to hope that his ler doesn’t know that’s even a tickle spot

[thedaveandkimmershow]

So I spent the last week detailing our wedding anniversary celebration vacation... basically, reliving it.

Why?

Long standing policy, I guess. Too much of life passes by in the rush of the present and so much is lost when it does.

Lost?

Lost to memory. Things that happened to me, to us, experiences that are overwritten by next experiences. Small things that might be important if given a little space to grow. Small things that if given space to grow might inform me in some important way.

You never know, is my point. And this is something over which I do have control: considering what has happened and allowing it to affect what will happen.

In the case of our vacation, it could hardly have gone better. It wasn't all about doing... and so there was actual relaxing happening.

Not the worst lesson ever.

I'm also reminded of how it was with us and our SLR cameras all those years ago when we were dating. We'd go places to see what there was to see... and then take photographs of what inspired us. It was a true experience of exploration and discovery, the very example, today, of which is exploring what we otherwise assumed would be cordoned off to the public–which was actually not–and discovering an entire section of park that's been closed, abandon in a way.

Click this link for the 360 experience, best if you use your phone's auto-rotate setting and look at it as a landscape, not a portrait.

The arena was definitely the biggest example of looking passed the obvious because so much was beyond the obvious. I'm impressed guests can still walk around all this. For us, it was very much exploration and discovery. After all, at some point we saw cordoned-off lanes as if for long lines of concert goers that begged the question.

Where does this go?

Which is how we found the theater, ready for some big performance. Except no. We wound up asking and, while this section of the park is no longer "online" (for lack of a better word), Universal hasn't announced what's gonna be here instead. An extension of Hogsmeade? A little bit more Seuss? Maybe something completely new?

No one knows.

But it was fun navigating to that understanding.

Here's what is used to be, though...

Photography isn't the only way we explore and discover. While traveling, especially, there seems to be more latitude for spontaneous discussion. And if not latitude across all travelers then we certainly feel a more widespread permission to engage with fellow travelers that we don't normally feel to that degree during our normal day to day work/home routine. I dunno. There's more ability to continue and navigate smaller conversations into much larger ones. There's more conversational and experiential improv we manage on the fly and the time to do it. Yes, we're a little more in the moment... but it's still exploration and discovery, the best example of which definitely comes from improv'ing our way through one evening.

It's from our first night at a bar that we found ourselves in because the first two places we checked out for dinner didn't really speak to us. So we arrive at this bar when a bunch of guests have gotten up to leave so we grab their seats and ask the bartender if that was gonna be okay which leads to an engaging conversation lasting, on and off, our entire experience of drinks and appetizers.

Toward the end, we hear a favorite classic rock song. Kimmer mentions the song she'd like to hear. I pitch the song to the band and later, when I've actually forgotten I'd done that...

They start playing the song.

So we listen from the back of the main floor and, after the song's finished, we find ourselves at the front of the stage talking to these guys starting with how we're here at Universal celebrating our wedding anniversary. Which prompts them to ask about our actual wedding all those years ago. Which leads to a discussion about wedding songs that ends with Kimmer saying how much we enjoy AC/DC.

And then this happens.

Okay yes.

More please.

Because.

Exploration and discovery pave the way for such experiences. Improv'ing conversations and experiences can lead to this. Being open and being fully engaged in these moments...

Yeah.

It's a helluva a thing that can happen.

Which makes me wonder.

Is this only possible on the road?

[techswings]

Popular 3D Scanner, Polycam, Uses AI to Complete the 3D Picture

Polycam, the most popular scanning app on the Apple store—and perhaps in the world has found an ingenious way to use AI in its scanning. Polycam users will be able to create a totally immersive view with the ease of creating a panorama. The normal process for getting an immersive view involves moving the camera up and down while rotating, what another iPhone-using scanner refers to as a “painting the wall” approach. But Polycam is able to take the panorama and guess the rest, as it were.

You can get a full 360 degree view of an outdoor scene in less than a minute.

Polycam uses a process it has named “stable diffusion complete,” which is based on “stable diffusion,” the technology similar to one used by media sensation, DALL-e, to generate fanciful pictures, except stable diffusion uses your computer rather than the cloud. To use stable diffusion, users must have a GPU and 8GB of VRAM. While DALL-E and stable diffusion generate images, inpaints and outpaints (more on that later), Stable Diffusion Complete appears to generate a picture based on the image itself, essentially guessing what the rest of the sky or ground would look like, and turns what is normally a low-resolution thin strip of images stitched together and puts you in the center of a full resolution, 360-degree view about the vertical axis (that’s the yaw axis if you are flying a plane), where you can also have a full 180-degree up and down view (the pitch axis).

Meeting Elliott

If Elliott Spelman, cofounder of Polycam, doesn’t strike you as the typical Silicon Valley startup founder, it’s because he is not. Spelman is a designer by education with a master’s in fine arts from Stanford. Being at the helm of a cutting-edge imaging technology is fun for Spelman.

Out for a spin is Elliott Spelman, cofounder of Polycam.

Spelman wants scanning to be fun for everyone—not just professionals with expensive LiDAR rigs. We watch Spelman’s short instructional video that demonstrates how simple it is to take a full 360-degree image.

Sure enough, that is all that is needed to record a full 360-degree immersive image. Polycam may have ruined panoramas forever. After seeing the big picture that Polycam can create, a breathtaking sky-to-ground and all-around seamless (almost) shot, could you ever go back to a thin, distorted, low-resolution image you got from Apple?

How?

Polycam creates this magic with AI, explains Spelman in a Teams meeting. We expect no less from a company with AI in its domain name.

Although several 360 imagers have the ability to create a high-resolution immersive view (e.g., Matterport, Envisioneer, Luxolis), all of them require that your camera view includes the sky and the ground.

I take it out of the office for a spin. Polycam uses the full resolution of the iPhone’s camera and its image stabilization to take a series of pictures on its own as I rotate in place. The images are uploaded and Polycam returns with what at first looks like any other picture taken with an iPhone. And then you press on the image with your finger, and lo and behold, it’s a full 360-degree, immersive image. Polycam has added a fake sky and ground. It’s pretty good fakery. You have to squint to see where reality stops and fakery starts. The ground below is an excellent guess at what would be underfoot—without me having to extricate myself from the picture.

The stitching together of images in the 360-degree sweep is not perfect—though, in all fairness, that may be Apple’s imperfection. It’s a rare overcast May day in the Bay Area and the sky looks darker suddenly from left to right in one place. But overall, the result is impressive and the process effortless. The scan took less than a minute. I didn’t have to wait more than a minute for the processing. Studying the image, I see that tilt has been magically added to the pan. The sky and ground were completely filled in.

“It’s called inpainting,” says Spelman.

Outpainting would be more appropriate, but okay.

How well does it work inside? I ask.

The AI has its limitations, Spelman admits. It can create ceilings, but it may have trouble in the Sistine Chapel.

Should you, though? There are only a million pictures of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, snapshots shared on Instagram, for example. In fact, Autodesk was able to create 3D models of the statues destroyed by the Taliban from publicly available photos on Google. Surely, your AI could use photos similarly?

Spelman tolerates impertinent questions graciously. He could have reminded me that Autodesk has over 10 thousand employees, whereas Polycam has but 15. It is another sign that he is not your typical hyper, type A startup founder.

But the lightweight Polycam punches above its weight. Its reality capture is easier to use than Autodesk’s ReCap Pro. Instead of clicking away and taking photos, Polycam takes pictures continuously as needed all on its own. And it generates better images faster than the “pop-up” metaverse seen at PTC’s recently held LiveWorx conference.

Better Than LiDAR?

While having the LiDAR scanner in your pocket, as with the latest iPhones, is initially exciting, the lack of accuracy is somewhat of a detriment. Also, the images from the camera look better.

Responding to a less-than-favorable review of LiDAR scanning in our first look at Polycam, Spelman has a quick solution.

“You should have used the photo mode.”

It’s unexpected that LiDAR is less accurate than photogrammetry, but here we are, with the result of the iPhone, even the biggest one being too small for multiple, accurate LiDAR sensors, leaving the iPhone with plus or minus one-inch accuracy. Professional LiDAR systems, on the other hand, command mm-level accuracy.

Why not have professional quality LiDAR on Apple’s much larger iPad, I have to wonder.

About Polycam

Spelman and Polycam’s other founder, the equally boyish-looking Chris Heimrich, left a scanning company to create an app for simple, easy-to-use scanning. They have taken a page out of the Autodesk playbook, essentially democratizing a sophisticated process available to the elite. Anyone can take their smartphone and create a 3D picture with Polycam. And have they ever. The Polycam site (“3D capture for anyone”) gives them all gallery space.

Yet, Spelman insists that Polycam is useful for the professional. It outputs its LiDAR and photogrammetry data to standard formats—for example, DXF for AutoCAD.

It was the iPhone’s ability to store the images that made all the difference. Otherwise, there is too much lag in the shooting if you have to wait for each photo to upload.

Also, unlike every other startup, Polycam is now profitable. Polycam’s revenue model is simple, $79.99 a year for unlimited use. There is a free version, which has usage and export format limits.

The free intro. version encourages engagement, and the all-you-can-eat price promotes continued use. Other pricing schemes I have seen, such as price per square foot, discourage continued use.

[littlemonstert-blog]

The Hyuga Clan

Well all know that Hyuga Clan is one of the oldest clans in Konoha and descendants of the Otsutsuki clan.

(Another one it's more in-depth ...reasons cuz i want to😜)

We all know about the main and side branch. How horrible that system is.(Chapter 78/79 also Chapter 102)

Honestly, we should have gotten more in depth about how the branch system is how it effects the clan as a whole.

But we can already know the results it would have been like Naruto the last

Ch105

The fact that the internal fight within the clan can't believe a close relative of his as some scheme against the side branch.

( Also no matter what ya'll try to say to me Hiashi has changed. I will probably always have zero respect for this B*tch lol. Until I see a DIRECT apology towards Hinata I'm not letting it go.)

A clan that practiced slavery and forces children to train/fight since young age. ( By the way Hinata was three year old toddler during this time against...a grown ass man doing what seems to be harsh training smh.)

If change hadn't happen then the hyuga clan would been just like the Harmura's clan on the moon in the last.

The strongest clan in konoha! (Though barely enough screentime)

Gentle Fist > Strong Fist. Anyone saying the opposite should read the manga again .

Byakugan

The rare kekkei genkai inherited only by the Hyuuga clan. It boasts a 360-degree range of vision and the ability to see clearly for hundreds of meters, and is able to see through opponents’ chakra networks.

Byakugan ch101

Anticipating all of their oppnent's attacks

The weakness to the byakugan

the blind spot starts from a minuscule point 

the byakugan does offer a some resistance to genjutsu. It allows to see if someone is using genjutsu by looking at their chakra network as well as see any disturbances in the chakra network that could be caused by a genjutsu. (with the exception of things like Otsutsiki genjutsu, MS genjutsu like tsukuyomi etc)

Ao saw genjutsu on the fourth chapter 459

With the Byakugan, Ao could distinguish chakra colours of certain individuals and determine if an individual was under the influence of genjutsu

Gentle fist (chapter 78-79)

The Gentle fist isn’t based on brute strength or damage area, it’s based on precision and speed. (combat speed and precision.)

Amazing chakra control

which ignores durability and directly affects the target. (internal organs)

  It can ignore durability thanks to its ability to directly attack the opponents chakra system as well as mess up opponents tenketsu in order to manipulate their chakra flow.

This ability also grants the user the ability to destroy chakra based substances such as ninjutsu.

Basic gentle fist one graze all it takes

Let's get to the techquinces:

Most gentle fist techniques (including the very basics) require excellent precision and chakra control

Rotation: This technique allows the user to send chakra out of every tenketsu in their body while spinning, creating a powerful barrier around them which deflects any chakra or physical attacks sent towards it. It's similar to shinra tensei in a way.

Air palm :

Wall Palm: does the same thing as air palm but on stronger. It comes with raw power

Neji & Hinata they weren't on Hiashi's level so they used it together

Wall Palm: We saw what an exhausted Hiashi was able to do with it (he was exchuasted fighting for two days none stop.)

Twin Lion Fists:

Sixty-Four Palms:

Sixty-four tenketsu are blocked, stopping the flow of chakra within the target's body and making it difficult for them to move. Alternatively, the sixty-four strikes can be split amongst multiple targets, such as to to deflect incoming projectiles.

The Hyuga trained their combat speed, their striking speed is too fast. It’s their specialty.

Gentle Fist One Art Body Blow:

technique works by expelling chakra from every tenketsu to hit their opponent with a blast of chakra that will send them flying away from the user. It’s similar Almighty Push, as it can be used as an offence or defence.

more chakra a Hyuga expends, the stronger the technique.

One Shot:

The one-shot similar to Sixty Four Palms but, makes Sixty four palms kinda a useless technique when they have better and stronger techniques than others.It takes a lot of precision and accuracy. 

I'll add and edit more since its a work in progress. Maybe a certain series will have more hyuga clan detail if there ever involved.

[m0urning-u-star]

Not my first creation so far but it's the only one I have on my new devices :( but yeah I'm not good with names so this one is called the Homovorous Chameleonidae, Man-eating Chameleon

Despite its name, it's much more closely related to the monitor lizards since, these bois are my idea of if an animal evolved to be an apex predator in an urban/ suburban environment, one that mainly hunted humans, and monitor lizards are the ones I know live closest to those kind of environments though plenty of subspecies wander away from main species soooooo...

Anyway these guys evolved specifically to hunt humans while not being caught so, they are nocturnal hunters. The problem is they're HUGE, like bear-sized, with huge bones, thick skin and all, though with much narrower bodies to fit and hide between alleys and trees. But in order to make up for the size they have camouflage, I was kinda scared about camouflage because an animal kinda needs to be intelligent to use camouflage effectively, and lizards aren't known to have the biggest of brains sooo. I came up with this: they have the same kind of 360-degree eyes that chameleons have except they can fully retract the skin over their eyes, allowing them to see as much as possible, then they take the colors from their environment and they automatically change the colors of their scales to those colors and patterns so it's sorta infinite-camo.

Then, for the other general stuff, they got super huge bones and muscles to carry bulky bodies and to move fast, claws that can retract so it can climb after food, massive jaws and round teeth for crushing things like bone, wood, or stone, webbing around their ears that can open up and rotate like cat ears so they can select where they hear the best, also intimidation, salivary glands that also produce a fast acting neurotoxin so anything that gets out of its mouth won't make it far, camera lens-like eyes so they can both observe either as much of the area as possible or focus on one thing, I was planning on giving them a sorta snake tongue so they can sense extremely small changes in the air in order to change prey they can't see, but maybe it would be better to give them a extendo-tongue like frogs for easy ambush, idk someone can gimme advice

[joyfulness03]

First addison to step up to the plate, Pink. Currently I haven’t picked out names for them in the au yet but we’re ignoring that because that is not the important part- Pink Goner_Addison

-The deal-

Pink’s story begins as an answer to a simple question: What if someone else picked up the phone? [He] can offer anything anyone could possibly want. And it’s not like Pink is particularly needing- Quite the opposite, Pink is the most successful of his brothers monetarily -But the offer to get anything your heart desires is not easy to ignore. [He] insisted that anything Pink wanted could be theirs if they were willing to deal for it, and really, anything? So Pink decided to see how far he could push it. Why not ask for the most over-the-top, incredible, unobtainable gift he could ask for? Perfection. Simple in theory, unachievable in concept, and in Pink’s humble opinion, it was the only thing left that they might want. Pink thought he was being sly, especially given that it was probably a crank call anyway, but [He] obliged. As long as Pink was willing to help [Him] when the time came, [He] could make them perfect. And, well, what harm could it be to say yes to that kind of offer?  -The rise (pre-fallout)- Over the next month, Pink began to change physically as well as behaviorally. Their physical form was altered to be more “““perfect””” and he began to act in a way that was perceived as more pleasant and approachable  by everyone around him. He began getting job offers to model for designer shoe companies, sponsorships for his tea business, or even simply invitations to high-class events. His brothers were rather concerned- Unsure what came over them to feel the need to alter themselves so drastically (And, how was he doing it? plastic surgery with no recovery time? They would all wake up some days to find him different from the night before. How?) but they did their best to be supportive of him, especially since his new found even better looks brought them greater business success and networking opportunities. 

That attitude began to change when the biggest change occurred. His face, altered to be something so eerily perfect that it was unnerving to them. When he walked into the shop that morning, Orange didn’t recognize him beyond his beautiful pink sheen and the feeling of familiarity. That was when they decided to finally intervene- figure out what was going on- (Was something wrong? Something they were too afraid to say? Pink had always been more outspoken and personable of the siblings, but they all knew he had deep-rooted anxieties he tried to keep to himself.) But Pink declined any kind of offer for conversation. Even if he was anxious, he wouldn’t want to talk about it anyways, he told them. He didn’t have time to dwell on the opinions of others, even his brothers. He was becoming Perfect, and if they couldn’t see that then maybe they didn’t know him as well as they assumed they did. (I don’t have anything else well planned from here, but this is the beginning of Pink’s rise and fall, and fallout with his siblings. Now the interesting fucked up stuff! :D ) -The fall- Pink is an avid collector of jewelry, specifically rings. He particularly liked the ones with magical properties, and so with his growing wealth, his fingers were always covered in a variety of dazzling rings with their own unique abilities.  After the fall, he doesn’t take them off ever. Partly because he can’t- He can’t move his fingers at all, actually. His ‘perfect’ hands are too delicate and pristine, and also completely immovable and attached to his forearms. Basically he gets turned into a barbie-esque doll, only having joints in specific locations- Elbows, Shoulders, Legs, Neck, you get the idea. Furthermore, they can only twist so far- Except for his elbows. His elbows can rotate in a full 360 degrees, because what’s the point of getting turned into a doll if they aren’t a little fucked up as a treat. (-[Him], probably) He’s a tad bit shorter than he was before as well, but that was to make him fit the mold of the “perfect” appearance.  -After the fall-

I’m a huge bitch for the ‘Spamton got shrank in acid’ headcanon and Guess what! All of the goner_addisons get fucked up too! In Pink’s case, all of their ‘perfect’ facial features basically get scrubbed off by the acid. Like one of those blank barbie dolls. It’s super fucked, and if his brothers didn’t recognize him before, they recognize him even less now. 

Also, other headcanon for this au, they start to gray/white and lose their color as the rise (and mainly the fall) begins, so the only pink they actually have left is their rosy cheeks. 

If they take off the rings on their hands, they actually lose their sense of touch on their hands. Completely numb. Basically the rings are like Pink’s version of Spamton’s Dealmaker (which i will explain more about when we get to spamton himself) Also the idea with making their hands uncomfortably large is based on the idea that Spamton’s head is so much larger than his body because it’s the most emphatical part of his personality relating to his deal, so in this case Pink’s hands because he is already so good at selling and networking and just dealing in general. 

That’s everything I have for Pink right now other than character dynamic things- Like for example the reason why his brothers didn’t take him back in after he gets kicked out of the mansion is because they LITERALLY do not recognize him and he is very eerie to look at so if he approaches none of them stick around.

Also each of the addisons also has their own unique vocal tick, for example spamton’s obvious and iconic [[BIGSHOT]] TALK LIKE T     HIS [ALL THE TIME] kind of thing, but I haven’t decided on one for Pink yet so I’ll come back to it later basically.  So yeah! That’s Pink! Oh and- If i didn’t make it obvious enough, the AU is called the goner_addisons au. Gonna work on the next one right away! Also will absolutely be making a sideblog for it if this gets traction so, finger guns. I don’t have mid-fame designs for them yet but they are in the works! >Pink< -Orange- -Blue- -Yellow- -Spamton- Please do not repost this thanks (Tags)

@puppet-supremacy

[projectsoleil]

NOW STREAMING... MOON ROVER ADVENTURES S5EP18: THE SUNRISE FINALE | GABRIELLE MORNINGSTAR | CHAPTER 3 EXECUTION

Gabi finds himself in the arms of a couple people as the votes finish being counted, as his fate is decided. The hugs are returned as tightly as possible, clutching with every ounce of strength left in him, until the other person is shaking with him. When they pull away, he whispers thanks. 

(Being held is only reminding him of the arms of the few he wants nothing more than to be in right now—face buried in Abe's shoulder, hidden against his chest with his lips pressed to the crown of his head; the soothing touch of Pheo's damaged hands through his curls, soft whispers of assurance; the swirling heat of a hearth and the unwavering, unshaking, protective embrace of Gale. Gabi rubs the heel of his hand over the tears burning down his cheeks instead, head down, and casts his gaze to—)

(—Hawk?)

Hawk crashes to the floor in an awful thump, convulsing on the ground while Tyr’s expression remains one that wasn’t joy at the situation, rather, dread at what was coming next. From Hawk, their attention went to Gabi, who's pupils were shrunk, trembling.

[Mr. Morningstar...it’s time...]

Tyr approaches Gabi slowly and offers their nub to him, though instead of taking it, the young man scoops Tyr up into his arms, holding him like one would a toddler or cat. For another hug, or in hopes to keep him from shooting at anyone else? From AI-T's podium, Rover suddenly goes rigid, and looking more robot-like than he ever has, turns and starts walking stiffly towards them. The redheaded bot stops once they get to the usual spot by the wall, and Gabi turns to look at him momentarily. A hand is lifted, and albeit shaky, presses against the center of the star on Rover's chest. The door in the wall pulls open, and as they turn back to give the room one last look, Fenrir, who has been silently waiting, shoves his phone against Maxwell's chest, then along with Galehaut, jumps to attention—bolting towards them.

"Fuck all that! Fuck all this!" Galehaut shouts. "When I said on our own terms, I meant it! Moon, I'm not gonna let them—!"

As they quickly approach, Tyr offers a small apology to the one that held them in his arms...

[I am sorry, Mr. Morningstar.]

They raise their nub, and like with Hawk, out launches a small pod shaped object that latches onto both of them and sends a powerful shock through their bodies. 

Ah—Gabi grips Tyr tightly to his chest and makes a terrible, strangled sound as the two join Hawk on the floor. His gaze rips from them to stare wide-eyed and glossy at the rest of the room. He shakes his head a few times, backing up, backing up. Lips parted, like he's trying to say something, but his voice never reaches them—Rover steps between Gabi and the rest of you, obscuring the smaller body from view. The bot looks over his shoulder and gives the room an empty, dark, protective look, before the door slams shut, taking them away. 

A minute passes...two...three...until finally the screen lights up with the single message:

PLEASE ENJOY THE PRESENTATION WE HAVE PREPARED

before fading back to black.

[TW: DESCRIPTIONS OF BEING BEATEN, GORE] 

…

The lights dim, casting your cohort into a spill of long stretching shadows. There's a brief silence that follows, until a familiar, cheery theme song begins to chime through the room, growing in volume as the television screen flickers to life.

♫♪ i can reach all the stars in the sky with you by my side! ♪♫

The obnoxious tune of children singing is accompanied with a cartoon music video of what looks like a television show—shooting stars fall across the screen in a sparkly transition effect, opening up to the robot you’ve all grown familiar with over the course of the last month, cartoonified and walking around the moon to the beat of the song. 

♫♪ and if we don't make it today, we'll try, try, try again another day! ♪♫

He's decked out in his hero suit, grinning ear to ear at the audience, and begins leaping from the moon to another planet. It plays in this sort of loop, with Moon Rover marching on rotating planets, waving at passing cartoon versions of.. well, you! He passes by Fenrir and gives him two high-fives, Snapshot he hip-checks, waving at Zero Sum and Oleander on a water-themed planet, Angel they clang a wine glass with...

♫♪ so let's shoot for the stars, and hang out on the moon, and together we'll be anything, anything, anything we've ever wanted to be! ♪♫

It ends with Moon Rover landing on the Earth, joining the rest of the show's cast. Heroes and villains in dramatic poses, making up your full group, including Collin and Ivo hovering by the sides of the screen. 

Well... it includes everyone but one.

We zoom in on the cartoon Rover, who winks at the audience and gestures to follow him, before turning around into a transition. When the scene returns, we're joined with the real Rover, standing in what looks like the middle of the foyer of a massive house. He grins bright, wide, and opens his arms up to the viewers. 

“HEYY, STAR TROOP! ‘m so glad y’were able to tune in today!" 

He places his hands on his hips, leaning forward into the camera. 

“Y’ready for today’s mission? T’day we got somethin’ a little different — we’re takin’ a trip back t’my childhood home! Keheh—betcha thought I lived in a rocket, yeah? Nope! I came from a house, just like yours!�� 

The hero beams at the audience and takes a step back, allowing the camera to sweep over the area better: yeah, he is in a foyer—the main entrance of a mansion—except, it’s as if someone has destroyed the place. Pictures are ripped from the wall, furniture toppled over--there’s areas that are just straight up blown up, holes broken through walls, the chandelier hanging slanted, too covered in char to glisten anymore, parts of the staircases caved in. Tire marks are burnt into the floor, the walls, the ceiling.   

There’s a 360 degree pan of the entrance, before it stops on Rover, where he’s gesturing to follow him again. He walks over broken wood and ash, until he gets to a form laying on the floor behind a fallen loveseat: bound at the wrists and ankles, Moon is trying to wiggle himself free.  

“Today we’ve got a suuuuper special guest!” He squats down next to Moon, grabbing a fistfull of his hair and pulling his head up off the floor. The boy winces, pieces of glass and dirt stuck into his cheeks. “The villain who hurt poor, poor Venus! An' subsequently hurt loads more through his choices! I already went ahead an' caught him, so, of course, all what's left is teachin' this no-good hooligan a lesson! Will you help me, Star Troop??"

There’s a blur of movement, and the binds on Moon’s hands and feet are cut—he immediately goes to scramble away, but with a simple step on the corner of his hoodie, he slams back to the ground. Nonchalantly, without hesitation or warning, Rover kicks Moon in the stomach—knocking him backwards in a cry.

Despite being kicked aside like a limp doll, Moon pushes himself up onto his elbows, grimacing, and begins crawling. Rover strolls slowly after him, easy and with a bounce to his step. When he reaches him, he bends down to grab the collar of his shirt, pick him up, and punch him directly in the jaw. It isn't pretty, the next seconds—if this were cinematic in any definition of the word, the moment would be done through silhouettes, the shadow of Rover pulling his arm back and bringing it down mercilessly into the smaller man's form, the ugly sounds of flesh being beaten being the only sense of how awful it is.

You don't get that pleasure. You see it all: no pretty cuts or dramatic angles to censor the boy's face splitting open, blood spilling up from fractured ribs into wet coughs, red splattering across Rover's hero costume. If anyone else was in his place, literally anyone else in the courtroom, this would be solved in an instant — a magma punch, a swipe of a sword, the crack of lightning, and this wouldn’t even be a fight. But Moon isn’t a hero. Not in the super-deep, metaphoric sort of way, but just that: Moon was a civilian. 

He’s dropped to the ground in a gross crack, whining, but moving regardless. He scrambles to his feet this time, using the help of a chair thrown on its side. He runs. He isn’t fast, especially now with his hand clutched to his chest, wheezing, but he runs… not to the front door like you’d expect, but deeper into the mansion. Rover walks behind him, chatting to the audience, you suppose, but now you’re following Moon. 

A door is flug open, and he staggers into a huge workshop. For someone who is frequently found scrawling on his arms to organize roaring thoughts and ideas, the place is surprisingly spotless, orgazined: filled with tools and kilns and forges and anvils. Computer software you know costs millions just by the sight. The young man’s eyes dart desperately around the room, and he makes a bee-line for the back wall full of displayed gear. A weapon? Is he looking for something to use? He grabs a pair of gauntlets first, something similar to Galehaut’s color scheme, before throwing them on the ground. A pair of yellow lense goggles—no. A botched looking race car—no. A pair of motorized wheelies—no. Equipment, equipment, equipment! He didn’t make weapons! He didn’t— 

“Found ya!” 

—whack!— 

Something whizzes past Moon’s head, smacking his hand away from the wall in the process. He turns around, and a small, helicopter-like birdbot is hovering in the air in front of him. Moon blinks, and then the bird shoots forward, whacking him a few more times in the head. It looks less like it hurts, and more like it’s just a distraction. The boy stumbles to the side, tripping over a small dogbot waddling by his feet. He crashes into the wall, and an array of different gear topples over.

It’s more pathetic than tragic, watching his own work fall on his head. He collapses under the weight, but ever-stubborn, ever-determined, ever-unbreakable, Moon whines and pushes his way out, tries to get to his feet once, fails, twice, fails again, and on the third—

—on the third, a red hand snaps forward and grips his throat, pulls him free, and dangles him up into the air, grinning widely. 

“Didn’t think y’could run, didja? Y’know, people want y’blood! They voted for it! Y’think I could let down the Star Troop now?? After how badly ya did?? They need someone they can trust, afterall!”

Moon grips Rover’s forearm with both his hands, clawing weakly at his gloves. The tips of his toes can just barely reach the pile of gear beneath him, so he’s at the very least got a bit of footing. Not that it matters—it’s no use, of course it’s no use—Moon reaches out to push at his bot’s face, push him away, do anything, anything— ah, wait? No.. he’s.. 

With a trembling hand, Moon sinks three of his fingers into the back of Rover’s head, prompting a hatch to pull away and open up in his chest, exposing a variety of wires and a pinpad. Rover doesn’t seem concerned, just keeps on holding Moon by the neck, even as the blonde starts fumbling a code in the pad.

He's dying. A small red button opens up between all the switches and buttons in Rover’s chest, and Moon's frantic, desperate reaching for the button slows down considerably. Really, it's kind of anti-climatic for a death, nevermind a supposed fantastical execution. Maybe that was what Moon deserved, though — something quiet, uneventful, alone. 

Click! 

...Just kidding! He presses the button. Rover’s grip falls away immediately, dropping Moon in a heap on the floor and leaving him doubled over, gasping and coughing, gulping down air like he'd been drowning. In front of him, Rover’s expression seems frozen, and his body begins… going limp? No, no.. it almost looks like he’s.. shutting down? A second later, Rover has joined Moon on his knees in front of him, his smile frozen, his shoulders slumping, his right eye flashing red. His right eye flashing red.. slowly. 

“...keh..” 

There is hardly any distance between the two, but when Moon pushes himself up and wraps his arms around his robot, hooking his chin on his shoulder, the effort looks akin to dragging your hands down a wall of glass shards. 

“...’bout.. time we wrapped this up, huh?” His voice would’ve been impossible to hear had this not been meant for entertainment — hoarse, whisper-quiet.

The sentence seems to, somehow, despite the red light increasing in speed, prompt a corrupt, laggy voice to start speaking: “..S-S-SHOOT FOR THE STARS—!” 

“—even.. if y’miss..” 

Moon grabs fistfulls of the back of Rover’s suit, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“..you’ll land on the—!”

…

…

[♫♪♫♪♫♪] 

The screen blacks out, rattling — the sound from the speakers blowing out from sheer force of the explosion. You… you feel like you should feel it in the courtroom—the floor shaking and rumbling beneath you, but you don’t. Somehow, it makes it feel more empty. More far away. 

As the scene settles, the dust and smoke beginning to clear, you notice blood splattered on the lense of the camera—blurred and out of focus, but unmistakably blood. Debris and metal parts are scattered everywhere, wires twisted and still burning like lit fuses. Something drips from the ceiling, and you're unsure if it's blood or a combination of that and flesh. But more importantly, you see the remains of a human body — the parts you'd never want to see; splintered bone, limbs still stuck in clothes, a head in the corner of the scene, blonde hair smoking, lulling on the slanted floor, and what you catch sight of his face is burnt through to the inside of his mouth, burnt through to his skull.

He looks like he was screaming, and though you know he wasn't in his last moments, this image will likely be the thing you remember when you think of him.

...

Life is continuous. 

Tonight, the sky will finish clearing the storm and the moon will glow across the horizon like it has every other night, and how it will continue to shine for every other night after this. For nothing has really changed—and that's the bonus of playing a stage hero robot that could be replicated, right? Built on? Upgraded? For years and years and years to come, beyond your short life, he can still do something amazing without you. 

Yeah, the world will keep going on without you. 

You wanted that.

(Didn't you?) 

[Gabrielle & Rover Morningstar have been executed.] 

(thank you han for the art!)

[nabhehiii]

Black Plague Returns to San Francisco

1900 — The Chinese Year of the Rat. The Dragon visits San Francisco and brings the Black Plague to San Francisco.

1960 — The Year of the Rat again but the Dragon fails to visit San Francisco.

2020 — The second cycle of 60 years. The Chinese Year of the rat. The Dragon visits San Francisco again and brings COVID-19 virus to revive the Black Plague that lies inactive beneath San Francisco.

History repeats itself for those that do not thoroughly understand the cycles of time. All ancient cultures, B.C., developed their calendars based on the 360 degrees of the circle. The Black African Egyptians, The Chinese and the Indians from the sub continent of India used calendars based on the rotation of the Moon around the Earth. However, the Earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle but more of an ellipse. Through observation, the Black African Egyptians developed the solar calendar with 3651 days to replace the Moon calendar known as the Metonic calendar. The Black African Egyptians adopted the solar calendar of 365k days in approximately 4126B.C.

Nostradamus predicted the events of 911 in Quatran 10:72, (see Geoff Stray Beyond 2012 page 265.) Stray shows that the Quatran states that the event, 911, would happen in the 7th month. Geoff Stray fails to distinguish between the solar calendar which has the 7th month in July and the Metonic calendar that has the 7th month in August or September. TheMetonic calendar begins its new year the second new moon after the previous Winter Solstice. Winter Solstice is December 21st-23rd. Therefore, the new year for the Metonic calendar is either January or February and the 7th month would be August or September. What causes the fluctuation in months for the Metonic calendar is their practice of intercalation, adding a month every 12 years to adjust the calendar to keep up with the procession of the Equinoxes. Nostradamus was being esoteric because in the 16th century practicing alchemy was considered witch craft and his safety was at stake. So Nostradamus used the Metonic calendar instead of the solar calendar for his predictions. He was correct to the date and day for 911. It happened September 11th 2001.

2020 is the Chinese Year of the Rat. The Metonic calendar has 12 zodiacal signs the same as the western solar calendar. 12 houses in one revolution of the Earth. However, the Metonic calendar repeats the same way that the western calendar does but on a 60 year cycle, 1900, 1960, 2020 all Years of the Rat. Its a different method of accounting for the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. Its just that the Metonic calendar is based on the revolution of the Moon about the Earth but remember its the Sun that the Moon is reflecting. Its the same source of light for our solar system its just that the ancients used the circle 360 degrees as a calendar base as opposed to the later discovery and implementation of the 365 1/4 actual number of days for the Earth to rotate about the Sun. Intercalation is the Metonic followers method for adjusting the Metonic calendar to coincide with the processions of the Equinoxes. There is an intercalation made every 12 years. There are three books that establish the relationship between 2020 the Chinese Year of the Rat, the Bubonic Plague of 1900 and the current pandemic of COVID-19 that arrived in San Francisco in February-March 2020 the Year of the Rat. The Dragon returns with a virus that can revive the Black Plague in San Francisco if the health officials are not prepared, vigilant and careful.

1. The most recent book: Black Death at the Golden Gate, David Randall published December 2019( coincidence??)

2. The Coming Plague, Constance Garrett, 1994 & 1999

3. Aids The End of Civilization, Dr. William Campbell Douglass MD (1920–2015).

A word about the authors. David Randall with the latest book does and excellent job in his narrative discussing the historical and sociological as well as medical problems that occurred during the outbreak of Plague in San Francisco in 1900–1903. He reveals what it took to arrest the Plague. Constance Garrett writes about the newest viruses that have come along in the late 20th century. Ebola, Marburg virus and the others and how the are communicated and vectored.

I don’t believe that Garrett covered the San Francisco plague. Due to COVID-19 I am unable to verify that statement. No library is open, I did not purchase her work nor is one available in the book stores. I will not comment other than her information was very well researched. Dr. William Campbell Douglass MD. (1920–2015) deals with the history of plague down through the ages and gives the reader a concise picture of the role that plagues and pestilence have played in world history. He establishes the symbiotic relationship between the rat, the flea(cheopis), and the bacillus that the flea carries that causes plague when the flea bites its victim. In certain cases if the rat dies or is killed and the symbiotic host is unavailable the flea relies on its astounding abilities to find another host usually a mammal including human beings. The flea can leap 10 to 20 feet and climb a vertical surface. Dr. Douglass avoids nonsense and speaks directly to the issue of the rat, flea, bacillus trinity as potentially being able to cause unparalleled death and devastation once a plague is initiated. The Plague is second only to botulism. Dr. Douglass MD is of the highest intelligence and wastes no words in warning that there is a very definite probability that the Plague can return to San Francisco under specific circumstances. Whats is of the utmost importance is what motivated Dr. Douglass MD. to write his book, AIDS the end of Civilization in the first place.

Dr. Douglass MD. wrote his book at the time of the AIDS epidemic and he obviously saw the probability that if the public health system of San Francisco became overloaded with AIDS cases and the sanitation barrier that separates the fragile health system from epidemic disease that the rat would return to the streets of San Francisco from its underground retreat and wreak havoc on the population. The critical factor is the strength and resilience of the health system. If overloaded and breached then the rats will return.

Fortunately that breach did not occur. However, currently there is a triple threat to the sanitation barrier in San Francisco. The first is the pandemic of COVID-19 virus, the second is the number of AIDS patients known or unknown that have compromised immune systems and then there is the rat with the flea that carries the plague beneath the City.

I don’t even mention the elderly and those with respiratory diseases that currently live in San Francisco. Will history repeat itself and to what extent if it does will the plague return to San Francisco.

At the end of the first chapter pages 45 & 46 Dr. Douglass fictionalizes a true story. Its a story that tells of a man named Tony Neel, a science student or laboratory worker at Stanford University. Tony Neel studies Xeenopsylla Cheopis the oriental rat flea that rides the rat and carries the plague. Tony Neel is amazed at the fleas ability to move about physically. The flea is a member of the Siphonaptera family, meaning a wingless siphon. The flea can bite and siphon its on weight in blood in very few minutes. The flea siphons the blood and injects the bacillus. Tony Neel was tasked to locate the fleas that caused the Black Plague of 1900–1903. He indeed found them under San Francisco and as far south as Palo Alto. Same breed of rats, same fleas and same bacillus that were around in 1900 the Chinese Year of the rat when plague arrived in San Francisco. Neels task and investigation occurred in the 1980s in connection with the AIDS epidemic. Neel realized then that a breakdown of the sanitation system would cause the rat to return to the city streets with the plague vermin. Fortunately that did not happen in the 1980s. But now there is an additional problem, the COVID-19 virus. Now let us deal with the COVID-19 virus that is invading the City. The virus like all phenomenon always seeks the line of least resistance. That is the law of Nature.

COVID-19 virus is contracted through the respiratory system, the lungs. The genius of Dr. Douglass MD. is that he realized that any threat to the respiratory system could break down the health system, destroy the health safety net and sanitation barrier bringing the rat with the flea and the plague back to the City streets which would allow the fleas to spread the plague immediately. Who in the population are those on the line of least resistance. The old, infirm and seniors and a large section of the San Francisco population conscious or unconscious that they have AIDS . They have compromised immune systems and would be a target for COVID-19 virus. Hypothetically, the hospitals are overloaded and the health safety net frays and breaks and unsanitary conditions on the street increase exponentially. Who would be the first victims that the rats would seek to spread the plague, the homeless. I lived 20 years in New York City and its against the law to sleep on the city streets between 10:00PM and 6:00AM. I have witnessed rats attack people in New York after dark if people contest the rats territory, garbage cans allies etc. Rats are rats and San Francisco is no exception. So we have an entry point for the plague due to the COVID-19 virus, the overloaded health system and the homeless sleeping on the city streets.

There would be a sudden upsurge in pulmonary disease from COVID-19 which would mask the pneumonic form of plague. DR. Campbell Douglass MD is very experienced and he has found that younger, more inexperienced physicians misdiagnosis pneumonic plague for pneumonia, a common mistake.

Its just according to Dr. Douglass MD that victims of pneumonic plague die almost immediately if not treated with the antibiotics streptomycin or chloromyacin. David Randall, author of Black Death at the Golden Gate does a excellent job of showing that the autopsy method is the only way to definitively determine when the plague has run its course. But again you have at least 2 other diseases that would possibly mask the pneumonic plague.

They say 3 is a charm. The Black Plague beneath the streets of the City, the AIDS population and COVID-19 virus. I would not speculate on the mortality rate but the British modeled 2 million Americans from COVID-19. What would the plague add ? You must remember that the pneumonic plague is vectored by the infected person every time they exhale that accounts for the ferocity of a plague epidemic. I look at it mathematically according to the 10 steps of the logarithmic process of nature. Each 10 steps of the logarithm is an ascending level. From the 1st death to the 10th step represents 1032 deaths. The second logarithmic steps or level 2 start at 1032 and stops at about 1 million. Add an epidemic of pneumonic plague and we are talking about 40 to 50 million people dead very possibly. The biggest thing is where are the antibiotics streptomyacin and chloromyacin being stock piled. Without a stockpile you could not stop the pneumonic plague when every time a victim exhales the plague which is within their lungs would be vectored to anyone and everyone with in a very small radius.

How to stop it.

1. The weak link and most immediate problem are the homeless living on the streets of the City. I imagine that the rats are watching now. The homeless must be housed immediately and removed from the City streets, at once. No need in wasting money renting hotels. ALCATRAZ is the best place. If you don’t get them off the streets the homeless will be the first vectors of the pneumonic plague. PASS an ORDINANCE, sleeping on the City streets is prohibited between 10PM and 6:00AM. You have shelter in place now. Round up the homeless and take them to safety. They will have 24 hours to store everything that they want to keep and they can bring only what they can carry with their hands. Confiscate all unattended property at their sights and burn.

2. Sanitize the areas where they were living with live steam. the only method I know of to completely eliminate germs. I Del Monte foods back in the botulism days of the early 1970s. Steam does it not disinfectant but live steam at 212 degrees. Street, sidewalk, gutter everywhere. Above all don’t get kill crazy with the rats. the steam will cause them to retreat. If you kill the rats then you have the fleas leaping around trying to find another mammal to host it.

3. One of the biggest problems you might have is controlling the western citizens ‘unbridled individuality’. Its my freedom and I will live on the street if I damn well please. China conquered COVID-19 because they believe the individual is limited in his personal freedoms when the population’s safety might be compromised through allowing one person to exercise their freedom at the expense of the population under emergency conditions.

You will have to remand the homeless to Alcatraz until each one has a place to live off the city streets. Build a field hospital, chow hall, and bring all emergency services to Alcatraz needs during the shelter in pace order.

Get started.

NAB-ATA123

Copyright 2020

REVELATIONS 11:8

Dead bodies till i lay in the streets of the great cities

[asterinjapan]

Museum day

Good evening again from a rainy Tokyo!

Well, I think it’s dry now, but it’s been raining for most of the day, I assume due to whatever remains of tropical depression ex-typhoon number 20 of this year. And of course, there is a very easy option to do on a rainy day: visiting museums! Or well, just the one today, haha.

On a rainy day and a national holiday, I for sure wasn’t the only one with that idea, but since Ueno Park houses a ton of museums and a zoo and what not, the crowds still spread out.

So, follow me into the Tokyo National Museum of Nature and Science today!

Actually, I’ve been sort of intending to visit this museum since my very first visit in 2010, when a trip via school let me see a glimpse of the giant blue whale statue (life size!) that marks the entrance. However, visiting a museum is never first on my list when I go to Japan, simply because I want to do so many things. With today’s weather, I didn’t think one of my planned side trips into the mountains was such a good idea, so it was finally time.

As it turns out, entrance for the permanent exhibitions (there was no special one at the moment) was free today! Today is the enthronement of the emperor, so it’s a national holiday, and apparently also a reason to call off entry prices, haha. Once inside, I did get myself a tablet with audio guide, because with this being a broad museum on eh, nature and science, I was already fairly sure my limited vocabulary wouldn’t save me here. The tablet (or plain audio device, you could pick) was 320 yen, and it was extensive. It also offered you guides through the complex, so I picked out the longest one that would lead me through all floors. This was my day plan, after all!

First, I visited the Theater 36◯ (yeah, a circle, not a zero, they’re too cool for a simple zero). True to its name, it’s a movie theater with a screen in 360 degrees all around. You get a free audio device here for languages other than Japanese, and since only 60 people can be inside at once, it’s a wait until you can get in. I killed time by checking the introduction movies on my tablet (featuring a very cute animated triceratops girl), and then I was allowed in.

You stand on a bridge that features glass on both sides, so you can watch underneath. The theater has rotating screenings, and for October, the movie clips are the deep sea and the mantle dynamics and evolution of the Earth. I was actually most excited for the former, but ended up being most impressed by the latter. I think the deep sea clip has been here for longer, because the quality was slightly pixelated at some points. The mantle dynamics movie took you to the center of the earth, and zoomed in and out to a degree that I suddenly understood the warnings that some people might feel light-headed or motion sick here, haha. It’s not that bad, but this screening definitely tricked my brain.

After that, it was time to explore the museum proper! Actually, it consists of two buildings: the global gallery, with 3 floors in the basement and 3 floors on top, and the Japan gallery, which has 3 floors with two wings each. The route I had picked sent me to the first floor of the global gallery first, going up and then starting back down on the third floor basement, and then leading me through the Japan gallery from top to bottom.

The first floor of the global gallery immediately featured the skeleton of an Allosaurus, the first dinosaur to ever be exhibited in Japan, back in 1964. This hall features the history of the planet since the very beginning until, well, now, so that’s a lot to cover and gives a starting point for the rest of the building. It showed off biodiversity, an interactive Tree of Life display where you could follow the lines to see which organisms were linked to each other, and the development of human kind starting with the very first primates to go bipedal. It was a lot, and I noticed my guide skipped some numbers here, but I quickly found out that was on purpose. If you want to listen to all the audio guide points, you need at least two full days here.

I made my way up following the guide to the third floor, where there was an absolutely massive exhibition of specimens of all kinds of mammals and birds, including the in the wild extinct Japanese wolf and tons of deer, bears, other predators, you name it. This was overwhelming and a bit creepy (these animals did die at some point, quite probably due to hunting), but very interesting and it was pretty cool to see these animals that close. There was a play corner around the, eh, corner, for which you need to make reservations in advance, and where kids can play in a climbing construction that seemed to be littered with specimens as well (I assume replicas), so they could get a hands-on approach.

The second floor was dedicated to Japanese inventions starting in the 1600s, and the interaction with other countries that brought this around. There were direct comparisons between Japanese and European measuring devices, which was very interesting, because similar museums back in Europe wouldn’t do something like that due to the distance. Also featured here were the first computers, a replica of the Himawari satellite, Japanese clocks (which are distinctly different, because the time during days and nights was measured at a different pace) and a Global Environment detector, featuring a giant screen that you could interact with to draw up measuring results on all kinds of topics, sometimes even being the actual measurements of that moment. It’s a pretty interactive museum, so there is a lot to see and do.

At this point I took a break, to find out I’d already been wandering around for two hours! And I was barely getting started, oops. So I quickly went down to the basement to find an exhibition on ‘exploring the structure of nature’, or ‘that part where I’m really happy I rented a tablet in English, because I barely even know these terms in English’, haha. It was super interesting though, showcasing a model of a particle accelerator, and a ‘cloud chamber’ in which you could observe cosmic radiation hitting earth, and actual moon rocks and the periodic table with all elements (except the radioactive ones) on display.

Another floor up is one of the more impressive ones, as it houses tons of skeletons of animals throughout the ages, including the biggest mammoth and the earliest human. They had some scarily realistic reconstructions of early humans, so lifelike that I was almost fooled into thinking they were actually people dressing up, haha.

One more floor up is one of the more popular floors, for a very easy reason: dinosaurs! There were quite a few on display, and I never fail to be impressed by the sheer size and variety of them. Not much to say here I guess, except me having a good time because dinosaurs, haha.

I made it back to the Japan gallery (the building I had started in) and after some latte, I carried myself to the third floor. I must confess I started rushing from now on, since it was already 3 PM, but this building is considerably smaller and the guide has fewer, if longer, audio spots. This building is, of course, more dedicated to the Japanese natural history, and guides you through the animals found in Japan’s waters until you find yourself facing a plesiosaurus, Futabasaurus, the first of its kind to be found in Japan. It’s reconstructed as if it’s swimming over your head, very impressive.

One floor down showcases the variety of animals found on the Japanese islands, and one of my favourites: Japanese people throughout the ages, starting in the Jomon period and ending in the Edo era (or the present, if you choose to go stand in the last spot, haha). These featured mannequins in daily life situations that were very realistic, I assume they used the same techniques as in wax museums, because I was seriously impressed, wow.

Near the end of this hall, a group of people had gathered to take pictures. You see, there was another very popular display: Hachiko. Yep, the same dog whose statue sits outside Shibuya station and of which I take a picture every time, so naturally I had to take a picture of the real deal. It’s almost weird to see him in white, his actual color, because the statue is cast in bronze. Hachiko is famous enough to get 2 plaques in English, rather than just a single line translated, haha.

On the first floor, you’ll find instruments from Japan used to throughout the ages to observe nature, including the very important ones of observing seismographic activity, rather vital in a country this active.

Finally, I was back in the basement, which has Foucault’s pendulum and uh, not much else, but I was kind of glad, because I was seriously tired and overwhelmed at this point. I learnt a whole lot today, and actually feel this is a museum you might want to visit in two trips rather than trying to stuff it all into one. I had a great time, though! I took a lot more pictures than I usually do in museums, there was just so much to see.

Of course there is a museum shop, and of course it has a special corner for Hachiko, and uh, now I have a plushie Hachiko, haha. He’s very soft and a very good boy!

It was almost 5 PM, though, so I rushed out and took a quick picture of the whale statue outside before making my way back to the station. The rain had stopped, so I walked from Ikebukuro station to Tokyu Hands to browse until dinner time, which meant I found their origami paper section, so I had a good time here, too, ahem.

Back at the hotel now, and time to go to bed, because it’ll be a long day tomorrow! It should be dry and even sunny, so fingers crossed, haha.

I’m not sure if I will update tomorrow, so for now good night and see you soon!

[patdrake]

On time -nautical mile update

3 May & updated 6 May.

Some factoids, a lecturette and a rant are coming in this post:

Distances are in nautical miles, which are practically but not quite the same as an ordinary mile. Here’s the thing: nautical miles are curved miles because on a ship navigation needs you to be mindful that you’re going around the nearly spherical earth, (unlike on land when navigating just drives you, flatly, round the bend). So distances are in nautical miles and speeds in nautical miles per hour, knots. These are actually now metric units, 1852m, the mean average of the length of an arc at the equator and arc at the pole, a tiny bit different from each other because of the flattening curvature at the pole. The arc is that subtended by a sixtieth of a degree latitude. Circles around the earth that have a radius of the earth are called Great Circles and all lines of longitude are Great Circles, but they aren’t the only ones - the shortest distance between any two places on the earth is along a Great Circle. Lines of Latitude are not Great Circles and the shortest distance is never around a line of Latitude (except the Equator), counter intuitive though this may be. Ships, like planes, travel along Great Circles where possible, though it may not be possible because countries might be in the way; or you might want to stop at the countries.

Depths to the bottom on charts are in metric metres, rather than fathoms. Direction is all given in angles, with 000 being due North and 180 being due South. Change in direction is given either as a fresh angle or as a rudder instruction: ‘midships’ ; ‘Port 10’; ‘Starboard 5’. The people on the bridge use all of these different units routinely and interchangeably.

Coordinates are in latitude & longitude and arrive via GPS, just like on the compass app on your phone, or on your maps. Very occasionally GPS is shut off because presumably the government owners of the satellites want to do something with or to them. This is hugely inconvenient not to mention dangerous and so we have several compasses on board that would enable us to find our way if that happened.

The navigation software takes the GPS coordinates, the distance according to the plotted route and the ship speed and provides an up-to-the-minute eta of the ship to its next place. There’s also software called Bon Voyage that takes into account wind and current, so the person on watch can adjust engine speed according to the conditions to produce the desired speed to arrive at a specified time.

.

Clocks are now back our final hour to UTC+1 which is the same as British Summer Time. This is temporary and arbitrary. The fact of our being almost 9 degrees west and off the Atlantic coast of Portugal is neither here nor there. Europe, from as far as Macedonia in the east to Finisterre in the west spans about 30 degrees longitude, about 2 hours time difference. Both are at the same time, UTC+2. The reason Britain isn’t is because the meridian passes through London and so yet more contemporary relevance would be lost if GB disconnected with 0 degrees longitude. Australia spans 35 degrees longitude too from Sydney to Perth but keeps faith with longitude to keep the 2 hour time difference. To think John Harrison went to so much trouble inventing a timepiece in the 18th century to manifest the relationship of the hour with longitude, I.e. the rotation of the earth about its axis (360 degrees) and about the sun (24 hours). Today that’s secondary in the global north for the sake of convenience that might almost be based on a flat earth. If it weren’t for the indisputable, the day the night, the sun and stars ...

I find that I mind about this, more than I mind about the Euro and the pound.

I have a view of the Atlantic and we are rolling a bit. There are waves that are cresting, it’s very windy and when the sun isn’t shining the sea is grey. Finished the Marmite this morning, we’re eating beautiful fresh fruit from Algeciras and it’s a fish bbq today that turned out to include no fish. One more day to go!

[rememberthattime]

Chapter 47. Fiji

I was born on May 13, 1989. I don’t remember much about the day, but from pictures, it looked like a great time. My parents were celebrating, there were balloons, someone brought a children’s Chicago Cubs baseball set.

Today is my 30th birthday, so I’m reflecting … looking back all the way to the very start.

It’s interesting to imagine my mom & dad’s thoughts in that delivery room 30 years ago. They must have been terrified by the responsibility of raising a toddler (I would be), but also excited for their new son’s future. What will he grow up to be? Where will he live? What will he do? Their dreams for me had to be bigger than their 1980’s hair.

In the least dramatic way I can say this: they couldn’t have predicted where I’d end up 30 years later.

Birthdays are important to celebrate, but especially milestone birthdays. This is mainly Chelsay’s influence speaking, but I agree with her: milestone birthdays are ones you’ll always remember. 15 years from now, we’ll think back and ask: “What did we do for your 30th birthday?” ... I won’t let that be an ordinary memory. Life is busy though, so it’s tough to carve out a day for festivities, let alone plan them. Even a month ago, Chelsay and I didn’t know how we’d be celebrating. Chels had plans in motion, but my work complicated things by scheduling meetings in Atlanta the week before. My trip back to Sydney would require 24 hours of flights, so would we still be up for a big celebration? The answer is Yes. I’m not 70, and I just said milestone birthdays were important, so we’re making this happen. Work would pay for me to get from ATL back to SYD via any route, so Chels and I started looking for convenient connecting destinations. Hong Kong, Tokyo, Patagonia, and Hawaii were all considered, but in the end, we found the perfect blend of celebration, relaxation, adventure, and convenient flights in Fiji. Fiji is a county made up of 330 islands, and each island chain has its own unique characteristics. Viti Levu is the main island and home to Nadi Airport, but most tourists don’t stay here. Near Viti Levu are the Mamanucas, small sandy dots amongst the expansive blue. The Mamanucas are stunning, but they’re typically more resort-y and popular with nearby Aussies & Kiwis. Then there are the Yasawas, where Chelsay and I chose to stay. The Yasawas are further from the mainland, and their remoteness means their less touristy.

This is a double-edged sword though, because less tourists means there’s less tourist infrastructre, so finding a comfortable option would take some research. We eventually decided on Paradise Cove, which perfectly balanced vacation comforts (comfy bed, outdoor shower, and excellent food, which can’t be understated on a remote island) with a sense of wild adventure (fewer guests, great snorkelling, and hiking paths around the large island).

I nailed my meetings in Atlanta, so my birthday weekend was off to a good start even before boarding the plane. For the next 24 hours of flights, I had nothing to worry about - just enjoying a few movies and catching up on sleep. Chelsay and I met up in the Nadi Airport after extremely disproportionate flight times (hers was only 4 hours), and caught a ferry to Paradise Cove. Seaplanes were an option, but they were 5x the price and this wasn’t our honeymoon. The other advantage of the ferry is that it allowed us to see the different Fijian islands up close. Viti Levu and the Mamanucas were very nice, but Chelsay and I knew we’d made the right choice as we arrived in the less crowded Yasawas.

We were in heaven as we stepped onto the sandy beaches of Paradise Cove. A jungle of palm trees lined the beach, at first hiding the resort before eventually revealing a dream island getaway: shaded cabanas, pool-side lounge chairs, and a bar concocting frozen, fruity treats.

The pineapple on top of this pina colada was that Chelsay told the resort it was both of our birthdays, so they upgraded our villa and outfitted it with balloons and welcome drinks. As birthday surprises go, drinks on a beach in Fiji was pretty good.

After drinks on the beach, scuba diving wasn’t really an option, so we decided to snorkel in Paradise Cove’s house reef. I was really surprised by its color. It was just last week that I wrote about the scale of the Great Barrier Reef... but out in the middle of the Pacific, Fiji’s immense soft coral, highlighter vibrancy, and sea life abundance were incredible.

Now, it was inevitable that jet lag would catch up to me. Atlanta is 16 hours behind Fiji, and I was mentally nearing midnight. Chelsay was also dealing with severe time zone change (2 hours), so she was equally down for a nap. We gave ourselves 90 minutes but would wake up well before our 6:30 dinner. Apparently we woke up to the alarm at 5:30... I don’t remember. I guess I turned it off and only woke up once Chelsay checked her phone. 6:20. Woof. I say all this only to give you an idea of the mental state I was in over dinner. It was similar to that infamous Innsbruck dinner, where Chelsay and I giggled through our whole meal in a tired haze. After our mains, I asked Chelsay if it was time to call it a night... Despite having sour straws in the room, she insisted we stay at the restaurant for dessert. “Alright, well if we’re going to be here awhile, I need some extra bug spray.” I stumbled back to the room and, as I was re-applying, I heard singing in the distance. “Must be the ‘Kava Social’ by the fire pit,” I thought. ...These resorts always put on a show. Still in a sleepy haze, I leisurely made my way back to Chelsay. As I got closer though, I realized the singing wasn’t coming from the fire pit… it was coming from the restaurant. I turned the corner and could see they were surrounding Chelsay and I’s table... and Chelsay had her hands clasped over her mouth... and they weren’t making eye contact with her... and they had a cake. OH NO! They’d been singing this whole time for me!!!! Ahhhhh-I rushed back to the table, face bright red, and started clapping along as they sang a Fijian happy birthday song. I don’t know what they sang actually... it could’ve been the alphabet. I just tried to focus on Chelsay and not on the fact that the song had been going for at least three minutes. I thought to myself, “Chelsay must be so embarrassed!” And then I thought, “Oh no everyone thinks I was taking a shit!” The song finally wrapped up, and the waiters were laughing with Chelsay and I. They accusingly pointed out that it was the longest they’ve ever had to sing happy birthday… “Guys, I swear, I was putting on more bug spray!” Luckily a nearby couple caught the awkwardness of camera.

The next morning, Chelsay and I had scheduled back-to-back dives. We’ve been diving quite a bit recently, but it was still fun to float around the bottom of the ocean. Much like the local humans, Fijian fish seemed incredible friendly: the sea life was very comfortable with divers, staring back at Chelsay and I from only a few inches away.

After our dives, Chels and I took a 1.5 hour hike around the island, stopping at a secluded beach for private snorkelling. Along the hike, the resort had set up a few small exercise stations. One station was a tire flip... like what NFL prospects train with. This is probably why all the Polynesian players are so big. Anyway, Chelsay challenged me to flip it and I did so without difficulty. It must not have looked hard, because Chelsay confidently stepped up to try it herself. She bent down, grabbed the tire, lifted from her legs for less than one millisecond, and walked away with nothing but a “Nope.”

At dinner that night, first of all, there were no birthday song surprises. Second, we had phenomenal steak with a spread of beetroot, pea, and garlic purée. It was exceptional, as was every meal we ate at Paradise Cove. This can’t be overstated. I mentioned earlier that food in many Yasawan islands is poor, often limited to rice and fries. These resorts just aren’t prepared to meet all vacation comforts... Paradise Cove was ready though. Over our three days, we enjoyed tasty local kokoda, beef lettuce wraps, coconut crusted chicken, and their many fresh catches of the day.

The next morning, Chelsay and I joined a snorkel excursion through a nearby island channel. In Fiji, these channels serve as a funnel for pods of manta rays, which are probably my favorite non-dog animal. See, ever since our failed hunt for mantas in the Maldives, I’ve had an appreciation for how hard they are to find. Even though we’ve since seen entire pods of mantas, I’ll always jump at the slightest chance to see another. Our boat between the two islands, and the guide jumped in the water. He wore a weight belt so that he could sink down where the mantas swim, which I only mention because I want to remember how easily he descended 10 meters (30 feet), sitting in the dark blue for 2 minutes before resurfacing. This guy is a fish. On the other hand, Chelsay had a less graceful descent. When we scuba dived the day before, we exited the boat by sitting on the ledge, tanks over the water, and just falling backwards. The weight of the tank would naturally fall into the water and 360-degree flip you back to the surface. When snorkelling though, you don’t have the weight of the tank. Chelsay threw herself back and entered the water, but was too buoyant to complete a flip. She’d contoured herself into an arch, with her belly sticking out of the water and fins frantically trying to rotate over. She probably scared the mantas away. It took about 30 minutes of tense anticipation, but while staring down at the blue abyss, we heard the guide yell, “Manta!” Chelsay and I swam over quickly to take in the majestic giant. At around 3 meters wide, this female manta was bigger than me, yet swam with such gentle grace. Its grace is deceptive though, because it’s actually still moving quickly - between our hunt and subsequent chase, I probably swam 3 km that morning.

Chels and I were tired when we got back to Paradise Cove, but it was our last day so we decided to snorkel the house reef one more time. It was cool to see the soft coral again, but we were pooped. I actually had to tow Chelsay back: you know, when I swim in front and my wife just holds onto my foot.

As I was towing her, we passed over a shallow part of the reef but I kept powering along. Suddenly, Chelsay let go of my foot and started slapping the water. I stopped in my tracks, unsure what she was freaking out about. She swam off, so I followed, and it wasn’t until we’d gotten to shore that she told me what it was: apparently a venomous white-banded sea snake popped out and launched within 1.5 ft of me. That was enough sea life for this trip, so we spent the rest of the day on the resort’s inflated jungle gym. We laughed, played around, and attempted backflips (key word: attempted). Just a reminder that I’d turned 30 a few days before.

That note actually transitions well into my conclusion…

A lot of people get anxious about their 30th birthday. It isn’t a vitality thing - too early for that - but the anxiety comes more from gauging where you are vs where you thought you’d be. Life isn’t a checklist, but it’s natural to have expectations for when you turn 30, 40, etc. Well, I’m writing this from my villa patio in Fiji, so I’m nailing the “Where you are” part. To answer that question less literally though, I’ll instead consider “Where I am” against Chelsay and I’s life motto, something we wrote in our wedding vows: “We’ll never let age get in the way of our youth.” This is perfect motto for age-related milestones because youth isn’t a concept tied to age. It isn’t chapter in your life that just fades away. It’s a mindset, and it’s one you can measure whether you’re 5, 20, 30, 40, or 80. To be youthful is to be energetic, playful, and optimistic. Now I’m technically 30, but this milestone age doesn’t bother me. “Where I am” is energetic enough to swim with Mantas, playful enough to laugh at awkward cake situations and splash around on an inflatable jungle gym, and optimistic enough to make a celebratory Fiji weekend happen despite all of life’s complexities. I’m not worried about turning 30, because after the past weekend, I know I’m as youthful as I’ve ever been.

[environmentworld-blog]

Making an environment in One Week - Part 1

I decided to make a whole environment piece in one week. So yeah!

WHAT THIS IS: Practice and an experiment. This was just a personal test to see what I could achieve and share my experience. WHAT THIS IS NOT: Healthy and practical. Healthy for reasons you will read bellow (at least for me), and practical because rushing things doesn't make you better. Even though there was some discovery here for myself, I didn't learn any new techniques, didn't learn from critiques, etc. I dont recommend to do this as a constant art practice. Its not smart if you are planning to grow in your craft.

That said!

Its been both a challenge, and a great time. It was definitely a big learning experience for me, and I am not very happy with the results but I decided to share it because I got something out of it, and hopefully some of you will as well.

The main challenge was to conceptualize and go from blockout to final in 1 week. Basically, going from here...

...to here...

...in one week.

The result is running realtime in UE4. I used Blender, ZBrush, Topogun2, the Substance suite and Photoshop.

DAY 1. Starting out...

This was, heads out, the hardest part. The whole piece took me around 45 hours. 4 hours after work from Monday to Friday and at least 12 hours on each day of that weekend. Needless to say, at the end of that week I was completely exhausted. MVP of the week was my girlfriend who decided to take care of my chores the whole week while I worked!

Looking at the empty canvas is always scary.

And of course this time it was no exception. It added an extra layer of pressure knowing that every minute I spent looking at it and clicking around, would take valuable minutes away from my busy week.  

I had to figure out SO MANY THINGS.

When tackling down an environment, there are many things I usually keep in mind. You have composition, theme, storyline, execution method, end platform, etc. And in this crazy jungle of thoughts that usually strikes me when starting to build a piece, I can get lost really quickly and begin walking in circles.

First I had to CHOOSE A PLATFORM. Unreal, of course. Moving on!

Then I had to FIGURE OUT THE MAIN THEME, on which I'm going to build my scene. So I almost instantly thought: pirates. I LOVE pirates. I mean, who doesn't? And with Uncharted 4 still to this day in my veins and one of the latest Magic The Gatheringset ever-present in my head (go Ixalan bois!), I had all the inspiration I needed. I had found my theme. And I set it in stone, for I would never allow myself to lose time changing it. That was not an option...

And of course, I ended up changing it.

Now, I need to THINK OF THE STORY. It was going to be amazing! I wanted to have a small boat in the sand with a treasure on it. And in the back, a huge ship shooting at it. As if the pirate stole the treasure and was getting away! He got to shore, but the ship was too damn close, so he had to take away whatever we could in his hands leaving most of it behind.

Cool, I liked it. It was no Dark Souls environment art storytelling, but it kinda worked!

So then I jumped to the next and one of the most crucial of steps: GATHERING REFERENCE AND BUILDING A MOODBOARD.

I think I got rid of most of my pirate-related reference, but here you kinda see what I was aiming for terrain wise. I had to cut a lot of it, but the feeling was there. This step is almost crucial, and it is really important not to underestimate reference. Spend 1-2 days looking for it. Always keep it open while working, and never stop looking for new pictures!

All this took me a good couple of hours. Perhaps 3 (tight time frame after all). So I HAD to move on to the engine now. No time to waste.

Next, I started with my main BLOCKOUT. This is definitely the most important part of it all. Here is where you should spend the most time when making environment art. The blockout is going to dictate the overcome of your whole piece. Don't think in details, details sucks, details are for murlocks. Nail your main shapes and composition FIRST. You will definitely tweak things around, but having your composition, shapes, balance, and flow of the piece in place in the beginning, is not only going to allow you to work more effectively, but it will also keep you inspired and moving forward.

So I did. This is the first blockout of this piece ever.

I started out with the simplest of compositions. I can go quite crazy trying things out at this stage but, not to my surprise, I hadn't much time to spare. So a simple rule of thirds, which I personally dislike (here is why), will do for now. I knew that I was going to keep a simple 3 point composition, and 2 counterbalancing points will do the trick for now.

Also, at this points rocks, water and sand texture were taken from the UE4 library.

I moved on then to BLOCKING OUT LIGHTING. As everything in this stage, it was very simple. Just used a basic skysphere (default to UE4) and tweaked the values a bit. I knew for a fact I wanted to keep working on both the mood and the clouds. But no time for that right now.

The goals of my first day were to have the whole blockout done. At this point it was almost 10 pm and I wasnt ready. And I wasnt going to bed until I had at least a very basic sand texture there.

So I made it.

And since its really awful, I figured I might aswell explain what was I shooting for composition wise. The framing was going to be natural vs man-made. Rock vs water. So the big rocks on the fore and the middle ground where doing that for me. At the same time, I was throwing all the flow lines I could to make the ship pop up.

And that was it. 11 pm. Time to eat something, go to bed, and go to work the next day. I could have stayed up all night. But I knew better.

DAY 2. Sand and rocks

Day 2 started out nicely. I almost ran home to get my hands on this! I was confident that I was going to pull it off. All was great!

I jumped right away to Substance Designer. I knew (and had been thinking all day) that I wanted to have the sand in as soon as possible. So I jumped directly to my next step BLOCKING OUT TEXTURES. Not everyone works this way, but I found out that having a solid blockout of your textures helps you to see the bigger picture. In an interesting scene, not only color but also roughness take a big part in making it look unique and appealing to the eye. And having your materials blocked out will get you early to a point where you can start tweaking lighting, composition and even propping to get the most out of your scene.

This screenshot is 2 hours in on the second day. I kept moving rocks trying to improve the composition, and all this new perspective came from my new sand material being applied to the terrain. I built a simple blend shader and vertex painted some roughness variation in where the land met the sea.

Also grabbed this super high poly ship from somewhere on the internet and used it very quickly to try to pull my vision a bit forward. All assets were created by me in their entirety, but blocking out a ship just for the blockout's sake would take me a whole day, and I was already starting to get scared from the scope of this scene. At this point I didn't think I was going to pull it off, and grabbing these ships helped me realize that my original vision simply wasn't going to happen. They were a lot of work, so I had to improvise something on the fly.

Much like in game development, the cool parts get cut. Ships were out, and I spent a whole hour trying to think what to do to replace them. And the clock kept ticking.

So I kept working on the composition. A 3 point composition would do it. A simple offset of focal points kept in flow by the terrain and contrast. Not too fancy, but would do the trick if done correctly.

Then I thought I might as well move on to the next thing: CREATING KEY PROPS. So I decided to get started with the rocks. I sculpted these godforsaken monstruosities and quickly decimated and textured them.

Here is a quick tip for you all: DONT RUSH THINGS. Because when you do, you end up losing time. They looked like crap. And I knew that. And hated the fact that I had to redo them. That didn't only make me lose time, but also severely affected my morale. Tackle things smartly, and give every piece of the puzzle the time it requires, because if one single piece is off, everything will look unfinished or just wrong.

Then added some fog and, just like that, the day was over. What a waste.

DAY 3. Rocking rocks.

Day 3 started at 7pm. I had to get to work with the rocks right away. So I did.

I looked for a lot of references and got to it. I ended up finding some killer ref on it, that was exactly what I needed. In the end, and after pretty much all day, I was happy with what I got. The sharp edges broke nicely with the smoothness of the scene. It almost felt like I was achieving a gradient between the smoothness of the water, the semi-rough surface of the sand and the sharpness of the rocks. I quite liked that. There was even a cool story element to it.

It also had to be reusable, so I sculpted it 360 degrees, since it was going to be rotated like crazy. I knew they weren't perfect since there was barely any small detail on them, but I would come back to them later.

I also kept developing the blend shader a bit. And used it on the rocks as a test, painting some sand on top of them.

DAY 4. Propping, mesh scatter and sand!

Getting back to it on the fourth day had me excited! I knew what I wanted to do with the rocks, so I started creating bigger variations and some backdrop ones. Once I had them, I kept working on the composition and framing of the whole piece. Also created some sharp ones to add at the distance, as some reference I found showed.

So at this point, halfway there, I had my composition kind of there, my secondary props almost done, my main textures half done, and I was still experimenting with lighting. Damn.

When propping, it's always good to keep micro-compositions in mind. There is a lot to talk about on this topic, and I plan to do it in the future in more detail, but as of now this should do. Every big shapes should be grounded, accompanied by medium and smaller bodies. And this is what you can see I did here. Breaking the rotation of assets and having other smaller props around them, blend big assets and terrain together smoothly, almost like in a gradient.

And then it clicked. I decided to take a huge U turn. Pirates wasn't an option anymore since the ships were too expensive to make. So I decided to turn into scifi. Star Wars more specifically. For some reason I just got a bit of a scifi vibe out of it. Decided to follow my gut.

First big change was lighting. Before I was aiming for something really moody and gray. Tons of fog, low visibility and and sad/uncomfortable mood. Changed it into a mostly clear sky at dusk.

DAY 5. Prop making

Getting back to it on the fourth day had me excited! I knew

My first idea was to recreate the crash from Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy on the planet of Blenjeel (the one where the sand worm tries to get you). So I thought it could be a really nice remaster piece to make! Story was figured out and all.

So I used some UE primitives to build the basic shapes of what I was going to go for in both focal points. It was going to be the fallen ship and one of the ships parts you need to retrieve in the mission.

But as I started looking for reference, what I could find was really limited. the game is really old and there is barely any art for the level. I found a single piece of concept art in one of many Star Wars wikis and started blocking it out from it.

My plan was to execute the main asset that day, so I quickly jumped into it. And as I started modelling one of the turbines of the ship (you can see it in the next image), it resembled something I was really fond of. So, again, a new sporadic change in the design...

Pod racers! I LOVE pod racing. Who doesn't?

And like that, day over!

DAY 6. Of grounding and helmets

First day of the weekend. My intention was to finish everything today. Wanted to have all props figured out, all dressing done, all painting in place, etc. The last day had to be just post processing and super small details in the scene. Lots of things happened on day 6.

The new prop was simpler and more easily recognizable. And, most importantly, I liked it! It would be now the remaining of a crashed pod. The races (as depicted both in the movie and the game) were pretty brutal, and so I figured I could try to show that.

Here is the asset.

After that I quickly jumped into grounding the asset better and adding smaller detail. Added some dragging marks for the turbine, wires, random parts of the broken pod scattered everywhere.

DAY 7. Final tweaks and presentation

Final day upon us!

I started the day early adding the third focal point to the scene. Backdrop pods racing at the distance. This wasn't only the third piece of the 3 point composition, but also a big storytelling element. This guy had some tough luck, but the race still keeps on going!

Also started to play heavily with a post process volume and some nice LUT tweaking.

Then did a final pass on everything. Added some more scatter, tweaked lighting, added some fake bouncing lights and tweaked the reflections. Then made some quick dead vegetation and added it around some rocks. The final composition was rather simple, but here is a breakdown of my mental process. It doesn't really matter which of the 3 focal points to see first, all of them are connected creating a circle flow between them.

In blue, you can see the helmet connecting with the turbine thru the wire in the sand, creating an arrow directly pointing back and forth. Framed by the rocks in the foreground, the helmet creates a strong contrasty focal point that is very likely to attract most attention at first glance.

In red, the turbine. The trail behind it serves a single purpose: its guiding the viewers sight towards the next focal point in the rotation. Also the same positioning of the turbine works as an arrow pointing left. Perspective and placement work together here for this end.

In green, the pod creates an attention spot simply because of contrast. And so it completes the circle. All shapes around are meant to both point towards it and guide the viewer back to the helmet.

General positioning on the scene and during the dressing had purpose. Playing with empty spaces vs populated ones, contrast and color helps, and here the sand areas and sea create clear paths to traverse. and the central, uninteresting, piece (in orange) creates the perfect shape to accentuate direction and a pivot for the whole image.

And so I was done! 8pm on Sunday. Crazy week! Was absolutely exhausted and had a real bad time trying to concentrate next Monday morning. But I managed to pull it off to the best of my ability in the given time, and the result was rather acceptable.

Many lessons learned on this. Not going to bore you with all the details of my own realizations, but I tought it would be nice to share the crafty side of them.

Im not doing this again any time soon. Even though I look back and can be proud of having finished a piece in this small amount of time, the gain wasn't really worth it. Things I would improve if would have had more time are:

Pods could have improved with some motion blur (didn't have the time to figure out how to make it happen in UE).

Smoke looks still and inorganic.

Rocks could be better grounded, with sand buildups on the sides.

Backdrop rocks are way too simple.

More color variation would have taken this to a much nicer place. I played it safe with complimentary colors.

Assets could use some more time.

And I think I could keep going on forever. Even though my eyes are still a bit used to seeing it constantly.

Thanks a lot for reading! Sadly I had to cut a bunch of it due to text characters limit, but I think this sums it up well enough.

Please leave any questions you may have, happy to answer them! Also any ideas and C&C on the piece is absolutely encouraged.

Thanks again, and till next time!

Otto

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Stateville Penitentiary was constructed on a panopticon model: its four main cellblocks are round structures, with the cells arranged around the periphery and a central guard tower, from which all cells can be observed. From the dining hall, a guard can rotate 360 degrees and view all four cellblocks. Except for solitary confinement, known as ‘the Hole’, Stateville was as clean, light, and airy as Joliet was filthy, dark, and wretched. Further, Stateville prisoners were given jobs—from breaking rocks to working in the X-ray department of the hospital—in order to make them useful to the prison and to make the prison useful to society. Although a single warden—during our period, Joseph E. Ragen, who served from 1936 to 1961—oversaw both Stateville and Joliet, the two prisons represented opposite philosophies of confinement and punishment.

‘But the Panopticon was also a laboratory’, wrote Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish, ‘a privileged place for experiments on men, and for analysing with complete certainty the transformations that may be obtained from them’. The beauty of the panopticon, said Foucault, is that by virtue of its arrangement, the exercise of power is internalized, ‘subtly present’ within the system and even the subjects. The institution is opened, not only to the eyes of the staff but even to the public. The panopticon, he wrote, can be integrated into any social function: punishment, production, therapy, education, research. Although the panopticon was the original architectural device, Foucault did not believe that these functions could only be implemented in a round building with a central guard tower. ‘Panopticism’, the exercise of discipline through these mechanisms of openness, could take place in almost any setting; it was, to him, a ‘political technology, that may and must be detached from any specific use’. When Stateville prisoners left the cellblocks to stay in the hospital wing, where most volunteers remained for the duration of their tenure on the malaria project, they entered a world of control and power far more subtle than anything the prison designers could have imagined.

In the ideal panopticon, the prisoners never see a guard, but they are always under surveillance. Just so in the malaria project. Warden Ragen allocated the entire third floor and part of the second floor of the hospital building to the malaria project. ‘I don’t think I was ever in a cell block’, recalled Ernest Beutler, a researcher on the project in the early 1950s. ‘The prison grounds were beautiful. Floral patterns’ adorned the walkways. Further, no guards were present in the project’s working space. The researchers did have to pass through a metal detector every day on their way in to work, but once in the prison hospital, Beutler said, it felt just like working in any ordinary hospital laboratory. But of course the experiments were in a prison. Prison rules and prison discipline applied in the hospital as well as anywhere else within the walls, and all of the malaria volunteers had been conditioned in the cellblocks prior to joining the project. Outside the normal prison routine, the malaria project epitomized Bentham’s (and Foucault’s) vision: ‘a functional mechanism that must improve the exercise of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle coercion’.”

- Nathaniel Comfort, “The prisoner as model organism: malaria research at Stateville Penitentiary.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. Volume 40, Issue 3, September 2009.

[kenfox784]

Control Mac With Iphone Free

Recent several years should be an era of VR (Virtual Reality) which has triggered an incredible storm around the world. Virtual reality has the power to let you interact with some devices for an immersive and sensory experience. With its breakthrough in core technology, worldwide manufacturers are rushing to compete against each other in this emerging field.

How To Remotely Control My Mac With Iphone

Control Mac With Iphone Freezes

Control Mac With Iphone Free

Control Mac With Iphone Freeware

Free VR Video Downloading and Converting Software. Download VR videos from YouTube and other 300+ sites at fast speed. Convert VR videos to MP4, AVI, MKV, iPhone, Android, Samsung TV, LG TV and more other formats and hot devices. Mac’s screen will turn black. Follow the same steps to turn it off. Enable Screen Curtain using three-finger triple-tap. You can triple-tap with three fingers on Mac’s trackpad to turn on Screen Curtain. It is similar to Screen Curtain on iPhone. However, this works if you use TrackPad Commander on your Mac.

Due to the rising craze of VR, various VR devices like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard, VR Box, etc. are springing up to meet different levels of requirements for customers. However, popular forms used for watching VR videos, SBS (Side By Side 3D) and 360-Degrees, are not supported by many platforms and devices currently. To fix the issue of how to watch VR videos on PC and mobile devices, you need a virtual reality player. So here are the best free VR video players for multi-platform and a simple guide for VR and 360 degree video download.

List of the Best VR Players

1. VR Player FREE

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http://www.vrplayer.com/

Platform: iOS/Android/Windows

Pros: VR Player is a powerful free VR player designed specifically for watching immersive content on head mounted displays (HMD). It can not only play VR video, but also play 2D, 3D SBS, 3D Top/Bottom, 360 degree videos.

Cons: Sometimes you may come across some performance issues with Oculus Rift DK2, but it's still a good VR player.

2. Homido 360 VR Player

Access 2016 download for mac. Platform: iOS/Android

For iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/homido-360-vr-player/id909196467?mt=8

For Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.homido.homidoplayer&hl=en

Pros: It is used for the Homido HMD headset. You can watch 360° spherical videos as if you were seated in an IMAX theater. The first ever HMD internet browser allows you to watch any VR content directly from YouTube or other VR video sites in the headset. Also, you can record SBS videos from your headset.

Cons: Again, to fully enjoy this app, you will need a Homido virtual reality headset.

3. AAA VR Cinema Cardboard 3D SBS

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.candlify.vrplayer

Platform: Android

Pros: AAA VR Cinema Cardboard 3D SBS is a free and great VR video player Android app. Except for the wide ranges of options to play 360 as well as normal 3D VR videos, rotation killer mode and pure gyro mode are added to head tracking option in the newest version 1.6.1. This player only supports MOV, MP4 and M4V format. You may need some VR video converter app if your video format is excluded.

Cons: Pay attention, this app will crash when you open a file that contains '%' in the file name. Please rename before open the file. And Bluetooth mouse is disabled temporary in the current version 1.6.1.

4. Mobile VR Station

https://apps.apple.com/sg/app/mobile-vr-station/id959820493

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mgatelabs.mobilevrstation&hl=en_SG&gl=US

Platform: iOS/Android Windows 7 dmg file download.

Pros: Mobile VR Station is a free VR player which is designed for iOS and Android users and it works with every headset. It's an alternative to Homido 360 Player and even better, you can view your Photos, Panoramas, Videos & Files projected onto a virtual screen floating in space for a unique heater experience. You can watch HTML5 videos from mobile safari with Micro VR Station extension and get better viewing experience on 3D content, 360/ Spherical movies.

Cons: But remember, the app won’t display any content that are DRM-protected, for example the content you bought from iTunes.

5. LiveViewRift

http://soft.viarum.com/liveviewrift/

Platform: Windows/Mac

Pros: LiveViewRift is one of the most popular virtual reality players which allows you to watch different sorts of media files with the Oculus Rift. With its powerful distortion and field-of-view-correction functions, LiveViewRift lets you enjoy media as your eyes would be where the camera is.

Cons: You can only download it free for Mac OS X 10.9 and Windows 7/8 so far. There’s no version for windows 10 currently.

6. SKYBOX VR PLAYER

https://skybox.xyz/

Platform: Windows 64bit/Mac/Android/Steam.. https://kenfox784.tumblr.com/post/654752863501893632/mac-os-catalina-disk-image-download.

Pros: Like Kolor Eyes, Skybox VR Player is a great and free VR video player on Windows 64bit/Mac/Android/Steam.. computers. You are able to stream local videos from PC to mobile devices with zero quality loss when connecting to Wi-Fi network. It also supports watching one video with multiple devices and can play nearly all video formats. You can experience HD, full HD, and 4K playback on this one.

So, these are the best free VR players for multi-platform to watch VR videos with ease. And there are more VR players like FreeVRPlayer, Delight VR Player that can also do a great job when playing VR videos. They may have their own pros and cons, but all of them aim to provide the best experience to users. Depending on your platform and preference, just choose the best VR player as you wish.

Free VR Video Downloading and Converting Software

Download VR videos from YouTube and other 300+ sites at fast speed. Convert VR videos to MP4, AVI, MKV, iPhone, Android, Samsung TV, LG TV and more other formats and hot devices.

A Simple Guide to Download VR Videos and Convert

After you've prepared VR devices and find out the best VR video player to meet different demands, can't wait to experience VR videos? I hope you have saved sufficient VR video resources to watch.

But if not, or if you just want to collect more at one time. As the dominant video-sharing website worldwide, you can download free VR videos from YouTube or any other online video sites. Before that, Free download and install Free HD Video Converter Factory on your PC (Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista). Then follow the simple guide below to download your best-loved VR movies. Here I just set VR video download from YouTube as an example.

Step 1: Run the freeware and open Downloader. Click 'New Download' button on menu bar;

Step 2: Paste the YouTube VR video’s link to “Add URL” box, then press the analyze button;

Step 3: Choose one preferred resolution and format and click OK to add the download task. Then press the “Download All” icon.

Download VR Video

Note: You can also download 4K video or download hot videos from YouTube here. Try analyzing the URL again if you don't get the wanted resolution that the orginal video resource should have.

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Optional – To fix some compatibility issue, you can convert the VR videos to your devices supported formats via this freeware. And the format conversion steps are as follow:

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Open Converter > Load the VR videos you download > Select your device supported format on the Output Format section > Press “Run” button to start the conversion

Additionally, Free HD Video Converter Factory can do more things for you, such as change video resolution, reduce video size, add subtitle, or compress 4K video and more.

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Why not have a try and keep this freeware for further use? Just download VR videos with this program and put on VR headset and start your immersive experience in VR world.

Wait! You are able to download video resources from 300+ online video sites including YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Facebook and any more.

So from this moment on, get your VR video player ready, save some awesome VR movies with this wonderful VR movie downloader freeware and watch your favorite VR video. Have fun!

Hope this article has helped you figure out what's the best choice for you. And if it works, feel free to share it to help more people.

In Case Someday You Want to Upload Video to YouTube/Facebook/Vimeo..

Aside from downloading VR resources, you can use the freeware to upload your recorded videos in right formats to online site including YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, and your blog. The software has provided ideal format profile beforehand, so that you don't have to be clear of what are the best video audio specs for uploading to a video-sharing site.

Now, please download the Free HD Video Converter Factory to complete your jobs.

More Special Features of Free HD Video Converter Factory

Download any video from online sites such as YouTube, Facebook ,Vimeo, etc.

Support Various media formats, optimized profiles for 500+ hot devices.

Extract soundtracks from film/video with orginal quality perserved.

Provided with a built-in video editor for cutting/cropping/merging, etc.

Can compress video with no quality loss.

Fastest conversion speed, 50X speed up supported.

[aero-307-horvath-blog]

Week 7 Log

Monday I went over the data we collected last week and fixed some of the graphs I had previously. Here are the new graphs I came up with:

This graph shows that the two wings have the same slope on their Cl-Alpha curves. The Red Wing has a higher Cl for the same Alpha as the the Blue Wing which makes sense because it has a higher aspect ratio, so it should have better performance. The slope of the Cl-Alpha graphs do not equal 2pi as the Thin Airfoil Theory would suggest, but is around 3.1 rad^-1. This is okay because our wings have a significant thickness to them, and the Thin Airfoil Theory makes the assumption that the airfoil is significantly thin compared to the chord length.

The Cd vs Cl graph shows us that even though the Red Wing beats the Blue wing in Cl for each alpha, the Red Wing has a very slightly higher Cd for the Cl as the Blue Wing. This is to be expected because the Blue wing has a longer chord length and therefore a larger Reynolds Number. The Larger Reynolds Number equates to less Cd for the same Cl which makes the above graph make sense.

This graph is Cd vs Alpha. It doesn't tell us much that the Cl vs Alpha and Cl vs Cd graphs don’t already tell us. One thing to note from this graph is that when Cl raises so does Cd.

This graph is Cl/Cd vs Alpha. From this graph we can see that the Red Wing has a higher L/D ratio due to the higher aspect ratio, and as you increase the angle of attack the L/D ratio decreases because you are getting closer to stall.

On Wednesday, I met with my group for the Probe Calibration Project. We Plan on collecting data from the probe on Monday. We will mount the probe like so on the Model 1127/1128 Air Velocity Calibrator, except we will shift the probe down much more so that is quite close to the outlet of the calibrator.

The Calibrator has a 60 degree range of rotation about the Z-axis, and we will only be using 21 degrees of rotation about the X-axis, as the probe becomes a poor method for determining velocity direction that is much greater that 20 degrees away from it. We will be taking advantage of the symmetry of the probe so that we don’t have to test 360 degrees of angles. The testing should be pretty straight forward where here is our test matrix:

Speeds = [ 0 5 ] m/s Stretch: 2.5 m/s Theta = [ 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60 ] degrees Phi = [ 0 7 14 21 ] degrees

Where Theta is rotation about the Z-axis and Phi is rotation about the X-axis