technozid

They did it again. I always enjoy working at Canon events. Only that they could have had a few chairs for staff. My knees still hurt from two day continuous standing.

They did it again. I always enjoy working at Canon events. Only that they could have had a few chairs for staff. My knees still hurt from two day continuous standing.

Well, my vacation is over and today was the first day in the office again. I always end vacations with mixed feelings – it feels good to have leisure time, but I really like to work as well… This vacation I had plenty of time for reading, and I actually “inhaled” 3 books – and I would like to recommend all of them!

Kristian recently blogged about Jack McDevitt – one of my favourite SF authors. In Kristians post I learned that the novel Omega is finally available as paperback. Omega is the fourth sequel of a loose cycle of stories centering in exoarcheology, a galactic phenomen cuasing civilizations to collpase, and the superluminal pilot Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins (a lot of starship pilots and people in leading positions in McDevitts worlds are female). In preparation for this book I re-read all three previous “Hutchins novels” (The Engines of God, Deepsix & Chindi). While revisiting Deepsix I thought I encountered a logic flaw, and I emailed McDevitt about it. I was in email contact with him once before, and like the last time he replied less than 24 hours later. I’ll save this up for a seperate post though… McDevitt writes slow stories. He takes his time to construct his characters, and their relations to each other. He has a way of describing weeklong travels in hyperspace, while still maintaining en element of action and speed. The solution of the phenomenon of the planet devouring (well…. culture-devouring) interstellar “Omega clouds” was quite surprising. If you have the time, and if you are interested in McDevitt and Hutch, I suggest to read them all. Nevertheless Omega can be enjoyed without knowledge of the other books as well.

Almost forgotten by me, Amazon also delivered the advanced ordered paperback edition of Terry Pratchett’s recent fantasy novel “Thud!“. For the sake of the length of this post I assume the esteemed reader knows about the Discworld series of Pratchett – if not look it up in Wikipedia. Since Night Watch, the novels got darker, more intense and – in a way – more political (in the same sense as a parable is political. Thud! however is the most political of Pratchetts books so far. Basically, it is a book about racism, and due to the outstanding talent of the author you can both laugh, but still get some kind of message from the book. At first, the racism theme only shows up between the obvious conflict of the dwarfs with the trolls on the eve of the anniversary of the battle of Koom valley where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs (or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls – depending whose side you believe), but there is a conflict also between Sgt. Angua – a werewolf – and Lance Constable Sally – a vampire. But then there is also the level of conflict between acclimated city dwarfs and the “deep down” (read: fundamental) dwarfs – the keepers of the laws and the lore. Go figure. But don’t expect it to be a grave, complicated or instructive novel. No – it’s hilarious and pure fun to read. PLUS it gives you a bit to think about.

The last novel is by McDevitt again. Apart from Priscilla Hutchins, he has created a second character who appeared more than once. Alex Benedict makes his living by selling archeological artifacts (sic!), an occupation heavily frowned upon by his uncle, who disappears in hyperspace almost at the beginning of the novel. He leaves Alex a few clues to solve a puzzle of historical dimensions. Alex sets out…. well, to tell the truth I only proceeded up to page 76 by the time I wrote this. The novel is from 1989, preceding the first Priscilla Hutchins novel by 6 years. In many aspects so far, it seems a prototype for the later series. Many settings are similar, like the faster-than-light engines called “Armstrong units” in the older novel, and “Hazeltines” in the newer ones. Interstellar travel is measured in weeks and months. And also a female pilot plays a major role. However Alex Benedicts universe is more crowded than Priscilla Hutchins. And there is an intelligent, spacefaring alien race in open conflict with the humans – both ideas not used in the Hutchins books, where there is neither armed conflict in space, nor a second STILL LIVING spacefaring race. Even though I hardly read a quarter of the book, it is quite suspenseful so that I feel safe to recommend it.

Well, long post. Thank you for reading.

Well, my vacation is over and today was the first day in the office again. I always end vacations with mixed feelings - it feels good to have leisure time, but I really like to work as well... This vacation I had plenty of time for reading, and I actually "inhaled" 3 books - ...

Well, it seems the folks at e-frontier wanted to do an enticing marketing campaign, but not disclosing any feature of a major new release is quite strange. As rumour had it a while ago, there is really a new version of Poser coming. But neither the release date is given in the press release, nor any details about the features. Only the packed 3D content gets mentioned – and of course the price. But – hey – a bit more would be nice?

What is interesting as well is that yet again two new characters get introduced. Admittedly e-frontier made quite a significatn leap in quality with the “G2 males” for Poser 6. However their characters James and Jessi from Poser 6 never really caught on with the community. What is predominantly used are the “Victoria 3″ and “Michael 3″ characters from DAZ. I would have expected a “G2 Jessi” and not a new character which the community might again not accept.

Well, it seems the folks at e-frontier wanted to do an enticing marketing campaign, but not disclosing any feature of a major new release is quite strange. As rumour had it a while ago, there is really a new version of Poser coming. But neither the release date is given in the press release, ...

The 3D community is speculating for a couple of weeks on the next release of Cinema 4D. As the Maxon Webpage became unaccessible this morning, rumours immediatly started to surface. A few minutes ago, Maxon went live with the new Version 10 – and since then their servers are pretty much swamped with all the demo download requests. The release-date coincides with maxons 20th anniversary.

Among the features:

• BodyPaint now included with every licencse
• Enhanced workflow with filters, bookmarks and layers
• Completely rewritten timeline
• Enhanced OpenGL and interactive render regions
• Lots of enhancements in MOCCA and character editing

Demo download is available at http://www.maxoncomputer.com/download_demo.asp – but beware the servers are quite slow right now.

The 3D community is speculating for a couple of weeks on the next release of Cinema 4D. As the Maxon Webpage became unaccessible this morning, rumours immediatly started to surface. A few minutes ago, Maxon went live with the new Version 10 - and since then their servers are pretty much swamped with all ...

Some readers may know that I am working quite a lot lately with 3D software. My main tool is Cinema 4D from the German company Maxon – a package I know since my Amiga days. However I am also workinga lot with e-frontier’s (formerly known as Curious Labs) Poser, a software specialized in creating human characters for 3D scenes.

The current version of Poser is V6, but e-frontier made the previous Poser 5 available for free download. The offer is time limited until end of this week, so hurry up! I have never used version 5, but from the screenshots its pretty similar to version 6. The main differences according to the Wikipedia article are OpenGL rendering and image based lighting. So get it while it is still available!

There is a kind of Poser “clone” which has been free ever since. It is a software called “DAZ|Studio” by DAZ Productions. The workflow is different, and I like it less than Poser, but you can achieve the same results and lots of 3rd party add-ons can be used in both. DAZ acquired the 3D package Bryce from Corel a while ago. The current version is 5.5, but DAZ decided to make the previous version Bryce 5 available for free. You can download the software without registration. However if you take the time to register an account with DAZ, you can download an extended 90 MB version too. Bryce 5 still suffers from the avantgarde user interface by German design guru Kai Krause, yet it is quite a mighty tool, especially for landscape rendering. For this task though, there is another free tool named Terragen by the British company Planetside. Current version is 0.9.43 – version 2.0 which is under development will be commercially available at 100$. If the old free versions will still be available once the commercial version is finished is unclear. So again – get it while it is available!

If you have never worked with 3D before, it might take some time to get into the right state of mind. You probably best start with Poser, since its interface is – despite a bit of avantgarde as well – rather intuitive. Bryce adds some complexity, but Terragen requires even more dedication. However the results of all three are quite stunning. Maybe you want to have a look at some of the galleries:

• Images created with Terragen: http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/f/tg09
• Images created with Bryce: http://www.daz3d.com/program/bryce/55gallery.php
• Images created with Poser: http://www.e-frontier.com/go/poser/galleries

Some readers may know that I am working quite a lot lately with 3D software. My main tool is Cinema 4D from the German company Maxon - a package I know since my Amiga days. However I am also workinga lot with e-frontier's (formerly known as Curious Labs) Poser, a software specialized in creating ...

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Tags are among the most controversial technology developments right now. Though benefits for logistics seem pretty obvious, many people are concerned with privacy issues, fearing that ubiquitous RFID-tags make their data trail even more transparent as it already is.

The European Commission has put a quite extensive questionnaire online: The RFID Revolution: Your voice on the Challenges, Opportunities and Threats. The good news is that it is open not only to companies or EU-residents, but in fact to everybody! You have to invest some time to answer all of the questions. But it offers a unique chance to voice your opinion on this matter. Also the questions themselves are very unbiased and try to shed light on all aspects of RFID implementation. For example there were questions regarding RFID use to prevent product piracy and for handgun control – two aspects that didn’t occured to me before.

The EU commision DOES ask for your input in all sincerity. Use this opportunity!

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Tags are among the most controversial technology developments right now. Though benefits for logistics seem pretty obvious, many people are concerned with privacy issues, fearing that ubiquitous RFID-tags make their data trail even more transparent as it already is. The European Commission has put a quite extensive questionnaire online: The RFID ...

In the office we are mostly working with Adobe InDesign, but we have some legacy and 3rd party files created in QuarkXpress. Recently we got some newer Quark files, so we needed to upgrade our old 4.4 version. However it turns out that we can’t upgrade, since the version we own has already been upgraded – according the Quark!
How can that be? After having a rather unhelpful sales rep the first time, upon our second call we got the information needed. It turned out the company we bought the licencse from (on eBay) had upgraded this very licencse to version 5 themselves – and sold the old package to us. According to Quark, this is clearly illegal. But even though Quark posesses all the registration information from that company, they want US to contact them AND refuses to upgrade our copy. Hey, are WE the ones who cheated on them?

In the office we are mostly working with Adobe InDesign, but we have some legacy and 3rd party files created in QuarkXpress. Recently we got some newer Quark files, so we needed to upgrade our old 4.4 version. However it turns out that we can't upgrade, since the version we own has already been ...

We had a public holiday yesterday so I did some cleanup at home. It turned out that I had two identical CD’s teaching “Progressive Muscular Relaxation” and a beta CD of the new Microsoft Office which was in a magazine a few days ago. I took them both to work and put them on the table in our kitchenette – that’s the place were surplus stuff, flyers etc. are placed for anybody to take with them.

As of this lunchbreak, the health-CD has found a new home already. The Office-Beta CD lies untouched…

Update June 21: … and lies untouched…
Update June 22: Yeah! I just returned from my lunchbreak only to see that one of my colleagues from Sales took the CD…

We had a public holiday yesterday so I did some cleanup at home. It turned out that I had two identical CD's teaching "Progressive Muscular Relaxation" and a beta CD of the new Microsoft Office which was in a magazine a few days ago. I took them both to work and put them on ...

I have the advantage that I can ride to work by bicycle. When I first came to this town almost two decades ago, it took me only a week to buy myself a helmet, since the traffic seemed pretty suicidal to me. Over the years I had several helmets and learned a few lessons (never again a black helmet since it cooks your brain, and never again one without a shielding net to prevent little buggers from stinging your scalp). The other day, I had to go buy a new helmet since the ribbons on the old one broke free. After I made the payment the shop owner handed me a little sticker to put my address and other personal data in. I looked puzzled until he said that this sticker is to go inside the helmet so in case of an accident I can receive quick help and proper treatment in case of a transfusion. Click on the image above to see a closeup of the sticker. This makes perfect sense to me, so my advice to anyone using a helmet is to paste a similar sticker inside. And to the ones not using a bicycle helmet: please reconsider! It’s cheap (I payed about 50 €), they are lightweight nowadays, and it adds a significant saftey zone for your head.

I have the advantage that I can ride to work by bicycle. When I first came to this town almost two decades ago, it took me only a week to buy myself a helmet, since the traffic seemed pretty suicidal to me. Over the years I had several helmets and learned a few lessons ...