Render Farming...

It seems that I spend a lot of time gearing up towards projects and never seeing them through to fruition (or abandoning them shortly after commencing).

I think it must be something in my psychology that's broken. The latest project is/was movingbricks.com - it's only been running for like, three days and I'm already feeling that it was a mistake to implement it.

It may be very successful later on down the track, but at the moment, I'm not feeling it.

So the newest project is I'm going to try and put together a render farm (a bunch of computers linked and working together) in order to make a 3D webcomic. As far as I can tell, the only things that I need to do in order to beat the average 3D comic is to a: use custom meshes (make my own models) b: have plenty of detail (hence the need for the render farm) and c: have better lighting. The lighting aspect isn't a drama because it seems that I have a decent eye for lighting, it's just the thousands of dollars that I'd need to spend in order to set up the render farm that are the main inhibiting factor.

Probably why most other people don't do it...

Anyway, that's on the cards for the near future, but I'm not sure if I'll actually go through with it or not. Buying hardware is somewhat expensive, and computers are obsolete almost the moment you get them home so there is very little re-sell value.

I could rent the computers instead of buying them outright (pay thousands across several years rather than several thousand upfront) but for some reason it seems like a bigger expense to me to be paying each week rather than paying once and be done with it.

It'd probably be a lot better in the long run, but I still have the mindset against it.

Maybe my brain just hates me...

movingbricks.com open for business

So my evil plans have now come to fruition.

The new site, movingbricks.com is now basically ready to go. There's just a few tweaks left to do and the forum needs some new graphics, but it's basically done.

I have no idea how successful it's going to be, but the first few weeks should be interesting. I'm curious as to just what type of crowd it will attract, but if it fills up with trolls and spammers, I'm not going to be crying about it too much.

In other news, my main site escobar.id.au has been feeling a bit neglected lately. My original goal of writing an article each Sunday has failed miserably, but I'm still busy trying to add content to it. Not sure if anyone is actually visiting it, and I haven't bothered making business cards like I had planned, but that's the way life goes.

The ol' exercise thingy has come to a grinding halt due to niggling injuries in my legs. They feel just dandy when I'm at work but when I try and do something for the exercise, boy - do they start complaining! No idea how to fix that, but having missed the last two weeks of exercise entirely seems to have sunk my battleship, as the expression goes.

In other news, a friend of mine is going over to lower Asia for a holiday, so I might pass him a few dollars and see if he can snag some of the funky bootlegged stuff that's available up there...

Super Secret - nearly finished...

So, this new project that I've been working on for the last few weeks is nearly out of Alpha and into Beta. I'll have more news and a proper url and such soon. Those of you who were part of the "Way of the Lone Road" project will be able to see a bit more about it at that site (if you still remember the url or can use google).

I've got a domain lined up, hosting (a stonkin' 5Gb hosted and 10Gb p/month) and I'm still being tight with the bandwidth. I'll be adding a third-party forum so that the forum isn't using up my bandwidth. How tight is that?

At any rate, it'll probably be set to 'launch' at the end of the week or at the start of the following week. After that, it'll be final debugging and making it look pretty and it'll be ready to start advertising.

Other than that, not much to report...

Php and MySql

Okay, so I have this "super secret" project in the works that I'm telling everybody and nobody about.

In order to get it to work, I need to use php and mysql (neither of which I know much about). So I asked around for some help and was consequently bombarded with three offers to help, maybe, later.

So with that response in mind, I started looking around at the different tutorials that are available for those two systems.

Turns out that it's not as hard as I first thought.

I reckon I could pull off this project by myself. It'd be hard, and ugly, but it could be done. So first thing next week I'll be signing up for my domain and a hosting package and I'll see how it all pans out.

Hopefully I'll have some good news to report soon.

May head east for a holiday

I'm thinking of flying over to the eastern states at the end of the year for a few weeks. There isn't anyone that I'm really wanting to catch up with, but it'd be good for a little holiday.

Not sure if I'll fly over for the YSA convention or if I'll just hang out on my own. It'll cost a small fortune, but that's what holidays are for - spending money. Or I may just sit at home on my backside and do nothing. I'm lazy like that.

Not much is going on around here. The movie stuff seems to have all died down, the local bands that I like aren't playing and all I do is go to work, come home, log on for a few hours then repeat again the next day.

Damn. I just realized I'm in a rut...

Back to just three cars...

Well, it was a bit of a hassle, but Mum's old car that was damaged in her accident has finally been sold off.

I didn't get a whole lot of cash, but the person that bought it seems to have been happy with it. It's kind of odd, but I never even met the person who bought it. They called me, agreed on a price and then sent a tow-truck around to collect the vehicle. First time that's happened to me.

Oh well, now we have more room in the backyard to ... um ... put another car? No, I don't want to be buying more cars, I already bought three this year!

Still have slightly sore knees, which is a real annoyance. But I'll take it easy over the weekend and then go for a run again on Monday. I think I'll have to eat more protein to help my body recover.

And now - off to eat breakfast!

Let's hear it for those lost pages!

Since I haven't had the time to do the updates that I've wanted to on my site, i figured I'd do at least something. So I spent a bit of time messing around and installed a new 404 page on my site. You can see it here:

http://escobar.id.au/404

And the villagers rejoiced.

Okay, so it's not exactly original or particularly funny. But it's an update! it still counts!

I'm really itching to create a new site, new comic or new something, but I just don't have the creativity to do something interesting or the motivation to keep doing it once I start it.

*sigh*

Someday I'll be famous. Just like someday I'll be rich and someday I'll meet a nice girl who likes me.

Bah, humbug.

Dammit!

Well, the old exercise regime has come to grinding halt. Again.

I've gone and stuffed up my left knee at some stage and now I can't walk properly, let alone run. This is really going to crimp my style... The plan was to get buff (or at least less flabby) by the end of the year but considering that it's October now and I haven't made any progress, things aren't looking good.

In other news, the weeds were finally mowed. They were waist high all around and I hadn't been able to cut them because we have an electric mower and it's been raining. Or more accurately: it's been raining on the days that I was going to mow.

In the end I just hired a guy to come over and do it while I was at work. It cost $90 but at least it's done. Maybe if I do it more frequently it won't be so bad next time...