Well its now 2025, my how time has moved on..

 Well I'm in a good place. 

 I think personally I'm going through a kind of personal artistic or creative renaissance. Sadly some electrical malfunction killed my 22 inch Huion display tablet (insurance said I didn't have cover for that so they declined my claim - funny that and how they weasel on things most needed), but I've replaced it with an XP Pen 12 inch display tablet. I I've opted for smaller and cheaper to replace (and also more transportable).

The old 22 inch still displays an image but I need the pen functionality so its going to another home. I've endeavoured to be more proactive in promoting myself and so this year I'm starting with my writing and following with other art, photography and music.

 

Its been 7 years...

Well, its been 7 years...

I've moved away and out of the tiny room I rented until 2014, and now I'm in a place I don't own but its mine. I've also gotten married, to the most wonderful woman. I've been in a job since september 2014, my longest job yet.

My list of blessings is huge. Just goes to show that a lot can happen in seven years. I'm trimming down the blogs I have (probably 4 at least to economise and be more focussed).

I got an i7 pc with two gigabyte GTX970's in 2015 (a 4th generation), and recently I just sold one GTX 970 as I got another i7 (12th generation) and upgraded my GPU to a RTX 2060.

In the last 2 years I got a 22 inch tablet screen which has empowered me in the most awesome ways, and now I'm finding my cartoonist roots so I'm looking to have a cartoon blog and just my critical blogs.

That's all for now.

Slow but steady

It's been an interesting time since my last blog entry. Since my last entry I have finally gotten my HD video editing capable Linux PC and ADSL and an iPad, for other extraneous creative things, mostly musical though. 

So now I have 6 Canon Powershot A480's and 3 Powershot A1200's and I just love the super macro focus on those little A480 cameras. I also have CHDK installed on them (that's Canon Hack Development Kit for the uninitiated) which allows soooo many other functions beyond the camera's initial design and its scriptable and controllable via various pulse widths on the USB port. 

Now today I tweeted about having a breakthrough drilling 20mm holes cleanly, and that was on two pieces of 20mm thick aluminum bolted together for exact hole registration. This is for a motorized camera slider I've wanted to have for ages. So now I am substantially closer to that goal having milled the ends of the two blocks nearly identically the same and also having drilled two 20mm holes exactly in register in both pieces. I have two 20mm stainless steel rods fitted nicely through the drilled holes and 2 linear bearings sliding on each rod. Next to machine a little platform, and bolt a threaded bold to the base of the plate for some kind of makeshift rack that a geared motor on the platform can track on.

I have some tiny PC boards that fit into the plug end of a Nintendo Classic Controller and it is my hope to make an arduino based programmable LCD driven interface, with the classic controller for programming the interval shooting and speed of the platform movement, including pan and tilt and perhaps focus too. But this is phase one, building the hardware.

Fresh blood in the creative membranes

Its always awesome for me as a screenplay writer to find good solid scientific elements that can make a more believeable "hard sci-fi" story and today I have found two such elements to strengthen two stories, so I guess I'm throwing myself back into the screenplay writing mode.

I've used Celtx until now, and recently I've found Trelby as scriptwriting software for Linux, but very recently I've found a great free collaborative writing tool called plotbot.com and I'm very excited about that. I just hope other writer folks are not paranoid about their scripts being stolen because its a collaborative cloud solution.

Ok, scratch that off the list

Yes, I can rig a lattice modifier. Some time later and many tutorials watched it's all coming into focus.
More significantly I have a new desktop pc and ADSL so now I'm Linux enabled, and I must say I like it. No GPU yet but that will follow in time.

Right now I'm enjoying the idea of dreamy focus pulled images in HD - video shot with my DSLR. And if it weren't for the fact that my sennheiser headphones are in for repair under guarantee, I'd be familiarising myself with shooting and recording separate audio too.

My itch that remains unscratched is for an automatically motorized camera slider or dolly and it's driving me crazy. I have a nice stepper driver board nearly populated and having cheap components but one or two component absences are still there. More delays. Eish

Blend it all together

This year I made a switch to Blender 3D from Maya. Quite simply I was tired of looking for ways to make maya talk to external renderers just to get the look I wanted. Now I'm happy to say I'm glad to be learning Blender's other superb built in features too.

I was initially attracted to Cycles, Blender's unbiased renderer that is GPU enabled. Whilst I don't have a GPU enabled pc yet that is on the list for 2014. I am very excited to see the results of what I plan to shoot and matchmove, combined with what I can model and render in Blender.

My major headaches currently (as blender is known for its interface quirks), are getting materials looking the way I want, and understanding how, and becoming comfortable with all the rigging and animating tools.

Also I wonder if its possible to rig lattice modifiers with splines like a circle.
I could in 3DSMax....

A busy year - 2013

Well it seems Christmas is nearly upon us again and as regards this blog not much documented for the year.

As the year winds down I'm getting time to do a bit of spring cleaning in a number of ways.

I suppose since December last year I've achieved the following things, of which I feel very good, given my current financial ham stringing.

I got a Canon 50mm F1.4 FD lens that I have been able to do some great tilt shift photography stuff with, as well as a proper Canon 50mm F1.4 USM lens. The latter lens needs a repair folllowing a small accident that damaged the autofocus. I have also gotten 2 M42 to EOS lens adaptors and use one for a Russian Helios 44-2 lens I bought and the other for a fixed 500mm F8 hanimex lens a friend gave me. That aside I also got a 28mm F2.8 for next to nothing and a 58mm variable ND filter for the (currently damaged) 50mm USM lens. Finally in the camera department I have also got a battery grip for the Canon 550D and a magnetic screen viewfinder.

My CNC router aspirations are as yet incomplete but I have learnt much on both the electronics side (how to etch a pc board), and the chassis side and hope to complete my cnc in 2014.

This year also marked a transition from Maya to Blender 3D for me and I am enthralled with the possibilities that Blender offers now particularly in GPU rendering.

I've come to really love GIMP as a photo editor and slowly forage ahead in my android development learning.

That's all I can think of right now, but one thing is for sure. More posts will follow more regularly

time to MOVI it

Every now and again something comes along that changes, or seems to threaten to change the face of a particular field of work. This year at NAB the MOVI handheld gyro based camera stabiliser was such an item. It took me a little while to comprehend how it actually works but now, as usual, my improvising brain has had a look at it, and decided it a worthy pursuit to try realise for my own aspirations.

Where to start I asked myself. Then I remembered I had motors I removed form a bunch of old Compaq 80/20 tape drives. So right now I'm trying to figure out how those coils are wired and if they'll be suitable for my purposes.

Cheap Cheat

I've hacked apart an old 50mm F1.4 Canon FD lens. It works well so far its just I can't use it for video like I want until I have made a DIY variable ND filter which I learnt how to do yesterday on youtube. So now the. big wait is for payday yet again... Sigh.

I should clone myself

I sometimes wish I could clone myself but with a singular shared consciousness, because, I need more of me's doing things to realise my ideas. At least I got my skater dolly built and bought a helios 44-2 lens for cheap. Now to make a cinerails snaptrack copy....

I am so glad for small mercies and having a little work again is one such example. December 30th last year I finally acquired another Canon 550D. But that's now two models behind you say. Surely you'd want to have a more current model? Not really, I just fundamentally wanted the capacity to make my own films in HD and have control over the exposure and focus and all the creative elements. Well now finally I have that and i'm excited for the potential it gives me. Hopefully this weekend coming I can get a whole lot of second hand lenses cheaply, if things go well, and then the current interest I have in telling a story can go forward.

once again

So here's a post again, its been quite a while since my last. Its not that I didn't want but I effectively had only my blackberry to blog from, and that needed setting up again. I have such a lot that I want to update but I guess most pertinent is on the content creation side. I got a full HD capable webcam for an absolute steal second and that brings with it the potential for usage in Monkeyjam, (http://monkeyjam.org/) because the webcam, has a WDM driver. So that means some Stopmotion animation aspirations can be fulfilled.

It also means I can use high res 3D scanning (www.david-laserscanner.com/)

Now with this in mind if I can lay my hands on a kinect and successfully cannibalise it to be used with Jasper Brekel's software I have motion capture for full body and face, albeit seperately for now. And all that means background character creations for film ideas. I find myself pining for a camera capable of full manual control whilst shooting and the pieces are currently just not falling into place courtesy of car insurance claims that are sucking up my money...

But hope springs eternal...

Gizmos gizmos

Its been a while since I updated this blog but in the last few months I've dived into making a panoramic camera head and photo stitching ad also investigating building a cnc router.

Currently I have an arduino which I fiddle with periodically and I now have 4 easydriver stepper motor driver boards and 4 stepper motors. Sadly the easy drivers don't handle enough current for the steppers I have. So my cnc router, although much closer eludes me still.

So I now have a circuit to build such a stepper driver but I have yet to finance making the pc boards.

Eish, I miss having a job. Its so difficult funding hobbies without one.
Campbell Rae
079 218 4360

Gears and gear

It seems I'm finally getting somewhere in my metal work. Some time back I was able to get a Canon powershot A495 cheaply and I got CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) for it.

Now I've decided to make a geared meter of track for interesting timelapse photography using this camera and CHDK. It has yet to be geared but right now the motion is smooth, and I feel good about that.

More to follow.

Them changes

I have a lot to report currently but actually it becomes a prioritisation thing.

I'm pining to finance a Xbox kinect camera for using with Brekel Kinect and Motionbuilder. Now first an explanation on what that is.

Brekel Kinect is a nifty piece of software which I have downloaded and installed on my laptop. It allows the Xbox Kinect camera to capture the motions of your limbs to a armature/skeleton in Motionbuilder. So now one can produce realistic motion for animation right in one's home.

I have several projects that I have been pursueing now for many years to affect the same result.

Having just finished studying to become a programmer I can now develop some of these tools, or at least their software parts to realise what I've wanted for so many years.

So now again like a junkie I find myself thinking of what I can sell to finance this need, that is until I get a job.
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Steps forward again

Its wonderful to be able to come up with an economical solutions that empower me to do new things.

By this I'm referring to the new portable DVD player I have that has a video input. With this new addition and a little cable I have made with a friends help, in one fell swoop regained functional use of my digital camera (now viewing what I shoot on the DVD players screen) and a monitoring solution for my steadicam.

So now with completion of the steadicam on the cards again, new creative things can happen.
Exciting times ahead.
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Big Strides forward

In a singulary serendipituous moment I was blessed with a great laptop computer from a friend. It even has the Mac OS on it.

Now with this advance I'm feeling so much more empowered to create.
The MacOS installation needs redoing though but I'm up for that challenge.

Hopefully with a little trading I'll be able to soon buy a suitable HD shooting camera. Then armed with me trusty hackbook and Shake 4.1
and camera I can begin to finally start doing some serious work.

Its going to be great fun and I can't wait. Oy... So much to do.
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Built and working

I've had a bit of a break from updating the blog, but where the beginnings of my new sanding gear was pictured last, I now have a two very handy and completed machines.

I itch to finish the steadicam but making the remaining 8 bearing housings proves tricky since its getting darker faster now with winter approaching. That makes decent work on the lathe (and I'm no fitter and turner) more difficult. But I may cheat And throw some money at getting 16 of the plates made. It all depends on the budget.

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Finally...

A chance to do some non study related creative work. I've sooo missed puttering around in my workshop and I'm thinking I'm glad studies are coming to an end because I'd like to revert my attention to some overdue projects.

Specifically completing my steadicam and then hopefully when I'm employed I can follow up on my DSLR photography and HD film ideas. I can hardly wait to get another nintendo DS for using as a camera controller.

Then I also can finally weld up a stand for my big chromed steel HDRI ball (high dynamic range imaging). Using the DS to do multiple exposure of the reflections in the ball.

I recently got some very nice welding gloves from a friend and now I'm really enjoying the creativity in the workshop.

Pictured is the beginning of a big belt sander I'm hoping to finish soon to greatly ease things like shaping guitar necks and smoothing metal edges.
Just a other tweaked tool realised from a motor I've harvested somewhere.

The future looks bright and oh so much fun is ahead. I can hardly wait.
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First half

The steadicam project has progress. Constant design changes nearly but solutions are being found.

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