Obligatory end of year post

Haven't posted much this year. Mainly because I haven't really had anything to say. I've certainly mellowed since changing jobs two years ago, and I don't remember the last time I needed a good rant. Annoyances are now little things that aren't worth the bother to post - hooray.

As for the good stuff, that's mostly personal and not really something I want to share with the world.

So what has happened this year?

I started off the year in drag, in a posh frock and tiara at The Catherine Wheel's NYE party. It was "Oscars" themed, and I don't own a tux ;-)

In summer I dated a scientist, and although we had a lot in common, and had some fun times, the spark wasn't really there. We're still on each other's Facebook friends list, but we don't really have much to talk about these days.

Later in the summer, I was all brave and attended Norwich's first Pride event. Circumstances conspired to stop me staying until the parade, but I was there for the picnic in Chapelfield Gardens, and went to the Forum where there were stalls and info booths.

In the autumn I tried my hand at making jewellery, and that's going pretty well. I've sold a couple of pieces, and made some friends happy with gifts. And I have a few pieces kept back for my own use too

For Halloween I refined my goth look, and made my first non-jewellery accessories (with quite a bit of help from Mum!) - furry rave boot-covers.

And more recently I've started to date a lovely young lady. No more details on that though - everytime I've blogged about a new relationship, it's fallen apart soon after :(

Tonight is NYE all over again, and once again I will be celebrating with friends as Pan. But this year I'll let my friends do the outshining. I've got some nice faux-leather jeans, and a belted top I've been itching to wear. Understated isn't a look I've played with before (and it's not a LGBT venue) so we'll see how it goes!

Don't play with your food

While making my, now 2 year old son, his lunch.. I realised that an orange can look like pacman if you cut it right. This realisation lead to me making the above while my son looked on in amusement. He knew it was Pacman. He's been cultured in the arts of old school gaming. I made my Pacman scene using an orange, smarties, blue crayons, a tortilla painted pink with colouring, brown smarties for the eyes with white icing. Oh and a white chocolate melt. Yum. This is food for the eyes and the ears. I mean, stomach.

My computer is running rather slow lately. I've defragged (ha frag) and now to delete all the crap that's on it. GAH! Why can't there be a computer intune with my brain and runs as fast?

Away I go. My daughter is coming back from hopefully watching Alvin and the Chipmunks with her Dad. You didn't think I would be able to deal with that movie did you?

Commbank sign trap?

Saw this today while I was out shopping. That Commonwealth Bank sign was hanging quite dangerously just above the ATM. Possibly why the Security guard was there.. as if he could somehow stop the sign from hitting anyone. I wouldn't use this ATM and I don't think anyone else would either. Luckily I'm with ANZ where there were no signs ready to pound my head in if I withdraw money.

But I figured out why the sign was like that in the first place..
Oh Wile E.. don't you know that Roadrunner is with ANZ like me? Your plan is full of fail. Long live Roadrunner beep beep!

(you should know by now I never do serious blog posts)

Haven't posted in awhile

Aw crap I saved it as a gif after I added the finishing touches. I've got to stop doing that. Now it's all pixelly.. crappity crap! Ah well. You get the idea. You can't tell me you won't think of Stitch now that I've shown you.

Haven't posted in awhile because I've been doing a bit of comicy goodness over at my online comic that I started the other week. The current post is a bamf pic of my boyfriend. Ok it's photoshopped but he's a bamf in my book. Love you Craig.

I've realised that my brain to finger response is slower at night time so I better go and finish this before I type some random stuff about squirrels or sleep deprived mothers who get mistaken as zombies.

SVO path tracer WIP

Inspired by the recent flood of real-time path tracers (both commercial and non-commercial:

V-Ray RT,
mental images iray,
Nvidia Optix,
Caustic's Brazil RT,
David Bucciarelli's SmallptGPU OpenCL path tracer (http://davibu.interfree.it/opencl/smallptgpu/smallptGPU.html),
albertoven's Raydiant (albertoven.com),
mxadd CUDA path tracer (http://mxadd.org/CenterFrame.php?wherejump=projects),
javor's CUDA path tracer (http://javor.tech.officelive.com/tmp.aspx))

and the promise of infinite geometry by using voxel rendering, I decided to take the best of both worlds and write an SVO path tracer as a hobby project ;-). My goal is to make a very simple demo showing a Cornell box with a SVO voxelized Stanford Dragon in it, interactively path traced (brute force calculated unbiased indirect lighting) with CUDA (or OptiX, if it's easy enough to implement SVO raycasting). The whole scene must fit in video memory, no streaming (yet), because the path tracing algorithm would badly choke.

I also want to do a comparison between a polygon version and an SVO version of the aforementioned scene, hoping to demonstrate that path tracing voxels is much faster than path tracing polygons, due to the much simpler ray-voxel intersection calculation and automagic multiresolution benefits (see Cyril Crassin's "Beyond triangles: gigavoxels effects in videogames").

I'm still in the research phase, reading articles on (volume) path tracing and SVO (Cyril Crassin's Gigavoxels paper is extremely informative and I think you could just extend the raycasting to a path tracing approach). More to come soon.

The Ultimate Vision Statement

The following can be considered as the Ultimate Vision Statement for a business or corporate entity. The name of this fictitious corporate entity will be defined as BrainCube Inc and will attempt to utilize as many Corporate Buzzwords as I can manage prior to personally bursting into flames while my eyes melt and ears explode.

I have graciously highlighted each corporate buzzword for your amusement.

While the obvious buzzphrase is Vision Statement (and has been highlighted), the company name itself, BrainCube Inc, was chosen at random via an online Web 2.0 Name Generator which mashes together buzzwords to create new name suggestions. As a result, the name of the company is also a buzzword and shall be highlighted.

Do not attempt to adjust your screen. Bright green text is normal...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

BrainCube Inc Vision Statement for 2009-2010

Braincube Incorporated is a client-focused component of a core business portfolio whose customer driven deliverables empower emerging technologies, enabling an integrated knowledgeable mindset among our resources. Through our standards, procedures, and documentation solutions we create a world-class, win-win, results-driven repository of service offerings which ramp-up productivity and empower our team to go the extra mile to create a synergistic, information based, integrated infrastructure for mission-critical, market-based, interim leverage opportunities.

With our recent proactive realignment, BrainCube Incorporated is engaging our assets through strategic and tactical rightsizing opportunities, leading to an unprecedented 538% increase in productivity among team players as recently noted in a widely held yellow pad study. Refocusing our efforts on repeatable resource management opportunities, BrainCube Incorporated has become a premier player in the global economic ecosystem through prioritizing our approach, clearing our executive pipeline, and pushing the envelope to foster a clear and precise paradigm shift for our market.

Through trend forecasting, and the use of social media marketing campaigns, our company will bring our services offering to the next level, ensuring a demographically compelling and viral nature among fast track individuals across a global environment. Concentrating our efforts on high profile individuals in the loop, we can expect to peel back the onion and push the envelope of our demographic reach while touching base with less fortunate entities which may be out of the loop.

BrainCube Incorporated, through our value added subsidiaries and holdings, aims to offer cross-functional, initiative focused, opportunities in a world of movers and shakers through strategic hard-ball dealings and a favorable rollout.

Module 10 - Wikis and Final Reflection

Wikis are very powerful in the classroom, or more to the point - in creating a virtual classroom. They are the epitome of Web 2.0 and collaboration. I have witnessed some wonderful wikis created by some great teachers to facilitate the collaborative work of their class, communication and feedback with ease (all of the things we would like in a LMS... Editure are you taking note?).

That being said, Wetpaint have let themselves down with the advertising and new requirement to keep a class public whilst inviting in members. To this end I have been experimenting with and promoting 'Ning' www.ning.com. Another advantage of Nings is that they have a Social Network format that students understand but are far safer than Facebook by not including any of the students' private life goings on.

Overall as a reflection, this has been a wonderful course that has opened up so many possibilities in terms of professional development, flexible learning, empowering teachers and reaching out to students with contemporary learning. Well done again to Helen and Diane. Enjoy your break Helen! Watch this space as we develop more courses, taking full advantage of the flexibility of learning with technology.

Acapela

www.acapela.tv/good-old-times.html