Not feeling very chatty right now. Here are some videos:
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Prayer Points - April 2009
Recently sent to the email list for our prayer supporters:
Dear Supporters,
Sorry that this month's prayer points are a little late. Thankyou for continuing to support us in prayer. As always, more news can be found at http://will-briggs.blogspot.com
Prayer points for this week.
1) Please continue to pray for the local community, particularly the local school communities as the two primary schools in Somerset begin the process of amalgamation. (More about this here: http://will-briggs.blogspot.com/2009/04/somerset-schools.html ) Please pray for the school community to be blessed, it is a real blessing to have use of the facilities there.
2) Please pray for the contacts we are making with the local neighbourhood, particularly children as we meet at the local school and are "noticed." Please pray for those who have shown a desire to attend and that they and their parents would become part of our community.
3) Please pray for us as we finalise a plan for (re)instituting small "community" groups. Pray that we would identify the key leaders and release a good foundation of mutual support, shared mission, and pastoral care at the heart of our community.
4) Please continue to pray for those who are participating in the "Search for Life" program, that there would depth of learning, sharing and engagement with the substance of following Christ.
5) Please pray for renewed evangelistic zeal and that we would have the encouragement of new Christians in our midst.
Finally, please pray for Gill and I and the children as we prepare for and take a month of leave beginning at the end of May. Pray for arrangements to come together and for a time of rest and rejuvenation. Please also pray for the rest of the leadership team who will be ministering during this time.
Blessings,
Will.
Dear Supporters,
Sorry that this month's prayer points are a little late. Thankyou for continuing to support us in prayer. As always, more news can be found at http://will-briggs.blogspot.
Prayer points for this week.
1) Please continue to pray for the local community, particularly the local school communities as the two primary schools in Somerset begin the process of amalgamation. (More about this here: http://will-briggs.blogspot.
2) Please pray for the contacts we are making with the local neighbourhood, particularly children as we meet at the local school and are "noticed." Please pray for those who have shown a desire to attend and that they and their parents would become part of our community.
3) Please pray for us as we finalise a plan for (re)instituting small "community" groups. Pray that we would identify the key leaders and release a good foundation of mutual support, shared mission, and pastoral care at the heart of our community.
4) Please continue to pray for those who are participating in the "Search for Life" program, that there would depth of learning, sharing and engagement with the substance of following Christ.
5) Please pray for renewed evangelistic zeal and that we would have the encouragement of new Christians in our midst.
Finally, please pray for Gill and I and the children as we prepare for and take a month of leave beginning at the end of May. Pray for arrangements to come together and for a time of rest and rejuvenation. Please also pray for the rest of the leadership team who will be ministering during this time.
Blessings,
Will.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Somerset Schools
As those who follow our prayer news will know the local community here in Somerset is facing a significant opportunity wrapped up in the amalgamation of the two local primary schools.
For years there has been what has been called a "thin red line" arbitrarily drawn along a street in Somerset which demarcated which primary school a child would go to. Despite the fact that the two schools are only 800 metres apart this division has also impacted relationships and attitudes in this small community.
With government incentives and some visionary leadership the decision has been made to amalgamate the schools and invest more than $6 million dollars in new school facilities at what is now the location of West Somerset Primary School (which just happens to be where we are currently meeting as a church).
A media release from the state government gives some insight:
For years there has been what has been called a "thin red line" arbitrarily drawn along a street in Somerset which demarcated which primary school a child would go to. Despite the fact that the two schools are only 800 metres apart this division has also impacted relationships and attitudes in this small community.
With government incentives and some visionary leadership the decision has been made to amalgamate the schools and invest more than $6 million dollars in new school facilities at what is now the location of West Somerset Primary School (which just happens to be where we are currently meeting as a church).
A media release from the state government gives some insight:
Mr Bartlett also acknowledged the hard work of the Somerset and West Somerset school communities, which began 18 months ago.As a new school community is formed and people struggle with the changes, please be praying for Connections as we seek to be people of God in the midst of it all. It is a significant opportunity for the local community in many respects and much good can come of it.
“In many ways the Somerset and West Somerset school communities are trail blazers. Community and school leaders realized the impact of the changing demographics in their community, and both school associations had the foresight to work collaboratively with their school communities,” he said.
“The result of that hard work will result in a $6 million investment to refurbish and modernize the West Somerset site using both our $5.7 million School Futures Fund and the Australian Government’s $370 million Building the Education Revolution package for Tasmanian schools.”
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Simulated Depth
Recently we've been looking into the various ways to simulate depth in a 3D environment, with the obvious ways being Anaglyph and Lenticular glasses. But one of the ways that strck us as interesting was taking two viewing angles and rapidly swapping between them.
We're not sure this is viable to implement but it's definitely worth another look if we were to lower the difference between the two viewing angles and drastically increase the speed. Doing this just might create a simulated depth with no special glasses needed.
More on this as we move forward.
We're not sure this is viable to implement but it's definitely worth another look if we were to lower the difference between the two viewing angles and drastically increase the speed. Doing this just might create a simulated depth with no special glasses needed.
More on this as we move forward.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
IE Inspired Rage
After a bit of a holiday rampage against Internet Explorer, we feel we've gotten the anger out of our systems.
Now, Internet Explorer 7 and earlier will see a link at the bottom of the page with the option to get Internet Explorer 8. In all seriousness, if you are still using IE 7 and earlier, you really should do yourself a favor and at the very least grab a copy of Internet Explorer 8.
While not our first choice here at Andromeda3D (being which would be Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, and pretty much anything except Internet Explorer) we would at least like you to stay up to date, not to mention there is marginally less wrong with IE8 versus IE7 and lower.
We're just saying...
In Other News
Fixed most of the errors with IE browsers and our website, with the exception of the curved corners on the text box. If you are using IE7 or lower, you're just going to have to deal without the fancy corners.
There is still more to come with this design so stay tuned as we continue to blow things up and put them back together again for your amusement.
Happy Holiday (Easter) if you're celebrating,
- The Management
Now, Internet Explorer 7 and earlier will see a link at the bottom of the page with the option to get Internet Explorer 8. In all seriousness, if you are still using IE 7 and earlier, you really should do yourself a favor and at the very least grab a copy of Internet Explorer 8.
While not our first choice here at Andromeda3D (being which would be Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, and pretty much anything except Internet Explorer) we would at least like you to stay up to date, not to mention there is marginally less wrong with IE8 versus IE7 and lower.
We're just saying...
In Other News
Fixed most of the errors with IE browsers and our website, with the exception of the curved corners on the text box. If you are using IE7 or lower, you're just going to have to deal without the fancy corners.
There is still more to come with this design so stay tuned as we continue to blow things up and put them back together again for your amusement.
Happy Holiday (Easter) if you're celebrating,
- The Management
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Down With IE
If you're using Internet Explorer for viewing our site, you'll probably notice it redirects to a firefox website and the option to switch.
We know there is a large amount of people who use Internet Explorer, but we also understand that it's not because of choice but because it came preinstalled on your computer. With that in mind, we have to tell you that over the years, designing websites that work across all browsers and then having to literally implement every known hack just to get it to look the same for Internet Explorer is very time consuming and frustrating.
We're probably sacrificing a lot of traffic by doing this, but it's something we feel needs to be done. For the sake of the Internet, and web designer sanity, please choose a browser that is standards compliant. It doesn't have to be Firefox... it could be Opera or even Google Chrome.
Whatever your choice, please just take some time to check them out and unchain yourself from Internet Explorer.
If Internet Explorer one day decides to be standards compliant and join the rest of the world in this digital age, we will gladly support it ourselves. But until then, we simply don't have time to continue pandering to a broken browser, and as an intelligent person neither should you.
Sincerely
- The Management
We know there is a large amount of people who use Internet Explorer, but we also understand that it's not because of choice but because it came preinstalled on your computer. With that in mind, we have to tell you that over the years, designing websites that work across all browsers and then having to literally implement every known hack just to get it to look the same for Internet Explorer is very time consuming and frustrating.
We're probably sacrificing a lot of traffic by doing this, but it's something we feel needs to be done. For the sake of the Internet, and web designer sanity, please choose a browser that is standards compliant. It doesn't have to be Firefox... it could be Opera or even Google Chrome.
Whatever your choice, please just take some time to check them out and unchain yourself from Internet Explorer.
If Internet Explorer one day decides to be standards compliant and join the rest of the world in this digital age, we will gladly support it ourselves. But until then, we simply don't have time to continue pandering to a broken browser, and as an intelligent person neither should you.
Sincerely
- The Management
NAI: Not Another Interface
Something which has been on our minds as of late is what seems to be a never ending barrage of cookie cutter interface designs online. It doesn't matter if the website is about science fiction or flash tutorials, they all have the basic layout of navigation bar and layout resembling a newspaper page.
I've personally seen some really interesting interface designs for websites, but they seem to lack intuitiveness or go deeper into the paradigm. To this end, we've redesigned the Andromeda3D website as a work in progress as we check out some interesting ideas that we've been looking over.
If you haven't noticed, we started with the idea of the Cooliris wall as a gallery, and then tried out the Zoomable user interface as a secondary. Unfortunately, the zoomable user interface did not carry over the original tags we had for the cooliris gallery and had to be scrapped.
This in turn was brought to our already knowing attention by a number of persons posting anonymously in our shoutbox and a couple of emails. To put things straight, we never said those technologies were ours and in point of fact, each image from that Flickr gallery is properly tagged with copyright descriptions and links. The zoomable user interface we were trying out did not carry the information over like the cooliris gallery did, and we were looking into alternatives at the time in order to rectify this.
We would like to take a moment to courteously thank the anonymous people who posted in our shoutbox accusing us of things which were both untrue and easily rectified through a simple email or actually following the Flickr links on the items to see they are properly tagged.
Anonymous people, pat yourselves on the back. You deserve it. As a result of your efforts, we've launched a redesign which was nowhere near complete, has not been tested, and omits any and all information about this project sans a small blurb on the main page.
The Andromeda3D project is a private project to discuss the merits of different technologies avaliable today, and also define which advances should be brought together under a single system for the benefit of the Metaverse as a whole. Much of our discussions revolve around the latest cutting edge advancements and how (if possible) to incorporate it in a real time fashion to benefit the overall virtual environment.
Obviously there is no single technology which will do this, and there are a plethora of computer graphics advances in the industry to benefit from. In this light, you now understand what the flickr gallery is about and what we are discussing. It is all fine and good to talk about the advances in computer graphics and new technologies, but a lot of what we are seeing in the industry is a half hearted collaborative toward a unified and better system.
To this end, the discussions vary in our beta team from reviewing such astounding advances in grass and tree lighting (Kevin Boulanger) to Ambient Occlusion in real time (pioneered by Crytek).
We also are looking over such middleware as Allegorithmic Substance Air which enables real time streaming of procedural texture data in miniscule amounts of filesize. Also in discussion is the Silverlining procedural volumetric clouds and atmosphere middleware to enable highly realistic and detailed clouds.
No single entity is going to be responsible for a next generation Metaverse system, and it is going to require a solid review of everything there is in recent advancements. As a result, what started as an effort to bring our reviews and conversations to the public has ended with simply putting them back behind closed doors until we are ready to share our findings again.
One of the things which was taking us so long with redesigning the site was merely the point of topic for this blog entry. We actually have about 5 or 6 different design layouts on the table, but have yet to test them thoroughly. We like the idea of a zoomable user interface, but are not totally satisfied by the interaction metaphor. We've dabbled with making a full 3D environment as the website, but again aren't completely happy with that either.
What you see today is the temporary layout we have chosen until such time that we have decided on our actual full layout. In the meantime, all review and discussions concerning the latest technologies in computer graphics and our feelings on them will reside behind closed doors for our beta team only.
If you wish to add your input to our discussions, you will from this point forward have to sign up for the forums section to participate. We look forward to your continued misinformed blathering in an environment where you no longer are shielded by the safety of a hit and run atmosphere.
- The Management
I've personally seen some really interesting interface designs for websites, but they seem to lack intuitiveness or go deeper into the paradigm. To this end, we've redesigned the Andromeda3D website as a work in progress as we check out some interesting ideas that we've been looking over.
If you haven't noticed, we started with the idea of the Cooliris wall as a gallery, and then tried out the Zoomable user interface as a secondary. Unfortunately, the zoomable user interface did not carry over the original tags we had for the cooliris gallery and had to be scrapped.
This in turn was brought to our already knowing attention by a number of persons posting anonymously in our shoutbox and a couple of emails. To put things straight, we never said those technologies were ours and in point of fact, each image from that Flickr gallery is properly tagged with copyright descriptions and links. The zoomable user interface we were trying out did not carry the information over like the cooliris gallery did, and we were looking into alternatives at the time in order to rectify this.
We would like to take a moment to courteously thank the anonymous people who posted in our shoutbox accusing us of things which were both untrue and easily rectified through a simple email or actually following the Flickr links on the items to see they are properly tagged.
Anonymous people, pat yourselves on the back. You deserve it. As a result of your efforts, we've launched a redesign which was nowhere near complete, has not been tested, and omits any and all information about this project sans a small blurb on the main page.
The Andromeda3D project is a private project to discuss the merits of different technologies avaliable today, and also define which advances should be brought together under a single system for the benefit of the Metaverse as a whole. Much of our discussions revolve around the latest cutting edge advancements and how (if possible) to incorporate it in a real time fashion to benefit the overall virtual environment.
Obviously there is no single technology which will do this, and there are a plethora of computer graphics advances in the industry to benefit from. In this light, you now understand what the flickr gallery is about and what we are discussing. It is all fine and good to talk about the advances in computer graphics and new technologies, but a lot of what we are seeing in the industry is a half hearted collaborative toward a unified and better system.
To this end, the discussions vary in our beta team from reviewing such astounding advances in grass and tree lighting (Kevin Boulanger) to Ambient Occlusion in real time (pioneered by Crytek).
We also are looking over such middleware as Allegorithmic Substance Air which enables real time streaming of procedural texture data in miniscule amounts of filesize. Also in discussion is the Silverlining procedural volumetric clouds and atmosphere middleware to enable highly realistic and detailed clouds.
No single entity is going to be responsible for a next generation Metaverse system, and it is going to require a solid review of everything there is in recent advancements. As a result, what started as an effort to bring our reviews and conversations to the public has ended with simply putting them back behind closed doors until we are ready to share our findings again.
One of the things which was taking us so long with redesigning the site was merely the point of topic for this blog entry. We actually have about 5 or 6 different design layouts on the table, but have yet to test them thoroughly. We like the idea of a zoomable user interface, but are not totally satisfied by the interaction metaphor. We've dabbled with making a full 3D environment as the website, but again aren't completely happy with that either.
What you see today is the temporary layout we have chosen until such time that we have decided on our actual full layout. In the meantime, all review and discussions concerning the latest technologies in computer graphics and our feelings on them will reside behind closed doors for our beta team only.
If you wish to add your input to our discussions, you will from this point forward have to sign up for the forums section to participate. We look forward to your continued misinformed blathering in an environment where you no longer are shielded by the safety of a hit and run atmosphere.
- The Management
Monday, April 6, 2009
The Local Global Financial Crisis
More bad news for industry in the Burnie area: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,25301849-1244,00.html
CONSTRUCTION and mining equipment manufacturer Caterpillar will cut 280 jobs from its 700-strong Tasmanian workforce by the end of the month, a federal MP says. Caterpillar's Tasmanian base is at Burnie, in the state's northwest, where the local federal member is Sid Sidebottom...This will have a direct impact on those amongst us and around us here in Somerset. We know that this is far from a unique circumstance for communities around the nation in these times. Pray for those affected and that we may respond well.
Mr Sidebottom said up to 500 more jobs could go in the area from Australian Paper's pulp mills at burnie and Wesley Vale.
A review on the viability of those two commercially troubled mill's is due in June.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
More OTOY video's
Jules Urbach talking about cloud rendering:
http://neuronspark.com/videos/rendering-in-the-cloud/
An early concept video of LivePlace from March 2007, commented by Jules Urbach. Doesn't use voxel raycasting. Shows scenes created by JJ Palomo from 3DBlasphemy, currently at Big Lazy Robot VFX, and working together with OTOY:
http://metanomics.net/otoy
http://neuronspark.com/videos/rendering-in-the-cloud/
An early concept video of LivePlace from March 2007, commented by Jules Urbach. Doesn't use voxel raycasting. Shows scenes created by JJ Palomo from 3DBlasphemy, currently at Big Lazy Robot VFX, and working together with OTOY:
http://metanomics.net/otoy
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Voxels, id tech 6, stuff
Great video of Zelex (Jon Olick) graphics engineer and researcher at id Software, showing the sparse voxel octree technology for id Tech 6:
It's the übersexy Imrod! modelled in Z-Brush by Dmitry Parkin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEpAFGplnI
There's a Siggraph presentation about SVO from Jon Olick as well
http://s08.idav.ucdavis.edu/olick-current-and-next-generation-parallelism-in-games.pdf
Gigavoxels: high quality sparse voxel octree raycasting from Cyril Crassin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HScYuRhgEJw
And an awesome blog about voxel rendering:
http://voxels.blogspot.com
It's the übersexy Imrod! modelled in Z-Brush by Dmitry Parkin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEpAFGplnI
There's a Siggraph presentation about SVO from Jon Olick as well
http://s08.idav.ucdavis.edu/olick-current-and-next-generation-parallelism-in-games.pdf
Gigavoxels: high quality sparse voxel octree raycasting from Cyril Crassin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HScYuRhgEJw
And an awesome blog about voxel rendering:
http://voxels.blogspot.com
Ruby, Ruby, Rubaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy
So, almost 10 months have passed since the first unveiling of the Ruby/OTOY/Cinema 2.0/whatever demo. AMD still hasn't released the demo. For shame.
Since my last post in October, their was a little media fart about OTOY's server side rendering around CES09 in January. They're gonna build a 1 Petaflop supercomputer, built out of ATI cards.
Recently, OTOY showed up at GDC as well. They showed a completely lifelike CG model of Ruby's head, made with LightStage. Only the upper half for now. So damn sexy...
linky for the pic: http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=6967 Skip to 50:00 and turn off the volume, cos the show host doesn't know crap about what he's talking about.
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