Category: Creative

LondonFur meet June 26th, and photo-shoot

A little talk about todays LondonFur meet, and the joy of photographing people who enjoy being photographed.

A lovely, if hot, day out with the furries in London again. Made a pleasant number of sales, saw Reaperfox there (her first attendance ever), Jackal back from holiday, some lovely new newbies, and had a wonderful time doing the arranged photo-shoot with Halo Huskybutt. At my request, she modelled the three new ladies-fit UKFur T-shirts, some of which will make it to the upcoming web-shop as model shots to show them in use (in addition to the item-only images).
I also managed to get Lupus Londonwolf to do some impromptu modelling of the unisex shirts, so that’s all the current bases covered!

It’s so interesting photographing people intently (rather than casually). I’ve said before I’m finding it rather like making instant art; you take lots and lots of shots, and pick only the best of them. You try lots of subtle variations. It’s so dynamic. But it’s also interesting to see what poses and expressions people fall into comfortably under only general directions, or how they move and engage with the camera.

I’ll freely admit that I appreciate images of ladies more than I do of men, so I’ll say up front that I got good pictures of both Halo and Lupus. But looking at the images of Halo as I did the first pass on them to sift the better ones, I felt genuinely amazed at how wonderful she looked in them, and that I’d been able to capture those images. I’m sure I have a long way to go and a lot to learn still, but it’s so intensely enjoyable to take photos like this. And particularly so when the model is so enthusiastic and engaging with the process.
My heart really did race looking over the pictures; there’s already the creative excitement of the process of doing it, but ending up with a variety of images of a beautiful woman is a wonderful bonus. I don’t mean that to sound sexual, but I suppose it is sensual. And with sensuality such a component of so many other forms of art, I shouldn’t feel bad about admitting it (maybe only about feeling bad about feeling bad).

I hope I can find a way to get the same dynamic creative excitement back with my drawing abilities as well. I think more days like today will certainly help. And I think it goes without saying that I would love to have another photo-session with Halo some time soon. (an idle thought is to play with the concept of costume and wearer, as she’s an enthusiastic ‘suiter. The dividing line between in and out of costume seems seldom touched upon.)

I’ll get the shoot photos up once I’ve gotten them down to the real cream of the crop. With help from the UKFur forums tech-section, the issue with uploading the full sized images from my camera has been identified. While I probably won’t upload many, so as to keep the full-size originals private, it would be good to have the option to upload the full sized images immediately or to show off the highest level of detail at times. Whether I can or not will depend on if I can have my PHP memory allowance raised by a few more megabytes.
But until then the freeware batch-resizer “Fotosizer” seems to be working fine shrinking them down to a compatible 60% of the originals.

The few non-shoot images from todays meet can be found in the gallery here: http://www.sci-fi-fox.com/?page_id=50&file=Events/LondonFurs/26th%20June%202010/

And as a small unrelated footnote; The “cargo pram” was pushed to its limit today on stock-duty I think. The wheels were starting to bow rather ominously, and it was so top-heavy laden with T-shirts it was bordering on uncontrollable at times. But a new one is in the works that’ll be able to hold more and in much more convenient sub-divisions. I’m sure it’s creation will be worth at least one blog entry.

HEV Suit ad-on idea: HUD displays

Mulling over a future HEV suit option.

Just an idle thought really, but perhaps it could be fun to install a couple of OLED display in the Mk5’s neck recess. Placed so I could glance down a them and see the health, suit power and ammo read-outs.

It would seem the Farnell catalogue stocks some yellow ones of the right sort of size (256 x 64 Pixels, 71.104mm x 19.264mm). Not cheap at £40 each, but it’s a nice thought for the future. The resolution looks like it’d be enough to handle the status displays on the left, and primary and secondary ammo levels on the right.

Canon?

In HL1, the HEV Mk4 suits do indeed have a helmet where you can presume the HUD displays would be located. You know this from seeing dead scientists wearing the full suit with the (ugly) helmet.

In HL2 though you never see the helmet. Yet Dr Freeman is apparently still receiving head protection from the suit (at very least, radiation doesn’t aim). My personal excuse for this is some sort of armoured hood that pops up when needed. Maybe that’s what’s behind the hatch on his back. But in any case, you’d need to know suit status with helmet on or off, so makes sense to stick if in the neck hole.

See? It makes perfect sense!

For really stretching things, assume the suit auto-detects gun and ammo status through strain-sensors in the limbs, and a database of the precise weights of different manufactured weapons and their ammunition. At precise enough measurement, it’d just be a matter of looking up what combination of weapon and ammo matched the weight of the object being held. Only certain ammo would combine with certain weapons, so the table of matching weights would be very limited.

In reality though, it would probably need to be fired a few times to be increasingly sure (assuming each shock is loss of one item of ammo, the weight afterwards would confirm individual ammo weight).

Xeno-Archaeology: Entry XA-A5#4563BBA, “Engraved Moon”

Just a little random universe building.

In the Epsilon sector is an A5 graded relic (little further analysis possible), the Engraved Moon.

A fairly unremarkable natural low-gravity satellite, the moon is tidally locked with it’s volcanic partner planet. It shows signs of some exploration, but little evidence remains. The vast proportion of the relic is in it’s planet-ward face, almost the entirety of which is covered with a massive laser-engraved image. The image itself is hard to decipher, but seems to show two unknown life forms interacting, with a background of non-sentient flora. It has been compared to the late Baroque style of Earth.

The significance of the image is unknown. For one matter, it is unfinished; the raster-rendering halting in the south-west corner with some small smearing that suggests violent interruption of the process. This is further supported by evidence of orbital gun platforms around the nearby planet, in the form of radio-actives and vaporised superconductors in defuse orbits of the Lagrange points.

There is also damage to the image from asteroidal impacts, determined through standard isotope scans to have originated from the cataclysmic impact of a larger asteroid with the primary planet some 700,000 years ago.

The core of the most popular theories is that the planet previously held a circa Class-0.7 civilisation that was in conflict with other members of it’s own race, which necessitated the construction of orbital weapons platforms. These platforms were re-purposed to try to deflect or destroy a ELE-grade asteroid, but were incapable of successfully doing so. The theory goes that realising there was no hope, one of the platforms was turned toward their moon to leave a lasting marker of the races existence by raster-engraving an image on it’s surface.

If this was indeed the case, it was a success as the impact sufficiently heated the planets crust as to initiate a new perpetual volcanic state. The entire surface is estimated to now fully renew itself every 4 standard years. No trace of former life on the surface has ever been found, nor is ever likely to be.

While of no remaining archaeological interest, the system does see infrequent tourist traffic. An extension of the theory has entered popular myth, embellishing it as a monument not to the civilisation, but as a final romantic act of a couple working on one of the gun platforms. The most consistent version sees the couple realising that death is at hand, and over-riding the useless firing attempts of the platform to immortalise themselves together, often dying in each-others “arms” as depicted in the image, as debris wipes out the platform.

This is of course massive assumption. The two figures could equally be locked in a final death-struggle; no other record of the race, it’s cultures or biology remains. But that it might be true is often more than enough for the die-hard romantics who take the long cruise out to see the Engraved Moon.

New T-shirts order

Got what’s likely to be the final quote in from Screens for the next shirt order. It’s been a long time coming, going through various options and revisions.
A £500 order will get all the shirts up to stock (previously tried to keep a stock of 4 of each), increase the held stock on some to 5, and widen the range to include some ladies-fit shirts.

The ladies fit will be standard black, light-pink and a blue one with the “union” variant on. There didn’t seem to be much interest in other colour options. The blue will probably sell for £13.50-£14 unless a cheaper shirt option comes up. The other ladies shirts will probably be about £12. The non-unisex base shirts cost more.

Onward and upward though! The range widens! And I had a dream about the proposed Ferret shirt last night which had the colours perfect on it! So thank-you subconscious!

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Buster: Chapter 1 in essense

From page one, the book is memory filled. I’m glad to have it because there’s no other way I could remember the details.
Published 1976, Buster the robot is described as “one of the most unusual machines possible in the context of modern technology” and that he “Represents the highest-order machine that technology can produce today”. And I believe it.

It’s a strong contrast to the book itself, as the glue holding the pages in is cracking and the first 14 of them are threatening to come away entirely.

Buster is set out in a three-stage project (accordingly titled Buster I, II and III), in which the same machine is further added to and modified, increasing it’s abilities.

The Buster I phase warns that it will be the most expensive, dealing mostly with converting/building the driveframe, power supply, control systems and so on. Basically building Buster up as a tethered remote control vehicle, going up through the stages of; going from brute-force power switching to logic-level control, adding speed variation control, self-centring steering, and finally converting the controls over to binary.

The Buster II stage starts working on the autonomic reflex system and “brain”.
I’m rather excited that it talks of them separately, indicating lifelike concious and autonomic motivators.
The section also adds sensors and reflexes, as well as low-battery self-monitoring and an alarm to alert the owner of this, which is also used if Buster gets stuck somewhere.
After this comes the cutting of the umbilical controls, and making some form of audio control system (though it mentions the transmission format being compatible with then-current regs for data links between telephones and CB radio systems. This seems rather esoteric now! I had no idea CB radios were often hooked up to telephones.).

Buster III starts by adding the impressive-sounding “tracking function” which ties in with giving him goal-seeking abilities. This then ties in with the hunger alarm, and allowing Buster to seek out his charging station to plug himself in.
I seem to recall from the first time I read the book that this had some sort of contacts on sprung arms. Guess we’ll see when we get there.

Yes, I’m not re-reading the book up front, I’m taking it as it comes (well, chapter by chapter).

By this point Buster should be able to run around by himself, bumping into things, hurtling into empty spaces, and charging himself up when needed.
Beyond this point it talks of the icing on the cake; optional extras and so on. Things like line-following and other variations.

There’s also mention of a theoretical Buster IV, adding microprocessor control on top of the reflexes and goal-seeking. Perhaps these would be analogous to reflexes, instincts and concious learning?

The staged construction and review layout of the book sounds perfectly manageable.

And ultimately it points out that you need to choose some of the design choices at each stage yourself. It’s a recipe, not a design.

It also notes that “despiking” capacitors are omitted on all schematics. Will have to remember that.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]