Hiya folks! Happy Christmas and Merry New Year to all of you! (and all that Jazz)

I wanted to share with you all that besides the miracle of getting that Christmas present deviation done in time, Christmas Eve it snowed - and we got anywhere from 2-4 in. up here (6 in drifts) that gave me an the boys across the street something to do yesterday. We attempted to do all the normal snow stuff, like sledding, having a snowball war, and building a family of stubby snowpeeps (still a WIP, lol). And w/e we got too cold we'd come in for cocoa and playtime on the wii.

Dad managed to smoke a turkey (something we didn't do for thanksgiving, like we normally used to do at Dumont) in the freezing weather outside, and I got the thing(s) i wanted for Christmas, plus another very awesome present. :>

Mommy got the quilt she wanted,
Dad got a telescoping ice scraper for his truck (mom saw him slip a little trying to scrape it on monday, so she picked that up for him),
and I got an mp3 player and a new set of headphones, which is what was hoping for. plus, they found a THUNDERBIRD KITE somewhere! 8D
I can't fly it at home (we have a field that would work fairly nicely, but there are powerlines), so hopefully we'll be able to set some time aside in the future on a breezy day to fly it. :> Otherwise I may just hang it in my room >.> no problem displaying it with the other TF/Thunderbird stuff.... (I shall hang him upside down like upender )

Anyway, onto the tale that gave this journal it's name!
I was a little sad I had to go to work today, until I realized there was a bunch of ice still left on our street. I told that Cam would be lucky to make it out of the garage (like last year), but he made it out pretty well. Unfortunately, the other large patches of ice were making Cam slide at 10 mph (he never even left first gear), so I figured if we were having trouble getting off our street we probably wouldn't make it to work; and my parents agreed. so i called work, and now im stuck at home with a car that won't drive on ice to save it's life! (I'm not taking Grill out; I hate his loose steering wheel, not to mention his terrible fuel economy).

So now I'm happy that I get to stay at home. I'm sore from playing outside so much yesterday, and still beat from not really getting a break anytime before then, but now I can rest in peace.

I hope you guys are getting some rest too. God bless.

Well, I don't know how many of any of you Transfans know about this, but another Transformers game is slated for release in the future, non-movieverse.

It's called "War for Cybertron" and looks like it may be in its own continuity, at least design-wise. No clue exactly what genre it'll be yet - really, the only thing I've to go off of is the website and teaser, which just recently got off of a counter for me: transformersgame.com (they always keep this site updated with the latest TF game apparently, since the individual games simply get booted out of this webspace ). Anyway...head on over there to see the teaser and bits and pieces of other video (unreleased as of yet, I suppose).

I'm not big on fighting games so I'm sort of hoping it's not fighting (genre, folks), but I like the mission-based action-adventure TF games we've had in the past. I could stand the fighting genre if they mixed it in with some adventure/free-roaming stuff (come on, what Transfan doesn't wanna run around Cybertron!). Needless to say though, I'll probably purchase it if I can....After all, when I get out into the world, especially if I go into Hasbro's arms, I'm going to have to know what they've done so I can not repeat it, and to improve on it. (ha ha, listen to a fan's rationale)

Well, yep, there ya' go.

Also, I thought I recognized some of the Cybertronian letters when the countdown was still up (it was at 64 yesterday in what, for Americans, would be the "days" position on a count-down, so I as surprised to find the site up for me today...), so I went ahead and compared it to some of the other continuities (mostly gleaned from Beast Wars, I believe) Autobot and Decepticon alphabets. It turned out "9" on the site looked almost identical to "q" in the Ancient Autobot type, but everything else didn't realy come close. It's interesting that they managed to get the same look for these new letters though, and I'm wondering if anyone's cracked the writing on the site yet.

Last note is that the "tens" position of the seconds on the counter only counted from 7 down to two, before restarting, while the "ones" place in seconds counted all the way from 9 to 0. Pretty interesting time-table they've got going on. o.O

And the clock had to be counting down to something (remember it was at 64 "days" when I left it yesterday...), because it did not reset when you refreshed/revistited the page. It was a live countdown. So, I'm just interested in the language and tims, I suppose...

I did this same thing when learning the Precursor font/language in Jak & Daxter, LOL (it was fun reading everything in-game, from "real" signs to easter eggs...the barrels in Jak X say "Stay in School" )

I just noticed an ad on someone's DA page that mentioned KJ52, LOL.

And I felt like mentioning it >.>

Not only is it rare for an artist I listen to (of any genre) to be heard of by any random person I may speak to, but even rarer for me to see (of the last things I expect) an ad for one of them LOL.

Journal! 8D



and I worked out the exporting issue I had on his Ando TG3 model, so I could finally get to rigging his whole model - though it does look llike a few of the object meshes are messed up. Thankfully they really aren't noticable unless you know they're messed up [and looking for them] and/or are looking at a wireframe view (which you won't be, LOL).

I finally finished naming and "fixing" the meshes, and tonight I'm moving onto parenting.



's costume I guess I've gathered enough info on whether the design is good or not (if you haven't said anything yet, now's the time to do so. ) and so once I get some measurements from her, I'll begin building the 'stume in 3D, then get to building it irl (the long but fun part).

In school I've learned a bit about texturing....next week I'm doing lighting. then once that class project is finished I'll upload pictures of the finished product. My next classes are the sequel to this one and physics! which I wanted to take in high schoool but we lost our teacher. :[ They don't start 'till the 11th of January.

It's almost been a month since I haven't been on an online game (haha, it's like I'm keeping track), and I'm still alive, which is good.
I can't afford to get my own internet (priced it), so I'll likely continue to go without it 'till I graduate in a year....

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recently i took a roadtrip with my mom to a city to go see an egypt exhibit. I learned about mummification and such, but what I most loved was seeing the carvings - how beautifully preserved and perfectly carved the heiroglyphs were. I wanted to absorb what I could about their art while I was there.

We also got our first frost on Thanksgiving morning, which was cool.


I love seeing the mist rise off of water this time of year, and seeing all the lights across the lake reflected in the water (especially since someone {THANKFULLY] decided to stick a Christmas tree down near their boat dock. ), and then just all the lights in general. I really like driving home from work right now since I'm all alone [with Cam ] and can go slow to enjoy the drive and the lights. :3

Well, I better stop typing so I can get some work done on Ando tonight.

After finally getting some Inverse Kinematics controllers set up, I must tell the world that they can really be an EPIC WIN in some cases!

I'm just so happy and some of the cool stuff it can do. Now, if I could just get it to work the same on all the joints...



update on Cam's low poly model- I've got the body, arms and legs controllers attached, and after doing more bug testing with them, I'ma see if a can do it to his fingers and toes too to save me time animating them.

and then more animaeting!!!!111one

I must scream it to the world my God-given passion for this stuff!