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Journal Journal: Wil Wheaton picture inspires writing contest 10

Journal by nizo

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/05/30/fanfic-contest

"For the benefit of the Lupus Alliance of America, John Scalzi, Wil Wheaton and Subterranean Press are running a fan fiction contest, in which contestants write a 400 to 2,000 word story describing the picture above. Any form of fan fiction is acceptable except slash. The winner of the contest will be paid for their story (10 cents a word), win a prize pack of books from Subterranean Press, and will have their story published in a special electronic chapbook featuring stories about the painting, written by Scalzi, Wheaton, Catherynne Valente and Patrick Rothfuss, to be published later this year, with profits to benefit the Lupus Foundation of America. E-mail the stories with the text in the e-mail to fanfic@scalzi.com by 11:59pm Eastern, June 30, 2010. One entry per person."

One must see the image at the link above, as it cannot be sufficiently described with words.

I posted this story but I have no idea if it will ever get accepted. Maybe they already posted this story, but I am too lazy to go check.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Anyone used the amazon trade-in program before? 1

Journal by nizo

Culling through my books/DVD/PS2 collection and seeing how much I can get for trade-in at Amazon. Anyone here done this before?

Apparently I have several DVDs that are worth way more than I thought they would be btw! :-)
User Journal

Journal Journal: Finally! (Geeky python code ahead) 7

Journal by nizo

#!/usr/bin/python

from PIL import Image

bg = Image.open("background.jpg")

fg = Image.open("foreground.tga")

comp=Image.composite(fg,bg,fg)

comp.save("output.tif", "TIFF")

What this does is take a background image (it could be a targa file, though mixing file types seems to work) and composites a Targa file (with an alpha channel) over the top of the background file, and then saves the result as a TIFF (sadly you can't output Targa files with this). The only issue is the files need to be the same size (which isn't a problem for me)

Why do I even care about this? Because, using libraries that are part of the Ubuntu distro, I can now take a sequence of animation files and composite them onto a background easily (once I add some code for looping), and then they can be loaded into a video editing package. I couldn't ever figure out how to make ffmpeg make, say, an avi with the Targa file sequence, because it ignored the alpha channel (instead it made it black) :-(
User Journal

Journal Journal: Render render render..... 2

Journal by nizo

So for our next assignment in my pipeline class we got tasked with playing around with Houdini, which it turns out is pretty spiffy. Hopefully I will have some new cool thing to post soon :-)

One huge upside of Houdini is it is a perfectly capable 3D animation (with effects) tool that has a free learning version and a cheap ($99) Apprentice version.

Oh and it runs on Linux/Windows/Mac, which is also a huge plus:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=589&Itemid=221
User Journal

Journal Journal: SOLVED: Peanut butter problems 15

Journal by nizo

Since I have been eating healthy peanut butter (i.e. only contains peanuts) I've had issues with oil sitting on top of the peanut butter upon first opening the jar. Turning the jar over prior to opening and stirring (with great difficulty) helps somewhat, but inevitably the first several uses have too much peanut oil while the peanut butter sitting on the bottom is too hard. The solution? Two jars of peanut butter! Once I reach the hard rocky bottom layer, I simply open the second jar and pour any excess peanut oil into the first jar and poof, problem solved.
User Journal

Journal Journal: HP Officejet 6500 Wireless All-In-One 4

Journal by nizo

I'm liking the look of this all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier thingamajigger. And it even has built in network capabilities, so that even when I am on linux I can print/scan /etc. Anyone used this beast before?

Also, good grief I hate the new useless /. layout; it took me forever to find the damn "post to my journal" link, since I am on a different computer than usual. Whatever.
Mars

Journal Journal: Creeping up on 20lbs 21

Journal by nizo

I don't know if I can get below 200lbs by the end of the year, but damn I sure as hell will by my next birthday. I started out at around 240 in July, so if I can make it through the holiday season without packing on weight I might still make it.

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