Blender studies…

This week I’ve been working on my 2011 Goal #2: Learn to model an environment in Blender. I’ve been learning from the secret book of Blender modeling ninjas, which I stole from the master ninja’s house in the shadows of the night. OK, actually I’ve been studying from this book: Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 by D. Roland Hess. It’s an excellent book for someone who’s never used Blender before. I’m only on chapter 4, but just flipping through the pages ahead, it looks like it will cover all the basics I’ll need to achieve my goal. So far, I’ve only modeled a purdy little flower and a purdy little vase. If I have time after work tonight, I’ll continue on and model a chair and a table and post some pics. Nothing amazing at all, but I’m a newbie. I must say, there’s something very attractive about modeling. If you know what I mean, nudge nudge. No, I mean 3D modeling, the act of creating stuff from nothing. It makes one feel quite powerful. It’s the chance to build cathedrals, entire cities, things that never existed. Things that couldn’t exist in the real world.

Rejected and WriteMonkey and Boyle

I got my first rejection letter for my short story No One Was Abendsen today; I’m going for 10 rejections.  I know it will be tough and will take a while, but, by golly, I’m gonna go for it!  Wish me luck!  I’ll submit it somewhere else next week (or maybe even tonight).

I haven’t tried it out yet, but somebody on Twitter linked to a free piece of software called WriteMonkey.  It’s basically a text editor that can go fullscreen so you don’t get distracted by all the other stuff on your computer, like that nice little Firefox logo which is always saying to me “hey, Sean, why dontcha Google somethin’?  Why dontcha look up somethin’ on Wikipedia?  Why dontcha see if there are any videos of Ray Bradbury on YouTube?  C’mon!!”  It would be nice to shut the logo up.  Also, you can have WriteMonkey make typewriter sounds as you type.  Now, come on, if that doesn’t make you want to download it, nothing will.  Typewriters are awesome.  Wish I had a typewriter right here, right now, I’d type all over it!

And now for a few words about Susan Boyle.  Actually, I commented about her on a music forum I often go to, so out of laziness (or efficiency) I’ll just copy and paste what I wrote:

I like the video, and I like the song (a good song to select!), and I enjoy watching these Internet phenomenons emerge.

Though this is may be called a “reality show”, it’s not really. The editors do control the emotions immensely, from the clips of rolling eyes to the music cues. That sometimes bugs me, because the editors are really creating a story for us. But isn’t that what we want? And it works!

Another things that bugs me is that if she was a beautiful woman and sang exactly the same way, the reaction might be different. The “triumph” here depends on our prejudice. And then we say our prejudice is a bad thing? Then why do we love getting over it so much?

(And what if she had sung terribly? No one would say “how dare we judge a person based on their singing!” and yet that’s what we do here; we’re still basing her worth on something…)

Even as I type this, I hear other people in this library talking about Susan Boyle! That’s some fame! I will be hoping that she stays true to herself and that this sudden fame and attention does more good and inspiring things, and that it doesn’t become the annoying beast it can often be.

Good luck, Susan!

Isn’t that nice?

I have nothing else to say at the moment.