One of my rare technical posts!

A few months ago I bought myself a nice new monitor, as I was starting to go half blind squinting at 3D Max Design on my 17″ laptop screen.  After comparing prices and hemming and hawing for ages over the many different types, I ordered a 24″ Samsung Syncmaster online, it coming recommended to me by my brother, and being similar to monitors we use in college.

The monitor sat on my desk where I made use of it until early December, when it was then moved to John’s desk so he could work from it. From there it moved to the tv unit in the sitting room, for the duration of the Christmas holidays, so that we could use it to watch the occasional DVD.  (By the way, we don’t actually have two desks. … Read More »

I haven’t been blogging that much lately.  That’s because these days my time is taken up with trying to get my head around this stuff.

I’m beginning to wonder what I ever did before all this programming stuff came along. (It’s a bit like when I used to wonder what I was doing before I had kids!)

I found this video on Flickr of a National Civil Defence Excercise in 2009, the year I started in the LIT Creative Multimedia Course.

And then I found this photo.

And then this one…..Ok this one’s a bit smaller, but I was two stone lighter at the time.

So eh…..basically I had time to blog this evening because I took a break from looking at blue boxes and em…..concentrated my studies in the area of Social Media. *cough*

Now that we’re all back to school, this is what our kitchen table looks like most evenings.

Ally’s current art assignment involves an A1 sheet of paper and a pointillism/sgraffito task.

I wasn’t sure what either pointillism or sgraffito were, but I know now.  With pointillism you take a pencil and dot it, loudly and repeatedly, on your page, while giggling at the poor individuals around you being subjected to the noise.

With sgraffito (I wonder why they don’t call it scratchillism), you scratch layers of paint off the page to reveal layers underneath, while covering your surroundings with the bits of paint you’ve discarded.

With all the tapping and scratching going on, I’m glad my own assignment involved a set of headphones. (Testing the Embed code below)

… Read More »

Something that drove me just a bit scatty this evening until I found out how to do it….

I opened up 3Ds Max, started up our latest project, and there was my ‘Move Tool’ (or  xyz arrows as I call them)…..GONE!!

It took me a while to figure out they were gone, but when you’re trying to move an object in a straight line, you really REALLY need the cursed ‘Move Tool’, so it wasn’t too long before I realised it was missing.

It didn’t help that I didn’t *know* the ‘XYZ Arrows’ were called the ‘Move Tool’, but eventually I discovered that hitting the ‘X’ key turns the disappearing fecker on and off.

Got my arrows back!

Like everything, once you know it it’s simple, huh?

Just to depress myself I took another look at Roberto de Angelis’s amazing 3Ds Max Jubilee Church animation that … Read More »

We’ve started using 3Ds Max in college.  My first basic design, which involved shapes, text, lights and cameras, was this:

I spent this evening going through Tutorials from thenewboston that I had downloaded from YouTube.  They were really well put together and I’d recommend them.

If you fancy messing around with 3Ds Max, yourself, you can download a FREE trial at Autodesk.com.

I just hope it’s a LONG trial.

Curiosity got the better of me this evening.  I decided I HAD to see just what this new ‘timeline’ stuff is that everyone has been ranting about.

So, I applied to be a Facebook ‘Developer’ (which is, apparently, the only way you can gain a sneak preview of the new Facebook profile at the moment).

First impressions are that the page is actually quite pleasant looking.  (But then, it IS my pic that graces the top of it.)

It’s clean and bright, easy to browse, and everything is laid out….well….in timeline format.  Mind you, I’m not sure why you’d want to browse anyone’s timeline unless they’re someone either REALLY REALLY famous, or REALLY REALLY interesting.  Personally, as I posted on Facebook earlier, I’d have been better off, myself, putting the two minutes it took to register as a developer into updating … Read More »

No, this is not an announcement for a forthcoming blockbuster movie in which relatives of the infamous Annoying Orange will star.

This blog post is about an irritating red box problem that I’ve had since this afternoon……no wait….that sounds wrong…..

See….I downloaded 3Ds Max today and this ‘red box’ has been appearing in Perspective view and wrecking my head.

It took me ages and ages of scouring the internet before I finally (thanks be to God) came across this post on the Autodesk.com forums, from which I’ve extracted Thaver’s reply below:

He says ”

it seams there is an easy fix, i had the same problem with an ati hd 4650

all you need to do is go to viewport configuration

go to display performance tab

uncheck improve quality progressibly”

I did what Thaver suggested, and it works!

Yee Haa!!

And now I’m … Read More »

Ally started a Fetac Level 5 course in Portfolio today.  Last year she studied Art and Design (also a Fetac Level 5 course) in the local Technical College, partly because she was quite young when sitting the Leaving Cert, and partly because she wanted to do something in Art but was unsure what area she wanted to study in.  She put in a lot of hard work throughout the year, passed her exams with distinction, and, as a result of doing the course, realised her interests lay in the area of Graphic Design.  To give herself the best chance of securing a college place next year, she enroled on the Portfolio course.

Ally has been on Unemployment Benefit since finishing the Art and Design course.  She hadn’t any success in securing a job for the summer (despite handing out several CVs … Read More »

At Tipperary Insitute we’ve been working for the last couple of weeks on a new production for local radio station TippFM.

Thanks to TippFM, Conn Ó’Muíneacháin of Edgecast, and Bernie Goldbach, Lecturer at Tipperary Institute, we (2nd year and 1st year Creative Multimedia and LMA students) are becoming familiar with the work involved in putting a radio show together by producing one of our own.  Mike Kiely, Audio and Video lecturer (expert) is also on hand to assist us.

The 24 minute long show, which will run for six weeks, will cover a range of different topics, and feature input from students and the general public in Clonmel.  So if you live, work, study or simply ‘hang out’ in the locality, watch out for a mic at a location nearby!

Since we entered discussions (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase … Read More »

I spotted the above when I was in Cork a couple of weeks ago.  Night club goers there appear to be getting much younger, if this scenario is anything to go by.  Pubs and clubs may need to consider the idea of a height restriction in order to deter toddlers.  It’s just not on!

In other news……

We must have watched this trailer for The Comedian at least half a dozen times since yesterday and now, every time the girls are asked to do something, they answer with ‘No, I like it in here’.

Things that made me laugh today (and DO I need to laugh at the moment):

Bláthny arived home from school, blabbering on about schoolwork, then mentioned that “Mairead’s** extensions fell out in class today. Heh heh…”.  That’s exactly the way she said it….with the subtle ‘heh heh’ added on at … Read More »