About Wyrd Smythe
The canonical fool on the hill watching the sunset and the rotation of the planet and thinking what he imagines are large thoughts.
Random (inexpensive) pixels!
I’ve been listening to U2 all evening, so I’m energized, and you get a bonus post today.
The last two posts used a lot of words, so I need to let the word barrel fill up a bit before I use too many more.
(And as you know, work really taps into the barrel, so word conservation is really important. I recycle many of the words I use, and there’s that old trick of putting a brick in your mouth to cut down on word dumps.)
But pixels are really inexpensive these days, and they come in a wide variety of colors. I’ve arranged a bunch of them in some interesting patterns you might enjoy!
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6 Comments | tags: birds, geometry, hammock, illumination, Photo Challenge, Rabbit, TARDIS | posted in Brain Bubble
It’s a gray skies snowy Sunday afternoon, the fireplace is turned on, Bull Durham is on the TV machine, and I’d rather play with POV-Ray, snooze or get back to reading Terry Pratchett‘s Going Postal than spend hours working on a blog post. Sunday should be a day of rest or, at least, of difference.
I’m not particularly stuck on Sundays; my Lutheran background programs me for Sundays, but there are other ways to keep a Sabbath.
I do think it’s important to observe one day a week that is tuned differently than your other days. I think it’s mentally and spiritually healthy to change your pace one day a week. Dedicating a day helps insure following the practice.
Saturday thousands died for my amusement; today my desiderata is pax and nepenthe, so I thought I would share a Desiderata with you.
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20 Comments | tags: Desiderata, Les Crane, Max Ehrmann, Mr. Spock, nepenthe, pax, poems, poetry, Sabbath, serious poetry, Terry Pratchett | posted in Basics, Quotes, Writing
I haven’t talked about movies for a while, and I’ve seen a bunch that are worth mentioning. Which is not to say necessarily mentioning them in a positive way, but there are two I really did like and highly recommend.
Of course, it depends on your taste in movies. Any recommendation has the implicit disclaimer, “If you like that sort of thing.” For instance, one of the films I’ve seen recently is The Raid: Redemption. It’s an extremely brutal Indonesian martial arts film that I found interesting and would recommend if you like that sort of thing. (I’ve never mentioned my love of Asian martial arts films; a topic for another time.)
I might touch on martial arts films today, but mostly I want to talk about a hockey movie, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Martians stealing our moms and a slightly magical film about noodles.
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6 Comments | tags: Brittany Murphy, Carnage, Goon, Guy Ritchie, Jodie Foster, Nancy Drew, Noomi Rapace, Seann William Scott, Sherlock Holmes, The Ramen Girl, Toshiyuki Nishida | posted in Movies
Speaking of Happiness Moments, I finished my POV-Ray Tardis project. More accurately, I finished the first phase. The beauty of something like this is being able to return to it later and add details or make improvements. Sometimes there’s a new trick to be added.
That happens on programming projects, too. Exposure to the Smalltalk and Lisp communities gave me a view of code as a living thing that evolves (sometimes daily) as all living things do.
I’ll write about that sometime, but today I just want to show off my Tardis!
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15 Comments | tags: CGI, computer generated images, Dr Who, POV-Ray, TARDIS | posted in Computers
You know the story about that nice family of bears whose home is invaded, robbed and vandalized by some pre-teen female hoodlum? I have a vague feeling of how that poor Ursine family must have felt when they discovered their food missing.
Indeed, we all must identify with the bears these days. There is a huge Goldilocks in our midst, and she’s been nibbling away at everything! We’ve all seen the candy bars get smaller while the price gets higher. And that space-reducing dome at the bottom of most plastic containers gets bigger and bigger. Consumers purchase ever-increasing amounts of air these days.
This is brought home to me full force every time I open a container of raisins.
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16 Comments | tags: ginger cookies, Goldilocks, humor, product packaging, raisins | posted in Life, Rant
Another quickie today (makes a nice break, right?), mostly just dropping by to show you my (work in progress) TARDIS. I think you’ll agree it’s looking a lot better than it did yesterday. I’ll show you that in a moment, but I have a mildly amusing story to relate first.
At least I find it mildly amusing, but then I find it mildly amusing that my fingers insist on typing “amuzing” every… single… time. One of my mental block words apparently (or a sign of encroaching senility). It (by which I mean the story, not my spelling) reminded slightly me of a similar story.
A time when I participated in events that led to Blast Damage!
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10 Comments | tags: blast damage, camping, diet mountain dew, Dr Who, ice, TARDIS | posted in Life
This is a bit of a drive-by posting. (Look at it this way: “Oh, goodie: more pictures!”)
I confess part of my distraction these days is being caught up playing with POV-Ray (which I’ve described quite a bit recently). Boy with a toy, I guess, but it’s just so much fun! It does open some great doors for blog illustrations down the road, so it’s worth building some degree of skill. (Plus, did I mention the fun?)
So just to keep my hand in posting-wise (it is so easy to get out of the habit), here are some pictures of what I’ve been working on while I’ve been ignoring you.
Bonus points if you know the post’s title reference!
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4 Comments | tags: planets, POV-Ray | posted in Computers, Life
Feeling a strong sense of blog ennui. Work is part of it. After five months of largely fruitless effort, my trees are showing signs of budding and maybe eventually bearing fruit. After a holiday slow down, things are heating up, so my attention is focused there.
And as I’ve mentioned before, this new position has a lot of communicating — it’s really a combination of architecture and project management — and it tends to dry up my usual urges to communicate. Sculpting a blog post too closely resembles the careful sculpting of work communications.
So this post has a bunch of pictures instead of words.
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25 Comments | tags: cute, pixels, rainbows, sunshine | posted in Life
By all indicators (page reads, Likes, comments), most of my readers don’t find POV-Ray quite as interesting as I do. That’s too bad, because I’ve finally decided on a theme for this blog. It’s going to be all-POV-Ray all the time! Think of the fun we’ll have!
Yes, of course I’m kidding. Anyone who knows me at all (hello, have you met me?) would know better. Me, one topic? It is to laugh. Out loud. (Honestly, I don’t know how mono-topical bloggers do it.)
But I do promise this is the last post — for now — about POV-Ray. We’ll just swing by the gift shop, and then move on to other things.
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5 Comments | tags: bar stool, BOOL Engine, EPS conduit, pool balls, POV-Ray, ray tracing | posted in Computers, Sideband
Logos con carne 