Some pictures I took

I just wanted to share some nice pictures I took. The one below is a pregnant doe that I managed to get close to.


This next picture is of of a moth that was resting on the window of my office.


The area where I live has many redwood trees. In case you don't know, redwood trees tend to grow in circles around a "father tree". This is a picture of the remains of the "grandfather tree" from which all the redwoods in my area were grown. The trunk is about 21 feet around and is hollow because it was burned by fire several years ago, possibly because it was struck by lightning.

The website went live

It's been a while since my last post so let me catch up on what I've been up to. The biggest thing that happened was that the website I was working on finally went live. I'm glad it did because now I can get back to animating. I'm sort of glad I got to work on the website because I had an excuse to learn PHP and SQL. Now I'm planning on redoing my portfolio site while everything is fresh in my mind. Besides learning server-side scripting, I also learned AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML). If you're not familiar with it, AJAX lets you call functions on your server after a page is loaded, and then update your page without reloading it. I used AJAX to make a live search feature which gives you suggestions for searching while you are typing. My live search is mostly based on Google Suggest.

Since my last post I have also done a couple things to entertain myself. A couple weeks ago I decided that I needed a hat and since I know how to crochet, I decided to make one myself. But, instead of buying a crochet hook, I thought it might be interesting to make one myself. So I went into the woods and found a thick branch and started carving it with a box-cutter knife. It took two evenings and two attempts but, I created a hook. After I sanded it a bit with a nail file I found it was reasonably smooth and worked like a charm. I made a hat with some wool I got from a nearby town. After it was done I decided it looked more like a woman's hat and I gave it to a friend.

Another day I decided to make a Tomato Soup Cake to have a bit of fun. It was a real scavenger hunt when I tried to find all the ingredients I needed. Sugar was especially hard to come by, but I managed to get everything I needed. It was delicious ( tastes like a spice cake).

In need of more excitement

It looks like our website if finally about to go live. I'm glad because I would rather start working on the animation again. I believe I finally came up with the best way to make all the character keys for the animation. I create layers for the base colors of each key, and then I put them into folders and add layers to my heart's content. The biggest problem making the rabbit was that I didn't label all the layers I made (and I make a good deal of them). So now, once I'm done, I just collapse the contents of each folder and viola! I've got a leg, or ear, etc. ready to be rigged for animation. Another problem I am facing in animating is rigging. I'm very happy to be using Anime Studio Pro, which is the best 2D animation software I've ever used, but using bones to get raster images to deform perfectly is tricky. I may end up cutting the legs up a little so they don't looked so scrunched up when they deform.

I'm always happy to be finished after work but lately, I think I need to find something new to do. I have a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald to read but, I would rather read something else. It may just be time to take a weekend trip to the city to get a better book and buy some music. I need music becuase I didn't have a chance to transfer my collection to my laptop before I left. I'm just glad there is internet radio, though it sounds like there might not be for much longer.

Finally here's a bit of excitement: Yesterday morning I found a scorpion in my yert. Check it out! It was sitting right inside my door, in fact the wood you see in the picture is part of my doorframe. I got it out by picking it up with a stick. It was pretty angry though and started attacking the stick. Luckily, this type of scorpion isn't very poisonous, but I still don't want living in my house.

Here's another picture I took near my house. Though it's less exciting. These two deer live in the woods next to my house so I've seen them a couple times. I think the female is pregnant.