mors_d's blog

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems -- but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible.
-- Salman Rushdie

My intention is not to take sides in any argument, but to record the major events that take place in ArtZone. If this text seems vague or to be skirting some details, it's likely been done on purpose.

A Brief History of ArtZone:

• April 04, 2006
  ArtZone Announced to DAZ3D.COM Published Artists.
  While some accounts predate this time, they are considered anomalies.
• April 20, 2006
  Presumed beginning of ArtZone.
  This is the earliest date when DAZ3D.COM Platinum Club members have appeared to join ArtZone
• June 01, 2006
  Public Membership.
  Membership opened to non Platinum Club members of DAZ3D.COM and general public. There are a few teething problems as the changeover from PC-only membership.
• June 29 - December 14, 2006
  Featured Chat, Season 1
  The Featured Chats begin. This season sees 23 weekly chats with a total of 26 guests. Many of the early chats include bribes to draw members who would not normally visit chat. This sets the precedent of freebies and/or prizes for attending a Featured Chat.
• c. December 14, 2006
  The First Chat Meltdown
  Victoria 4 is released later in the week, to handle the expected spike in downloads changes are made to the DAZ|Store servers. During which an integral performance optimization component is not migrated over to handle the added load of the week's Featured Chat. This has the unfortunate affect of making ArtZone Chat somewhat unstable and it crashes for a few hours.
• January 14 - ???, 2007
  Featured Chat, Season 2
  New guests, and fewer door prizes mark the start of Featured Chat in 2007. The schedule also becomes more sporadic than the first season.
  The return of Featured Chats was announced by the new ArtZone Admin on October 02, 2007 after a five month hiatus.
• March, 2007
  The Second Chat Meltdown
  The growing instability of ArtZone Chat from the First Chat Meltdown come to a head when the Bryce 6.1 update is released to the public. Load placed on the DAZ|Store server causes ArtZone Chat to become almost completely unresponsive with the added user load of the day's Featured Chat. After the Featured Chat, things return to normal as people leave Chat.

The events of March 05 through 13 are not anomalous in the Poserverse, or anywhere else for that matter. It is simply that this is the first time it has happened at ArtZone.

• March 05 - 13, 2007
  "The Last Straw" or "How Religion Ruined the Party"
  This is likely the first major schism in the politics of ArtZone's members. An image was posted to a user's gallery depicting the characters popularised in the Warner Brothers' Cartoons worked into Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper". While the intent was innocent, the fallout was not. Words were exchanged in public and, no doubt, in private resulting in the image being removed by the author, and one account either being terminated or cancelled by the owner. While this is not the first time someone has been asked to leave ArtZone (temporarily or permanently), it is the most public.
  This is the final word on the matter.
  ... Or not.
  A letter posted in the Classifieds section of ArtZone, by the person whose account was cancelled, decrying his treatment over the events from "The Last Straw" continues from the first, but in a public arena. The responses from the community outside the original image's comments start rolling in. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] A few equally subtle images were produced as well. [1, 2]
  However, the whole deal progresses no further and slowly drifts out of memory.
• October 02, 2007
  New Face from the Land of DAZ
  ArtzoneAdmin officially replaces MrBigg as the human face from DAZ Productions at ArtZone.

Around mid-January I began noticing that my notebook was slow, frustratingly slow. I figured it was just time for the quarterly rebuild, plus I had installed a few things I hadn't wanted to and maybe they'd left some cruft clogging the system. After the rebuild things were running fine, loaded more stuff on it and this continued to run fine... Then I got an idea for a scene to render, which is where things started going a little odd. Layout went fine, rendering took an age. I figured it was just a side effect of using a raytraced light source inside a semi-opaque and refractive object. To alleviate this I started breaking the scene down into specific components. This helped a little, but not much. Eventually I decided that if it was going to take an age to render, that age could be better served on my Pentium3-based file server as it was doing nothing aside from serving files and my printer.

This is where things decided to kick into high gear and become far-far more interesting. The Pentium3 finished the renders (all parts) at my default test render size faster than my notebook, in fact almost twice as fast, which is confusing as my notebook is a desktop Hyper-Threaded Pentium4. It's a mobile workstation, not a mundane notebook.

So, here's the stats:

	Pentium 3 (Coppermine)	HT Pentium 4 (Prescott)
Clock Speed	866MHz	2.8GHz
BUS Speed	133MHz	800MHz
RAM	1GB PC-133	2GB PC-3200 (DDR)
Chipset	VIA VT82C694X (north) VIA VT82C686A (south)	Intel i865
OS	Windows XP SP2	Windows XP SP2
CPUID Output Click thumbnail to view.

You can see where I'd be concerned. I don't run the notebook off of battery unless absolutely necessary as the CPU eats it for lunch. 12 AA cells? full charge? 1h and change runtime in most conservative mode, eg. idle with the display on the lowest setting.

then I saw this...

Huh? So I re-ran it again and got 2.1GHz with a 600MHz System Bus, and ran it again to finally get the numbers to match.

This, combined with my abysmal render times, poor D3D performance in Galactic Civilizations 2 and Halo PC sets me off looking for benchmarks. I eventually find Maxon's Cinebench which is used to benchmark your system while tuning for running Cinema 4D. I don't use C4D, but it's the most applicable benchmark so far, so I download it and start fiddling...

The 3.0GHz Northwood is a notebook configured identically to mine, but with a faster CPU. I have updated this image since the original post. the low scoring value was not with the same disk as the 2.8GHz Prescott.
The Pentium3 is the system I listed above
The 2.8GHz Prescott is my notebook, the 2 CPUs is with hyper-threading enabled, the 1 CPU is with it disabled.

The Cinebench user guide says: The "Rendering (1 CPU)" value multiplied by 10 roughly equals the MHz speed of the CPU. In other words, a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 may provide 280 CBs. A margin of error in the region of 10% is acceptable. If you get a result that is much greater, you should check the installation of your system. (p.17)

OK, not only do they tell me what my expected value should be for a single CPU test, they give me an acceptable margin of error as well. As you can see, I'm well below the expected value less the margin of error. Interestingly the Pentium 3 and the 3GHz Prescott are acceptably close or within their margin of error. Doubly intriguing is that once the renderer is handed to the video chip it improves drastically, better than my Quadro, which admittedly is an 8x AGP card stuck in a 4x AGP slot.

Armed with this I head off to tech support, forgetting that Tier-1 could be replaced with an AI and no-one would notice. I start my ticket off by lobbing all the benchmarks, the problem description, everything. It's all happily consumed by the script and I'm asked for more which I can contradict with information already provided.

Sigh... I should have phoned, that way I could have asked to be elevated to Tier-2.

after two hours of Tier-1 not knowing why the system performs just fine while idle I'm about to suggest he connect to my Pentium 3 and watch for an hour and a half as I run a render simultaneously on each machine so he can see that the P4 does in fact take almost an hour longer. However, I'm cut off at the pass with an offer to send it back. It's going back, and when it returns it's getting itself benchmarked all over again.

Things I've learned:

• Tier-1 is a nesecary evil, especially on Sunday.
• never underestimate the script, just don't expect it to solve problems that fall outside it's 90% coverage.
• 3-Year warantees can be usefull, I'm not paying for shipping :-D

Man: 4
Computer: 3
Entertainment: 3

As a footnote, I know some of you are about to reply "switch to AMD". I can't. I'm tied to this system until I can afford another, then I'll go looking for a new one. Even then, I'll probably stick with Intel unless something major happens in the market.

I've been working on an update to my skin shader settings for DAZ|Studio.
however, as I've got the majority of the work done, I'd like to test it on models I don't have.

the primary list is:

• David 3
• The Freak
• The Girl
• Luke and Laura
• Matt and Maddie
• Millennium Baby 3
• Stephanie 3

the "like to have for completeness" list is:

• Aiko
• Michael 1/2
• Millennium Boys
• Stephanie
• Victoria 1/2

I don't really care about the P3-6 figures as I'm more or less interested in the DAZ suite of models given that this is strictly for DAZ|Studio.

What will be needed for this testing?

1. DAZ|Studio 1.3.0.1 or greater. preferably 1.3.1.0
2. The Default DAZ|Studio shader presets package
3. the package
4. one of the above models

What I'm essentially looking for is missing MAT zones.
as I don't have the models I'm asking for help with, feedback will need to be at least the mesh used, the base script used, and the name of the missed MAT zone.

You enter a lavish library of rich woods and old books.
A number of large inviting chairs and a single beanbag chair sit around a fireplace where a healthy fire is roaring.
In the beanbag chair is seated an android dressed in a lavish housecoat, holding a tumbler of whisky one hand, a book on the comparative anatomies of swallows in the other, and effecting a variably bad English accent. He is apparently attended to by a number of anoles as one or two look at you intently.

Welcome, have a seat. Please, let me tell you of chat here at ArtZone. It is regularly populated by a right manner of friendly folk. Admittedly they are not all there, at the same time that is, but there is usually someone about who will be happy to greet you if you wait a bit. Some may even be able to answer questions.

As of late November or early December of 2007 the old chat room was overhauled and replaced with a Flash application. It has a Help section that explains all the functionality.

• Images posted to chat are all resized to 400x300 pixels, likely squashing your image out of proportion. The only solution at the moment is to post a link to the image.

I should cover a few of the ground rules, as they apply to conduct and decorum; seeing as I have just told you how to talk to the best of you abilities.

1. Please respect the Terms of Service located at the bottom of the page. It really is all you need to know to get by, especially with the occasional teen wandering through.
2. If you wish to post material that would, in the gallery, require one of the Nudity, iolence, or Controversy tags we have adopted the mechanism of:
   • Posting a warning then a link to the gallery page,
   • Posting a warning then a link to the image, but not using the [img] tag,
   • Or posting an intent to post and requesting objections, then after a discrete period of time posting the picture in an [img] tag.
3. Spelling is strictly optional. It is not that we spell badly, but a few letters can be dropped or transposed while carrying on a number of conversations at once. In fact, the only place in chat where spelling counts is at the Featured Chat.
4. There will be heated discussions. Words will be exchanged. Live with it, they’re only words.
5. Try and avoid the “What is art?” debate, it always results in the prior point, which can then result in the last point.
6. j0 \/\/1|| |0053 pp| 1f j0 5p34|< |1|<3 7|-|15. It is a sad truth, but only a handful of us can speak the language, and we do not do so out of habit.
7. Chat has problems with everything that lies after the Latin-1 UNICODE range. This effectively limits the languages that can be used to English. French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
   A number of us have complained about this and have received a reasonable explanation as to why this happens. And, unfortunately the solution involves rewriting most of, if not all of chat.
8. If you do have problems, drop a note to ArtzoneAdmin.
   When filing a conduct complaint, it is best to provide a screenshot of the perceived offence.

In the end, we operate on common courtesy. It keeps things simple and civil.

Oh! I completely forgot about the Ignore List. I can be so forgetful at times. If there is a user in chat that is annoying you, you can click on this and a list of users will appear. Just select the people you do not want to hear from, and it will persist across all of your uses of chat.

Oh! did you order that? It is quite tasty if I say so myself.

You look towards the floor to see that a number of anoles have approached, and are offering you a snifter of jell-o cubes.

I guess I should also cover some of chat's more interesting landscaping as well, seeing as you have just met the anoles.

1. The Rafters:
   A number of chat's residents have taken to living in the rafters on a rather permanent basis. The rafter are not part of the ceiling per-se, but they do have a belfry and roof which are used on rare occasions when the rafters reach capacity.
   The rafters have a set of drapes installed, and the general consensus is that when they are closed, you avoid.
   Of additional note is the even more infrequently used mausoleum in the graveyard directly behind them.
2. The Gutter:
   This is a home away from home for the gutter girls. they can slide on in, or ride the train. Either way, hilarity and double entendres are sure to follow.
3. The Forest:
   This is really a stand of trees used in much the same way as the rafters. But, in this instance, strictly for the birds.
   There are unsubstantiated rumours of a group of anoles hiding out in the trees. A hammock has been hung from two of the trees by sturkwurk so he can lounge when he passes through.
4. The Rubber Grove:
   This is the source of every piece of rubbery fake fruit in the world. The grove is tended to by the rubbermonk, and as such it is a place of peace and tranquillity away from the regular bedlam of chat. I have only seen it once, but, if you slap one of the innermost trees just right the entire grove will wobble in a most pleasing manner.
   Depending on how far you are willing to wander into the grove, you may find any manner of rubber object growing off of a tree.
   Due to an extended absence by the rubbermonk the rubber grove has become quite overgrown. Visitors to chat should always carry either a can of 'new car smell' or Armorall to ward off the packs of all-season radial tyres that now freely roam the grove if they intend to enter it.
5. The Toga Tree:
   This tree remains a bit of an oddity. Where the rubber grove makes sense in its size, the toga tree is a single tree that grows only ready-to-wear togas. We, of course, make use of these togas as it would be a waste not to. But, occasions where a toga is necessary do tend to be relatively few.
6. The Couch:
   The couch is a reasonably non-descript sofa. Where it differs from others is that this one might be made of some type of sapient wood, and is usually hungry. Fortunately for all of us it has taken to a diet of halos and dust bunnies, although it has been known to gnaw on just about anything that crosses its path if the circumstances look good.
   In late January 2007 the couch was set on fire and spent a while recuperating in Room 200. However, it has since returned and is happily stalking beanbag chairs, scaring people, and waiting for halos to fall from above.
   in recent months the couch seems to have become tamer. What this change signals is unknown, but it's appetite has not diminished. It is possible that the couch has taken to wandering into the rubber grove to hunt.
   In October 2007 the couch was again immolated, and required an emergency re-upholstering, which seems to have tamed it for the time being.
7. The Ceiling:
   We have rafters, and a ceiling. Along the ceiling is a corner formed by the only two walls that is well guarded and used exclusively by chat's own Vargr.
   The ceiling is naturally located above the rafters so as to accommodate the belfry.
   It is not known what is on the other side of the ceiling. Some postulate there is an attic, others that there is nothing.
   To further this mystery, it is very possible to walk from a point on the floor, and end up on the ceiling.
8. The Floor:
   The floor is ground. There is a single locked trap door for access to the inner workings of chat - usually covered by a rug. Otherwise it is just the ground, and possibly the ceiling if current theories hold any weight.
9. The Lake:
   This is a reasonably sized body of water. Other than that we have no idea what resides in it.
   The shoreline sports a pit for lighting campfires.
   The lake is presently being cleaned up after it was set ablaze with potassium.
10. The Revolving Door:
    This is a rather standard revolving door. However, it also acts as one of the more common entrances to chat, and as such some people have a tendency to simply walk around for a while, entering and leaving every few seconds.
    The door is the main reason why we may not immediately greet you, we may just be waiting for you to sit down.
11. The Hole / Abyss / Void:
    This is the other popular exit point from chat. We usually keep it hidden under a rug, or a pile of branches to keep people from exploring it. Sometimes it will eat through the floor of chat. A number of expeditions have been launched to explore the Void by both anoles and minions. no word has ever been received from any party and frayed rope is all that has ever been pulled back.
12. The Pit:
    This is where a horde of not-all-that-bright minions reside. Communication generally requires that you be very good with charades.
13. The Walls:
    Yes, I know I said there were no walls. These are to partition the chat into the other rooms such as Featured Chat. Unfortunately, you can not lean on them as they tend to topple over and you will fall out of the room.
14. The Beanbag Herd:
    No one is entirely sure where the entire heard came from. I arrived with a single chair, this one in fact, and their numbers have grown ever since. They are very docile, and quite comfortable to sit upon.
    Occasionally someone will forget to feed the couch, and it will stalk a beanbag chair and eat that.
15. The Throne:
    This is the sole reserve of chat's very own moral crusader. Actually, she is a tad nuttier that the rest of us, but that really is quite normal.
    The throne itself is more or less comprised of some sort of black electrified cloud in the form of a high backed chair. Dreadful smell of rotten eggs to the thing, and we are constantly moving it downwind.
16. The Pillow Pile:
    This is a large pile of plush pillows. Their manufacture runs the gamut of satin, crochet, silk, felt, quilted, velvet... The list goes on.
    This is the sole competition for the Beanbags for places to sit. A lot of pouncing takes place in the pillow pile, and this gives the beanbag chairs their present advantage.
17. The Sandwich:
    One day in mid-June 2007 I went out for a sandwich. As chat knew I was going out for a sandwich, orders were placed. When I returned, no-one claimed the remaining head cheese sandwich. As such, it presently resides in the bar's refrigerator waiting for someone to come along and claim it.
18. The Boulder:
    The boulder is just that, a very large rock. It was originally located on the ceiling, but after it changed ownership it was moved to a position closer to the floor, but not actually resting on it. The original power plant was removed by the anoles and replaced by 20 geometrically balanced point singularities. As the anoles also run the bar they will confiscate your keys and place them in one of the plant's Lagrange Points.
    As the boulder has been a long-time feature of chat, a few modifications have been made to it:
    • A deck, for lounging.
    • An E-Z Bake oven, for making cookies.
    • A stocked bar, suitable for all ages.
    • A dancing stage, it has poles!
    • A Jacuzzi, for soaking in.
    • A number of pneumatic and electric organs.
    • A defensive forcefield.
    • A functional Doom Ray.
    • A sound system powered by a pocket universe.
    
    The anoles are now based out of the boulder, and have been making a number of minor improvements to it as well. They will at times move the boulder to the Featured Chat to serve fine drinks and jell-o to the participants.
    The bar and stage were both burned to the ground. After a week they were both rebuilt out of metal and asbestos slabs with a tasteful wood veneer covering.
19. The Anoles:
    These little lizards were originally introduced to manage the cricket population that sprung up during extended periods of silence. They have since colonized - at least - the boulder, and to an extent fortified it as their new home.
    They are a mostly friendly bunch, although you should be on the lookout for the Darth Anole and his apprentice. It is rumoured that the Darth Anole leads a splinter group of anoles, their whereabouts are still assumed to be the grove.
    On a side note, I do not think there has been a cricket seen or heard in ages, I may have to restock them...
    The anoles took a two week vacation in late March of 2007 to warmer climes (Death Valley), but returned true to form bearing freshly moulted skins, little straw hats, and vacation pictures. Do not ask to see them, it is about 50 carousels long, and they like to go on about each slide...
20. The Regulars:
    Well, most of the people in chat are regulars one way or another, unless it is a Featured Chat Thursday. At which point not so many people in chat are regulars. But we do so like the influx of visitors. Most of the regulars will catch you off guard by quickly and efficiently shortening your chosen username to something that will be quicker to type. Do not be offended by this, we may be carrying on a number of conversations at the same time, and it is much easier to specify replies or single a particular person if a shorthand name is adopted. This shorthand may be assembled from your account name, or it may be from the first name in your account, and the number of people that share both in chat at the moment.
    Now it has been suggested that some of the regulars actually live in chat. Those are baseless rumours, I have never seen so much as a house or a cot in chat. Although, a cot would be convenient for taking naps on. There are pillows sitting in the corner, but we do not use them on principle.

You notice the anoles approach you carrying a few colourful pamphlets. You pick them up as the metal man quotes the highlights verbatim.

Acronyms, Shorthand and in-jokes:

• GWA:
  Gothic White Ass
  I'm not going to go into how this came about, it just is not worth the pain involved. But, if you want to know what it is, just stand under the rafters and look up. You may want a hard-hat to lessen the impact from a rogue anvil...
• MMC:
  Mad Mutant Cow
  This is the name given to the Content Paradise Cow. Do not ask to see some of the picture featuring it.
• Mutant *
  This is just about any non-insect - and possibly a few of the insects - 'animals' released by Content Paradise. Usually this is a freebie, but not always. In general a mutant is denoted by it looking very close to the animal it is intending to be, but there is usually one or two elements that are just a bit off.
• Escherian Physics
  This is the basic operating standard for chat. As such, everything really is a matter of perspective, even if it has to be forced to look 'right'.

Events in History:

1. The Great Fire:
   Some time on January 11, 2007 a great fire destroyed the bar and damaged the rafters. The fire was lit by ghostangel after he wanted to roast some marshmallows but did not want to use one of the pit's jets of hellfire. The fire was initially started and extinguished in the rafter before starting again in the bar. The devastation was incredible, the bar and the stage were reduced to ash and cinder, the only survivors being a few bottles and the "Happy Hour" sign. The bar was promptly swept up and put on the curb in a few large green rubbish bags.
   In short order a new superstructure of special heat-resistant alloy and panelling of sealed asbestos was assembled to produce a new bar. The stage was reconstructed utilising the same structure, but is covered in a tastefully lacquered wood laminate. The rafters were repaired and re-paneled, had a fire suppression system, pillowed nook, new black lace curtains with deep purple drapes behind, and a small ridge installed. The minions got a spiky new grill and floor to torture people with.
2. The Second Great ArtZone Chat Meltdown:
   With the load already placed on DAZ's servers from the Bryce 6.1 update, a Featured Chat was held on March 08, 2007 with near disastrous results. While unlike previous Featured Chats where the guest would simply drop from the chat session and have to re-join, this time around all chat rooms became unresponsive. While you could read chat, there was usually no names in the user list, and people could therefore not post messages to chat. Featured Chat seemed to have gone off with out much of a hitch, although it also seems to have been one of the shorter ones.
   As a note the First Great ArtZone Chat Meltdown occurred in mid December after the launch of Victoria 4. But, at least that time chat just stopped working.
3. The Overhaul:
   Chat was converted to a Flash application. This added new features and imposed new limitations.

Now, another thing I should tell you is that most of the regulars are armed. Well, except the ones with wings, but that's different. Fortunately the weapon of choice tends to be a pink cluebat. Sometimes there is a clue-by-four or LART. But, for the most part it is this fine weapon here. Look at its slender reinforced plastic handle fused to this lovely pink foam adding a full 4cm to the diameter. However, weapons development doesn't stand still and those above us now have anvils to deploy, some now have foam noodles and pink silly string to bop and entangle us with, and others like to use what nature gave them and gnaw people that annoy them until the lesson has been learned.
But, of all the weapons we stock, none is so terrifying as the... No! I can not mention it's name. But, I must! Oh, the conundrum, the inhumanity of its use... One of the regulars can and has deployed the most devastating of weapons. The. Pink. Polka-dot. Thong. Any who have seen it deployed at its full capacity can never forget it, even when deployed at lesser capacities. Even its mention can strike terror in the hearts of those who have seen it. So, I must warn you. Never, ever, push someone so far that they threaten its use. The results are just too horrible to imagine.

Oh, do you have to go so soon? I hope I am not boring you? No? Something else? Well, I guess you must then. The chat is almost always open. So, in fact, is the bar. If someone is not tending, the anoles will be happy to make you a very nice jell-o cocktail. But, please do remember, they are the staff, not a light snack, OK?

Standing up to leave you notice that the android is not so much lounging on the beanbag chair, but being supported by it, as its feet have apparently been welded - quite firmly - to the floor. In fact, it might just be a guy in a cheap cardboard costume spray painted a dull silver...

... blood

every once in a while I decide to put DAZ|Studio through its paces.
Once, I set the bounce through reflections as high as I could and rendered a shot between two parallel reflective surfaces. That took three days, Studio forgot how to count time, but it worked.

On Monday I decided to see how many polys I could get into one scene and still have D|S remain usable...
My base figure is this: It's comprised of Victoria 3 SAE, Veronica Year 3, and Kozaburo's Kyoko Hair mk3.
the short answer? Much more than I thought. I actually stopped at 25 as it was taking more than an hour to save the scene at that point. As well, D|S had become very sluggish with latency in the single-digit seconds.
Then I tried rendering. well, 2GB of RAM and 3GB of page were not sufficient and the render allocated 1.2GB of RAM off the bat, and then bombed. No big surprise really, so I reduce the number of base models. Eventually with a lot of fiddling I get D|S to render 12, and it still sucked up alot of resources.

I have no idea how many polys that is, and the thought of finding out both frightens and intrigues me :-o

Unfortunately I seem to have found a save read/write bug, and have to rebuild the scene by hand if I'm ever going to open it up again. Still need to figure out the root and file it too...

Man: 2
Computers: 2
Entertainment: 3

Edit:
just loaded one into bryce, and it came out to 476438 polys. so the total size of the scene is 5,608,152 polys...

Obveously this dead horse hasn't been beaten enough ;-)

1. Hear through several people that Poser5 is free at Content Paradise


2. Think: I loathe the interface. But, I do need the boning tools. Plus, I've still got that cupon that expires today.
   Also, it does give me the opportunity to re-download the freebies I never saved the files for.


3. Head over to CP, and struggle through the site as it's being hammered by every Tom, Dick and Harry trying to get their copy of Poser5.
   I'm not at all surprised by this.


4. Place order! wait for this confirmation thing...


5. continue waiting...

I was a fan of Poser4 when it was the only horse in town, but DAZ|Studio changed that. In fact, if I didn't need to bone a mesh, or maybe fiddle with dynamic cloth, I wouldn't care about this. Or, perhapse it's just the packrat in me.

Oh well, time to dig through EF and CP and see what I can dig out :-)

I am sitting here - at Vancouver Eats - after spending $10.50 on food and the only thing I am reminded of as I sit here watching the stage chefs warm up for the next segment (looks like drinks, yep... eXtreme bartenders from TGI Fridays) is how much I enjoy cooking. I do not get to cook very often as my kitchenette is chronically crowded. I don't have the appliances I would like. Heck, I don't even have a proper stove.

I do not think that it has helped that for the last few months I have been too busy to do more than boil water. It is frustrating wanting to cook any manner of recipes, and not having the time or somehow botching it up. Not that said salad was inedible, you cannot mess up lettuce and croutons. You can, however, mess up the dressing.

I’m hoping that I now have the time to do a little cooking. Just have to fill out a list of things to get:

1. New pots.


2. New pans.


3. New knives, well knives in the first part.


4. A proper kitchen?

Hrm... that last one is going to be tricky :-/

Oh, and the bartenders were so-so, at least I don’t think they dropped any bottles...