A Knotty Issue

The second assignment for the NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) course I'm taking this term was due yesterday. The topic of the assignment was symmetry and Celtic knots (an example of which is pictured above). The Celtic knot portion of the assignment was based on a paper that presents a way to generate Celtic-knot style artwork using a grid-based method which can be done by hand or, as in the assignment, by computer. I seem to find it rather fascinating and doing the method by hand is, as the prof pointed out, a very good way to kill time in class. Some examples of knotwork that I created for the assignment (some based on ones that I did in class) can be viewed on the results page of my write-up. Those interested in some of the technical details (though I don't describe the method in detail - unfortunately there does not seem to be a freely available download of the paper in question) are on the main page for the write-up.

Completely unrelated to that, I was watching an episode from the 3rd season of Deep Space 9 last night - "Past Tense, Part I". As the name might suggest, it's a time travel episode and those often tend to be fairly good episodes, overall. The "treknobabble" invovled in justifying the time travel, however, was rather laughable. Ignoring that though, it was generally an enjoyable episode, despite being a bit predictable at points.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Assignment Overload

Gah!

I've been working pretty steadily the past couple days finishing up an assignment that's due tomorrow. I don't know how, when I do get started on these relatively early, I still end up doing a lot of last minute work like this. Though, I suppose, deciding to add a couple of new features and change how some of the rendering is handled at the next-to-last minute doesn't exactly help my case! Ah well. I suppose this goes to show that when I have interesting work to do I'm actually more-or-less willing to actually do it. (I say "more-or-less" because if I didn't actually have to do it I'd most likely have spent my time doing other things.)

Anyway, I'm going to relax for an hour or two before going to work on the other assignment that's due tomorrow. It's much less involved though, only a short 5 minute presentation on something photography related, so it shouldn't take too long - at least in theory.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

This Cake is NOT a Lie... And Other Oddiments

So, it's been about a weeks since FASS 2010 rolled it's final credits and, over all, I think it went pretty well. We seem to have had the most ticket sales since sometime in the mid-90's (including largest crowd for opening night since around that time too) so hopefully that is a sign we were on the right track. And despite some of my complaining in my previous post, I did end up having fun with my part - though getting the second role added (the Wise One) helped a bit. Plus for both roles I was able to wear a costume that wasn't just jeans and a t-shirt which is always nice. In fact I think that the Kirby costume turned out rather well and for the Wise One, well, it's always nice to have an excuse to wear my cape (and I got a funny looking robe). Also, the Friday Late audience suitably amused me this year.

As seems to be becoming a post-FASS tradition for me, I hosted a small gathering at my apartment today since it is, in fact, the third iteration of "Wear You Under on Your Head" Day, also known as "Why I Voted for the Provincial Liberals" Day or also, more officially yet more boringly, as "Family Day". I made some home made pizza and a couple of tastey cakes. Or rather, one cake in two parts since I made round cakes but did not layer them as is traditionally done with the round cakes. And now that I think about it, why is that, exactly? Why doesn't anyone make single-layered round cakes like one would with a regular rectangular cake, or non-circular layered cakes? Or, if they do, why aren't the more common?

But that's really somewhat tangential to the real matter which is to show pictures of my two half-cakes:


I made a Kirby cake! The lettering on the cake is Kirby's first line in the show. His fate, in Final Fassity MMX, was to shut himself in the bathroom and eat himself to death (a la Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs). Here we were able to eat him one last time, and he was very tastey.

Originally, I had planned just to do the one cake, but when I realized that the circular pans are only about half as big as the rectangular ones and that I'd have half a cake left over I decided...


...that I could make a Pac Man cake as well! The letter here says "Do you like falafel? Nom nom nom..." because in the penultimate scene, Pac Man kept going on about setting up a falafel stand. I actually iced this cake first since I figured it would be easier (and it was).

Despite that my cake decorating skills are clearly underlevelled (I've never been able to get the icing satisfactorally smooth, in my opinion) I think they both turned out ok, especially considering this was my first ever attempt to actually try to decorate a cake. In any case, they both served their purpose and amused and were enjoyed by all.

In a way, I feel a little bad eating such adorable cakes, but now I get to eat Kirby and Pac Man (or what's left of them) for the rest of the week.

Anyway, that is all for the moment.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Doing Time

We got our third piece for the orchestra this week. It's from Barber - Second Essay or something like that, not a memorable title, really. However, as I was playing through it, I found myself often uttering things like "this is so strange", especially regarding the time signatures. The piece changes time signature fairly often - not really an uncommon occurance, but this seems to do so more frequently than most of the stuff we've played - and while most of the time signatures that are used aren't really all that strange, there's some less than common stuff in there like 12/8 or 5/2. But the one that prompted a "that's so bizarre" was a single bar of 7/4 on the last page. Fun stuff, that.

In other news, the first performance for FASS 2010 was last night. It seemed to go well with no noticable major gaffaws (unlike skipping 20 lines in scene 1-4 in the dress rehearsal) and the audience was larger than is typical for opening night so that may be a good sign. The audience named the Silent Protagonist "Balthasar" last night which is respectable choice. Tonight we have the double feature, including the infamous "Friday Late" which will make for a long night.

Slightly related to that, I've had a cold this week and, as a result, did not sleep well at all on Tuesday night (or that's what I'm blaming, anyway) which meant I was veeeery tired on Wednesday. Tired enough that I had a nice two hour nap when I got home. I felt nicely rested afterwards, but was slightly disoriented as it felt a little like Thursday morning and had to check my watch a couple times to reassure me that it was, in fact, still Wednesday. I figure that was at least partly because when I woke from my nap I basically went through my typical morning routine: turn on computer, prepare food, eat whilst surfing the web. Ah well!

Anyway, that's all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC