Shiver

It's bloody cold.

Australia is not known for it's freezing temperatures. Dunedin, New Zealand, however, is famous for it. So when I moved here I thought those cold miserable days were behind me.

For the most part I was right. Winters are not exactly tropical, down in the southern parts of Australia, but they at least don't get snowy and icy. In fact, I sort of miss the frozen puddles and snowy fields. But I don't miss the shivering and shaking, the suffering the cold temperatures each day.

An unexpected development in Melbourne's winter this year, is that it started early with quite a sharp, biting cold snap. I don't have efficient heating in my new home, there's not a jot of insulation in this, rather shoddily built, cottage, and the heater built into the air conditioning is, undoubtedly, sucking up electricity that is going to hit my bank account hard.

So I have had to just sit and tolerate it, so far, which is not very pleasant. I have found a couple of warm blankets I like to sit under, all toasty, while watching TV, but I can't really wear them when I'm at the computer, so my extremities are a bit exposed for most of the day, which is quite the discomfort indeed.

I have always preferred the warmth to the cold, that's one of the reasons I moved here and don't miss being back home, but the four months of winter chill is unavoidable, and I guess all I can do is grin and bear it.

From There To Here

I am not from around these parts.

I lived in New Zealand until 1999. I love New Zealand as an entity, as a country, and its people are delightful. I do miss it. But it has a fundamental flaw that it cannot do anything about, and so is forever going to lose out, in my estimation.

It's too bloody small. And by being small, and, worst luck, at the arse end of the world, relative to the development of civilisation, nothing really happens there of any note. It gets ignored, dismissed, and generally loses out on any benefits other countries might get.

Now, NZ is hardly alone in this. There are bunches of countries where I hear their names and I don't have a clue where they are, what they are known for, or sometimes even that they existed. I don't know where Pago Pago is, or what happens in Guam, or who lives in Andorra. Spanish people, I suppose, though I only discovered Andorra's whereabouts recently, when it was a question on a quiz show.

But NZ is considered a force to be reckoned with above those countries, because of its association with Australia, its participation in World Wars I and II and beyond, and because it's vocal in its attempts to be noticed.

1998 was a weird year for me. I had a small group of wonderful friends who I loved to hang out with, were the funniest people I have ever known, and had creative ideas out the wazoo. However, we had no resources to speak of so it was a bit of thrashing around with no real action. But then, one by one, each of my friends disappeared out of my life. They all either moved away, or in one case died, in a very short space of time. And then I looked around me and saw that I had no ties anymore. And worse than that, I was in a rut that was very bad for me.

How do I deal with a situation like that? I was tempted to keep going as I was, in the hope things might change. But I also looked at my home town, and what I saw was a ghost town. Shops were closing, familiar landmarks were being covered over, and everything I knew growing up was, I realised, already gone.

I decided the best way to get out of my rut was to move away. And not just to a new town, where I ould end up in the same rut only with different buildings around me, but to a whole different country. Admittedly Australia is not that different to NZ, hence its attractive nature to ease the culture shock, but what it also had was convenience, proximity, and a "no Visa required" immigration policy between it and NZ.

And most importantly, it would force me to have to find a way to take care of myself, and not fall into a rut anymore.

It was a little bit hard to start with, as I had never visited Australia before, but having learned some skills as a website designer, and having a few friends I met online to help me, I soon found my feet, and things have turned out very well, for the most part.

That was exactly ten years ago, and I haven't regretted it one moment. I love it here, it feels like where I always was supposed to be. Melbourne, especially, is just perfect. I lived in Sydney for about a year, and didn't like it there at all, but here in Melbourne - well, I expect I'll be here for the rest of my life, barring unforeseen developments.

There are some things I miss about home - the beautiful landscape, the short distances to get anywhere, some distinct foodstuffs, and my family (though I visit often enough to get my fill on them when I can) - but Australia has so much more than NZ will ever have, so I can't complain really.

I am a little disappointed that I left NZ right at the point of its renaissance, when Peter Jackson single-handedly put it on the map and attracted all the big names to work there with him (even as we speak, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Guillermo Del Toro, and Neill Blomkamp, amongst others, are all working at Weta Studios for their next productions), and changing the face of the industry in the process, let alone the local identity of NZ. Oh well, I probably wouldn't have ended up working there anyway - I hate Wellington, and was already blacklisted from Weta, so it was out of reach.

So things are good here in Australia. Not perfect, but it seems to me I'm on the cusp of taking the next step, and if I'm careful and optimistic, I should be well on my way to a new stage of my life here in Melbourne.

The Opel Blitz

I was supposed to be doing some other kind of work this weekend, I promised someone I'd finish something up for them.

But though I did do a little bit on it, I instead got carried away with something else that I wasn't even supposed to do for weeks yet.

And why have I blogged this admission to slack off proper promised work, and instead to bugger about unnecessarily? Because this is the fastest CG model I've ever built. In only two days, technically around 8 or 10 hours work, off an on, I made this model of a German WWII Truck, the Opel Blitz.

I've always been fast, mostly because I cut corners. People are often surprised that I can come up with something to show them in only a few hours from when we spoke of it.

Though then when I promise to finish something, I start, then rapidly tail off, and then very slackly never get things finished. Unless I am paid to, and there's a specified timeframe.

Anyway, back to the CG model I made:


It's still incomplete, and has no textures yet, but the broad details are all there. I am really happy with it so far. It's arguably the best model I've ever done, especially as vehicles can be so fiddly.

This one will be going on my showreel, that's for sure.



EDIT:

A couple of days have passed, and I've applied textures. I think it's all done now, except for a driver, but I've rigged the wheels to steer, and now all I need to do is the actual final animation and composite that it was built for.



ANOTHER EDIT:

Here's a lighting test, in the actual location (matte painting) that the truck will be driving down in the finished shot.

Pigs May Flu

I do not have the Flu. I have never had influenza, as far as I can recall. The worst I've had is a severe feverish cold for a couple of days. Some people call that level of affliction "flu" but it's not consistent with the symptoms of true influenza, so I don't believe that it was.

Many people get a dose of flu shots, which I believe are free, in the impression that will help them not catch the flu. Maybe that's true, though they often seem to suffer a week of squirty aches and pains each year anyway, so I'm not so certain it really helps them. As far as I can tell the shots only cover the "current strain" of the flu, so if it has mutated by the time it hits you, you're out of luck.

People can die of influenza. Tens of thousands do so every year, even in first world countries. This isn't a rare and exotic, tropically based, racially targeted, ancient disease that has a 100% cure rate; it's still a serious danger to our lives. But you very rarely hear much about that, unlike cancer, or HIV, or Parkinson's Disease, it seems to be a quiet killer. Mostly that's because it's not the influenza itself that kills you, but the resultant effect it has on other weaknesses of the body you may already suffer from, such as pneumonia, heart troubles, or asthma.

Until, that is, the scientific and medical world goes a little bit bananas and causes a worldwide panic over something that really shouldn't be a big deal, by crying wolf over a Swine Flu pandemic.

If we were never told about Swine Flu, which is equally as curable as any other flu virus, and people just figured they were experiencing regular influenza, then life would go on as normal. There is no logical reason for the specifics, or the word "pandemic", to confuse and worry the population at large.

Causing worldwide panic is not helping. Raising the level of "severity" of the pandemic has particularly confused people. Firstly, do you know what the difference is between a pandemic, and an epidemic? An epidemic is spread through a smaller populated area, while a pandemic is spread across the world. The "severity" of a pandemic is not because the disease is getting any worse, it's because it has spread wider across the world.

Here's the thing: If you are unwell, don't panic. Visit your local Doctor or Emergency Room, and they will prescribe a treatment. It doesn't matter what exotic strain of influenza it turns out to be, there will be a vaccine made available, and it will more than likely successfully treat the illness.

Now will you please shut up about it so I can go back to ignoring the daily News.

Geeks Rule TV

The general principle you should expect the world of TV to run by is if it's your favourite show of the new season, it will be cancelled after half a season, and never tie up the loose ends.

Mostly because the current crop of TV Execs and Producers are of my generation, the first to have been brought up with Star Wars as a primary influence, and with fond memories of the action and SF shows and movies of the 70s and 80s, there has been a neverending onslaught of geek concept shows.

Star Trek: The Next Generation and X-Files found the formula for success in the 90s, and they've been trying to re-create that magic bullet ever since. The first to achieve that for a while was the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, a show nobody expected to work at all, and yet was a runaway hit and a fantastic adventure. It completed its four season run earlier this year, and was quite an influence on many other attempts at re-imagining.

Lost, and Heroes, are SF concept shows with an epic outlook. Lost has managed to secure itself a definite ending, which has increased the pace of the story, and heightened its energy.

Whereas Heroes is floundering. After one of its better writers left the show to create his own, it immediately lost focus, and now he's back it may be too late to find its feet again. They do have at least one more season to come, so if they can figure things out and get back on track, it may be worth continuing to watch, but right now I wouldn't miss it if it ended.

Then there are the myriad of smaller geek shows, like Eureka (a new season is imminent), Reaper, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Life On Mars (all recently cancelled), and the UK shows like Primeval, Ashes To Ashes, and Doctor Who (all are going well, but are lower budget and much shorter than any US show).

And then there's the action shows with no significant SF element: Numb3rs, Castle, NCIS, The Mentalist, Lie To Me, Fringe, Eleventh Hour, which are cop shows but with rather unlikely methodology or technologies, therefore stretching credibility, unless you accept that TV always has a sprinkling of fantasy by definition. They all seem to be healthy, especially The Mentalist which has rapidly become one of the highest rating new shows of the year.

I am not an obsessive fan of any show, and never really have been, but my favourite new show of the last couple of years is Chuck, a great show about a geek who has a supercomputer implanted into his brain, which he uses to help the CIA in their spy missions. The problem is it's really popular amongst the geeks, but not actually getting the ratings. They're downloading it and swapping it, or watching it online or on DVR and Tivo, instead of actually watching it live, so the ratings are being hit.

But I'm lucky, as it's been renewed despite this. The only reason it's been saved each year is because the Execs seem to love it, the same aforementioned Execs who are of my generation and were brought up on shows just like it.

Chuck was renewed today. It will be some time before it returns to our screens, as the cast will be all off doing their own thing for a while (Yvonne Strahovski, for example, is here in Melbourne making a comedy movie), then they have to go back into production sometime in July, ready for the new season debut in September.

I can't wait.

Star Trekkin' Across The Universe

I am not a Trekker. Or a Trekkie. Or a particular fan of Star Trek. I don't really like the original TV series from the 60s because the dated production values just bother me too much. I'm a bit of a snob about that kind of thing, to my detriment, cf. Doctor Who.

I enjoyed a few of the movies. And Star Trek: The Next Generation was really quite fun, now that the production values and effects technology had caught up with the stories. Deep Space Nine was great, but I thought Voyager was awful. Enterprise completely missed the boat and failed to live up to its considerable potential.

However, the trailers for the new movie, simply called Star Trek, a reboot by TV show creator JJ Abrams, excited me. It managed to take the familiar elements and reinvent them without losing their essence, and it was obvious he'd found the perfect middle ground. The fans just hoped that the movie would follow through with the promise.

I saw the movie on cheapo Tuesday. And it was outstanding fun!

The plot is a time travel romp, which explains the change in actors, and sets up a whole new potential future to develop new stories that can ride rampant over the established canon, effectively allowing it to invent new canon of its own. And more than that, it has the single most epic and dramatic disaster in Trek's televised history.

The key was to accept the new actors playing familiar roles. For the most part their skills outweighed any need for doing an impression of the original actors. Karl Urban's is the closest attempt at copying DeForest Kelly's intonations, but even then he didn't do a complete copy. And Zachary Quinto had a tough job when he was playing against Leonard Nimoy directly, and yet didn't do a Nimoy impression in any way. However, I did think that Chris Pine slipped into a Shatner-esque pattern of speech when he was being casually dismissive with his apple during the Kobayashi Maru test.

The main problem with the original movies and TV series is they wanted to be hugely epic and impressive, but had a budget of $2.50, and cardboard and string technology. The budget for this new film was a somewhat excessive $150,000,000, and every dollar of it is on the screen.

As an effects aficionado, sometimes I'll wince at an otherwise wonderful movie when a poorly completed effects shot comes on screen. This still happens, even on the biggest budget films. I could rant about those instances for days, it's so disappointing. But there wasn't a single instance of that in this film. I didn't notice a poorly executed effect once, they were all perfect, seamless, and spectacular.

I can't say I was enamoured by the shaky camera and the constant lens flares as a stylistic choice, though. They were distracting and brought me out of the movie on occasion. And some of the plot and set pieces strained credulity, and wouldn't have taken much work to pull into a more believable shape, but that's just action movie shorthand, I guess.

A great movie. A lot of fun, a lot of clever in-jokes and references back to familiar canon, and a lot of spectacle and adventure. If this is the future of Star Trek, indeed the future of movies, then it's going to be a wild ride.

Can't Say No

There have been times in my life when I have no work to do. My free time is left wide open, and I am a little bit lost for some way to occupy myself.

But to be honest, I cannot remember the last time that occurred.

I've always had arty, creative friends throughout my life, but the current crop are the most creative, energised bunch I've ever known. There's always some new project bubbling under, or actively happening, and I am happy to see it so. I also love to be involved.

I'm lucky enough to have a skill that is sought after. Though there have been others with my skills in our team's past, those people have mostly moved onto other things, leaving the way open for me to muscle in where they once trod.

I think I've made an impact, though, as now they won't leave me alone.

I am loving doing the work for Rob's film, Checkpoint. It's one I've chronicled a lot on my Blog, and hopefully it's come across as enthusiastic, because there's so much new and different stuff to do on it. I'm learning new skills at every turn, and if the challenges weren't there I'd not be having half as much fun. And it's typical of us to see that we've almost completed the work involved only to subsequently pile on more. But it's getting there - even now as I write this, my other computer is rendering out a sequence of frames.

I also need money coming in, so I have committed myself to doing a website for my friend Anna. She's a musician, and she wants a site up showcasing her music and gigs. We've figured out a nice, clean, simple design for it, and if all went to plan she will have taken a load of promotional photos over the weekend, which will be used on the site. The actual assembly of the site won't take too long to do, once I get back into it, and it will net me some extra money and future work, so I can't complain, but I must say that at times my heart isn't in it, and I'm finding it hard to engender any enthusiasm for it. I expect that will change once I have more stuff to actually work with, but until then it's a struggle.

Anna also suggested an amazing idea, that she would like to publish some of the stories she has written, as a series of children's books, and she needs an illustrator, and she asked if I'd be interested. Well, I would indeed! Especially if I could use 3D characters to do it. I think it could look really amazing!

This may never eventuate, but it's something that continues to bubble under in my brain, nevertheless.

And now another friend has asked me, once again, to re-design his characters for the superhero TV show, the one he's been almost starting to make for five or six years now. It's a complex tale he has wrought, one that requires an enormous budget and a raft of talented people, neither of which we currently have (we are a small, highly talented crew, of limited skill and no money).

And though making these character models doesn't take too much time, I'd feel better if this production had an end goal in sight. But it's something that's always been at the earliest stages, with the goalposts constantly shifting, and I don't think will ever get past step one.

And of course, there are my own projects, the most visible one being writing the Viking movie script. For the last fortnight I've been concentrating so much on all these other projects, I've not written a word on it. But I hope to get back onto that very soon, as I was thinking about it today, and made a plot decision that I need to write down. I expect that once I do that I'll probably go off on a burst of scriptwriting again.

So there's where I'm at. I'm happy doing Checkpoint and I'm happy doing the web site design paid work, and I am very happy writing. But what I really should learn to do is say "No" to things that clearly have no future or money in it.

Blurring The Motion

I use Lightwave for my 3D graphics. It's not a very popular program in the Professional Industry, unfortunately, except in certain branches. It's used a lot in commercials, children's animation, and previsualisation (which is rough animatics for movies, like 3D storyboarding). But it's rare for the movie industry to use it in their visual effects (instead they use apps like Maya or Softimage), or the video game industry to use it for their cut-scenes or in-game models (they use Maya and 3D Studio Max).

So what that means for Lightwave is that it's not developed at quite the level it needs to be to keep up with the Pro applications, and some of the features are less than perfectly optimised, and often the plug-ins are not updated from their first versions. It's quite a shame.

And also what it means for me as a 3D artist is I can't apply for Pro jobs if they're looking for people experienced in Maya. I am fine for a startup company with no preferences, though. Probably.

Anyhoo, I am putting together the backgrounds for the pickup shots for Checkpoint. Rather optimistically, and somewhat foolishly, I suggested we have shots of the characters interacting with the trains, running between them and planting a bomb. I figured that as I already had made the model, it wouldn't be too hard for me to adapt the shots to suit. I was fairly certain I had the skills, and the methodology.

Surprisingly I was right, and I did know how to do it. So far everything I've tried has worked wonderfully, sometimes incredibly well. It's almost seamlessly realistic, if I do say so myself.

But I have encountered a problem.

Render times for these scenes for just one frame, with HDR lighting and fresnel reflections switched on, is around 45 minutes per frame (two trains next to each other mean lots of back-and-forth reflections to calculate). That means a 150-frame sequence is several days worth of render time.

But then there's the motion blur. To get that looking as realistic as possible, each frame is rendered five times and then blended together into one. Five times! That makes four hours per frame! A month of render time, just for one sequence! And I have several sequences requiring this method.

If Lightwave was just that little bit more optimised and better built, it would have alternatives or better rendering speeds, I'm sure. But I'm stuck with its limitations. I had to find some kind of shortcut to solve my problem.

I tried a few new ways of applying textures to avoid some of the heaviest hits, like faking the reflections, or removing them altogether, but they weren't very successful at all.

However, as I was experimenting with a ridiculous idea that I thought would never work, I finally figured it out. If I first render the sequence without motion blur, then apply that sequence as a front-projected texture on the model, I can then render the motion blur on what has become a less complex scene, saving myself a ton of render time!

Front-projection is when you apply a texture from the point of view of the camera, as opposed to the X- Y- or Z-axis of the model (or the scene). That means you can create a 2D image, perhaps from photographs, and apply it to a 3D model, and then do a small amount of movement, and it will 3d-ify the photograph. In this case I will be reapplying an already rendered sequence back onto the same model, using the same motion, all matched frame-to-frame, so the blend will be seamless, only this time I'll be rendering the motion blur along with it. The end result is a much faster render, but the exact same result as if I had done it with every setting switched on.

I am a genius.

Spiced Ham

The internet should be exclusively an information and entertainment resource. Unfortunately, that's an unrealistic hope. Not only does it cost money for upkeep and maintenance, but there are too many opportunities for advertising to expect them not to be tapped. And now that the internet is starting to supersede magazines and newspapers, advertising needs to abandon them and swamp the Web.

But Spam, on the other hand, is nothing but useless irritating wastes of bandwidth. Every so often, as I am not averse to buying items online occasionally, I have clicked on a banner ad to see where it led, and even subsequently purchased something. But I have never received a spam email that contained a trustworthy word. Every one of them is not only a poorly spelled irritation, but they are selling dodgy, possibly illegal, crap, that nobody in their right mind could or should ever need, let alone purchase via such an intrusive and questionable method.

The perpetrators of Spam are solely responsible for ruining what could have been a fine and convenient way to purchase genuine and trustworthy products and services. Instead they have soiled themselves with the Viagra, cheap watches, diplomas, and other illegal and dangerous nonsense.

And who the hell is buying all this stuff that keeps them in business? How can they fall for this blatant and obvious lying, cheating, stealing criminals? And when are we going to find a way to stop it all so my email bandwidth can get some peace?

Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

I have a problem, and it's starting to interfere with my life.

About six or seven years ago, I started to have this issue that mystified and annoyed me. I don't eat a lot of stuff, especially healthy stuff, but I adore chicken. But when I ate chicken, it started to feel like it was stuck in my throat. In fact, I thought that was actually what was happening and I'd have to wait some moments, or even minutes, for the feeling to subside.

But soon it started to happen more frequently, and yet almost exclusively with chicken. I eventually got so frustrated with this, that I went to the Doctor to see what's up, in case it was a sign of throat cancer or something. I had a Barium Swallow X-Ray, where I took a dose of this thick creamy substance that tastes like plaster of paris, and which shows up on the X-Ray, giving them a clear view of my throat in action.

They found nothing wrong.

Years pass, and my chicken intake has been reduced to about once a month, and I am still suffering this problem. I look the symptoms up online, but there has rarely been help. GERD, or Gastroesophogeal Reflux Disease, has the closest match, but it's not quite right either. GERD's symptoms include heartburn and indigestion, which I don't get, but I do get a feeling of something stuck in the throat, an inability to burp, and a gurgling in the throat. That's enough to convince me it's my problem.

Here's what I think has actually been happening. Something about chicken, possibly its dry nature if it's overcooked, or maybe even from a full fledged allergy, causes muscles in my throat to constrict. I think the chicken as the common factor has to be relevant. I don't have a problem with other meats, or indeed any other food item at all. It's only been with chicken.

Usually I have suffered this in private, and I just need to wait a while (sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes, and on many occasions it's been hours), or in extreme discomfort cases go to the bathroom and induce vomiting, to sort my throat out. But today, for the first time, I felt the discomfort in the presence of my mate Rob, and it was a trifle embarrassing, as well as just being inconvenient, to have to abandon my meal in front of him.

By the way, I think the vomiting just spasms or expands the throat back to its normal state, rather than expelling any obstruction. Though to be perfectly honest I haven't a clue what's going on.

I am most disappointed in my stupid digestive system rebelling on me this way.

Railroaded On The Information Super-Highway

The last internet plan I had with my last ISP before I moved was very nice, and suited me well. I probably abused it by using it to capacity, but if you've got it, then why not? It was 25GB download during peak times, and another 40GB download during off-peak times. On top of that, my uploading was not metered.

Since moving to my new place, I no longer have access to ADSL, so cannot remain on that plan. Instead I have to use Cable Internet. But not anybody's Cable (and there are only two companies that provide Cable in Australia) because Bigpond Cable uses an underground cable that is not available in my suburb, but only Optus Cable, which uses an overhead cable system, connected to the power lines throughout the area.

That means I am forced to use one of the Optus plans. I have no choice whatsoever to go with the competition, it's simply not available to me. The closest plan I have to match my previous one, cost-wise, is 20GB download (including metered uploads), considerably less than the 65GB I am used to having at my disposal.

This is absurd - if one company can offer such a high rate of download, why can't they all? Why aren't they being realistically competitive?

And here's the thing - though I was a high user, relatively, with the 65GB downloading each month, I am now just using the internet in a very low key way, and I'm already going over my daily limit (which adds up to around 600Mb a day) just by browsing around, watching a couple of YouTube videos, and not doing too much. Admittedly I am probably over indulging right now to make up for my lack of connectivity last month, but even so I don't think I'm behaving unrealistically for casual use.

I am just frustrated by this imposed limit that I cannot control as a consumer. It's considerably unfair that my choice of living arrangements would put me in such a limited position.

This whinge is brought to you by the Whiny Privileged Who Don't Appreciate How Good They Actually Have It Society.

The Madness Of Internet Connectivity

Though some parts of our day to day life are necessarily complex, some parts ought to be so much easier.

Here's the comedy of errors that has been my efforts to connect to the internet in April 2009.

Before I made the big move, I anticipated a few hiccups, but tried my best to be completely organised so that a minimum of things would go wrong, and if they did, I could cope with it within my limited means. So I organised my electricity, gas, phone, and internet to be switched over on the day I moved. Organising the internet ahead of time is a waste of effort, it seems, because they don't do anything about it until after the phone is fully connected anyway. I also arranged for the movers to arrive, and the steam cleaners to come in the next day for the final clean.

I was afraid it would all fall apart.

On the day of the move, the movers arrived on time, did their thing quickly and efficiently, and were all done in a few hours. Unfortunately it ended up costing more than I hoped due to traffic dragging out their hourly rate, so that sort of sucked, but never mind, they did their job.

The electricity and gas were on when I arrived and settled in, but the phone was dead.

The next day I went back to the old place for a final clean, and waited two hours for the steam cleaners. They never showed up. Damn them. Made my final clean look a bit shoddy, unfortunately. That's a count against me, I fear.

Back home, I familiarised myself with the new place. Apart from creaky floorboards, light switches in stupid places, and no knobs on the kitchen cupboard doors, it's a pretty decent place.

I then set my TV up, only to discover that the connector to the antenna was installed by some cowboy, as it dangles by a loose wire, and if you nudge the cable or switch the light or aircon on, it affects the TV reception, which, for a constant on-off thing like an aircon, is very irritating. I had to find a way to fix that up, somehow. After some experimentation, I swapped the coaxial cable to another, which, as far as I can tell, solved the issue. So it appears the old cable left here was worn and poorly shielded.

The phone, however, was still dead.

On the next day, after realising I had moved into the wrong bedroom, because that one was dark and cold, while the other one was sunny and bright, I spent the day shifting things from one to the other, but I also checked the phone line and, yes, it was still dead. Well, that's just going too far, and is completely unacceptable.

So the next day, after checking it one more time, I headed down to a public phone, a rare commodity these days, and asked the ISP what was up. They said it was, in fact, successfully connected the previous day (two days later than promised, but okay...) whereas I was sure the line was still dead. They asked me to return home and check all the connections with multiple cables and phones, just to make sure. I did go and do that, and came back to the public phone to tell them it was definitely all dead.

So they said they'd lodge a fault. Do I have an alternative phone number, in case I need to be contacted? Well, no I don't. I'm not working, so I can't use a work phone, I hate mobile phones and do not have one, and I had only just moved in and didn't know my neighbours yet. Well, they cannot lodge a fault without an alternative phone number.

Argh!

So the next day I go into the nearby shopping centre (which is pretty decent, luckily) and bought a pre-paid mobile phone. I set it up, and lodged a fault with my phone.

By now, this was Friday, so I didn't expect a technician to come out on the weekend. However, surprisingly, he turned up on Sunday. Though, naturally, he did not use the alternative phone number, and instead he just knocked on my door. I just *knew* that would happen.

There are three sockets in the house, and it appears the problem was that they were all previously connected to a different phone company, Optus, and that's why my Telstra connectivity wasn't coming through. So the technician had to switch that over. Then he discovered a technical fault at the points, and so fixed that up too. However, he could only switch over one of the sockets, the "point of entry", which instead of being in a logical place like the living room, was in one of the bedrooms. So my phone is hooked up in the bedroom that I use as my DVD library, instead of in somehwere socially logical like the living room.

I called the ISP, from a proper phone, to get my ADSL connected. But they said the fault is still marked as being open, so I should call the next morning.

Fine.

I call the next morning. It's now an entire week after moving in. The ISP closes the fault, and checks my line for ADSL suitability.

And it's not suitable for ADSL.

What?

I live too far from the Exchange, and cannot get ADSL.

WHAT??

Do I have Telstra cable? Nope. My only option, then, is Wireless Internet. Which costs three times too much for an unreliable connection and a crappy and pathetic download limit. Well, bugger that for a game of soldiers.

So that was that. I can't get ADSL. I have to abandon my ISP, who had the coolest plans I could ever hope for, all because I moved to a home that was too far from the Exchange. But what does "too far from the Exchange" mean, exactly?

Imagine, if you will, a circle representing the limits of the Heidelberg Exchange. The Exchange building itself is near the southern border of that circle, whereas my new place is on the northernmost tip of the circle. Quite literally on the borders, as one block north they're on a different Exchange. That puts me around 5km away, which is too far for ADSL to work. Instead of the building being central and within reach of all, it is completely lopsided and only within reach of a few lucky souls.

The next Exchange over, the Greensborough Exchange, is a lot closer to me, and well within reach, but it technically doesn't service my area. Can I connect with that one? They tested the line to check, but apparently I cannot - the ports are all full, and really I'd be buggering about with their system too much anyway.

Fuck their stupid system.

I need ADSL. It is my life. It is my work. It has already driven me a bit nuts to go this long without it. It's amazing to me how much I rely on it, and how many times a day I think "Oh, I'll just check this online" and frustratingly realise I can't do it.

So I considered all my options. And then realised that there may have been a good reason why the last tenant used Optus for their phoneline. There is a cable that stretches from the building to the street, not a Telstra cable (they go underground) but an overhead one. Perhaps Optus can help me out.

I check out a brochure, but there's no mention of Optus still using cable for internet so I'm not certain if it's even possible. So I call them up, and they say it's fine (hurrah!), they can do cable internet. The plan I'll be on will be considerably less than what I was used to, but it's still decent-ish, has ADSL speeds (theoretically), and is a permanent online presence, so I sign up. At last.

And then, not twenty minutes after hanging up the phone with Optus, a Telstra sales guy turns up at my door, who is surprised to learn that ADSL isn't possible where I live. After all, he was assigned this route to sign people up to ADSL, and if it's not possible why even bother with the job at all?

He tells me that he will get back to me on the truth of the matter. I have my doubts that this guy will have any better luck than me, because I talked to a pretty specific subsection of Telstra, the guys who truly know what's what, and they said it wasn't possible.

The next day he calls me back to say "Certainly it's possible." I express my doubts again, but his supervisor assures him, and he assures me, that it is possible.

He turns up with forms to sign, and during the "I agree to the terms and conditions" part I have to do over the phone, the support person on the other end tells me that my line is flagged as incapable of getting ADSL. I tell her that I know that, but their representative has constantly assured me that it's possible. She says he's wrong, but goes through with the rigmarole anyway. (Later it turns out to be confirmed as an impossibility, so I cancelled everything before they began work on it, I haven't lost anything but my time, and a little bit of hope).

After that was signed and sealed, I got a text message on my mobile (that I hate and will not be keeping beyond its pre-paidedness) informing me that my Optus cable tech will be here on the 27th of April. Three entire weeks from then, and a whole month after my moving date.

Three weeks?? But it's supposed to be ten working days!!!!

Oh, that doesn't count weekends, of course, that's an extra 6 days onto the 10 day promise. And then there's the Easter holiday break, an extra 5 days, which ends up as... the 27th.

In the meantime, I am going slightly mad, and am struggling with finding ways to occupy my time. Stupidly, I have become so reliant on the Internet to entertain me in various ways, I can't remember how to do other things anymore.

I have written a lot on my newest screenplay, and have rewatched a lot of DVDs and torrents, and of course have tried to set up everything at my new place, but that is a lot less fun than even it sounds, and it's making me go a little bit potty.

Why can't things be simple? What ever happened to the idea of plugging things in, and they work first time?

I want my internet.

Days pass...

It occurred to me that if it was possible to swap my phone to another exchange, then maybe iiNet can do that for me, and I can then remain with them and use their super-duper plans as I am accustomed.

So I call them up, and as luck would have it I stumble upon the best Tech Support guy in the entire universe, because not only is he helpful and friendly, but he has all the answers: He knows all the techy stuff; all the secrets; and has the raw facts of my situation. I grill him for details.

The sad truth of the matter is I cannot get ADSL on my line at all. Not only am I too far from the Exchange, but the cables within my new residence are lowest quality. If they were a couple of steps up, then the distance would be counteracted and I could have ADSL. Not top speed, but better than nothing at all.

I asked if I could swap to another Exchange, as I know that the Greensborough Exchange is considerably nearer. But apparently I am right in the exact zone where I am out of reach of every Exchange in my area. If I was three blocks west, then I'd have more chance. If I was two blocks north, I'd be in the Greensborough range.

Almost everything about my new place is wonderful, the community most of all, but damn it, the lack of internet just sucks.

Today, after a bit of cable madness, my internet came back online. It is much less than anything I have had with my previous ISP, but I have no choice. It's all I can have.

Roll on the Fibre To The Home project, that's all I can say.

From Here To There

The other day I called my new Estate Agent for the new place I'm moving to, and checked to make sure everything was on track for moving in on Monday.

And she said "Oh. No, I don't think the current tenants have moved out yet, and won't until Tuesday! Hmm. I'll call them and check."

Argh!

Luckily she called back a couple of hours later to say all was fine, they are moving out over the weekend, and I can continue my plans as normal.

Tomorrow is officially my last full day in my current apartment, and I move to my new place on Monday. I am 75% packed, I just have to pack up the larger items that I have still been using each day, like my TV and computers and the bed. Once they're packed, I'm pretty much done.

It's been a bit of a stressful situation really; nobody likes moving house. But I must say I'm looking forward to a new environment, a nicer home, away from noisy neighbours and apartment living, into a cottage with some privacy and independence.

Last time I had to move, it was from Sydney to Melbourne, and most of it was organised by my Boss, as it was a work-motivated move. This time it's all down to me, and I am a little nervous that I have missed something, and it will all fall apart. But I think I've got things sorted.

I just hope I haven't forgotten something.

A Gut Feeling

Around 15 years ago, when coming home from a visit with my sister, I suffered unexpected and persistent acute pain in my gut. My Mum, who was driving me at the time, saw me writhing in pain, asked me if I wanted to go to the A&E, and I said "Yes." She told me afterwards that my saying that, from a guy who was normally reluctant to visit even a Doctor, meant this was serious.

The diagnosis was not very successful. The X-Ray didn't tell the Doctor anything, and further tests left them confused. I was kept overnight, though the pain had long subsided, and a couple of experts were called in, but they didn't know what was wrong, so I was sent home.

About three weeks later it happened again. I went to A&E in an ambulance, and if I had been seen by the Doc on duty straight away, while still in pain, I would've been rushed into surgery and my gallbladder removed, as that was what it was - he recognised it as gallstones immediately. That would've been free surgery, as it was an emergency.

But that was not to be. Because a serious and tragic car accident had happened that same night (interestingly enough, to a family I knew from my school days) and had occupied the emergency services exclusively during that time, the diagnosis wasn't made until late the next morning, and by then the pain had subsided, and therefore was no longer considered an emergency.

Gallstones, though extremely uncomfortable, are not usually considered a life risk. Gallstones form in the gallbladder, and are made up of calcified cholesterol. When the gallbladder injects bile into the stomach to help break down fats, the stones sometimes get caught in the ducts, causing intense aching pain as the stone makes it way through the tube.

There is no cure. You're either genetically inclined to create these stones or you're not. There is surgery, where the gallbladder is removed, but that's not a cure, that's removing the problem area entirely, a different concept altogether. Surgery is safe enough, the gallbladder is not an essential bit of your innards, but it can mean that any fatty or cholesterol-laden thing you eat afterwards can do some amount of jiggery pokery to your gut.

Also you can reduce the likelihood of occurrence by changing your diet, by reducing your fat intake, or combining foods that assist in bile's job of breaking down fats, but even that isn't a guarantee, and eventually it will likely happen again.

This morning, after some seven or eight years since my last, I had another gallstone attack. It lasted around two hours, as they normally seem to do, and there was no alleviation of the pain during it. Knowing what it is and that relief is inevitable helps lower the stress, but it's still no fun rolling around in literally gut-wrenching agony.

There is no way to stop the pain, either. Normally, with other kinds of damage to your body, there are ways you can sit or contort your body parts where the pain is lessened somewhat, a case of "If it hurts when I do that, then I don't do that." But not so with gallstones (and probably similarly with kidney stones). When the pain starts, you just have to ride it to the end - there's no way to alleviate the pain, not even with painkillers. Suffering is your only option.

Gallstones, therefore, are not recommended.

Checkpoint: Operation Big Ba Da Boom

This weekend was supposed to be when I was shooting my first short film. But it was not to be, I cancelled the shoot when it all fell apart before my very eyes. As I have mentioned before, I have few regrets, and it is possible I'll revisit it later in the year.

But as the camera and dolly tracks were already booked, Rob thought he might take advantage of the opportunity of a weekend where a team were available to assist. We had gotten a review of the edit of Checkpoint so far, and there was one suggestion that it was a shame there wasn't a single cutaway shot of one of the other British Soldiers. At the time of the original shoot, no other British soldier was in the cast, so it wouldn't have happened even if we'd deemed it necessary. But it is glaring in its absence, in the current cut.

Well, a single shot isn't enough for a big hassle - we probably could've done that with a simpler camera and a quick dash outside with a mate in a tin hat. But Rob and I detected another feeling of absence in the film, which is the whole back-story of the mission our main Brit character was on.

Originally we were going to gloss over it entirely, and then meet the Soldier properly later in the film where he describes that it all went wrong. The problem is, we didn't really show what their mission even was - it was implied, but only in a single shot that gave away very little. We as creators knew it all, but an audience coming in cold would not be satisfied by this. It needed just a few additional details to fill in the blanks.

So we sat down and went over a few things that we both wanted to see. I wanted them to run amongst the trains. Rob wanted them to attack a couple of German soldiers. We also wanted to build up the similarities between the British soldier, Finn, and the Germans at the Checkpoint, Kleine and Weiss.

We have recently learned a lot about what we were capable of with greenscreen keying and motion tracking, and my 3D rendering is getting to be quite realistic. We set ourselves a few really fun challenges with these shots, including following the soldiers along as they dash between the trains, soldiers marching up to the C-47 plane and climbing in, a brief burst of gunfire as the Germans discover them, and an overhead shot of Finn sneaking up behind and disposing of a Guard.

Every one of the shots we did, and there were at least 30 of them, will have some kind of greenscreen keying and background elements added. Many of the backgrounds will be digital mattes, pieced together from photographs, and many will be 3D graphics, especially the shots with the planes and trains in them.

We have basically put another six months of work on our plates. Though I have made the train and plane already, they don't stand up to extremely close scrutiny, so some parts of the trains will need to be rebuilt in higher resolution. And there are new things to make, such as a suitable period car and a German army truck that drives up a road.

Wow, it's not going to be easy!

But then, that's what makes it fun to do.

In The Mood To Write

I am sure this is a human trait, and is common amongst most of us, but sometimes I get all "creative'd out".

I generally spend a lot of my free time pursuing some kind of creative or artistic endeavour, be it reading (email, articles, novels), drawing (sketching, website art, 3D graphics, storyboards), writing (emails, scripts, ideas), or something movie related (compositing, visual effects, animation, editing). And sometimes after spending a few hours, or concentrating a few days in a row, on one specific kind of creative idea, I find it hard to shift focus onto a new creative idea.

So, for example, I might be working so much on a sequence of greenscreen keying for the short film First Floor that by the time that's over, the thought of returning to the screenplay I was working on is less appealing than it might have been, because I have spent so much of my mental energies on creative thinking and artistic imagery already. And even though the disciplines of compositing and writing are very different walks of life, they still crossover enough to interfere with my mental exhaustion.

Thus I have not been in a writing mood for so long that I haven't touched the first draft of my Viking screenplay in about three weeks, which I am most disappointed in myself over. I can make excuses (I've been packing, planning the move, and working on other creative ideas) but really I should've found a couple of hours each day to devote to writing. It's not like I have a lot of big decisions to make for the first draft, most of them are sorted out and I'm just fleshing them out and connecting them together to see what develops, so I really shouldn't be using the "creative'd out" excuse.

But there you go, I am using it anyway.

What I've also noticed is I haven't read a book in about three months. I don't know what's up with that, but my normal reading time, which is when I head to bed, has been without any notion of grabbing a book ever since the heatwave fried my brain. Most unusual. But then, I haven't got a compelling new book to read anyway; all the books I've bought recently have been quite uninspiring.

So, no writing, no reading. It feels like there's an empty spot in me that I ought to be filling, but even after writing all this blog post I'm not that enthused to continue writing or reading anytime soon.

Checkpoint: Pickup Shots

After feeling the need to abandon my short film, and reschedule it for much later in the year when I regain my confidence, the production stops going off the rails, and the weather is less of an unpredictable bastard, it freed up the weekend I had originally planned for the shoot. So my mate Rob leapt on the day and the previously booked video camera to use it for pickup shots for his film, Checkpoint.

One of the reasons I was happy to leave my film was because I am singularly unsuited to organising things. I have always been this way, I am a complete fuck up when it comes to being in charge and making sure things get done. I tend to feel much more comfortable when other people are dealing with that stuff. Decision making, contributing creative ideas, and post production work is a doddle and I love it, but phoning people, and ordering stuff, and scheduling workdays, and getting a crew together and on my side - forget about it.

And I don't mind admitting it, either. Rob mentioned today that he did wonder if I would feel bad about the fact that he had organised an entire new shoot and all the pickup shots, using my shoot weekend, all figured out and actioned within a week, while I embarrassingly struggled with my own shoot after six entire months. But in fact I don't care about that at all, it reaffirms my suspicions of where my limitations lie, and I'm happy to see someone who actually has an affinity and an energy for it do all the hard work, while all I have to do is agree a lot and draw a few sketches.

The main reason why most of my life I have created half-begun projects that never get completed is because I only do the bits I like; I tend to abandon them just before the parts of a production I don't like to do happen. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if someone else was in charge of those parts, so all I had to do is write it, tell the crew where to point the camera, and tell the actors how to say the words properly. That would be bliss!

I have intimated a few times that I'd rather be a co-director, or even just a creative consultant, than be in charge of a full-blown production, even when it's my own film, and I think this proves it. I am best placed in that role, and the sooner I find myself there, the better I'll feel.

Horizon: Fail

Ugh.

Wherever I Lay My Hat

I have been asked to leave my current apartment. Not through any fault of my own, but because the owner wants his son, who is moving to Melbourne, to live here instead of me. Not the greatest piece of news I could have gotten.

So since that bombshell, I've been looking for somewhere new to live. Two problems with this - one is that the time limit is stressful. Two months sounds like plenty, until you realise that the standard practice is to wait for inspection days, send in an application, then wait for a response, and if you are not successful, you have to then do it all again. If you do many simultaneously, you risk getting four approvals, or four denials, or any number of other obstacles you have to negotiate.

The other problem is that I am currently unemployed. I would much rather have moved in a more secure and trustworthy financial situation than I have found myself in, indeed that was my very plan. But no, forced to move when I'm not ready means you have to take me as I am, and that does not put me at the top of anybody's approval pile.

The answer is to hope, to be charming, and to project an air of confidence and trust. I absolutely have enough funds to handle at least six to twelve months of rent, even if I didn't get a job in between. But I am anticipating getting a job in between, that was the point of this time off - to re-skill myself - so it shouldn't get that bad.

I had no expectation, at this short notice, of getting an ideal place. Compromise is the name of the game in a situation like this. I had a few possible wants that I hoped for, though, including a private area like a balcony or yard, and hopefully separation from neighbours so I don't have to share a wall with household noise anymore. I wanted to stay living in my current suburb, as it's really nice and I love it here, but it became clear very quickly that the rent would be too high to get that, especially with my other desires, so I ranged my search out a little further.

Well, I have just learned today that I have been successful in finding a new place to live. And it's perfect.

It's in a beautiful quiet suburb.
It's close to shops and transport.
It's a separate cottage.
The living area and kitchen are both bigger.
It has a separate laundry.
It has a private back yard.
The shower and bath are separate.
It's got a second bedroom, which I can use for storage/ my DVD library.

I could not ask for somewhere any more ideal. Everything I wanted, and more. It's a dream!

I hope living there is as good as it first appears.

Now I just have to pack and relocate.

Cryptic: Too Many Characters

As I begin my first draft of my new screenplay, I have come across an unexpected development that is really quite a thorny problem.

I have a treatment, which is a five page outline of the complete story, and it works reasonably well as a simple breakdown. Undoubtedly, as the writing develops, and new drafts are written, changes will occur, some major, some minor. For the first draft, however, all I need to do is follow the treatment as written, because if I start to bugger about with it now, and make big changes, it will threaten to divert from my intended path and come to a different conclusion, which will potentially confuse me, and possibly derail the whole film.

But as I wrote the first sequence, I included a character, a person for one of the leads to talk to as he enters the story, someone who wasn't in my (very loosely written) treatment. And the problem is I really like this guy. I have managed to write him as a really interesting character, who I can see would be fun to bring along on the adventure.

This is an issue I find surprising. I don't usually look at my writing as anything other than a way to tell a story. I can't look at it objectively, I tend to know what I'm good at, or feel comfortable at doing, and what level I am capable of achieving. It's weird for me to look at the writing and realise I've just created something really good, beyond what I had planned. He originated through necessity, but by giving him a particular personality, and placing him against the main character in just the right hierarchy, it made him much more fun than I had expected.

So I'm torn. Do I follow the treatment and abandon this new character after page ten, like I'm supposed to? Or do I take risks, and bring this character along on the journey, introducing new dynamics that I haven't accounted for in my original plot?

After some wrestling with the issue, I have decided I will follow the treatment. But as things develop, I will keep an eye out for an opportunity, take note of it, and I may weave the character in during the next draft.