Get the CrazyTalk model pack below for $7.77 via PayPal to ina.centaur at gmail.com

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Fact: I am basically “in character” for most entries in this blog. If I get too irreverent or act too “out of character” (relative to the character you know me as), please simply disregard this quasi-muckracking “blog” rendition of the Ina you thought you knew so well…
In other news, please view my re-entry to the eBillMe Shopping Confession contest for a (possible) laugh… and to help me score a few visitor points:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IvtO_8roRc

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A while ago, I promised someone to write a brief intro to some technical CG terms used in materials such as specular and diffuse amount. I guess that’s what I’m doing now!

Light rays do not exist, per se, in pixels — and, incidentally, hence the bane of digital cameras vs. traditional cameras, btw — but, it’s interesting to note that 3d software are often developed based on the physical theory of light. Raytracing is basically about light bouncing off things and onto other things so that the colors appear the right shade.

When light hits a surface, it is either reflected or transmitted (or absorbed - but, in general, we needn’t worry about that in CG).

So, I really like how modo breaks up its material panels into ref and tran:

Reflective

• Diffuse Color: The object’s basic color. If pure white light hits the object, this would be the color you see. Diffuse Amount would modulate the intensity. A Diffuse Amount of 0 yields the best version of a black body your screen can represent.
• Specular Color: The object’s highlights. A Specular Amount of 0 would yield a dull un-shiny object. Specular should be equal to Reflection for realistic effects.
  • Specular Fresnel: Fresnel, in this case, basically refers to specular light hitting an object perpendicularly. A 100% specular fresnel would mean an object’s reflection perpendicular to you becomes unrealistically white. It’s named after this guy named Fresnel who proposed that waves basically sprout out perpendicularly from points.
• Reflection: 100% turns your object into a mirror. This actually doesn’t have a real world analogy.

Transmissive

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P just sent me a new word called Hikkomori, which I immediately wikipedia’ed. While the researcher who coined the word had initially thought the phenomenon secular to Japan, Hikkomori actually exist all over the world. They’re basically young adults who are in a state of flux–and thus have chosen to withdraw from society.

I can’t say I’m housebound as a refusal to interact with physical society… I’m basically just trying to settle some personal conflicts that ought to be settled internally. I have a background in physics and engineering… but when I visualize myself as a physicist or engineer twenty years later, I usually wind up with a panic-attack. Another part of me wants to be an artist.

It used to be that I regarded any work that didn’t have tech innovation to be menial and in vain — spending hours and hours doing pixel art, for example, may yield a beautiful end result, but doesn’t yield any “net work.” But, the thing about modern science and engineering is that it’s all messy and ephemeral and based on the wrong paradigm :-O. Everyone’s basically just finger painting on a dirty canvas.

So, what of the recluse who locks herself up in some cloister and dreams up beautiful equations all day and then burns them all up so that they remain hers… It’s what E said about art being not about the end product, but the actual process. In the end, what you actually get to make all relies on your own perception of your work… and, that’s process dependent.

I for one hate waste, and would try to make something out of everything. Eventually, at least. I have a tendency to fall madly in love with projects and then lose interest before completion.

It’s also about what K said about doing what you enjoy… And, I enjoy taking photos of fake people in a fake world… currently more than any other occupation in the world. (Yes, there *is* that annoying part of me that wouldn’t shut up, the part that keeps at it with the mantra: “you are *so* wasting your life; you are *so* wasating your life; you are *so* wating your life; you are *so* wtng your life…)

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I keep comments off on this blog for a reason, but people have been emailing and IMing me about how my blog is both too impersonal and also too personal! When I started designing the layout, I had intended this blog to be the update blog for IC-E. But then I considered one of the only reasons IC-E came up… more or less as a holistic mechanism for creative release to keep me sane during my YoS. So, I guess the only way to placate both parties is to make my blog both personal and impersonal!

Many have asked me about my love life, and a few have been blatant enough to refer to it as my sex life. Officially, I am engaged to a brilliant med school junkie. But, Hamlet has driven me to a nunnery (read: my YoS), and so we’re separated as I try to find meaning in my art, forget the fact that I once had uncannily ambitious dreams in physics and bioengineering, and reminisce over all that’d occurred before… and as he figures out whether he’d MD/Ph.D or just defect to straight-on Ph.D. We’re technically engaged, but neither of us is sentimental or traditional enough to favor the ring. (I am the type who would cry if you buy me a dozen roses — it’s $100+… and what a waste! Rationally, I have allergies… and roses when you can buy me a nifty cool tech toy or fund my Software Sponsorship Foundation with the same amount!)

But, recently, though, my current SL relationship feels much more real. And it’s crazy because we have no idea what the other looks like — and the romance actually developed significantly back when we were in text chat only. The guy is actually bound in his own version of the YoS, and so… I dunno.

But, enough about me. Here’s something that might be of interest to you:

The Jan 28 Issue of Time featured an article advertised as “The Science of Romance.” But, I only picked it up because of an extremely long and slightly painful and maybe even bloody toilet session (lol, too personal?). Time sends free print issues to me, so every once in a while I fish through the magazine pile in the bathroom and feel obligated to read it — anyway, so while the web version I linked doesn’t show the article cover image… which flaunted Hamiltonian and Lagrangian dynamics, canonical variables and all that, a la equations H= and , I should mention I was only somewhat disappointed that the article didn’t explain how these equations related to love. But, the point is that I did learn something interesting that might explain for why SL relations often lead to childless marriages in RL or mere brief encounters.

Other than the usual things, the article mentioned two interesting points. Physical contact that allow for smell or taste can transmit the adequate MCH from partner to partner so that each can determine biologically compatible for reproduction. Women who are on birth control typically fail in this MCH detection.

Given the limitations of smell transmission when two parties are separated by distances of hundreds or thousands of miles, I guess the first physical meeting might be either shocking — “OMG, our MCH are sooo like incompatible” or the more optimal. I think most people would react out of politeness or nostalgia (the “addiction” part of the brain, according to this article) and attempt to believe and force belief in the latter.

In other news, I started to continue work on this (still untitled!) urban fantasy story I became obsessed with sometime in mid-2006. Its paradigm rests on a scientific-ish framework for your usual magick and all that… but also involves the concept of reincarnation, quite heavily. This whole SL/Internet-based romance thing where the other party does not actually get to experience much of the other party other than voice or perhaps a pointful and postedited (and thus unrepresentative and inaccurate) photo… and the fact that people still go crazy for each other despite this stoic technicality! In light of how the Internet allows people with potentially incompatible biologies to connect, I’m going to make the strong conjecture that the Internet and virtual worlds were inevitable because they’re fate’s will to overcome the randomness of biology’s “body assignment” to allow for estranged souls — destined soulmates — to connect, life after life.

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(Here is an early draft of the infoCard for my VizClone exhibit at the tech.)

VizClone is a visual artificial intelligence experiment where a robot uses fuzzy logic to “focus” on an individual in the crowd and clone their image in real time 3D. Robot sees. Robot becomes. You shall see!

The Second Life implementation uses libsecondlife to scan avatars in the vicinity, a fuzzy logic algorithm to choose an avatar to focus on, and libsecondlife to grab their baked textures onto the “robot”.

The Real Life implementation may occur with either an array of cameras capturing the nearby people, and then a multimedia projector projecting on a blank 3d statue, or perhaps a hologram to create the clone.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Tech/57/140/37

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Today I found out that someone whom I haven’t thrown this blog link to actually reads my blog (/me gulps; she tracked me down, commented on the odd extremity of my YoS experiment, and linked my Davos Question). I should probably react by posting things that make sense… and maybe create vBlogs that are less random improv and more pointful as well o.O I should also anonymize people by referring to them by their first initials.

Since my last post, I’ve processed/delegated half a dozen SLface.com orders (yes, business is slow nowadays; and I know the site needs a redesign), flickr-API‘ed Ina Centaur Photography (Yes, I am an active professional photographer again despite my YoS!)… finalized the SL Shakespeare Company iCampaign website… and…

I totally flunked the Vagina Monologue Callbacks. The parts are traditionally read to sound “read” (sans stumbling), but the directors seemed to want drama. I was assigned “My Vagina was a Village” and Spotlight Monologues. C suggested that I sound innocent vs not-so-innocent for the dichotomy in Village. It’s been a while since I was interrupted in the middle, but it happened during Village. A gave the verdict away when C asked if she wanted me to read anything else, “not unless you want to dance Swan Lake.” Read: way too melodramatic.

Please see this updated hindsight post.

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Bored enough to write a formIM for a blog post:

I understand that you have concerns about __. Please note that we are officially __. However, I am concerned about your perspective, and would like to do what I can to help ameliorate the situation. If you can explain what you mean, I should be better able to help you.

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