Sam-K.net

Last night, I continued to work on the lion’s mane, bulking it out and then smoothing the “ropes” together. Most of the blending was done with a small wooden sculpting tool, followed by light burnishing with a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol. It’s still not as smooth as I’d like it to be, but it’s a start.

I also worked on the back legs and tail. The legs were a little too stumpy, so I thinned out the ankles and shaped them a little better. There’s stills some detail work to do, and I think the legs could still be thinned out a bit more.

I haven’t worked much on the face at all yet. That’s probably one of the last things to do along with the left front leg, which will be resting on a book.

Cary told me that one of the things she wanted for Christmas was a lion sculpture (actually, she has been saying she wants one for a while now, but I figured Christmas was as good a time as any to start one).

This is the 4th real sculpture I’ve done, so I’m learning as I go. For some reason, work on this one is going much faster than the others. I started this sculpture at about 7:30 PM last night, and in about three or four hours, this is what I have so far:

I’m going for a stylized look for the mane — more along the lines of a marble sculpture than a real lion’s mane — so I’m experimenting with layering tapered ropes of clay to make the fur. Right now, it looks a little too “ropey”, so I plan on blending and smoothing the ropes together before I’m done. I think the face is a bit too long, and I need to add detail to the back legs (the left front leg is still missing). Cary wants the lion to be reading a book (reminiscent of the many lions scattered throughout Venice that we saw on our honeymoon), so that part will come last. I don’t know that the lion will be reading the book so much as “lying next to a book”, but I imagine that will suffice.

That’s the word I’ve invented to describe the killing of one’s sense of taste. I came up with it after sampling the unholiest of confectionaries.

Cary is a marshmallow connoisseur. From plain jane white marshmallows (which I’d imagine a mallow snob, if such a person existed, would call “roasting mallows”) to circus peanuts, flavored marshmallows made by Cadbury that you can only get in Australia, hand-made marshmallows, and Peeps, she’s tried ‘em all. A grocery store in Peru had an entire aisle full of marshmallows of different colors and flavors. We also found some silky smooth melt-in-your-mouth marshmallows at the Autogrills in Italy.

Just as there are high quality marshmallows, there are less than desirable ones, too. Cary loves Peeps, but doesn’t care for the “Holiday Peeps” that come in odd artificial flavors like “ginger bread” and “french vanilla”. So it’s no surprise one might happen across a few bad eggs now and then. Combine that with the fact that I’m adventurous when it comes to trying new candy or gum (I heartily recommend “Mint Mojito” Orbit gum), and it’s almost expected to try some duds now and then. However, nothing prepared us for the worst of the worst, an insult to the word marshmallow:

I found this abomination at an “Old General Store” gas station on Highway 11 as Cary and I were traveling back to Charlotte from visiting my Mom for Thanksgiving. I saw the package and thought Cary might like to try them. We had lunch at the General Store, and I opened the bag once we were back in the car. I should have heeded the warning that wafted up from the open bag: an odd industrial smell, not unlike something used to lubricate band saw blades in a steel cutting factory, issued forth. In retrospect, I’m surprised that the fumes weren’t visible, and that they didn’t take the form of a ghostly skull and crossbones as they rose up from the bag.

Stupidly ignoring the smell, I pulled one of the Day-Glo yellow “fries” and handed it to Cary. I retrieved my own fry as she took a bite. I immediately realized that by not taking the first bite myself, I had automatically relegated Cary to the job of guinea pig, and felt a tad guilty about it as I saw the look of disgust wash over her face. She immediately handed the partially-eaten fry back to me. The disgust remained on her face until I handed her soda to her and offered her a mint.

I decided — perhaps in an attempt to purge my guilt — to take a bite. The assault on my taste buds that commenced, like the Orc’s siege on the White city of Gondor in Tokein’s Return of the King, was gruesome and relentless.

The fry had a deeply wrinkled surface which reminded me of aged human skin once it hit my tongue, and it had very little taste until I bit into it. Perhaps the toughened surface of the fry was an last-minute attempt by the manufacturer to protect the consumer’s taste buds from the horror that lurked within after realizing that their product was pure evil, and knowing that, for some reason, they could not stop it from being unleashed upon the unsuspecting public. Whatever the reason, I did not appreciate this protective outer skin until long after this experiment concluded. Once I broke through the unflavored layer, I detected a vague sweet taste. But any effort to concentrate on the flavor of the marshmallow was overpowered by the unsettling texture of it. As I chewed — yes, chewed the fry, I could not shake the feeling that I had a piece of gum in my mouth. I realized that it was taking an unnatural amount of time for the marshmallow to break down as I ate it. I doubt that the amylase enzyme has ever before encountered a more surprising starchy foe.

I did, eventually, manage to swallow the bit of horror in my mouth, and immediately put the remaining piece of uneaten fry back in the package.

As I examined the label on the bag for nutrition information, warnings, or perhaps MSDS information I had previously overlooked, I realized that I had purchased a similar marshmallow product from this same company a couple of years ago. As sort of a joke, I ordered a Mallow Burger for Cary from Stupid.com. I was amazed at how burger-like it actually was. Cary tried it, and said it wasn’t bad, but not great. Had I reazlied that the mallow fries were produced by the same hellish cult company, I probably would have passed them by. Damn my memory. I still have one of the Mallow Burgers in its wrapper on my desk at work, and I have no intention of every opening it. The difference in taste between the Mallow Fries and the Mallow Burger is significant. I could, in the interest of fairness, chalk up the horrible Mallow Fries experience to the fact that these particular fries were aged beyond their recommended shelf life — after all, they were purchased at a gas station in rural South Carolina, and there was no discernible “sell by” date on the package — but I cannot imagine that the aging process alone could turn a pleasant tasting food unto such a detestable one. Besides, Cary in particular likes stale marshmallows; she finds year-old Peeps to be especially good.In this case, my interest of fairness is defeated by a concern for the public welfare. Scientific method be damned.

As it turns out, the organization that produces these vile concoctions, a company called Krazy Kastle, also makes Mallow Dogs, Mallow Pizza, Chocolate Mallow Sundays and, not surprisingly. . . a product called “Tape Worms”

I began writing this blog post about 10 minutes after recovering from the first and only bite of Mallow Fries so that my recollection of the experience would not be affected by time (or nausea). The world must know.

Cary and I saw Beowulf in 3D at the IMAX theater on Saturday. I think the last time I read the poem was in highschool, so I don’t remember much. That’s probably a good thing, because movies rarely follow the original source material very closely.

This is a movie that practically demands to be viewed in 3D. 3D technology has come a long way since the days of the red-and-green cardboard glasses. Beowulf was filmed in “REAL D”, a 3D technique that employs special glasses with circular polarized lenses (one lense is polarized clockwise, the other counter-clockwise). The film itself is projected on screen with a single projector, showing the alternating polarized frames at 144 frames per second. Using circular polarization of the lenses (instead of linear polarization) allegedly reduces the amount of “ghosting” (one eye seeing the image intended for the other eye) when the viewer tilts his head (though I did see some, it wasn’t that bad). The REAL D method is also supposed to reduce the headache-inducing properties of older 3D techniques.

At any rate, the 3D was amazing. And although there were a few cheesy shots in the film that were made to show off the 3D effect (like a spear being shoved right into the “camera”), they were few and far between. Despite the fact that 3D is still seen as a novelty, Beowulf‘s story and digital acting was good enough to outshine the technology used in making it. Although Beowulf screams the line “I AM BEOWULF” a few too many times, the story is solid and the characters are engaging. Beowulf’s narcissism was present in the source material, so you can’t blame him for being in love with himself in the film, too.

Just like 3D, creating entirely computer-generated humans is an art form that’s still in its infancy; but the characters in Beowulf are a huge step towards believable photorealistic digital actors. Many of the characters in this film were based on the actors who supplied their voices (Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright-Penn, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich), and the modeling of their faces was, for the most part, dead on. There were one or two scenes with characters in closeup that were eerily real. Background characters were a little less real, and there were scenes here and there where main characters looked a tad lifeless, but nowhere near director Robert Zemeckis’ previous 3D film The Polar Express.

At this point, I’d say the biggest flaw in animating digital humans is with the hands. The animators seem to have trouble moving characters’ hands in a natural way unless the hands are actively doing something (like holding a weapon or other object). At times, the characters’ hands resembled mannequin hands stuck awkwardly on the end of their arms. I think it’s one of the last areas that’s preventing CGI humans from looking completely real.

There’s a term coined by the Japanese called “the uncanny valley”. It’s a robotics term that describes how humans react emotionally to robots that are made to look human. The hypothesis is that as robots look increasingly more human, our positive emotional response to them increases but only to a point. At a certain point, the humanlike appearance begins to repulse (approacthing the look of a corpse or zombie). There’s a nice graph on the Wikipedia page that describes this.

This hypothesis can be applied to computer rendered humans as well as robots. If you watch the film The Polar Express, you’ll get a good idea of what it’s like to be in the Uncanny Valley. Many of the characters in that film are very real-looking, but for a split second here and there, their eyes seem lifeless, or their movment just a bit too unnatural. At that point, the emotional response dips into the Uncanny Valley, and it’s a bit unsettling.

Fortunately for Robert Zemeckis, Beowulf spends very little time in the Uncanny Valley. It’s a real tribute to the animators, modelers, lighting riggers and texture artists that worked on the film.

So I’m either supposed to become a charismatic leader, or a celebrity. Or maybe a charismatic celebrity leader. I can technically run for president since I’ll be 35 before the elections start…. Fortune cookies should be more specific.

If only Ghengis Kahn had opened this fortune cookie, maybe he wouldn’t have needed such a big army.

Cary has been wanting to buy a coin sorter (one that isn’t battery- or AC-powered), so last weekend, we shopped for one. I didn’t think finding something like that would be difficult, but boy was I mistaken. We tried Target (Super, Greatlands and Regular), Office Depot/Max, Walmart and a few other places with no luck. We did find a coin sorting kit at Staples — it was just what Cary was looking for: 4 coin tubes for counting coins — but it was priced at $15.00….for four plastic tubes. So we went home, and I thought, “Why don’t we check the Eckerds that’s only a few feet away from our apartment?”. Sure enough, we finally found one that was only $5.99 and included a multi-level coin sorting tray. So we take it home and later that night, we’re sorting coins.

The coin sorting tray is a plastic bowl-looking container that consists of a bunch of different discs that fit together. Each disc has holes in it that fit smaller and smaller coins. The top shelf holds quarters, and has holes in it that are nickel-sized, so the nickels, pennies and dimes fall to the next level, which has penny sized holes so the nickels remain and the pennies and dimes fall to the next level, and so on and so on. Once all of the coins are sorted, you take them out and load them into the coin tubes, then wrap them. It’s cool and all, but one thing about this sorter is that it’s LOUD. The fastest way to use the sorter is to dump the coins in the top shelf and shake it back and forth to let the coins fall. The only problem is that because of the type of plastic that the sorting trays are made of, the rattling coins make a LOT of noise.

It’s this noise that possibly made Merlin and Megan freak out, because as soon as I started sorting coins, there was a scuffle.

It’s also possible that this noise had nothing to do with the rumble. We think maybe Merlin might have climbed into Megans house to try out the new bed we bought for her. Merlin has napped in Megans house before with no problems, so maybe it was this combined with the noise.

At any rate, I get up from the table to see chunks of Merlin fur lying on the floor near Megans house. Megan is sitting in her house wagging her tail with a tuft of fur hanging from her mouth. Merlin is on the other side of the living room looking — for the most part — normal. After looking closer, though, it appears that Megan might have swiped at Merlin with her paw, or maybe snapped at him and grabbed some fur. There’s a milk-cap-sized patch of pink skin on his right side. The skin looks normal aside from a small scrape in one corner (probably where a claw or tooth made contact). I was concerned at first, but then we realized that after the incident, Merlin and Megan were acting completely normal. Merlin wasn’t avoiding Megan, Megan wasn’t growling at Merlin. I think it was just like all of the other little tussles they’ve had, except this time, there was more contact than usual (most of the time, they just end up chasing each other for about 10 feet and then stopping).

Needless to say, seeing the bare skin made me wonder what Merlin would look like hairless. It almost makes me want to shave him. But I’m not that cruel.