pagsanjan falls

i took this photo off of one of my nieces' fb album. it's from a recent trip to pagsanjan falls where i went with norie, dave, ludy, toto, jane and jon.  find it strange that none of us had a paddle? that's because the boatmen did all the rowing, and they literally carried us (well, the boat - with us on it) on the rocky upstream parts of the river. if that isn't service i don't know what is.

and yes i'm posting this because i'm still busy learning them difficult (but awesome!) 3d apps.  

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what was i thinking?

 © Joselito Briones
i opened maya and got scared by the buttons.  how can anything have so many buttons?  i decided today is not maya day, hopefully i can recover from the shock.  i was already in geeky mode tho so i decided to walk to wanchai instead.  298 and wanchai computer center. tech/geek/nerd paradise.  used to be that if anyone needed pirated copy of any software, or any movie, these are the places to go to.  they've cleaned up of course. no more pirated software and cd's and they're are not as seedy (nor as smelly, tho they still are, kinda, and very stuffy.) as they used to be.  but still full of interesting things - computers of course, electronics, gadgets, comics, action figures, robots, and every imaginable kind of iphone case or any other phone case - from the simplest to the most ridiculously pimped up (blings!). i placed an order for an LED signage display and walked back to central.

when i got back to my flat, i felt dirty and overdosed of wanchai computer center - so i decided to do the complete opposite to balance things out.  i went to palace ifc and watched a gay movie.  alfred molina (spiderman 2's doc ock) and gary oldman (batman begins' comissioner gordon) as lovers.  they were so good!. and vanessa redgrave. but then she's (almost) always good. it's an old movie. "prick up your ears".  the british council brought it in as part of this year's hklgff.

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the autodesk maya 3d learning challenge

i'm kinda all over the place nowadays, so many things i want to do and i don't know what to do first.  so naturally, i decided not to do any of them.

i'm gonna try to learn a new app (new to me) instead - autodesk's maya.  it's basically a 3d modeling and rendering program and supposedly the best among all the ones geared towards cgi animation (avatar, anyone?).  the best thing about it, of course, is that it has a version for mac. i can play with it at home.  so i downloaded the trial app and i have a month to learn it. the objective is to have a working knowledge of the system and processes, enough to do simple photorealistic 3d renderings, before the trial expires.  the problem is that it's notoriously difficult to learn - which is exactly what i'm gonna say if i don't have anything to show after a month's time.  that, or that i got sidetracked by all the other things i wanted to do in the first place.  we'll see.

***above is a screen capture of the maya website.  i am not in any way affiliated with them.  unless of course they want me to be.  in which case they can always send me a full copy of the app.  hello? anybody there?

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h&m unveils the lanvin collab window display

© Joselito Briones

woke up today with the start of a migraine. there goes another weekend wasted, and it hasn't even started yet. called in sick and downed a couple of pills to hopefully get rid of it. early afternoon it's still there but not worse so i thought i'd take a couple more pills and take a breath of fresh air (let's just pretend for a sec that it's possible here in hong kong's central district).  i thought i'd walk to ifc so i packed an impulse purchase (a beanie, from agnes b., a wee bit too small for my ginormous head) i did last weekend to return it for a refund.

a block down my building a crowd was watching mannequins of h&m's display window getting dressed, so i looked and saw that they're preparing the window for the sale of lanvin-h&m crossover. something to do this week. they open at 8am tho. too early. last time i went to an h&m collab sale (with comme des garçons, in germany) there were very few items left an hour after opening.  people get crazy in these events.

i went to agnes b. and returned the beanie, only they don't give cash refund, so i ended up getting something else to use up the credit - a cardigan and a t-shirt - and paying a lot more.  that's me and my f*cked up idea of being wise with money.  return an impulse buy that i don't really need, and end up getting more stuff that are more expensive.  at least my migraine was starting to go away.

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meh. no vasari for mac?

if you've always thought autodesk products are way too expensive to have a personal copy in your home computer to play with, you don't have an excuse anymore. autodesk has just launched vasari, a.k.a. revit light, a.k.a. autodesk's version of sketchup. it looks promising (hello, it's FREE!), and pretty cool especially if you use autocad or revit at work. now you can create all those fantastic architectural designs that you've been dreaming of - you know, the ones that would make you famous one day and show your boss why he should've listened to you all those times that you suggested something that you were pretty sure will be a hit but instead got buried under all those pragmatic mediocrity? (don't look at me, my boss listens to me, most of the time at least)

don't hold your breath for some vasari projects from me tho - it doesn't come in mac version and i don't have a pc at home.


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anti-social (network) behavior

i never really saw how it's different from all its predecessors - friendster (r.i.p.), myspace (r.i.p.) etc.  it's gotten easier to publish, and there's a lot more users, of course - but surely these are brought about by tech advances in general and growing number of internet users, not groundbreaking innovations from facebook? unless of course including mindless games (farmville froze my brain at one point) counts as innovation.   anyway, as with friendster and myspace - facebook's now so full of junk it's unbelievable - and useless.  ok, not entirely useless as i can still link my website and blog posts there while waiting for the next big thing.

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full circle

 © Joselito Brionesi spotted this, my very first stock photo (bowls, on the right), used to cover up a shop for lease in staunton street, a few blocks from where i took the photo 6-7 years ago, with a pentax 67II.  made me smile.  

it also feels strange, because i don't really have any more drive to do stock photography.  it got me wondering if all the hard work i've put in it over the past 3 1/2 years will just be reduced to this - occasionally spotting them in use until they've all become obsolete and useless. sad. i still don't know what to do with all the stock photos that i've taken but never put up for sale.

anyway, i was walking around because i bought a new lens today and i wanted to try it out.  it's a canon EF 35mm f1.4L. nice. why i bought it, i don't know.  maybe i just want to go back to taking useless photos that are of interest to nobody but me.

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waaaahhhhh!!!!

meh. i changed the tags on my older posts and blogspot automatically changed/updated the dates on them so now they all look like they're new posts.  on one hand i really can't be bothered changing the dates again, on the other sometimes i get freakish with organizing things that i'll probably change them. oh well. who cares, right?

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BIM BAM!

© Joselito Briones

haha! considering i've never opened revit before early this year, i've learned enough to do a functional BIM of this project, and another one progressing nicely. everything's custom parametric family, too! (families are the basic components of the model)  the great thing about it is that i was able to see possible construction errors while I was designing the project, i was able to get as many views as i wanted from a single model, and when the model was done, it was a cinch doing all the required standard drawings (altho still laborious, 80+ pages of drawings, two colleagues had to help me when it was time to issue them). revit's definitely the thing to use in a small design-oriented offices. now if only autodesk can do revit for mac!

© Joselito Briones

well then, that's it for 3d models.  i think i'll pick up on my video editing now.

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