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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

49 Years ..

I have been married 49 years today - where have all those years gone!!  This is the card I made for my husband, first time I have tried one of these window cards.  The photo I have used is a very special place to us in Italy, just love it there and if only my lottery numbers would come up!!!


It was a bit difficult to get a good photo because of the acetate, needed to be in the light as if I turned it away the flash went off!  Not very good at this photography lark.

Скрап-странички в рамке для подруги



Сделала для подруги на день рождения сына (ему исполнилось 3 годика) фотоколлаж, который прдставляет из себя 2 скрапстранички. Размер работы 30х60 см. Коллаж оформила в раму, которую к сожалению забыла сфотографировать...
Подарок очень понравился, подруга и члены ее семьи были в восторге! Ведь в этот коллаж попали лучшие моменты в их жизни! Я и сама довольна: ведь это такое счастье - приносить своим творчеством радость другим людям!
Коллаж делала 20.08.2011, оформила 25.08.2011, подарила 27.08.2011

BlueAnt variation

So I was told the Antman was too "creepy" or "mean" so I worked on a happier more kid friendly version.


Turnaround video on my youtube channel:


Tuesday, August 30, 2011

User Submitted Screenshots (6)



It All Began With An Earthquake, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation


Robin, my son James, and I were on our way out of the house, on our way to the airport, when the house started to shake. At first it was just a rattle of a lamp shade, just like it always did when my son ran up and down the stairs like an elephant. Only it continued to shake for longer than it usually took him to bound down the stairs. Then there was a faint roar like a big truck on the main road outside. Then the floor began to shake. Earthquake.

I went downstairs and we stepped outside the house even as the walls were threatening to shake off mirrors and paintings. By the time we hit the grass, it was over. The dog was shaking and neighbors were coming out asking what just happened.

Little did we know that this was just the start of our adventure. All we would be missing was an Indian friend for my son named named Hadji and a dog named Bandit. (figure it out.)

As much fun as it might have been to hang around to share stories of the quake, we had to go. We barely caught the bus to the airport, flagging it down at the last second, this too was the start of a pattern.

The bus was filled with people leaving work early due to the quake. Those in high-rise buildings had the best stories and everyone was eager to share. We raced to the airport only to find our flight delayed. This was bad as it meant we would miss our connecting flight in Denver. As we touched down in Colorado, I received a delayed voice mail saying due to the delay, we had been re-booked onto a new flight--one leaving in thirty minutes and we were trapped in the back of the plane.

We raced out and surprisingly reached the gate with a full fifteen minutes to spare. Only this was a new airline, and they didn't have proper notification of our joining them. The gate steward struggled to get us on. They processed my son and checked him through but due to a glitch in the system they couldn't get us on board. At the last minute, as the door were literally closing, they threw our identification back at us and told us to just run for it. We raced up the gangway and on to the plane entering like Indiana Jones slipping under a stone door.

We arrived in Vegas at midnight. The temperature was still one hundred degrees. If you've never been to Las Vegas, the first thing you notice are the slot machines waiting in the airport, at the gate, as you exit the plane like a friendly family welcoming you. As it turns out there are slot machines everywhere. I was actually surprised they hadn't invaded the restrooms.





Vegas and I aren't meant for each other. Vegas, I determined, is for people who want to party in a serious way. I found it to be a cross between a dive-bar and a carnival midway with bright lights, the smell of urine, cigarettes, car exhaust, and fellas coaxing you to try games, that while they might not be rigged, aren't exactly fair either. Some of the casinos were nicer than others of course, but over all the best thing I saw there was the fountain at the Bellagio. The most annoying thing was the strange lack of WiFi. Nearly everything in Nevada is contained in casinos, Starbucks included, and the casinos (at least the one we were at) only had wired connection, and ours was broken. We were forced to travel to the outskirts of the city in order to find a coffee shop with free WiFi. As it turned out the WiFi access was consistently inverse to what one would think. We could get free WiFi at a remote cabin deep in the mountains of Yosemite Valley, but not in Vegas or at the Marriott near Fresno, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The good news was that we weren’t planning to stay long in Vegas. We were heading out to Death Valley the next morning. The bad news was that the area was experiencing record high temperatures--record high temps in the hottest, driest place in the world. We loaded a cooler with ice, bottled water, a few snacks and cold cuts--we didn't want to end up eating lizard and drinking the sap from cactus--and headed in.

The city of Vegas vanishes quickly and all there is is desert. Our car had an outside thermostat and we watched it rise as we cruised along in air conditioned comfort. We exceeded 100 early on, but not much more than 106. Then as we entered the park, as we began descending into the valley my son noted it was 108. This would have been a new high for us, except that he was looking at the radio frequency and not the temperature gauge. It was actually 118. The temperature had risen ten degrees in as many minutes.

All around us was dirt and rock. It was like being on the surface of the moon--at least what I imagine it would be like--the sunny side perhaps. We pulled off at the park sign and for the first time opened the doors.

Taking a trip to Death Valley in August feels a bit like space travel. Our car was our ship and we took “space walks” outside that had to be limited by time because of exposure. Everyone was required to carry water and wear a hat and sunglasses.

We unsealed the car doors and were hit by the blast of heat. Yeah, it was hot alright. We did a little rock climbing noticing the tremendous difference between shade and sun. We were only outside about twenty minutes but it was enough to break a solid sweat. Something that I didn’t even notice until returning to the car because the hot, dry wind hid the fact.



 
Robin at Zabriskie Peak


We continued onward, and as we descended deeper, the temperature continued to rise. 119, 120, 122. The heat had reached 123 when we arrived at Furnace Creek, the destination and the location of the park headquarters. 123 degrees does interesting things to you. The skin of your fingertips prickles like your being stuck with pins and since the ground is about 200 degrees, it’s like standing on a skillet. You feel the hot burn coming up through the soles of your shoes.






We entered the gift shop were I got a proper cowboy hat, I know why they wore them now, then we had lunch at the saloon. We were not at the lowest point yet, but we were at the location I needed. So while Robin made plans to press on deeper into the park, I took notes with my iPad and snapped photos. I took mundane photos, photos of things that I might need for my book. Other tourists looked at me oddly. They were snapping shots of the mountains and covered wagons. I was taking photos of their car, and the other tourists, the bar menu, and the gift shop.

After lunch we drove deeper. Long stretches of nothing but rock and dirt and forbidding mountains. I got the very real sense this was a dangerous place. We stopped at some dunes and then left the paved road and headed up a dirt road toward a remote canyon that Robin had a hankering to explore. By now the temperature was 124 degrees.

Because the road was rough and we had the potential of sliding off and getting stuck, something that would definitely would have been a problem, I was stupid and concentrated on the road and not my gauges. As I was gunning it up a steep slope the air conditioning stopped. The vents were just blowing hot air. I looked down and saw the temp gauge was pegged. The car was about to overheat.

Recalling my younger days of driving a rattletrap Dodge Dart, I shut off the air conditioning and threw on the heat. This immediately dropped the car’s engine temperature, but of course the car’s interior suffered. Just imagine driving in 124 temperatures and not just without air conditioning, but with the heat blowing full blast like it was the height of  a New England winter.

We made it to the top, parked the car, and shut it off. We needed to give it a rest, so we went hiking up into the canyon. We darted from shadow to shade like kangaroo rats scurrying through a 1950s western.You could just see the cowboys and Indians.


 
Robin in Mosaic Canyon


We followed what was clearly the carved path of an old river with smooth curved stones. When we went through our water we turned back.

Going down was easy. We ran into another car who was coming up and I flagged them down to explain they ought to watch their temp gauge only their English wasn't very good and I'm not certain they understood.

This was a common throughout our trip. Just as American youth have been known to visit Europe in summer, it turns out that July and August is the time when foreigners visit the American west. There were mostly French, Italian, and Japanese and all in-park restaurants had instated “tipping included policies” as apparently Europeans don’t tip.

Lastly we went to Badwater. This is the bottom, the lowest place in Death Valley, and the hottest. It is a giant salt flat that looks just like a lake from a distance and like muddy snow up close. It is the sun’s anvil, a reflecting mirror that when you walk out on it you feel as if you just entered into a convection oven.



 
Robin and James on the salt flats of Badwater


This was incredible insofar as heat goes. Heat came from above, burning down, and heat came from below as it bounced up off the white surface of the flats, and the heat swirled around you in the form of burning gusts of desert winds. Here we were around 300 feet below sea level, and despite the scorching heat a small pool of water was there and had been for years. Full of salt, this "bad water" is what gave the place it’s name.

We headed out of the park after that, but stopped in the desert after dark and spent an hour just staring at the stars and listening to the only radio station we could pick up that was a call-in talk show about UFOs. Disturbingly interesting as we weren't far from Area 51. If this was a Johnny Quest episode, you just know we would have seen a saucer that night. (yes that's the answer if you couldn't figure it out.)

News of the hurricane was everywhere. It was made very clear that the eastern seaboard was about to be blown out to sea and never seen again. Given this we felt the odds of returning to Virginia on Saturday was unlikely. Unable to even contact the airlines due to the high volume of calls, and our discontent with Vegas, we decided to do something radical. Envisioning a day or two of being trapped in an airport, we said screw it, and turning our round trip car rental into a one way to San Francisco, we went exploring.



 
Statues at Hoover Dam


After visiting the Hoover Dam and swimming in Lake Mead we crossed the Mojave desert. With the intention of reaching Sequoia National Park, we took this nice little gray line on a state map. We later dubbed it Bob’s Road. Robin called it other things--things I shouldn’t repeat.

Bob’s road was a tiny road that went up into the mountains. It switch backed it's way along the edges of cliff, cliffs with no guardrails. Robin, in the passenger seat, and being afraid of heights, clutched the arm rest and...let’s just say she wasn’t a happy camper. After reaching the top I noticed we were getting a bit light on gas. Anxious to find gas and a place to stay for the night before it got dark, we became concerned as the road narrowed, turned to dirt, and then as the sun began to set, the road just ended.


 
Me...somewhere along the road


We spoke to some locals and learned that to get gas we had to go back down. Robin was shaking her head before the guy finished speaking. To her credit she climbed in the backseat and read her Kindle as we went back. It was a good thing, because at the very worst bend, where the road narrowed to near one lane we met another car coming up. When i think of that moment, I imagine little rocks breaking free as our tires crept around that edge. Outside of that we were fine.

We reached the Sequoias the next day, and wandered around a grove of the largest trees in the world, many about 2,500 years old. Then we moved north to Robin’s favorite place...Yosemite.We'd been there about sixteen years before, but our son was only an infant then, so we took him back.

If you’ve never been there, you likely can’t imagine it. You travel over hills and mountains with great views then you crest the ridge and start down into this isolated valley. You pass through a tunnel or two and then, wham! There it is--this vision that is too perfect to be real.





The largest single piece of bare granite cliff called El Captain, and the famous bald granite cliff Half Dome. Waterfalls, mountains and a river running between all of it. At the bottom of the valley there are lush meadows of flowers walled in by towering rock walls spilling waterfalls like some Jurassic Park movie.





Normally there is never any lodging available here due to the high demand, but that day there was also a fire. Yes, a forest fire started by an exploded propane tank that burned down a hillside and torched four thousand acres in twenty-four hours. It had closed one of of the three roads into the valley. It also (along with an earthquake a few days earlier in the park--can you believe that?) scared a number of people away. As a result we managed to land a “cabin-tent”



 
Our tent is the one on the left with the door open


and spent the night in Yosemite beneath a starry sky, sitting in a log built lodge that had 20oz dark draft Mammoth beer and free WiFi of all things.

The next day it was on to San Fransico and our flight home. So we faced, dealt with, or benefited from two earthquakes, record high temps, a hurricane, and a forest fire.





Our four day trip turned into a week, I'm rather sore from rock climbing learning I am getting too old to keep up with my seventeen-year-old son, and I took to buying souvenir T-shirts just to have clean clothes. Still, it was very fun. The only problem is that tomorrow I will have to fly out again to Atlanta for DragonCon.

No rest for the weary, as my mother always said. Hope to see you there. I’ll be the tired looking one.

OTOY partners with GPU path tracing renderers Octane and Brigade!

Wowowow... this is superawesome news! An article on Venturebeat today revealed that OTOY will be partnering with two fantastic renderers, Octane Render from Refractive Software and Brigade from Jacco Bikker, both pioneers in interactive/realtime high quality GPU based rendering.



I've blogged about these three developers before, and the fact that all three will be joining forces is just breathtakingly awesome! It's a dream come true:



- Octane Render is by far the fastest, most feature rich and highest quality unbiased GPU renderer, trouncing traditional biased and unbiased CPU renderers



- Brigade is a realtime CPU/GPU path tracer targeted at games (with many noise reducing optimizations) developed by Jacco Bikker, who also developed the GPU path tracing code used in my latest demos



- OTOY is an emerging cloud rendering/cloud gaming company (probably best known from the AMD Radeon 4800 and 5800 launch events and the Ruby demo which used voxel ray tracing) that also owns LightStage, a state-of-the-art dome-shaped capturing environment for creating 100% photorealistic digital actors, which was used in blockbuster movies like Benjamin Button, Avatar and The Social Network



This new partnership means that there is now a very high concentration of high-quality rendering know-how and I've got a feeling that there will be more to come. This will have a profound impact on the movie/game/rendering industry... I'm extremely happy and excited to see what's coming from all this :D.



The VentureBeat article is here: http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/30/otoy-cloud-video-games/



Make a Box

My creation today is to be entered into a couple of challenges.  The DCD challenge this fortnight is to make a box or gift bag and the Oldie but Goodie challenge is lots of sparkle.  The card I have used was some that I bought ages ago and is really heavyweight and no good for cards but ideal for boxes.  The stamp I have used was another really old one, stamped several times, glittered and layered.



Die Cut Dreams - Make a box or gift bag
http://diecutdreams.blogspot.com/

Oldie but Goodie - Lots of sparkle
http://oldiebutagoodiechallenge.blogspot.com/

Minecraft desktop wallpaper






The Red Goblin Tower




An ancient ruin




Post zombie apocalypse




Ti fighters looking for a rebel base



Guard tower on the border

Monday, August 29, 2011

Still Wandering





Okay so I've found new apps that made this attempt far easier.
Just a quick update. Robin found us a new return flight after spending all day on the phone while I drove--yes AT&T has cell access in the deserts. The flight isn't until Tuesday, and will be leaving from San Francisco so we crossed the Sierra Nevada, climbing out of the moonscape deserts and up into Sequoia National Park and wandered around the giants. Then yesterday we pushed north and entered Yosemite, where we climbed waterfalls, went biking, and spent the night in a one of the tent-cabins they have here. This morning I am sitting in the lodge as it is surprisingly, one of the first places we've found with wifi in days and I'm writing this post as a squirrel runs about the couches and stone fireplace.

Hope everything is better on the east coast, and that if you are reading this that you have power and aren't just at a coffee shop.

My first real Game Character

Ok so this wasn't for a game technically, it's for secondlife which doesn't even support normal maps so the included normal map in this blog post was just to show I can make them and because it makes me look cool I guess...

So this is AntMan! My first mesh avatar in secondlife and first game character period...


Video link to my youtube page at the bottom :)




Winter Philip

Today's card is for a few challenges, the image is a digi stamp from Pink Gem coloured with a mixture of Promarkers and Spectrum Noir and the backing paper is from a Fizzy Moon pad.



Pink Gem - Sketch  -
http://pinkgemchallengeblog.blogspot.com/ 
CHNC - Build it up 3 layers - http://craftyhazelnutschristmaschallenge.blogspot.com/
Diva by Design - Christmas in August
http://divasbydesignchallenge.blogspot.com/

Sunday, August 28, 2011

UPG: Unbiased Physics Games!





I've been working on some new real-time path traced demos during the past week involving physics, driving and shooting, three popular ingredients in action games. The demos will be bundled under a new 3 letter acronym, i.e. UPG (GPU in reverse), which stands for Unbiased Physics Games.


I've created two new small games:


- a simple driving game where you can pull some driving stunts with lighting effects (the camera follows the car):




- a simple shooter game where you can hit the car and a robot-like character which will respond to the impact of a cannonball:






Both games use the GPU path tracer developed by Jacco Bikker for the Simplex Paternitas demo. The videos were recorded on a GTS450 with 16 samples per pixel (which already offers very good image quality with little noise) at a resolution of 640x480.


The robot and car in the second demo are both encapsulated by a "hitbox" (an axis aligned bounding box to maximize the path tracing performance), which position is updated every frame.


I'm going to implement a movable and "shootable" light hanging from a chain, which should create dramatic shadow effects. Some basic AI path finding code so the robot starts chasing and shooting the user-controlled car might also be an option. Still thinking about implementing oriented bounding boxes which would enable some cool collapsing structures. Plenty of ideas still and new ones are coming every day, there's just not enough time to execute all of them :) On the rendering side, I think I'll shift the geometric focus of the demos to triangle meshes and two-level BVH or grid, because there's only so much you can do with spheres and boxes - even though they're relatively cheap to intersect.



I've also tried porting the code to OpenCL with the recently released OpenCL1.1 drivers from Nvidia but the OpenCL kernel refuses to build for some reason and there's no easy way to find out what's causing the error. It will take some time to get this right.



Download the executables at http://code.google.com/p/tokap-the-once-known-as-pong/downloads/list





blue

cnn hurricane irene

sam cooke death

ocean city maryland beach irene

kim kardashian wedding dress

Something missing... Prayer

1 Corinthians 10:17 – Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.



This is the verse that my Stampin' Sister in Christ, Miesje choose for this week.



I love the fall because that is when I start making home baked bread. I love the smell of the bread a it is rising and especially as it comes out of the oven. A lot of ingredients go into making the bread: water, flour, milk, butter, salt, yeast, eggs... too much or too little of the ingredients and you get either a mass of dough or something that resembles a rock.



Jesus said in John 6:48

I am the bread of life.



I love communion. A time when we as believers come together to remember what Christ has done for us. To me it is also a reminder that I am not alone. I have brothers and sisters walking beside me.



The other day I was feeling particularly discouraged. Satan kept telling me that I was all alone. Now we know that Satan is the father of lies, and what he was telling me was a lie, but it started to really feel true. I reached out on facebook asking for prayers, and within minutes, I had Christian friends from all around the world praying for me and lifting my needs before the Father. Some of the problems that I had were still there, but I didn't feel alone anymore. What a blessing to live life with our Christian family. That is the number one reason I love being a part of Stampin' Sisters in Christ Challenges. I know that I have family that is praying for me. If there is ever a time that you need prayer, you can leave me a comment and I will definitely pray for you.



Our Sponsor this week is Sweet and Sassy. Go check them out.



Miesje's challenge is a Recipe Challenge - choose at least 3 of the following for one card. (ribbon, button, a swirl, hat pin, brad, charm, popped up image)



My card has ... ribbon, button, charm and popped up image. I thought I would share how I did my popped up flower.





First I stamped the flower three times. On the first flower I crossed out every other petal. I reveresed the crossed out petals on the second flower and on the third flower I colored all the petals in. I cut the flowers out, cutting off the un-colored crossed out petals. I took the handle of a paint brush to curl the petals.





Here are my cut out flowers with their curled petals.







Next I cut small pieces of craft foam.











Really small pieces.














I glued the first one to the bottom flower and then one to the middle flower.









I added glue and stacked the middle flower on the bottom flower.









Finally I glued the top flower on top.













I added a button center.









This is how the card looked when I finished it. I kept looking at it and something just seemed to be missing.







I added a simple tag with the sentiment... I'm praying... Then I knew it was complete.













You should go check out Miesje's devotion at Stampin' Sister in Christ Challenge.









Check out what my Stampin' Sisters in Christ have created:

















Saturday, August 27, 2011

minecraft

New York Evacuation Zones

The New York Times' New York City Hurricane Evacuation Zones Google Map shows the three evacuation zones in New York.The zones are based on the strength of the hurricane making landfall. New York is preparing for the threat of storm surges with the closure of the entire public transportation system.Climate Central has created a Google Map showing the areas in lower Manhattan, New Jersey and
I made this card for the color combo challenge at SCS this week. Red, yellow and blue. I had so much fun doing the resist technique, I had to try it some more.





Minecraft Tutorial - Redstone e Pistons - Parte 01.

Still Alive

We survived Death Valley, and the earthquake, but the hurricane is playing havoc with air travel, so instead of flying home today, Robin, my son James and I are wandering aimlessly in the American Southwest.

We crossed the Mojave desert yesterday and had an "exciting" adventure last night where we took a wrong turn and found ourselves low on gas on a treacherous mountain road as the sun was setting. The road was one of these twisting no guardrail, sheer drops that nearly gave Robin a heart attack and prompted my son to declare it to be the highlight of the trip so far.

I am now making this post from the lobby of a Comfort Inn somewhere near Edwards Air Force Base.


I am writing this post on my iPad, which is near impossible to do. Jamie Rubin does this all the time, but I was unable to upload a photo without the help of Robin's computer. So be even more forgiving of errors.

Sorry but I won't be able to make my usual Writing Advice post tomorrow. Wifi has been sketchy out here, and today we will be heading up into the mountains so I doubt I will be able to broadcast.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Lita Ford is dead

atlantic beach nc mandatory evacuation.

valkyrie

hurricane irene

Google Crisis Response - Hurricane Irene

Google Crisis Response has put together a Google Map for the 2011 Hurricane Season. The map currently shows the projected route of Hurricane Irene with the option of viewing a number of other layers on the map.As well as viewing the forecast track of Hurricane Irene the map includes:a cloud imagery layer from the Navy Research Laba layer showing coastal areas placed under tropical cyclone watches

Questions & Answers with Google Maps

Quora is a website of questions and answers created, edited, and organised by everyone who uses it. Today the site has added Google Maps to topics with associated locations. For example, if you search for Chicago the city is shown on a static Google Map with all the Chicago related questions listed beneath the map. If a user clicks on the static map a larger interactive Google Map will open.Read

Space Mountain dans Minecraft

Voici la vidéo d'un joueur qui s'est amusé à reproduire Space Mountain dans Minecraft. Oui oui Space Moutain !N'ayant pas assez de courage pour connaitre parfaitement l'attraction phare de Disneyland Paris, je vous laisse juger si le résultat est fidèle à l'original ;) En tout cas, un grand bravo à CapitanoTtouristo.

Challenge #81 Back to School

Morning crafters, Caroline here, and I am your challenge hostess this week.

Before we get to last week's winners and the new challenge
I'd like to say, on behalf of all the DT,
a sad farewell to Carol.

Carol has been a brilliant DT member and friend
and we are all going to miss her loads.
Thanks for all your fantastic work Carol,
and good luck with your new projects.
xxx

Now, onto the winners of the
'Christmas in August' challenge.

The winner, of 3 digi images from Karen's Doodles,
chosen my Random org is No 23

Rebekah - Berrylicious

Congratulations Rebekah
please email us (addy is on the side bar )
so we can arrange to get your prize out to you -
and don't forget to take your winner's banner from the side bar.

We always have a hard time choosing our Top 3,
but here they are, in no particular order.

1. ClaireC


2. Morgan
Check out the inside of this card!

3. Alie

Congratulations ladies, please take your Top 3 badge,
from the side bar.

**************************************
Now, onto this week's challenge.
Here in the UK it's time to get ready for

Back to School

Can I hear a collective sigh of relief,
from all the frazzled mums out there? :-)

We would like to see any back to school cards/projects
and we know you are all busy,
but we hope you can find some time to play along.

We have 2 fabulous sponsors for you this week, Sqigglefly who are offering a choice of
5 digi images


Squigglefly

and this lovely collection of goodies
from Simon Says Stamp.





Here's some fab inspiration from our lovely DT.
Just click on their names to visit their blogs :o)

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