Tumblr Dump.

Here ya go, have a few random ass tumblr blogs I like.

rrrick

thememedaddy

wilwheaton

memwhore

morganathewitch

And a sampling of their fine wares.

How to forage for food on the Oregon coast

Mussels right on the beach? Yes please! First link has the OPB video. Can’t find a way to embed it into the blog.

“The Pacific Northwest has one of the most abundant tidal ecosystems in the world. The ocean conditions are cold, murky and nutrient-dense, conditions that provide fuel for life on shore.

Alanna Kieffer studied marine biology and eventually left a career in marine research to start her own business – Shifting Tides – where she teaches people how to forage for food in the coastal ecosystem. “

Chris Hedges on America entering the “Trump Phase” of late capitalism

Chris Hedges on America entering the “Trump Phase” of late capitalism

“College is just how well I can use ChatGPT at this point,”

I am not a fan and everything I read just seems to make AI worse and worse and worse. And I used it for band flyers in the past.. BAd Dan….

“Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College. ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.”

Sarah, a freshman at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, said she first used ChatGPT to cheat during the spring semester of her final year of high school. (Sarah’s name, like those of other current students in this article, has been changed for privacy.) After getting acquainted with the chatbot, Sarah used it for all her classes: Indigenous studies, law, English, and a “hippie farming class” called Green Industries. “My grades were amazing,” she said. “It changed my life.” Sarah continued to use AI when she started college this past fall. Why wouldn’t she? Rarely did she sit in class and not see other students’ laptops open to ChatGPT. Toward the end of the semester, she began to think she might be dependent on the website. She already considered herself addicted to TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit, where she writes under the username maybeimnotsmart. “I spend so much time on TikTok,” she said. “Hours and hours, until my eyes start hurting, which makes it hard to plan and do my schoolwork. With ChatGPT, I can write an essay in two hours that normally takes 12.”

The Theremin!

Full disclosure, one of my bands has a lot of theremin in it ;)

“Eyck agrees that the sight of a human body manipulating invisible electromagnetic fields adds to the theremin’s otherworldly aura. The fact that it sounds like nothing so much as an unhinged soprano – listen again to the original Star Trek theme – adds to the unsettling effect.

“You don’t tune it to the A from the piano, but you tune it to your own body and to the surroundings,” she says, citing something called “body capacitance”. In this way the instrument is unique, “except for the voice, but that’s inside you”.

“With its sci-fi antennae bristling left and right, Russian physicist Leon Theremin’s novel invention of 1919 remains the only musical instrument you play without touching anything. “Aerial fingering” was the technique devised by the inventor’s original Lithuanian prodigy, Clara Rockmore, in the 1930s.”

Hoodini Doodle: Hexagon Particles

Was messing around with this tutorial by Caskel and just pushed it ever so slightly further by adding motion blur to the particles in Redshift. Just kinda following along so not that different than the the tut. Kinda a relaxing little piece though. Really great tutorial as well.

Reviving a Modular Cargo Bike Design from the 1930s

Whoa, this is a pretty cool concept for a cargo bike. I wonder how this would work on our narrow streets? Would cars just get pissed at you for taking up a lane?

“French mobility company Cyclauto has gone through the history books to revive an alternate design from the 1930s.”

“This design, originally by French industrialist Auguste Reymond, places the rider directly above the front wheel. They pedal this wheel directly; there's no chain, reducing maintenance needs. A three-speed gearbox in the hub makes starting easier.”

Fonts look bad in Firefox, how to fix.

So for some unknown reason suddenly this morning all my fonts looked like garbage in Firefox and I saw no font smoothing or other options in the default settings page. I did find a tweak though that fixed it.

In a new tab, type or paste, “about:config” in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button saying you know you can break shit here.

Search for, “font_r” in the search bar.

Look for, “gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode” and click the pencil / edit button on the right and change the -1 to a 2.

Click the pencil icon / check mark to save the change.

Restart Firefox and that should make your font;s not look like crap.

The Emergency Is Here - The Ezra Klein Show

The emergency is here.

The crisis is now. It is not six months away. It is not another Supreme Court ruling away from happening. It’s happening now.

Perhaps not to you, not yet. But to others. Real people. We know their names. We know their stories.

The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists. A prison known by its initials — CECOT. A prison built for disappearance. A prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, because it is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world. It is a prison where the only way out, in the words of El Salvador’s so-called justice minister, is a coffin.

Apple Podcast


Magnus Hjalmar Munsterhjelm (19 October 1840 – 2 April 1905) was a Finnish landscape painter

Hjalmar Munsterhjelm was a painter I was digging on last night. Wiki is pretty cool for finding this kind of stuff, bonus points that the jpgs are sometimes in the 4k relm.

Houdini Doodle: Texturing with USD Material X

I just wanted to work on some USD Material X texturing techniques, NOT Karma Material X, but USD specific. So this is working on getting better with Displacement with the planks and getting the right dicing on the geo. Working with Transmission and Metalness on the sphere and using a greyscale image to drive the bump instead of a normal map. Tried to dial in some caustics being driven by a pretty sharp spot light, but those did not really pan out all that well. Not very familiar with using Metalness instead of Specular so that was kinda interesting. The only hard wall is there are no ramps in USD material X yet, so I had to use the Karma ramps there.

I think the next thing I do will be to take the “Dyerin” art and try to remake that in Karma / Solaris and see how I do texturing all the plants.

On a side work note, we are hitting a busy patch and have a bunch of vacations coming up. So if you have any projects on the horizon let us know sooner than later as quick turn rush projects might not be feasible. Thanks!

Houdini Doodle: Lighting for Subject 4

Now that I am getting my head around Solaris and Karma, I wanted to revisit the cloud study I did and rework it from the ground up. The undocumented thing I had to figure out this time was how to get the HDRI that is lighting the scene to show up in the render. Its buried under Dome Light > Karma > Render light geometry. And the freaking manual just has a blank section for Karma….. like really?