“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember [literally anything that’s free of plastic].”

Denethor prefers tomatoes raw. More explosive power.

Back in the day TCL was used in a few places in Pixar’s Renderman renderer (called PRMan), and in its connection to Maya. You could write little TCL scripts within the Renderman Artist Tools (RAT) that would be evaluated during scene export. I think this still exists in some form inside Tractor, which is their renderfarm management software.

It’s been a long time since I used prman but generally Python has replaced everything as the “glue” language, which honestly makes things a lot easier. VFX and game dev used to have a hundred different scripting languages rolling around.

Thank you for the encouragement. I’ve been thinking about it.

At AAA studios you can pour your heart and craft into creating something beautiful along with hundreds of other wonderful colleagues, for years, only to have it ruined by management who literally doesn’t give af. Not only do they not play games, or even like games, they are proud of this fact in a sort of, “sell me this pen” type of way. These people always existed but the “financialization” of the industry means they are everywhere now. Even one of these people in the wrong place can be poison, and they are everywhere. This mutated organelle has made the entire studio system too neoplastic to perform its primary function.

It’s like training for years as a chef, slaving away in a hot kitchen for the big opening, then having the owner (who hasn’t cooked in decades) insist you serve your food in the toilet because “hey it’s porcelain, it’s the same as fine china”. Then when the restaurant bombs you get fired and he gets a huge bonus because he’s a genius cost cutter and you couldn’t sell his vision. Nobody cares that you made the best bisque of your life when its served in a toilet. How many times can that happen before you say, “fuck it”?

Well for me it was ten years. Not laid off, but just couldn’t take it anymore. I could probably get another job with my resume, but I just can’t bring myself to apply again. Through a little planning and extremely good luck I’m not really under any pressure. Makes me feel like a fool because a lot of people work worse jobs, but then I remember how sad and angry I was all the time. When I look at job postings those feelings return. The problem is I still like it and want to do it. I feel forced out because I care about making good stuff instead of just “line go up”. I would take a huge pay cut to work on a team that had the “magic” again.

I watched a program about Tangier Island, Maryland. The main street frequently has ankle deep water now. They are all Trumpers and are convinced it’s just erosion, but want the government to step in and fix it somehow.

So there you go. People can literally be standing in water and not believe it’s happening.

Hah, nope. Shrek was made in Glendale, so they probably had everything on site or right next door.

In the early 2000s I worked on an animated film. The studio was in the southern part of Orange County CA, and the final color grading / print (still not totally digital then) was done in LA. It was faster to courier a box of hard drives than to transfer electronically. We had to do it a bunch of times because of various notes/changes/fuck ups. Then the results got courier’d back because the director couldn’t be bothered to travel for the fucking million dollars he was making.

It’s happening in the USA also, farmers in Florida are replacing oranges that have died from greening disease with pongamia tree.

I just remember Jimmy Smits strapped into a big satellite dish, going fucking “Scanners” on some people.

You’ve invented Cincinnati.

Media and Entertainment side sucks too. No hate on the actual devs, I know a few of the Maya devs personally and they are competent and want to help, but M+E is like 4% of Autodesk revenue so management doesn’t really give a fuck. At least there’s still Houdini and Blender is getting better as the time as well.

The same thing happened to me with a few memories:

• People turning into blocks and interlocking to form a city. It turned out to be Unico: Island of Magic.
• Some evil guy crawling into a painting, and something about hair growing. This was a fucked up movie called The Peanut Butter Solution. This one legit scared the shit out of me as a kid and I had nightmares about it.
• A guy being surrounded with evil looking puppets. This was a stage show called In Search of the Wow Wow Wibble Woggle Wazzie Woodle Woo. I didn’t remember this one until the youtube channel RedLetterMedia made fun of it.

These must have just been random VHS tapes my parents got in some bargain bin. I have no idea how we got them or what became of them.

DisneyToon, BlueSky, Circle 7, Imagemovers Digital… could be a lot more doors.

Or I click a link to story about a cat stuck in a tree and it takes me to small, local newspaper I’ve never heard of called “The Sawfly Gazette - serving South Western Maine since 1975!”, then it immediately tells me I’ve hit my “article limit” and must subscribe for $14.95.

Check your regional Craigslist, mine’s full of them. This is also why the fair exists (besides funnel cake).

I guess I can go to Rural King but honestly I doubt they’re better, but least-harm I suppose. When you live where I do you pretty much can’t avoid patronizing businesses like this, unless you can hear through the grapevine about some guy who’s selling whatever and is a fan of John Brown. We’re out here but we’re outnumbered and underground.

The article doesn’t really do Tim justice. He’s a bodger who is basically a genius for what I can only describe as Goblin technology. His projects are as much about fun and experimenting as having a result. In the first windmill video he acknowledged that he could just buy a small electric windmill, but that’s not the point.

I mean, this is the dude who made a narrow gauge railroad and a compressed air locomotive to transport wood to his terrifying biochar chopper and crucible.

Yep, old shirts came out of the wash looking like a fucking Calabi-Yau manifold, even casual wear.

It’ll be a common law marriage when it comes to sharing debt and calculating income for denying SNAP, single when it comes to hospital visitation rights and bereavement.