I thought that the obsession with the anorexically thin models was an american phenomena. I always just assumed it was part of the obsession with "the other" as America is pretty fat. While reading the Chinese news at xinhuanet.com again today, I came across this article about the "New Silk Road" beauties' swimsuit show Apparently, models from 40 countries come to a park in Hangzhou to participate in the pagent. They are prison camp skinny.



Apparently, starvation is an international symbol of beauty, at least for 40 countries. Wow how the times have changed. It really hits at the fact the human beings have moved so far away from the "natural" condition. Historically, being not-so-skinny was a sign of properity and beauty as it showed you had money, health, etc. Imagine how not-pretty an anorexically thin woman would seem if you were moving out west in a wagon train caravan and had to cross the salt flats, ford rivers, and traverse mountain ranges.

[size=m]Links[/size]
(e:sqb) added a link from a forum on the Central Terminal Project Site. It seems to be bringing a lot of traffic in. If anyone else uses any other local sites and has the opportunity to add links back to their journal, I encourage it. To find the internet address of a particular journal entry simply click on the little earth icon at the bottom of the journal. Once you click, a window will pop up with the direct web address to the entry.

[size=m]Beach[/size]
Last night we headed out to Tom's Beach house for a giant party. We saw a bunch of people I never expected to see and brought a bunch of peeps with us. It ended up being one of those hot summer nights, complete with skinny-dipping in the lake nights. (e:mike) actually got sick from swimming based motionsickness. (e:southernyankee) actually started to learn how to swim. I can't imagine not being able to swim, I guess I always took it for granted. Thanks mom for sending me to swimming lessons all of those very cold Buffalo summer mornings.

Roy from media studies was there with his wife. Apparently, his son works for for Tom's pet store [inlink]paul,1856[/inlink]. The new professor, Ste(v/ph)en from Media Studies, was also there. We hung out with him most of the night - he seems like a really nice guy. He lived through (e:matthew)'s tiraid on the plight of the Native American's in America. On the way home I thought the border Nazis would give us trouble at the border. Especially, because ste(v/ph)en was from Britain. At first they started hasling us, but as soon as we said where we came from they sent us right on through.

I actually tried to play tennis for a while. Not as in "by the rules" but as in "ran and chased after balls." It was kind of fun and made me think that I should possibly get more excercise. I felt bad for (e:rachel) because she is actually good at tennis and the rest of us sucked. We hit the ball back and forth a maximum of five times.

In regards to [inlink]paul,1868[/inlink] and [inlink]paul,1869[/inlink]

Unnammed person,
I am not mad at you, I just wanted credit for my part. I think you should credit everyone in the project. That is what collaboration is about, right? What is the advantage to not crediting everyone? It would only be one extra line.

Paul

UPDATE: I think we finally agreed on this.

---

I am putting this here for future reference to myself and all collanoration participants. Rememeber to credit each other.

So I have been working collaboratively with some people on a project at school [search]josephine[/search] . I have to say that I am quite leary about the whole collaborative environment since Trebors Network and Collaborations conference, but I thought I would give it a whirl. Today someone I worked with posted their website to our school listserv. My friend wrote to tell me that they saw my models on the web without my name anywhere, as reference.



The background was all my models with no credit on it. I assume it was just an oversight, but in the mean time, lots of people viewed the page assuming that the work was not mine. Don't get me wrong, the person who posted them did a huge portion of the project and is by no means a slacker or stealer but I would never post their portion of the porject (code/storyboard) to my website and add no reference to them. In fact on my web site for the project , the only link to work I didn't create mentions the makers of the storyboard right on the link.

In regards to this [inlink]paul,1868[/inlink]

Hi Paul,
Thanks for expressing your worries about a copyright violation because of me using your rendered model image as a background image in one of my pages in my personal site.

I think I will rather prefer to change the image or credit everybody in the project at the same time.

You are right that image is modelled and rendered by you. But you didn't conveided it on your own. The project is Josephine's, You did the modelling based on my storyboards which I discussed with Josephine, Trupti the AI, Dave the VR whole toolset, Prof Shspiro Sneps and etc. This is a chain of collaborators, and one is not independent from the other in this project's context. I explicitly express my role in the project, I say that I am doing the storyboard (put the actual image there), and build scenes in YG and write/extend code for agent navigation. Belive it or not, to be honest, I thought that this is clear enough. So that people don't get the idea that I did any modeling. I also explicitly stated the kind of programming I do there so that people should not think that I do more than that in such a complex programming intensive project.

Besides, I made videos of people walking in the environment with a footage shot by Dave. This videos were only possible by everybody's contribution, but I did them anyway. I will put a grab from them instead of your image.

The reason I didn't put every name about the project is because I am linking to the very site which tells all of the details about it in a proper way.

I wouldn't worry about you using my code as a background image on your site because it is not entirely mine. You have to credit everybody involved with that or non. I guess people belive that "looking" at images is enough to claim a copyright, than perhaps the use of code/text as a visual/image.

I have a lot of issues to say about copyright and identity, and what belongs to whom, or who you are (like should one need to credit mom and dad, or the monkeys in the evolution chain, if there is any, which made your existense possible for claiming a right to that image) anyway but this is a different discussion for a different interest.

Anyway, I don't see this as a big problem and except your argument no matter I agree or not. And I am sorry if I dissapointed you, as I like you as a friend.
So the image will go or replaced, but I got also warnings about sending this kind of a stupid e-maisl to the list even though this was totally a mistake. People thought that I want them to visit my site. I realized that this is a huge list, and I don't want to take people's time again. If you don't mind, I prefer to give a written explanation to the people whom went to my site and reported this act as a violation. But if your really really really really really want to me write to this list, anyway, I should think a solution for that.

I hope you understand, and got my points. Again sorry for the inconvenience,and I apology if I made you feel dissapointed.

The image will be gone, or replaced, 1 min. after I send this e-mail.

Unnammed person

So I decided to work on the mushrooms a little more and to test out Maya 6's new soft modification tool. It rocks. It is so much easier than using lattices and yet yields even better results.

Here are the same mushrooms from this entry [inlink]paul,1864[/inlink], rerendered and modified.

[size=m]Nancy King[/size]
Before, I explain this I would like to note that Nancy King in the Media Studies office is the most helpful person I have ever dealt with at UB. She seems really caring.

[size=m]I want to finish now[/size]
I am so used to small schools, so this UB megunivopolis thing is overhwhelming. I think I really made a mistake when I decided to get my MFA there.

I am so busy that I have a hard time keeping up with the nuances of school beaurocracy. I am so jealous of the students who are not working right now. I can't imagine being able to really focus on my own education.

It is just too hard to teach two classes at Cansius, continue to do free lance work, work on my thesis project, and take a full-time course load. I keep telling myself it's almost over but then little things creep up. A great example being when I discovered that i am supposed to take 3 out-of-department courses. This wasn't listed as overtly as I would anticipate on the paperwork. It should be listed in the electve section in bold letter (Student's are required to take 3 courses in outside departments.) I wanted to take 3 one-credit courses as it did not specify the number of ours per course. The school told me that wold not satisfy t he requirement.

Someone must have heard about my story because at 5:45 am I received this anonymous email that said:

.. (the school's) position is weak. The documents legal implications are strong for yoou. You can likely take 3 one credit courses. If you put it in court, you will win. Unless you have agreed to do whatever they say at any time in the future.

The person is surely right but I don't think I could deal with the drama of the court case, not to mention it would surely end up costing as much as taking the classes.

Today I also temporarily dropped under 12 hours and was nervous because I won't be able to add classes until Tuesday. I thougt I would be financially penalized as we are required to remain full time. Luckily, I called the grad school and spoke with Debbie. She told me that I have until Friday to get my schedule finalized.

The Graduate School
408 Capen Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-2608
Phone: 716-645-2939
Fax: 716-645-6142

Watch how 3D mushrooms are grown.

Here is the texture file with the corresponding UV coordinates marked out.



Here is the model with the texture applied and subdivided at level 1.


Here is the rendered image with the mesh subdivided at level 3.


Here are some examples after tricking the renders out in photoshop

Wow, this would revolutionize internet access. I am moving to Philadelphia as soon as it is reality.

Here is a visual depiction of how I imagine it. Like a street lights up the streets, the wireless signal will light up the city's information superhighway.



The administration hopes to turn all 135 miles of Philadelphia into a giant wireless hotspot and bring the Internet to the masses.

Street has named a 17-member "Wireless" committee to explore the feasibility of the plan, which would involve installing thousands of transmitters across the city. Computers equipped with wireless cards could then log into the Internet.

If this becomes a reality, Philadelphia will be the first major city in the United States to provide wireless Internet access to all its residents. About 1,200 people now regularly use the free wireless access the city provides at LOVE Park.

Everything sucked today. I realized in so many ways that I am not a cyborg genius, but rather an average mortal. I don't think I can keep up with Communications 630 - ICTs and Social Change. To tell you the truth I didn't even know what ICTs were before last night.

We talked about epistemology [dict]epistemology[/dict] , axiology [dict]axiology[/dict], and ontology [dict]ontology[/dict]. To be honest I was only familiar with ontology, and even with that one, just barely. I am definately not trained to jump into PHD level communications. Not because I am an idiot but because I have not developed the vocabulary to allow me to do this. It is no different than trying to jump into a 600 level physics course. I just don't have a background for it.

This still leaves me with the dilema of having to take to more classes outisde of my department before I graduate.

Teaching was also not so great for once. I had planned to have a five hour period to prepare for class today from 1-6 PM. Unfortunately, the software for my class was improperly installed and I spend the entire 5 hours, locating the software and installing it. It was such a pain because I had to entire the admin password about 500 times in order to get it all working. By the time I was done the students were walking in and class began. It made me really mad.

I was going to show how to make these boots, but I forgot all the files.