I take the leap to the Third Dimension..

Whee. Things are good! Especially for the site: Averaging 8 views a day. And if all those hits are from so-called ‘Chavs’ from school, who cares? They get to post stuff I don’t read, and I get a lovely pageview. Everybody wins.

To business! And slightly different business this time, as I’ve been fiddling around with a 3D package to make interesting results..

Even better interesting results as I’ve had a tip to a fantastic texture site: www.cgtextures.com. If you’re into this sort of thing, that site deserves a look.

From the left:

#1: A pile of some spheres

Well, this is some spheres. Just a simple raytrace test with a skydome world map and a flat wooden plank texture for the ground. The image is 1280×800 (my lappy’s screen resolution) and I think it came out rather well.

#2: A pile of some spheres at sunset

This is exactly the same, with a sunset lighting model. I also added a Nor map to the spheres to act as bump mapping. No displacement though. Can’t be bothered. Loses marks because I didn’t set up the camera properly before rendering – which took 41 minutes so I’m not doing it again.

#3: Springer!

Ah yes, absolutely none of you will have heard of Springer. So there isn’t much I can say. I think this image rocks, just because of the effects the AO rig has on his body.

In case you were curious, I made all these in Blender, with most textures coming from www.cgtextures.org. Springers eyes come from www.imageafter.com.

If I get around to it, I’ll write up about last night. Man, that was awesome! ^_^

~James P

Copyright James Plant, 2008

All trademarks acknowledged.

That ‘School’s Out’ song is overused.

Clearly, anyone who thinks they are a ‘tough man’ isn’t one. That much is plain for all to see. It has been thought, not by me incidentally but I do agree having seen the evidence, that these people are merely attempting to be ‘hard’ so they may inflict revenge on those who bullied them at an earlier age.

Also, if you’re over 5′ 6″ tall, then you musn’t gel your hair. Really. You will look like a children’s television presenter.

I notice things like this. For example, Year 7’s are irritating. They run around screaming. They shout. They jump around. But worse are the ones who think they are ‘Hard Chavs’. Seriously. Who wants to be a chav anyway? Do you people even know what ‘chav’ means? It’s an acronym of ‘Council Housed And Violent’. And you’re giving teenagers a bad name. It’s because of you that there’s apparently going to be a curfew this summer.

Anyway, rant over. And back to my previous rant.

Year 7 ‘Chavs’ are just weird. I saw one who, at Wallasey Village station after boarding the Liverpool-bound train decided to stick his finger up indiscriminately at everything on the other platform. While grinning, and there is no other way of saying this, like a f***ing idiot. Jesus.

Ok, both rants are over now. But what to fill the rest of the column with?

Well, school is out now, leaving me with hours to.. sleep.. and see people. I personally don’t mind one way or another about the holiday. While I may get teased in school (and really, that’s all it is – teasing -) I’ve now got a couple of weeks to sit off. And the persistant ones? Well, I’m turning them over to the appropriate services which advertise everywhere.

Well, that’s not very much column filling. I’m only up to 298 words.

Cadets is a greens night on Tuesday. Sounds like a night ex may be coming!

The Tall Ships this weekend was overrated. I only went because it only comes every 15 years or something. In short, it gave me a chance to stand in a space 60% smaller than my body.

Progress on the game: Timmy in the Magic Cave (Abbreviation unfortunately ‘Tit MC’), is coming along nicely. Some oddities to iron out, but all is looking well!

I’m all out of ideas now. Happily, no-one seems to care about my lack of writing quality as this site averages 8 pageviews a day.

~JC Plant

 PS. This is my 20th post. I should probably do something to celebrate.

© James Plant, 2008

All trademarks acknowledged.

TMSD’s New Website!

Well, the title says it all You can now see the full TMSD website, on the air!

Clicky

The Wirral Show

Ok James, breath deeply. Relax.

Right. From now on i’m going to be a ‘changed person’. Or rather, I’m going to be the person I was three months ago. No more bizzare silliness, as I can forsee you all getting tired of that quite soon. Plus I’ve been informed that my more recent character is tiring and that I’ve gone downhill since precisely April 22nd. Although you’ve alrealdy read about that.

Well, tomorrow is more Wirral Show shenanigans, and my brother (who literally is like Jeremy Clarkson – but cooler) is coming to visit. Henceforth, I’ll be going around with him at the show! Hurrah!

Oh yeah, Amy’s at the show tomorrow too!

 

Hypothetical Situation

Me: Amy, this is Ben, Ben, this is Amy!

(Uncomfortable silence as I can’t predict anything that either party would say..)

*Imagination shortage – end universe*

 

So yeah, that’s how things might work. I hope to meet my brother (and his girlfriend who is coming with him) at the ATC stand, or, to make things cooler, he could arrive at the stand and they could radio for me! Like in a film! Now that’s coolness for you!

Ok, I’m done now. I have to practice some communication skills for tomorrow…

~James

© James Plant, 2008

All trademarks acknowledged

Downhill

It would seem that until a few days ago, things were going downhill. which is fitting as I’ve been told that I myself have been going downhill since precisely April 22nd.

Yes, That was possibly the most significant day in my life so far. At about 9:35 PM.

Well, from now on, I’m going to try and revert myself to how I was before that characterwise, as (someone) very special to me has noted that I’ve changed since Llanbedr. For the worse. And She’s right: I have. So, less loudness and more subdued randomness from now on. Would someone please remind me how I was before April 22nd?

Yes, sorry if you were expecting some silly similies and random humour here tonight, but I really had to get this off my chest. It’s opened my eyes, really.

-James

RAF Kinloss – Part 3 – Bowling

Still reading? I salute you.

Now, onto the last part of the week. To round things off, we were all taken to ‘Roller Bowl’, a bowling alley in the region of Inverness. I was excited: I USED to be half decent at bowling, however through years of negect my skills appear to have taken a slight deviation to the worse. At least to the gutter. Which is where, almost invariably, the ball ended up.

Seriously, these things are fixed. I realise now that I was probably only ever good at bowling due to the bumpers. However, we were playing a ‘proper’ game and the bumpers would have taken some of the fun out of it.  For the other people. Time and time again, my ball went diagonally into the gutter on the left. After correcting my angle due to a helpful tip from a friend, the ball invariably went diagonally into the gutter on the right. There was only three or four occasions that the ball actually went near the pins, on one occasion I somehow managed to score a half strike *cough*fluke*cough* and this made me happy.

However, I had not forseen that Debbie would be so damned good at bowling. She got almost all the pins down every time, scoring several strikes. Many people marvelled at this. I was simply dumbfounded as to how she could persuade the ball to arrive at the other end of the lane and I couldn’t. My other opponents were similarly good compared to me. I admit now, publically, that I am a hopeless bowler.

The game ended eventually, with the highest score of our group (Debbie) being something like 104 and the lowest score (Mine) being about 36. We all shuffled over to the alley’s impressive arcade. I say impressive, but I never got to actually play any of the games as I was all out of money by this stage. Needless to say, they were taking advantage of us. The best game there, After Burner Climax, cost THREE POUNDS to play. For one game. Only one of us actually went on it, but his experience was slightly limited when someone pressed the seat movement’s emergency stop button. I think he should demand a refund.

Well, that’s all there is to say about Roller Bowl. Go there if you’re up in Inverness sometime.

-James

© James Plant, 2008
All trademarks acknowledged.

Tuesday

Well, I’ve got nothing else to do, so I’m going to write. Hurrah you say.

So, what’s happening at the moment? I’ve got work to do, school trundles on, that only really leaves Cadets to talk about. Tuesday may or may not be good. It may be good because I’ll see Amy again after this last week and be able to tell everyone about Kinloss. It may be bad because Flt. Sgt. Anderson/Debbie finishes tomorrow, and that’s a pity. Partly because she’s one of the coolest NCOs there, but partly because she’s been in the ATC for (I think) seven years. That’s a long time. I have great respect for someone who could stick with anything for that long. Seven years, by the way, equates to about 700 parade nights. Each of those being 2 1/2 hours, that works out to:

(Opens Calculator)

105,000 minutes. Or 1750 hours. Or 72.92 days. Or just over 10 weeks ‘on duty’ without counting camps or the like. Holy Damn.

As I say, I have great respect for anyone who can stick with anything for that long. If you’re reading, I genuinely wish you good luck with what you’re going on to do after Cadets!

-James

RAF Kinloss – Part Two – Inverness Aquadome

Come back for more? Hurrah.

I should probably do some explaining here. Towards the end of the week we did more fun activities, such as a very short lived water balloon fight (have you ever been hit by a water balloon? Those things hurt, man!) and Ten-Pin Bowling which, to me, was deeply unfair.

I’m not crap at bowling. My ball was magnetically attracted to the gutters, I swear!

That doesn’t really bring us to the Inverness Aquadome. But I don’t care.

The Aquadome! Kind of like Europa Pools (Our local moistworld) on steroids. This thing had ‘awesome’ flumes!

The Cyclone

Yeah. You lie down in this one, go very fast then land in some water. Average.

The Vortex

This slide is, quite possibly the most infuriating thing in the history of swimming pools. The idea was that you would go down a normal slide in a rubber donut thing for a bit, then go into a whirlpool at one side, go around 180 degrees and go down another tube. At least in theory. In reality you go into the whirlpool, then go around… and around and around and around for all eternity while a pipe above drips ice-cold water on to you. Pretty much everyone I saw got stuck in the first whirlpool until they gave up, got off their donut, (which would invariably turn over if you even hinted at getting off it), dragged it to the other pipe, hopped back on it (turning it over again) and going down. After TEN MINUTES of rotation that’s eventually what I did. And guess what they had put at the bottom of that little bit of tube?

ANOTHER WHIRLPOOL.

And another one ofter that. This slide isn’t so much a water ride as a life ambition – get down it without starving.

The Loch Ness Monster

Now this was good. This thing has a vertical drop in it. It takes two seconds to get from top to bottom as you fall about four storeys. Riding it is like this: you slide down a slope that gets very steep (like 80 degrees or something) very fast, then you feel zero gravity. Then you hit the bottom of the tube again, doing about mach 4. Then your femurs shatter as you hit a wall of water designed to slow you down, but instead rips your face off. Then you drown. All in all, jolly good fun. And the queue was tiny as people were too scared to go on it. Or they knew it’s wrath.

There is more to the Aquadome than this, but it’s getting late so I’ll write more tomorrow. Goodnight!

-James

© James Plant, 2008.
All trademarks acknowledged.

Return from RAF Kinloss

I have just experienced what is known to most of you as a bloody good week!

I’m back from RAF Kinloss, a (huge) RAF base right up at the top of Scotland, where I looked at planes.. and.. erm.. shot things.

For real now, there was far more to it than that. There were visits to various parts of the base, shooting (with a real rifle) and various other things like the Inverness Aquadome (incorporating the most soul-destroying water slide in the known universe) and ten-pin bowling.

Yes, I’ll admit it publicly here. I am crap at bowling.

Well, let’s start off with my favourite part, the Night-Ex.

*DISCLAIMER*

Due to the secretive nature of an RAF base, I have been told I can’t tell you certain things. So I’m not going to tell you about the base itself or any of the equipment on it, but I’m going to be safe about this. Some of the stuff I censor may well not be restricted, but I’m playing safe. It’s restricted for a reason and I don’t want to be prosecuted for accidentally releasing something I shouldn’t.

Ok then, the night ex. Basically, we go out into a forest at night, do all the sort of jungle warfare – hand signals – keep down sort of things and ambush the enemies. And try not to get ambushed. And get some boxes which were playing the part of ‘important parts’ and the like.

We started with a practice, IE no ambushes or anything and just to go over the moves/ hiding etc. We all went into various parts of the forest and practiced hiding. Then we all came back to our rendevous point  and were briefed. I must say, the scene was a bizzare one.

One of the Staffs was wearing Debbie’s DPM hat – a womans hat it appeared – and looked very silly, Mattheus had affixed some grass to his head and the other Staff had pulled a massive BB rifle out of hammerspace. Pretty much everyone else had applied the wrong type of camo stuff and looked like they’d been assaulted by a five-year-old armed with poster paints.

We were then breifed about getting some boxes, and we all set off into the forest. Running. In a forest. In summer. Resultantly, I was attacked by a herculean bout of hayfever and had to go sit in a van for a while while a cocktail of tablets got to work.

After my head had been released from it’s invisible concrete block, Debbie (or Flight Sergeant as I should be calling her) showed up and asked me and Lucy (who had also had to drop out) if we wanted to go and ambush people. I readily agreed. I quickly found out there is nothing that much more fun than jumping out in front of a load of unsuspecting people and shouting ‘BANG BANG BANG’ until they ran away. As a group, us three ambushed four other groups. It was then EndEx and we were given a cup of mercifully hot green soup. Nice.

Well, that about wraps it up for the Night Ex. Or ‘Murky Twilight Ex’ as I should call it. Damn you British Summertime.

Keep an eye out for RAF Kinloss – Part 2 – Inverness Aquadome!

-James

© James Plant, 2008.
All Trademarks Acknowledged.