Dabbling in rendering again. Click the image for full-size.

Another excuse to use the “chess” tag. Click for biggie size.

So over the weekend my main computer died. It was an eMachines comp which has actually served quite well for the last 3 years. I was trying to upgrade the graphics card, which required a power upgrade from a measly 300W.

What I didn’t know is that eMachines comps often require a proprietary power supply. To my sorrow, I only deduced this after buying one, returning and swapping for another one, having that not work and finally testing an old power supply I knew was problem-free.

By that time, the motherboard was fried, so I had little choice but to get a new motherboard and CPU. Having little time to do research, I took one of Fry’s mid-priced combo deals, one which included the odd triple-core processor Phenom X3. I’d probably have been better off with one of Intel’s dual-core offerings. (FYI, few programs today take advantage of more than two cores. Oddy, I actually have at least one.)

The final stroke was the RAM. After spending a bit trying to shove my original memory sticks in the new motherboard, it dawned on me to take a look at what types of memory I was dealing with. Sure enough, I was trying to shove DDR sticks into DDR2 slots.

After 4 trips to Fry’s, 3 to Best Buy, and 1 to a local shop, I finally had a working system again.

It was a very aggravating day.

If you can’t tell, the trophy’s of some invisible hand about to pour liquid egg product on the smiley’s face. Ha! Hilarious.

The body of the trophy is crafted polyethylene, coated with a layer of gold (paint). The Styrofoam base supports the body, spray-painted to give it a granite-like appearance. The lightweight materials enable the trophy to be easily transported and positioned, even for young children.

The nameplate will be affixed next week once the winner is determined. Rather than using duct tape (which would look incredibly cheap) the nameplate will be bonded to the faux-granite base using name brand Elmer’s glue.

Haven’t voted yet? Cast your vote for the 2007 Liquid Egg Product on the Face Award!

[Hot and allegedly hot female day, post 5]

Last week, we had a bit of discussion about the drug lordess Sandra Avila Beltrán (half of it about whether she was hot). Chessloser had this bit to add: “i can picture her in tight leather pants, boots, and a machine gun…rrraaawwwrrrr…”

I thought that imagery wasn’t bad, so I put my journeyman’s ability in 3D art to work. It’s not actually Beltrán herself–my skills are too poor to simulate someone’s facial structure, and it would have taken time that I don’t have anyway. The leather is very unconvincing and it seems odd to have metallic boots. Nonetheless, I have no time to redo it. Click on the pic for a wallpaper-size (1280×960) version.

[Hot and allegedly hot female day, post 3]

Say hi to Kari, everyone!

Kari 3.1′s really great, because I don’t have to worry about stuff like buying flowers, deciding on a restaurant, or being bugged about when we’re getting married. Meeting Kari was easy; it’s not like I had to go out and meet anyone, spend time getting to know her, then have the guts to ask her out. Plus I have full control over her personality, appearance and actions. Er…

(BTW, I’m not really using this program. If anyone wants to give it a whirl, let us know how it is.)

Pretending to add something relative to chess. For this render in particular, it helps to have a larger version (click on the pic). It’s called “Chess Spirit”.

The problem with this pic is the difficulty of picking out the pieces, especially the Bishops and Rooks. A big part of that is what I tried to do with the materials: each piece is clear glass with a glowing light inside determining the color of the pieces. The models were created by Matt Clara (I don’t have time to develop my own at this point, not that I’m all that skilled at it anyway). If you look on his webpage, the pieces are a lot easier to pick out, probably because the materials used in those pics aren’t funky.

On the board, only the center squares are obvious, but the effect is interesting, so I didn’t bother to correct it.

I was looking at that pixelish looking picture of M-Ahm (that’s hip-hop for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) and thought it looked cool. So take a look at me in that pose:

Yep, yep. Pretty sweet.

By the way, a shout out to all my fan(s) who give me love, like l3rucewayne. And a thumbs-down and a “Boo” to those who doubt my manhood, like Annie. It’s not like you’re so masculine yourself.

In Bryce 6, there’s this feature called TIR (total internal reflection) which is supposed to be neat-o for renders of objects that naturally have…internal reflections.

Like gemstones. Looks a’ight, I suppose (click for bigger version).

It’s the Amethyst Citadel wallpaper–except in the daytime!

He said it was “too frightening” to try. So, unable to resist the siren call of representing all my e-mail as bikini-clad babes, I’ve downloaded it to see if it’s worth using.