Our air conditioner simply couldn't keep up with the heat yesterday, so Karen and I decided to cool off in a movie theater. We saw Shrek 2, which was simply amazing.

The hair and cloth simulation was mind-bogglingly good. I'm guessing Shrek's shirt had a hair simulation applied to it as well; when he was backlit, thousands of tiny fibers along the edge caught the light. His vest must have been pretty heavy geometry, too, as the surfacing was actually displaced rather than merely bumpmapped.

I'm curious what their rendering machines' specs are; even though I'm sure they used multiple passes, especially during the crowd scenes, the detail in the surfacing maps was just immense. Some of the surfaces were probably procedural, but at least the faces must have been mapped. And then there's that hair again, which really cranks up the CPU time (especially when you have characters which are almost entirely hair-covered, such as Donkey and Puss-In-Boots).

Oh, yes, and there was a story too. It only had one big plot hole that I noticed (spoilers: Far Far Away was at least 700 miles from the swamp, according to the road signs (and we were subjected to Donkey's incessant "are we there yet?" to drive home the fact); however, Pinocchio, the Three Blind Mice, the Gingerbread Man and the Wolf were watching the start of the night-time Wedding Ball on Shrek's TV (Shrek has TiVo?) and managed to get there with enough time for the Muffin Man to mix, make and bake Mongo before midnight).

Warning: spoiler discussion in comments.

Installation diskette #1: looking good! Ready for diskette #2? oh yeah!

Aaaaaaaaand... the dreaded System Trap c0000005.

I tried Warp 3 as well, and it simply locked up during the splash screen. But I know it's at least possible!

(On the bright side, bochs will read the compressed installation diskettes directly off the OS/2 install CDs, so I don't have to go through the trouble of booting to DOS in order to make the OS/2 installation diskettes, and then converting the diskettes to image files on my hard drive. So that's pretty nifty, even though it won't actually install.)

I don't know anything about Capitol Hill Blue's reputation for journalistic veracity, but if there's any truth to this article, it's very disturbing.

Alas, I wasn't able to install OS/2 Version 2; I don't know if install diskette 1 was bad or what, but it just locked up, the cursor not even blinking. And, sadly, the box only included diskettes, so I can't generate new ones from the CD.

However, I was able to get two later versions running, so I can inflict upon you this screenshot of Windows XP simultaneously running both OS/2 Warp 3 and Warp 4 through the magic of bochs, with Windows 3.1 Program Manager running inside Warp 3 for added comedic effect. Click for full-sized OS geekery.

And now to convert those documents I was originally after when I started this mad quest...

This morning, through Elf Only Inn, I discovered a webcomic about people who work in an ad agency. Which is actually funnier than it sounds at first glance. But anyway, the SCA got a mention in this strip. Fortunately, the subsequent storyline involves a trip to the Renaissance Faire, not an SCA event...

This article explains why Garfield sucks so badly: Jim Davis planned it that way.

Davis meticulously plotted Garfield's success. And part of his calculation was to make the strip so inoffensive that it's hard to hate it even for being anodyne. [...] he consciously developed a stable of recurring, repetitive jokes for the cat. He hates Mondays. He loves lasagna. He sure is fat. The model for Garfield was Charles Schulz's Peanuts, but not the funny Peanuts of that strip's early years. Rather, Davis wanted to mimic the sunny, humorless monotony of Peanuts' twilight years.

And here I thought he had just run out of ideas.

George W. Bush, to Bill Clinton: "Thanks for your service to the country, and welcome back to the White House. We're really glad you're here and I know the President is, as well."

I am attempting to improve my drawing skills. My shortcomings in this area have long been a source of embarrassment to me; a fine-motor coördination deficiency prevents me from being as precise as I'd like. I can see what I want to draw, my fingers simply won't do exactly as I tell them; it's like the drawing equivalent of a speech impediment.

I took up calligraphy when I was in elementary school, as a big "fuck you" to the doctors who told my parents I'd never be able to do anything that required precision. To this day, I still have trouble drawing true vertical lines and keeping the letters exactly the same size. And it hurts like a bitch; in order to retain any semblance of control over the pen, I have to grip it too tightly for comfort. As a consequence, I don't really enjoy calligraphy.

Drawing, on the other hand, is something I long to do; not out of spite or stubbornness, but as a means of expression. I've wanted to draw ever since I was a child, but I quickly curtailed my efforts every time I attempted it, because I couldn't manage to execute my desires to my own satisfaction. But that only compounded my problem, because even with perfect coördination, I couldn't hope to improve without plenty of practice.

But I'm determined this time, and each time I fail, I keep going instead of quitting in disgust. I've finally reached the point where, while I know my work is still far from perfect, it doesn't cause me to cringe and immediately crumple the paper.

So. Tonight I tried a pencil sketch of a woman I'd seen on a Fark link. It didn't quite look like her, and there were some definite problems, but it also didn't look like it had been drawn by a retarded chimpanzee. So I inked and shaded it, and it still didn't look too terribly bad.

Like I said, there are several things wrong with it, but it's a start. Next time, I'll try working a little larger (I left my sketchbook at work, so I did it on the back of a bank deposit slip — so the drawing's only about two inches wide) and I'll avoid the blue pencil (which doesn't erase nearly as well as a "B" lead). But still, I'm happy; I'm a lot better at it than I was even a couple of weeks ago.

This image cracks me up. Kudos to whoever created it. Warning: contains Rumsfeld.

The LAN party went pretty well. Subtracting time for sleep and food, we played about thirty-seven hours' worth of Battlefield 1942 and Tribes 2, mostly the former.

Battlefield 1942, is always loads of fun, but one of the version updates since the last time we played together included a great new map: the Battle of Britain. We tried it three times on Saturday, twice as the British and once as the Germans, and the Germans won easily each time (despite our "help" when we played as Germans, since it involved a lot of flying and bombing, which none of us were terribly good at). Sunday, we decided to play the map a few times to see if we could actually win as the British. Our quest was aided when we discovered we could take the Engineer class and actually repair the factory as well as defending it with antiaircraft guns. Once we learned that little trick, it was easy to beat the Germans — the AI players weren't aggressive enough to damage the factory as fast as we could repair it — so I switched over to the German team while everyone else stayed British, and that made things a little more challenging for everyone (part of the challenge for me was in learning how to fly well enough to actually hit the factory).

Thirty-seven hours of gaming is a bit hard on the ol' wrists, though. I think next time I'll be wearing an RSI brace on my mousing wrist during the game...

"You will enter Iraq both as a soldier and as an individual, because on our side a man can be both a soldier and an individual. That is our strength—if we are smart enough to use it. It can be our weakness if we aren't. As a soldier your duties are laid out for you. As an individual, it is what you do on your own that counts—and it may count for a lot more than you think.

"American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not. It may not be quite that simple. But then again it could."

—A Short Guide to Iraq, US Army, 1943.

The skateboarding bulldog — the videos have to be seen to be believed. The dog skates better than I probably could; he even steers!

Evil Dead: The Musical

Someone on Fark linked to this recent musical offering by Eric Idle: The FCC Song. He writes: "Here's a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge... It's a new song, it's dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars."

As you might guess from that description (at least if you've been following the news), it's not entirely safe for work.

Courtesy of Fark, this article points out that Starbucks isn't really great for dieting. While a regular cup of Starbucks coffee is only 10 calories, the large Java Chip Frappuccino is a whopping 650 calories, and 25 grams of fat. A "grande" (which I think is their term for "medium") Strawberries & Creme Frappuccino Blended Creme with whipped cream (creme?) is 600 calories, 17 grams of fat. Without the whipped cream, it's only 470 calories and 5 grams of fat.

Yeesh.

My office will soon be moving to another building in downtown Tampa. In other news, an attorney is moving into our current building, into a smaller space on our floor. He'd expressed an interest in having our space once we're out, and he and my boss have been discussing the possibility of subletting one of our rooms, so the attorney can move in now and keep the same address once we've gone. My boss was receptive to the idea, and was leaning towards letting the guy move in.

The landlord came by today and told me that the attorney had proposed that the landlord simply kick us out, since we're not under lease, and give the entire office to the attorney immediately.

Needless to say, my boss is no longer receptive to the idea of subletting to this guy.