At the last minute, I threw together a couple of scenes for one of Hash's monthly image contests. I didn't win, but at least I entered. This marks the second contest I've entered since buying the software. In 2000. Given the amount of time I spend with the software, that makes me feel pretty lame. But the theme was "Science Fiction/Fantasy", which is about all I do, so I would have felt even lamer had I not entered this one.

Image 1: the Unuiĝinta Tero Kolonista Ŝipo 'Banjano'. This is actually only the engine section of the ship; I started modeling it for a story I was writing for a round of NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago, and stopped work on it when I gave up on the story. This image didn't give quite the sense of scale that I wanted; here's a QuickTime animation showing it in relation to a human-sized object. Or here's a quick render of a Saturn V rocket sitting on one of the clamps for the not-yet-modeled storage section.

Image 2: the Dalek invasion of Tampa. This one I literally threw together in the hour before the deadline; setting up the lighting to match the background plate took the majority of that time. I cropped my entry to the lower half of the image, because all that blank sky at the top wasn't exciting; but the full image serves me nicely as a desktop background.

Found this in a Fark thread: The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Just click the link. It's not what you think. Unless you're from Baltimore, I guess.

Karen has requested a photo of the new-and-improved Theseus, so here it is. The blinkenlights are more impressive in person. Especially in the dark. When they're all glowing blood red. And yet she thinks it looks evil.

While walking back to my office this afternoon, I was writing something in my PDA when a man in the hallway stopped me. "Excuse me," he said, "could you tell me... oh, never mind, you're not a State worker."

"Uh, no, I'm not," I said.

"I could tell, because you were doing two things at once."

Got up yesterday at the crack of night, and my lovely wife Karen drove me to the airport. As I expected, they dug through my laptop case to see what all the little electronic gizmos were. The first leg of the journey was great: I was in a single-seat row, plenty of leg room, no seatmates. Polished the teaser of my Big Project script, then played a little Battle of Britain to pass the time. I swear, the graphics are so good that it actually felt like I was flying. Ha ha.

The second leg of the trip: not so good. I was in the back row; no problem with that until The Family showed up. A girl of maybe three or four, plus an infant -- the only children on the whole flight. Naturally, they were in my row. They put the girl next to me (and she immediately started fussing and swinging her feet wildly, hitting me three or four times). The father was going to be sitting in the row in front of us, because that was the only other seat available on the plane, so I "altruistically" offered to switch seats with him so they could all sit together. But my relief at not having to sit next to an unruly child for four hours was short-lived; she would kick my seat madly every few minutes. After the first few times I turned around and glared, her parents tried to stop her — but being a young child, quickly forgot her parents' admonishments. And every time the pressure changed she would start screaming. I know there are good children out there — my friends Simon and Melissa have an absolutely angelic daughter, at least from what I've seen of her — but experiences like that make me really glad Karen and I are childfree.

Anyway. I couldn't do any work on that plane, as I was sandwiched in between two big guys, who took jealous possession of the armrests, so it was impossible for me to type. Got in to Seattle, called Karen (that toll-free number paid off!) and then called Moira. Now, Moira's the person who convinced me to start blogging in the first place. I'd made arrangements to meet her; some time later, she dropped me off her LiveJournal friends list, but assured me she still wanted to meet; she gave me her phone number and told me to call her when I got to Seattle. Well, she didn't answer the phone, and didn't call me back. After two hours, I said to heck with it; I had better things to do than sit around Seattle waiting for a phone call. So I drove up to Vancouver, BC instead. (As of 7:41 PM Sunday, I still haven't heard from Moira. Nice to be stood up that way.)

There's some really beautiful countryside in Washington. Mountains! Trees! Mountains with trees! Tallahassee's got a few more hills than Tampa, but it's nothing like what they've got up here.

The Canadian border gate was cute: it looked like a rustic log cabin, with "Haben Sie ihre Papieren im Hand" scrolling in English and French. I didn't realize the protocol and started following the car ahead of me into the gate; the guard looked shocked and held up his hand. Oops. It had been about twenty years since I went across the border, and then it was on a bus. And before all the heightened security measures, too.

"Sorry," I said to the guard when it was my turn. "I've never done this before."

"That's okay. Just make sure you stop at the gate when you come back, 'cause the American guards aren't as understanding." I'll bet. I handed him my identifying documents, but he seemed a bit confused by my statement that I was going to Vancouver just to see it. There aren't tourists anymore? Oh well. He let me through anyway.

When I came into Vancouver, the stoplights perplexed me for a while: what does a blinking green light mean? (I eventually figured it out. I think.) I saw a lot of Vietnamese and Thai restaurants; if you like Asian food, this seems to be the place to go for it.

Downtown Vancouver was neat. I tried taking pictures from the car, but they turned out too blurry. I wanted to stop and take some pictures of the mountains surrounding Vancouver, but I couldn't find an unmetered parking space, and I had no Canadian coinage on me. Could have planned this little junket better, I think.

Came back across to the States, where the guard was even more suspicious of my reason for being Canada than the Canadian guard had been. And the American gate just looked bland and institutional, not friendly and welcoming like the Canadian one. Go USA. I drove for a while, then realized I'd been up for about nineteen hours and I was really tired. I pulled off at the nearest exit which offered a choice of hotels, went in and asked the prices of each one, and whether or not they had Internet service. Only one fulfilled the latter requirement, though it was about $15 more expensive than the others. I should have gone for the cheaper one, as their wireless access point dropped me after about fifteen minutes and wouldn't let me back on. But I got a couple of emails out anyway. Had dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant (very good salsa, and chorizo tacos) and went back to the hotel to sleep. (I am an idiot.)

While looking at the map this morning to double-check the route to the Washington Vancouver, I noticed that Snohomish was only a little way off the direct path. Snohomish? I had to stop there! (It's where Twin Peaks was filmed.) Sadly, Big Edd's and the Mar-T Diner were no longer there. The trip wasn't a total waste, though, as I got some excellent texture photographs from a railroad graveyard.

(click for larger image)

I also got some beautiful pictures of mountains. I didn't see the famed "Twin Peaks", which were a ways away, but how'd you like to have something like this in your back yard?

(click for larger image)

The rest of the drive down to Vancouver was uneventful. Made a quick trip into Portland to buy a power strip (as there's only one free outlet in the whole room, which just won't do) and a cheap memory stick reader so I could put pictures into this post.

Tonight I pick Squelch up at the airport, and tomorrow begins the Hash Bash.

Whatever I expected of this trip, Monday was not it. We all met up at the Hash office — a converted Presbyterian church — I was introduced to everyone whose names I'm familiar with, but then (since I was introduced to everybody at once) promptly forgot which names belonged to which faces. Got to hear a presentation from Martin Hash, founder and president of Hash, Inc., on the super-sekrit Hash Project. Is it a secret? I don't recall. Best not to mention specifics, just in case.

Then we loaded up into two vans and took off for Ape Cave, a 2.5-mile-long lava tunnel in a mountain near Vancouver. Along the way, the van I was riding in got sideswiped by a trucker who wasn't even looking where he was going. He said he didn't see us — but how he missed a leopard-print van I'll never know.

So we got to the mountain, hiked up two miles and then went down into the lava tunnel.

(click to enlarge)

All told we walked a bit over three miles inside the cave — really neat stuff, though I learned it's not wise to concentrate on watching the ground if you don't want to walk smack into a low-hanging rock shelf. D'oh. No bats, no bugs, no crawling things, just cold wet dripping stone. There were a few drops — including one which the "natives" said was eight feet — and big piles of boulders and loose rocks we had to clamber over. I'm sure my legs will be stiff in the morning, but it was worth it.

Had dinner and then went to Martin's huge house. Martin loves balconies. He had four or five that he showed us, and then we went up on the roof, where he plans to build another. And he's got all the toys: pool table, foosball table, table tennis table... all he was missing was the air hockey.

We sat around and chatted for a while, then did "show and tell", where people showed off some of the non-Animation:Master things they'd done. I didn't have my laptop with me — we'd locked them in the Hash office before going to Ape Cave — so I hooked my PDA up to Martin's stereo and played a couple of my songs. I was gratified that they laughed at The Day The Clowns Went Berserk.

Then they drove us back to the Hash offices, whereupon Zach and I drove back to the hotel and blogged like geeks before turning in for the night. I think tomorrow we'll be rappelling down into the caldera of Mount St. Helens, so I definitely need my sleep.