Below are the 14 most recent journal entries recorded in gizmoelf's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
7:56 pm	Station Fire Staging I joined up with the Burbank CDV recently, and I got a call on Monday that the official services have made the call for mutual aid requests. I spent most of Monday afternoon and evening over at the staging area. I tried to take pictures with my phone, but I don't have a place to upload. I'm taking it easy today, but I know that there will be additional calls later on this week. Current Mood: uncomfortable (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
11:08 pm	Former Co-workers Its been over a year, so its a strange coincidence that I bumped into not 1, not 2, but 3 former co-workers in one day. Hi Lewis, Brandon, Peter, I hope things are going well. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 9th, 2005
8:40 pm	Downs and Ups I havn't updated my journal in a bit of a while, so here goes... I've had 2 job interviews the past week. I have mixed feelings on how things went, and I don't want to talk too much about it, else it'll jinx my chances. ( I need to get a real job. ) ( Hanging out with Fred ) I took Fred out to see The Chronicals Of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I've read the books long time ago, and I've recently re-read 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe'. I'm not much of a critic, so don't expect an in-depth review from me. The movie stayed with the story, very well done with good CG work. I was surprized at how it stayed within its PG rating with well done battle sequences. I'm having problems thinkng these thoughts out. I've been practicing sketching, trying to learn how to storyboard and layout. The next thing I need to figure out is writing.. which means practice... as soon as I can figure a good method to follow while practicing. This weekend is starting to look busy for me. There's work, LASFS events (Cinema Anime), and a whole new week just around the bend. Same old, same old. Current Mood: drained Current Music: TWIT ipodcast (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 1st, 2005
10:57 pm	insert witty subject here I took Fred to see Serenity. I picked him up ontime, but when we got to the theater, we couldn't find a handicap parking space. We got in just in time for the start of the movie trailers. Talking about the movie without giving spoilers is difficult. I enjoyed it. Later in the evening after dropping Fred off, I made cookies: 1 cub butter/margarine 1/2 sugar 3/4 brown sugar 1 tsp vanilla 1 egg 1 cup unsifted flour 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 1 tsp cinnamon 1/8 nutmeg 3 cups uncooked oats 1 bag (12 oz) chocolate chips 1 cub pecans Mix butter & sugars together Mix in vanilla and egg Mix in flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg Mix in oats, chocolate chips and pecan bits Bake at 375F for 8-9 minutes for a soft cookie Yum. Current Mood: tired Current Music: R. Lee Ermey/Mail Call (Comment on this)
Friday, September 30th, 2005
12:10 pm	Lots of little big things Normally for me, there's always something going on, but to me its not worth commenting on because: Other people do a better job talking/reviewing things Talking about the 'good' stuff feels like boasting and showing off It seems cliche to talk about depressing/annoying things that you can't do anything about in the Livejournal These subjects include: The local wild fires. Katrina & fallout. Politics. The state of the IT industry/job market. Movie reviews. Workplace & co-workers. Lots of things have been going on, work being the base, consuming most of the time, but getting financial resources from it. Last week I chauffered Fred to a showing he was invited to of Corpse Bride. I took him to the LASFS meeting last night. This weekend I'm planning on taking him to see Serenity. (Last weekend, I tired to go to the 'behind the scenes/Q&A session' over at Universal Studios Hollywood, but was late, and things had already filled up.) Next Monday, Fred has invites for a showing of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. (Taking Fred to these things has its benefits. He gets transportation, and I get to see these movies.) Out of the blue on Wednsday, my phone chirped. My dad was up in LA doing business, and he was going to spend the night at a local hotel. A great opportunity to head out and meet, have supper, and show him the LASFS club house. I invited Tadao along, and everyone had a good time. I gave him the DVDs I recently got for his birthday/Chrismas presents: Mythbusters Season 1 and Penn & Teller's Bullshit Season 2 (I'm still trying to track down a copy of season 1) Earlier this week I picked up a copy of Sly Cooper 3: Honor Among Thieves. I -really -enjoyed- the other games in this series, and what I've played so far lives up to it. I also got a used copy of Beyond Good & Evil, and I found it to be -very- impressive. (Take the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, up the quality of graphics and sfx (particles, haze, flares, etc), put it in a somewhat futuristic/rustic setting, and you have it!) Inbetween all the things happening, I'm still working on finding a real job, trolling Craig's List, Dice, and hitting my local contacts, asking around for employment opportunities. So far, nothing. I'm continuing my feeble attempts at creativity, be it practicing cartoon sketching, or fiddling around with computer code. I get a kick out of trying to do game programming, eventhough it seems nonproductive at this stage, and is -very- difficult. Its a great learning experience to me, trying (and mostly failing) to figure out how the professionals do stuff. Its obvious that I don't have speed to be a 'professional', eventhough once I go through the stuff, I -really- know what's going on, from high level (python hash/lists) to low level (binary operations), and between. Recently, I've been tinkering and getting thoughts about learning HAM radio stuff, and Flash. @Whee! More expensive 'hobbies'! Current Mood: busy Current Music: Hollywood and Highland street traffic (Comment on this)
Monday, September 12th, 2005
12:13 am	Merchadizing! I picked up a copy of the Serenity novel. Now, do I read the book first and wait for the movie, or see the movie first and then read the book? (If I had a paid account, I suppose I could start a poll on it.) Current Mood: confused Current Music: (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 11th, 2005
12:02 am	Incommunicado Last week my private server down in San Diego got unplugged. I think its being moved, but I can't contact the folks to find out what's going on with it. Also, my backup email account has locked me out. In the meanwhile, I'll be continuing my tinkering with C/C++ and SDL/OpenGL. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 8th, 2005
2:07 pm	Acountability This article is copied from the free montly technology magazine called ComputerUser for May 2005, under the On Point Pursuits section on page 46. ( Who's to blame? ) Current Mood: distressed (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 16th, 2004
12:12 am	Playing with Jython I've been working on my JavaSpriteEditor, looking into hooking up some scripting. I finally got a python interpreter working inside a java class, using jython, check it out: In file PyInterpTest.java import org.python.core.*; import org.python.util.*; public class PyInterpTest { public static void main(String[] argv) { PySystemState.initializer(); PythonInterpreter interp = new PythonInterpreter(); PyObject value = interp.eval("2 + 2"); System.out.println(value); } } This is compiled by: javac -classpath jython.jar PyInterpTest.java and executed by: java -cp jython.jar;. PyInterpTest This could be pritty cool for my java projects. Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 29th, 2004
12:21 pm	Math, part 1 Math is a good place to start. I wrote this up using various notes and books for reference, including Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus: Advanced 3D Graphics and Rasterization by LaMonthe. This info is in almost -all- 'How to do 3D Game Programming', coupled with DirectX/OpenGL primer (setup, display a cube, texture mapping, polygons. etc...) ( Coordinate Systems ) Current Mood: geeky (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 27th, 2004
9:31 am	Last night I found and fixed my python pygame/OpenGL scripts for loading and displaying the Milkshake3D 3D file format. I've been neglecting this journal, as I've got 3 main project ideas on the burner, a 2D sprite 'editor' written in java, an ambitious RPG game engine in development, and this journal. I'm learning alot as I write these things out, and hopefully it will be helpful to others. JSE - Java Sprite Editor A sprite editor written in java. I'm plugging away at this, right now working on an 'image editing' panel/component which handles mouse-clicks and keyboard commands for editing a 2D BufferedImage, and a 'map editor' for laying out sprites into 'levels'. RPG Engine I'm not sure which direction to go with this, MMORPG, 2D, 3D... When I start thinking on 2D terms, I flip over and code on my Java Sprite Editor. When my thoughts waver over into the 3D polygon realm, I work on python/OpenGL 3D utility scripts. I've been doing pritty good working out the components, learning things as I go, 3D matrix math, file formats, skeletal system, surfaces, etc. This project gives me something to work on and to learn while doing it. This Journal A place for me to write out things I've learned, to use as a reference, show what I know, and help others. I have no indication of how useful it is, feedback is appreciated. Current Mood: geeky (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 6th, 2004
11:51 pm	Windows Bitmap The Microsoft Windows Bitmap File format and information on how to decode this file format into an image. Microsoft Windows Bitmap is Little Endian Order ( Read more... ) Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 5th, 2004
8:10 am	Bits & Bytes Bits & Bytes Different types of data and its sizes. A bit has only 2 states, on, or off, giving a total number of 2^1 (0 or 1) values; A byte is (traditionally) 8-bits unsigned, giving it a value range of 2^8 (0 to 255); A char is (traditionally) 8-bits signed, giving it a value of range 2^8 (-128 to 127); ( Read more... ) Current Mood: geeky (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 30th, 2004
7:14 pm	First Post! This is my first entry into this here Livejournal thing. I'll be writing down various thoughts and ramblings. Deal with it. First off, some information on computer graphics; An image is stored as an array of values, each value pertaining to the color of a pixel. The number of different colors possible in an image is called the color depth. The higher the color depth, the larger the size of the values in the array has to be. In 24 bit color images keep the color values as RGBs. Image: +------------+------------+------------+ |P1(R1,G1,B1)|P2(R1,G1,B1)|P3(R1,G1,B1)|... +------------+------------+------------+ . . . Each pixel is a reference in the table of 3 byte RGB values. Some images use a palette to hold the colors Palette: +------------+------------+------------+ |C1(R1,G1,B1)|C2(R1,G1,B1)|C3(R1,G1,B1)|... +------------+------------+------------+ Then, the image is an array of references to the palette color to 'paint'. Image: +--+--+--+ |C1|C2|C3|... +--+--+--+ . . . Some images have an Alpha channel value for each pixel. The alpha value determines the 'opaqueness' of the pixel. At 0, the pixel is transparent in most cases. Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)