Category: General News

Okay last saturday i had a great day! Woke up late and joined some friends from the University for a game development day.
In short it was awsome! First i finished my Python Pong game. Basically a game of Pong using Python and PyGame for development. Added some “fancy” graphics and decided that was that small game project, so check out the screens of it running :p

Afterwards i helped some of the other guys getting some graphics work done. It was great fun and i really got back into my old workflow in Painter. Funny how little i used Photoshop, but rather painting simply because im used to the shortcuts :p

Anyhow afterwards i finished off the day with a quick ½ hour speedpainting before heading to a crazy party, so enjoy this new speedpainting as well 😀

The following is a copy of a statement Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight, made about the death of Heath Ledger

Best known for his haunting, Oscar-nominated performance as Ennis Del Mar, one of the gay cowboys in 2005 ‘ s “Brokeback Mountain,“ Ledger was a massive young talent on the cusp of greatness when he died last week in New York. The native Australian, who is survived by his 2-year-old daughter, Matilda, had recently finished work on this summer‘s “Batman“ sequel, “The Dark Knight,“ in which he plays a villain, the Joker. Christopher Nolan, the film‘s director, shared these memories:

One night, as I’m standing on LaSalle Street in Chicago, trying to line up a shot for “The Dark Knight,” a production assistant skateboards into my line of sight. Silently, I curse the moment that Heath first skated onto our set in full character makeup. I’d fretted about the reaction of Batman fans to a skateboarding Joker, but the actual result was a proliferation of skateboards among the younger crew members. If you’d asked those kids why they had chosen to bring their boards to work, they would have answered honestly that they didn’t know. That’s real charisma—as invisible and natural as gravity. That’s what Heath had.

Heath was bursting with creativity. It was in his every gesture. He once told me that he liked to wait between jobs until he was creatively hungry. Until he needed it again. He brought that attitude to our set every day. There aren’t many actors who can make you feel ashamed of how often you complain about doing the best job in the world. Heath was one of them.

One time he and another actor were shooting a complex scene. We had two days to shoot it, and at the end of the first day, they’d really found something and Heath was worried that he might not have it if we stopped. He wanted to carry on and finish. It’s tough to ask the crew to work late when we all know there’s plenty of time to finish the next day. But everyone seemed to understand that Heath had something special and that we had to capture it before it disappeared. Months later, I learned that as Heath left the set that night, he quietly thanked each crew member for working late. Quietly. Not trying to make a point, just grateful for the chance to create that they’d given him.

Those nights on the streets of Chicago were filled with stunts. These can be boring times for an actor, but Heath was fascinated, eagerly accepting our invitation to ride in the camera car as we chased vehicles through movie traffic—not just for the thrill ride, but to be a part of it. Of everything. He’d brought his laptop along in the car, and we had a high-speed screening of two of his works-in-progress: short films he’d made that were exciting and haunting. Their exuberance made me feel jaded and leaden. I’ve never felt as old as I did watching Heath explore his talents. That night I made him an offer—knowing he wouldn’t take me up on it—that he should feel free to come by the set when he had a night off so he could see what we were up to.

When you get into the edit suite after shooting a movie, you feel a responsibility to an actor who has trusted you, and Heath gave us everything. As we started my cut, I would wonder about each take we chose, each trim we made. I would visualize the screening where we’d have to show him the finished film—sitting three or four rows behind him, watching the movements of his head for clues to what he was thinking about what we’d done with all that he’d given us. Now that screening will never be real. I see him every day in my edit suite. I study his face, his voice. And I miss him terribly.

Back on LaSalle Street, I turn to my assistant director and I tell him to clear the skateboarding kid out of my line of sight when I realize—it’s Heath, woolly hat pulled low over his eyes, here on his night off to take me up on my offer. I can’t help but smile.

Thought it was extremely well written and a worthy tribute to Ledger.

Okay so from i started using Akismet to catch comment spam the following number of spam messages have been deleted before being posted.

 Akismet has caught 42,300 spam for you since you first installed it.

Just think its funny that even a minor blog like my own will get this many spam messages. Luckily for me Akismet catches them all and i never get a single one of them posted here 😀

Title says it all.. i will be posting more later on today i think. 😀

Okay the site may be down a couple of days from now.

I have been neglecting the blog for some good reasons that i will ellaborate upon when i finished my hosting change. Basically my current hosting solution doesnt provide me with the features i need behind the scenes of the blog.

Also i have some stuff that will bring the activity on RD back again. Mostly i will be bloggin offline on my laptop most everyday, and make sure to make at least a weekly update on RD to keep it going. Mostly i guess it will become more of a personal blog since i dont find much time to paint at the moment. Entering my final ½ year of university so its kinda important 😀

Stay tuned for a new host soon 😀

Its come to be that time of the year once again. The blue orb has rounded the big bright star yet another time, and Swoop got another year older.
The big 2 5 … wow. Kinda itches a little. But by some miracle i can still get out of bed (barely) without making the *uuumph* sound of old people getting up. My eye sight was still able to focus on the tv screen. I didn’t hit any extra walls or doors on my way to work, and i managed to still find the correct bus there.

So what does this all mean ? 😉 Well not alot… from 1½ weeks from now i should be able to pick up the pace on this website again. Been luying dormant for a while now for personal reasons. Wont get into it here, but i will do my best to add some paintings and tutorials.

Im currently writing my own little review of Ubuntu 7.10 now, and so far im really liking it. Everything on my laptop just works out of the box, and only have slight issues with suspend/hibernate now. Its great! 😉

Got to head off to work now since apparently my birthday doesn’t provide for a national holliday… yet!

PS: Thanks to everybody who decided to wake me up early this morning to say happy bday. I appriciate it 😉

Okay im totally psyched about this. Been looking for two way synchronisation with my google calendar for ages now it seems. Every solution has always required me to install complicated (seemed that way) applications and troublesome synching procedures.
I just wanted a simple calendar on my desktop that not only shows my gcal but allows me to upload appointments.

Now the solution is here, and within my favorite e-mail client also. Longstanding calendar pluging for thunderbird “lightning” will allow you to get your google calender to see. And the “provider” pluging will enable you to do two way sync. No further instructions that install both extensions for thunderbird, and the rest is pretty easy.

I got this hot top from the ubuntu forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=540330