foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

Depthcore version 5.00 and the release of the next pack was moved until early next week. I’ve seen some submissions in the pack and unlike the last two packs we released, this one is closer to the depthcore roots.

Something to watch out for.

I don’t think I can wrap one up though before the pack releases.

Even Pixelcatalyst.Lair is quite idle these days.

Soon… baby. Soon.

Omni-pie. Client decided to move the meeting/presentation to Monday next week so I’m here today in the office… for the Foxpro.catalyst’s site birthday.

Hehe… : ]

I have prepared already for tomorrow’s client visits since last week so I guess I’ll just spend the afternoon catching up with buffered feeds, buffered blogs and bloggable thoughts.

Qs on the other hand is working on her database application which she will also be presenting tomorrow and I can hear her programming-related grumbles from here.

(Conscience to WildFire: “Good… blog about it instead of helping her.”

Shut up, conscience. The end justifies the means.

OK… some initial link round-ups: Ah… one of the thousand reasons why I love computers.

A global network of computer users has clocked up more than 4,000 years’ worth of computer calculations in under three months as part of a huge grid project.
Link

Nice… computers can solve those amount of problems but humans can’t even start solving some of the ‘basic problems’ that have infested this very world for years now.

Intel’s silicon laser breakthrough has been popping out in some of the feeds that I’m getting. What’s next… the grizzly patents?

But this is good. I have constantly argued with my alter ego that there should come a time where we give software development-related solutions that do not set their foundations on a framework that was created because hardware-based connections are too slow to catch up with the data being processed.

I know that sounds vague but I’ll explain that more soon.

But in a nutshell… it’s like Porky Pig telling you add-ons that you can carry with your bike so you can do fish-castration-related stuff and all. Improve the bike… change the bike with a Harley Davidson instead.

Something like that.

Later, compadres.

I’m a Masamune Shirow fan… looking forward to this: APPLESEED.

One more thing… if you’re like me who prefers downloading media files, storing them and watching them later instead of directly playing or streaming it… here’s a direct link to that .wmv file inside that Channel9’s First Look at Visual Foxpro 9 thread.

So… fire up your GetRight Downloader and sniff that link.

(Chan Kok Kiet also posted a direct link to the video stream.)

I’ve been busy with some artworks on Depthcore’s next release and the SeventhSense Project, there are still 114 Foxpro-related feeds inside my RSSBandit reader.

Again… I’ll catch up later.

… will be released inside Depthcore‘s next pack (December 17 2004).

Plus here’s SeventhSense 2002. The 2004 re-initialized release is on its way.

But before these releases, I will re-activate the coding mode first. I spent the past three days working on graphics/html-related stuff.

It was fun.

A Steven Spielberg film… War of The Worlds.

At first feed glance, I thought it was a World of Warcraft film.

I wish.

Blizzard and Warcraft had produced tons of awesome cinematics for their games in the past few years.

Speaking of World of Warcraft, here’s a funny dance movie that shows, well Warcraft entities dancing. (Be warned though… it is not intended for kids and probably is offensive to some conservative humans.)

I like to move it… move it.

(Thanks Takz for the link.)

Calvin Hsia is on a roll. First he posted the Intellisense: inspecting live objects information a couple of days ago. I refrained from linking to it then since almost every Foxpro-related blog I have on my RSSBandit points to it already.

Today, he discusses Using non-Automation compatible types and Creating mailing labels automatically.

Why do we always link to Calvin Hsia you ask?

Well aside from his being the Visual Foxpro lead developer, his blogs are very helpful and informative.

(Insert your adjective here) programmers/developers always look beyond on how to just merely use a thing. We are also interested on why things are done that way.

Looking back to my high school algebra teacher… it’s more of a ‘how was the formula derived?’ and not only how to use the formula.

So why the link again..?

If the lead developer of the programming language of your choice shows passion towards his work, reflects that passion through sharing, sharing snippets, sharing informative stuff, sharing the VisualFoxpro experience… you tell me and I’d be glad to link to him/her.

It’s not only Calvin Hsia who shares these things though… the whole VS Data Team has a blog which includes Ken Levy, YAG and John Koziol from the VFP team.

… ah one of those reasons we prefer VisualFoxpro.

It’s a Saturday, and I’m turning off my coding mode for a while. I’ll turn on the GFX mode and finish up the SeventhSense 2004 Project before the 2004 part of the title becomes obsolete.

If, by any chance, artworks depicting the beauty showed by the curves of the female species offend you… I suggest you go to this link for now and come back again later. Now having said that, allow me to continue.

Heavy Metal Magazine goes 3D in its Fall 2004 issue.

I haven’t followed thoroughly Heavy Metal through the years but I do have some issues in my collection especially those with cover art created by Luis Royo.

This is the first time I have seen a story in that mag illustrated entirely in three dimension. Although there’s still room for improvement especially in the action sequences (Hint: Do it the Marvel way), overall the artwork quality is great.

Though, followers of this magazine know that 3D or 2D or traditional, the illustrations inside it are awe-inspiring.

(Plus you have to charge up your IQ level when reading some of the weird stories).

This is not the first time though I saw a magazine/book that holds pure 3D inside its comic boxes. The first one was Machine Phase.

… and pretty I’m sure there’s more to come.

Studios sue Pixar, Demand Bad Movie. “Stop making the rest of us look bad”… demand Hollywood executives.

Hmm… 400GB PC hard drive, anyone?

November is my birth month. One of these days, one numeric character in my age will change. Everytime that day arrives it has been my tradition to do or try something that somehow ‘ups my level’. Something challenging.

It’s also the month I do some reflecting… about life, work, direction and all.

I remember during college days I skipped class twice when that day arrived. During the third year, I created a screensaver/TSR-type program in Clipper 5.2 using some low level routines.

My first encryption algorithm was also created on November when I was still in college. Until now I’m still using it in some of my programs.

And until now I am still unable to decrypt it. The ‘exact reverse’ of that encryption algorithm would only decrypt 7 out of 8 characters due to a certain method I included… and the only way I am able to compare things in the encrypted data in the database is to re-encrypt the password entered and compare it with the encrypted value.

Function decrypt just won’t work.

It was on that birth date too last 1998 when I released my first site online. That site was Coollections… which, holds some of my artworks before I decided to create a separate site for it now known as the Pixelcatalyst.Lair.

The conversion from Pixelworkz (pre-pixelcatalyst) to Pixelcatalyst.Lair was made on November 2000.

It was also November when Pixelcatalyst.Lair version 5.00 was released… that was in 2001. The very same year I transferred that site from our old office Pentium 200MHz Linux powered server to the digital fortress of the Plastiqueweb Networks.

It was then when the number of its visitors increased by a factor of 20.

Shift Dimension was created last 2001 and Quendoline Dreams was created last year.

I have one artwork which I started November of last year too, which up to now, is still a work in progress. The main .psd file for that artwork now reaches 30MB and a sub .psd file is around 19MB.

It was November of 2002 when I had my first ‘major’ freelance project. I had a number of freelance projects since college but that November 2002 project was different… and it was that client that referred me to eight more clients.

There were some non-database/graphics-related personal ‘breakthroughs’ too but I won’t be sharing them for now.

This year I’m still considering what I’ll be doing.

Probably a new artwork or finish up the artwork which was started last year. The SeventhSense 2004… or the reorganization of the Pixelcatalyst.Lair website. I’m also thinking of coding that copyright protection-related mechanism I’ve been planning for months already.

Or perhaps I’ll spend the day just bumming around and thinking and doing nothing… for in this year filled with database projects… just doing nothing (and not thinking of code-related things) can be considered a personal breakthrough.

Seventh Sense 2004… something to watch out for. I’m also re-compiling the contact information of those artists involved in the 2002 release. The site will be released once the old HTML codes are updated and a batch of new artworks are included.

Stay tuned. I’ll be posting the updates and some creation process related information here too. This project is a break from the usual database-related tasks I am doing.

Mondo gratitude goes out to Kevin Stacey (a co-Depthcore member) of Shiver7 for the hosting.

For the past two days I’ve been viewing cinematics and trailers that involves a great deal of hardcore visual effects and render power.

It started when Takz (a Filipino friend of mine in Netherlands), gave me that World of Warcraft cinematic trailer. Released last November 05, 2004… this one’s different from the previous World of Warcraft teaser cinematic I saw years ago.

(Awrk… as of 1:43AM WorldofWarcraft.com is currently down.)

Blizzard is consistenly pumping these uber cinematics since the third installment of Warcraft.

Starcraft trailers were good during their era but quite far from the quality of Warcraft III cinematics.

I would love to elaborate and paint this blog with words but my supply of coca cola in cans ran out and when that happens I’m usually not in the mood to do things.

I’ll give you one observation though, why their cinematics rock.

It’s not just the attention to the most intricate details (and damn the attention to details would wipe out both Pixar’s Finding Nemo and the Final Fantasy movie out of this world and beyond).

Aside from the technical aspects, Warcraft cinematics are truly moving.

It moves you.

Before I start getting mushy in here let me give you the other 3D clips that were also given to me… a Double A (or is AA) bond paper commercial. That’s the 15 second clip, here’s a different 30 second clip of the same theme.

Star Wars III: Revenge of The Sith teaser also popped out sometime last weekend.

And then of course there’s The Incredibles trailers and one teaser (if you haven’t watched the movie yet), Robots (this time from the makers of Ice Age) and Cars (also from Pixar).

I am not quite impressed with the renders Polar Express is showing so no links for now.

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Now that you’re done buffering those cinematics in your download queue… I’d like you to meet Jenny.

Citadel of Sector 10:Zeus

Released last month for Depthcore’s Habitat pack. I mentioned this here also a month ago but somehow I wasn’t able to post the artwork. My first individual artwork since October of 2003. There were collaborations with fellow Depthcore members along the way but it was last year when I released an artwork created individually.

Of course there was that LOS2004 artwork which was released last March but it was a remix of an old LOS2002 piece.

I’d like to give you more information in words but at three in the morning, I have this feeling that my fingers are pounding the keyboards on their own.

I’ll give you some numbers and stats related to this work instead:

• Duration: 05/25/2004 – 10/05/2004
• GFX applications used: Poser 4 / PaintShop Pro 5.02 / Adobe Photoshop 7.01 / 3DSMax 4 / Bryce 4
• PSD Files: 2 (6.1MB + 21.8MB)
• PSD Layers: 72 layers
• Hi-res dimensions: 1600x656x32bit | JPEG | 625,427 bytes
• Coca-cola in cans consumed: 32

Watch out for Depthcore’s next pack… next month.

I should’ve posted about this last week, but somehow I kept on forgetting things. What you’re seeing in the left is the current splash cover of Pixelcatalyst.Lair V6.10, created by Vincent Lai (aka NiteAngel), a friend and a co-Depthcore member. You can view NiteAngel’s artwork in his official site: AW8.net and inside his DeviantArt account. The larger version of this artwork, entitled Empower can be downloaded in this link. (It looks a thousand times better when full viewed.)

Sometime last year, when I was more active on the PixelCatalyst.Lair project, we were able to interview and feature NiteAngel. Here’s the link to that interview.

I did promised myself to devote some time every weekend on that pet site of mine which will turn four years old this November (Yes FOUR YEARS, baby! (Actually six years if you would include the pre-pixelcatalyst.lair mother-sites that gave birth to it))… but somehow database-related stuff has its own way of seducing my time away from GFX.

The least I could do for now is post some GFX-related blogs.

Which reminds me… I know FireFox in a number of ways outperforms IE6. OpenOffice.org pars with MS Office… but I still have to see a product from the OpenSource world that could battle commercial graphics application such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel’s products, 3DSMax, AutoCAD, Lightwave, Maya and the list goes on…

… or am I missing something?

(But please don’t mention GIMP here… Photoshop (even if you slice the current version by two) is still light years ahead of GIMP.)

I was hoping I could wait from for something to be resolved first before I’ll talk about it but since I’ve been receiving inquiries here and there for the past few hours, I think it would be better to post some information here and just C/P the url instead of re-typing and saying things again and again.

Plastiqueweb Networks DNS (or whatever you call it) is being transferred.

Niko (aka Phoenix), our friend who provides free hosting services for some digital artists (for almost five years already), has been trying to reach the ‘domain machine’ since last month with no replies. Domain name reached it’s expiration deadline. Domain shows an expired message while we’re transferring stuff. And my Bamm-wham-blam-blam counter is incremented.

Like any tech-love stories in this world, things like this happen.

No worries though. The Pixelcatalyst.Lair site has been through bamm-wham-go-down situations a number of times already even before Plastiqueweb Networks cradled us into their digital fortress.

If you’re looking for the artworks, you can still view most of them inside Portfolio 2004 of this site, in my DeviantArt account or inside DepthCore (the digital abstract art group I’m currently affiliated with).

(Speaking of DepthCore, watch out for the next release. I have already submitted one artwork in it. It is the first individual artwork since releasing Quendoline Dreams October 16th of last year. Although LOS 2004 was released last March, it was a tweak of an old LOS 2002 artwork. There were quite a string of collaborations but the artwork I’ll be releasing this 15th of October is the first individual thing I made for quite some time.)

Email-wise I’m also deactivated because I use Plastiqueweb’s email service as my primary account. You can reach me using the following e-mail:

Richard.Base [at] GMail [dot] com
pixel_catalyst [at] yahoo [dot] com
WildFire [at] NTSL119 [dot] com

Looking at the bright side of things, I haven’t received a single spam for the past 24 hours.

For almost three years I’ve been using SereneScreen.com‘s Aquarium ScreenSaver. Needless to say, it is one of the best screensavers.

Yesterday, I found this Machine Code Screensaver from Improbable Software (through surfing Sofotex.com). It has the same ‘geekie-Matrix-ie’ feel but I like it better than the other Matrix-look-alike screensavers.

You can customize the pictures the screensaver shows in hex. All you need is to convert it to BMP format. The software recommends grey scaled 256-color bitmaps (8 bit), but you can actually use higher resolutions as long as it is greyscaled.

I also tried using colored bitmaps. The screensaver still displays the image but the quality is better when it is dark and grey.

Also from the same site, you’ll find some fractal-powered screensaver. If you’re into Fractals, they have this Optimal Mandelbrot Screensaver which elegantly depicts the fusion of art and mathematics.

But well of course the effects are enhanced by computers, the fusion of mathematics and machines.

Inspired by Dave Barry, GapingVoid, Garfield, Neopoleon and a late night online conversation a couple of mid-nights ago with Avatar… I’m coming up with this new thing here in this site.

If you have CuriousLabs Poser 4, the toon is Edgar. The monitors and the lcd monitor mounts are from Ergotron… future ‘must-have’ in this technolust list of mine.

A hi-res version of the strip above is available here.

During our client visit yesterday (just hours ago really since it is still 1:11AM and I’m still up), I asked qs to setup and configure the computers inside the internet laboratory while I was finalizing some database integrity checking.

Yup… these days she’s not only involved in database discussions, data flow concepts and usability testing, she’s also doing hands on configurations.

She was even able to override that hide START.RUN feature I included in the IUMS program.

Plus she showed me where MSCONFIG was hidden. For years I was thinking this was an ‘internal command’. I didn’t even bothered looking it up.

But anyway, while she was doing this cleaning of the startup garbage entries through MSCONFIG, running the Novell client application and entering the dummy username and password I created to test the program… she found herself attempting to copy and paste some values from PC-001 thinking she could paste it on PC-002.

Weird and funny really, but this occur to me once in a while. And probably you too have been in this kind of situation.

Which makes me think, what if we can really copy and paste things to a memory within our bodies, let’s say the hair on your fingers or your nose, which can easily be retrieved (and pasted) with a short cut key interfaced with a computer.

It could even be used for storage of passwords and stuff.

Yeah I know, you’d point me to those fingerprint/voice/iris-powered technologies. But I’m talking here about the little amount of data which you can store within your body parts and not using your body parts as a the key.

Some of you would probably lecture me of how the brain should be used… but hey if Microsoft was awarded a patent which involves the usage of body as a source of power (power conduit and data bus to be precise and that was more than two months ago), why not use other parts of the body aside from the brain for little harmless amounts of data storage?

But then again… probably I just need some rest.

Spiderman, anyone?