Cool

Patu

Chill Cool

Amazing that the Ukrainians pulled that off. And it truly is great to see all the vile Putinoids crying so much about it.

Prudence

Chill Cool

One of the things I like about Aella is that she is the least prudish public person I know. Even though I disagree with her on quite a few things, that’s a pretty great way to be.

Even many of the people who claim they are not prudish are really huge prudes. And that seems to be getting worse.

Cyl the Deal

Chill Cool

Hey folks. Here's one of the animations I did showing an O'Neill Colony – basically a hollowed out cylinder in space. This one is 35km long and 9km across and spins once per minute (if I remember) to provide 1g gravity.

Please repost! Spread the love!

Made in #blender. #sciart #scifi

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— โญ แ—ฐแ—ฉแ–‡แ›• แ—ฉ. วคแ—ฉแ–‡แ’ชIแ‘•แ›• โญ (@markgarlick.com) April 23, 2025 at 8:30 AM

This is what we should be working towards. There is nothing — not one thing — physically impossible about any of this1. We could do it if we chose to do so. It’d take a couple hundred years, though, and a huge amount of resources. But it could and should be done. And so much more.

  1. Though the shearing forces from spinning something that large at 1g…dang.

Differently Armed

Chill Cool

HOLY SHIT! This might be the coolest thing ever.

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— Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou (@kanaratron.bsky.social) April 17, 2025 at 1:10 AM

Damn, that’s cool. That’s about $2 million worth of equipment she’s…wearing? What’s the proper term here? “Has installed?”

“Is using?”

None of that feels quite right. They’re her arms, but they’re not quite like my arms. I like that she doesn’t have them look more natural. There’s nothing wrong with being part robot.

Animoot

Chill Cool, Movies

Thinking about CGI and all that stuff, hereโ€™s a clip of Anchors Aweigh! from 1945 that is another highpoint in visual effects.

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— Emily โœจ (@emilyoram.bsky.social) March 13, 2025 at 6:27 AM

That is amazing, but every one of those frames is hand-painted. That scene is 94 seconds long, so that’d be 2,253 frames. 2,253 frames x 30 mins animation etc. per frame = 67,590 minutes. Which is 1,127 hours or just under 47 days.

In other words, that scene alone would’ve taken just under 47 days of animator time to produce1. There’s no way CGI would take that long. A comparable scene with CGI would take a day or two of animator time. Big, big difference.

  1. Of course, multiple animators worked on it. The actual scene probably took a week or so to make once filming and editing was complete.

Music Mac

Chill Cool, Killin' It

Today, I wrote a little application that when I hit a button I’ve placed on the Mac Finder’s toolbar, it opens all the directories where I’ve stored music, sets the volume to my preferred level and opens Strawberry music player.

Pretty slick and didn’t take long.

Bindery

Chill Cool

Today, I heard from a friend in the UK who hadn’t been in touch for a while. She said she missed me and that I “understand things effortlessly that most people cannot even think about.”

If that’s not a great damn compliment, I don’t know what it is. It’s not as effortless as it looks, though. Behind that instant intuition is tens of millions of pages of books. It was good to hear from her. She has a damn fine mind herself and is much funnier than I will ever be. She wanted my take on the changed world and the future that lies ahead. I gave it and she said she’ll stay in touch more.

I hope so.