señor taco’s travels

Well, that was the end of my first week at ImageMovers Digital. The first two days were intense. On Tuesday I was questioning what I had done and why I was there. I got my first assignment and was able to dive into it full bore. By Friday I was feeling really good about what I was doing and my first project had progressed well.

I had a good time and I got to see a lot of cool stuff for the first movie out of IMD. I’m excited and I can’t wait to get more into the nitty gritty. It’s a great group of people.

Now my office mate, Davey, and I just need to make sure we get the heat in our office under control.

I haven’t really done a re-cap post before and this is my first one. It’s been a while since I posted and that’s only because of a fear of jinxing things and a lack of time. This post will catch you up and then I should be able to post more regularly from here on.

AIDS/LifeCycle

This year would have been my third AIDS/LifeCycle. This year my friend Everett decided he wanted to ride the ALC but hadn’t ridden a bike in many years. I helped Everett out and he got a bike and we trained together for a few months. Everett picked up riding again very fast and we had many morning rides before work. I was enthused because this is the second year I’ve helped a friend train for the the ALC an Everett was so into riding that it made me jones for riding again. Work changed (more later) and about half a week before ALC I had to make the choice to cancel going on the ride. I was really upset I had to cancel, but I knew that for my own personal benefit (long term goals and continued employment) it was the right decision to make. There are many more years to ride, so I will keep going and maybe I’ll ride again in the future.

Wall•E

Pixar is no stranger to success. This year Disney/Pixar will release the latest Pixar endevour, Wall•E (in theaters June 27, go see it!). At Pixar we get to see the movies as they are in progress. I feel really fortunate that we get to see the movies in that stage, before they’re ready for public consumption and still rough in parts. To be very honest when I saw Wall•E about a year before release I hated it. There were parts that I just didn’t agree with and I was wondering what Pixar was thinking.

A couple of weeks ago the movie was completed and we had our company wrap party to see the movie and celebrate the fact that we we finished such a monumental task. I went in skeptical and came out loving the movie. In the intervening year all the right changes were made and the story got a lot better. It’s a great film that, as many animated films do, came together at the end. I love Wall•E and I can’t wait to see it on opening weekend.

The Job

While everyone thinks they’ll have the perfect job when they get to the penultimate place in their industry, sometimes that just doesn’t happen. I started at Pixar about two years ago. At the time I took a job as a QA Engineer. I did it because of the challenges of the job and the opportunity to work at Pixar.

After two years at Pixar I realized that the QA position is not what I want to do in the long term. I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work at Pixar and see the amazing process that is present there.

As of July 2008 I will be leaving Pixar and transitioning to another Disney company, ImageMovers Digital. I will be entering IMD as a Sr. TD and there will be many challenges to working there and getting the first film out the door. Some people have questioned why I would leave Pixar, but in the end me being happy in my job and being able to contribute the most I can is what is important. I look forward to starting at IMD in July, it will be a great time.

As always, life is moving. I will expound more as I can and I’ll really try to keep up to date here.

But damn, does that look tasty as all hell:

Bacon on a stick with fries on the back

(via riceplate)

from bynkii:

What got us there? Not prayer. Kneeling in a building, mumbling to the magical sky man did not get us there. Thinking happy thoughts did not get Phoenix to Mars.

What got Phoenix to Mars?

Science

…

Or, to paraphrase Animal House…on your knees and terrified is no way to go through life.

As I pumped up my bicycle tire this morning I thought back to the last time I had to change the tube for a flat. It was before last year’s AIDS/LifeCycle. I remarked to myself I would probably get a flat on today’s ride. In fact I got two.

Warren Ellis writes:

“The more creators who only took on housepainting as a part-time gig, the healthier this medium would be.”

Oh man, so true. This is why staring my own work up is very appealing.

What is it with people that they think I must be responsible but they can shirk on their responsibilities? Take tonight. I commute between work and home on a bicycle. There is a part of the route I take that is a greenway which is bikes and pedestrians but no cars.¹ It is also park-like and right next to several housing areas. People tend to walk their dogs along there and as long as they pick up the poop I don’t care about that.

Tonight there were two people off the paved path with two dogs. As I got close the dogs darted out across my path. I braked and as I did the lady reached out and grabbed my shirt sleeve causing me to skid out. Today I was on my road bike because I went riding with Everett this morning. Not only does that mean I was clipped in but it also meant that I had a bit of gear in my bag on my back.²

I came to a safe stop without falling and immediately blurted out “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” at her. The guy across the path and the woman both start claiming that I was going to hit their dogs. I pipe up that had I hit a dog we would have had something but I was breaking and that by her grabbing my shirt I could have crashed badly. She said I have to yield the right of way. I yelled not for dogs, looked her in the eye, and told her if she touched me again I’d break both of her hands.

Now comes my favorite part, she pulled out her phone and said she was calling the cops. I pulled mine out and said I’d join her and we could see if assault was still a reason for people to spend the night in jail.³ She said “Fuck you!” and stormed off. I looked at the guy and he just walked off.

Is it just me? Do people get shit like this happening to them too? Why do I have to be responsible for people’s dogs actions but they don’t have to control their animals in a public space? Yes, the comment about breaking hands might have been a bit over the top, but when my blood gets boiling I can bubble over a bit.

Ugh, time for a drink.

1. There is a double wide paved path and a single wide dirt path on it↩
2. Clothes, shoes, Camelback, laptop, etc.↩
3. See, I hadn’t touched a person or a dog at all↩

Flying Meat makes a great, and simple, image editor called Acorn. Acorn has a plug-in architecture that allows one to develop in python. I had begun work on a Flickr export plugin but got side tracked because I didn’t know Objective-C (you can write obj-c interface code in python) or Interface Builder all that well. Now that I’ve learned them I was going to go back into it and see about finishing up with a dialog box.

Happily, the gang at Coding Robots just beat me to it with Flicker Export Plugin for Acorn. I won’t complain because they’ve done a great job and with the source available I can learn more from it. Interestingly enough, except for the dialog I hadn’t yet done my implementation is very similar to theirs.

(via Gus Mueller)

This morning I was listening to NPR and the weekly StoryCorps segment came on. I’ve been fascinated and delighted by StoryCorps. It’s a project well worth the time people are putting into it.

Today was Marry Ellen Noone talking about her great-grandmother. There was a disclaimer on the radio that this segment was hard to listen to. That disclaimer applies here as well.

Mary Ellen Noone on StoryCorps.

That a person could have so much hatred, distain, and disrespect for a human as what happened to Mrs. Noone’s great-grandmother makes me sad and angry at the same time. I realize the event was almost 100 years ago, but that our country and the world ever got the point that degradation of humans was acceptable I sometimes wonder how we ever got where we are without destroying ourselves.

At any rate, StoryCorps is fascinating. If you’ve got some time browse through it and listen to stories. If you have a story I encourage you try and share it with StoryCorps.

The future is born from the mind of visionaries. Arthur C. Clark is one of them. He first conceived of communications satellites in 1945. Ninety years is a good long run. Farewell ambassador from future times.

NY Times