Project Blender - Day3: My Gift to You

It was very rainy today in New Zealand, so I played some more with Blender and followed the Creating a Present Tutorial from Blender Cookie. I'm getting more familiar with the interface and modeling objects, and I added a rounded present box to the picture for fun :D And since it was such a bad day, I'm handing out gifts to all of you!!


Project Blender - Day2: EL Coffee

blender-coffee
Day 2 of Project Blender! This time I did the Coffee Cup Tutorial from Blender Cookie and it took me quite a while before I had it right. Minor mistakes led to huge ones in the end, forcing me to start over again :@ But in the end I learned quite a lot of new features and techniques for object modeling :D

Weekend is coming up (actually it's passed 5pm now so technically it's weekend) which means more Blendering! :D :D


Project Blender - Day1: Color of Death

For my internship at the HITLab in New Zealand, I need to learn some basic 3D modeling in Blender. The perfect opportunity to actually learn some useful 3D modeling. The only modeling program I know is Rhinoceros after doing an assignment at Industrial Design. But the program is very visually based and is practically useless if you want to implement it together with other programs. So if you're thinking of learning a 3D modeling program, I would recommend NOT to learn Rhinoceros. You're way better off learning Blender, 3DMax or Maya in terms of compatibility.

Anyway, I'm going to start Project Blender. I'll try to learn Blender in a couple of months by working with it practically everyday and see how far I can get. I did the same for Processing for my final project at Industrial Design; 1,5 months of coding, camera tracking and some robots.... It requires a lot of focus and it's very exhausting, but in the end it's all worth it (*FUCK-YEAH-face*)
I just started learning Blender 3D today and I used the Balloon Tutorial from Blender Cookie to create this image. It took me 4 hours to do a 40 minute tutorial, because I never used the interface before and quite a lot of features and functionalities are difficult to find unless you know them. Nevertheless it was fun! I can't wait to do more Blendering :D


Google Chrome - Recovering Deleted Bookmarks


Yesterday I accidentally deleted one of my bookmarks on Google Chrome. It doesn't prompt a warning or moves it to the Trash Bin, it just deletes it... and there's no recover option.

Luckily, there's a way to get your deleted bookmarks back by using the bookmark backup file that Chrome creates, allowing you to "recover" it. Simply replace the Bookmarks-file with the backup and it's back in place :D

For Xp user's, Go to : C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default

For Vista user's, Go to : C:\Users\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default

For Windows 7 user's, Go to : C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default


You can see a file named 'Bookmarks.bak' . You can make an extra backup of it if you prefer, but it should work just fine. Delete the file 'Bookmark' and rename the file 'Bookmarks.bak' to 'Bookmarks' and BAM!! problem solved :D

Source: http://tech-knowlogy.blogspot.com/2009/07/recover-deleted-bookmarks-in-google.html


Flash AS3 TextField buttonMode

It got so frustrated when the mouse cursor didn't change into a hand-icon when I do a MOUSE_OVER event over the MovieClip containing that TextField with "buttonMode = true;"

Apparently, the TextField class in AS3 doesn't contain the buttonMode property. The cursor does change into a hand whenever I scroll over the MovieClip, but turns back to the default cursor if I'm moving over the TextField :@

Luckily Google saved me some headaches!
To get round this simply use the "mouseChildren = false" property on your Sprite/Movieclip button.

mc.buttonMode = true;
mc.mouseChildren = false;

Source: http://www.adenforshaw.co.uk/?p=168


Re-enable Clickable Links In MSN Messenger 2009

Ever noticed that the hyperlinks posted in your msn chatbox stopped working? Apparently they turned off active links on MSN 2009 to stop a worm from spreading. I got sick and tired of copy/pasting every single one of the links in your browser, so I went to do some super detective work and found the solution.

1. Download Freeware Hex Editor XVI32: http://www.handshake.de/user/chmaas/delphi/download/xvi32.zip
2. Close Windows Live Messenger (don't forget to check the task manager)
3. Use XVI32 to open msnmgr.exe which is probably in C:\Program Files\Windows Lives\Messenger
4. Press Ctrl + F, choose Text string
5. Type in hotlinks in the search box and press OK
6. When it finds hotlinks, click on the h and change it to a t, it should now read totlinks
7. Press Ctrl + S to save

source:
http://www.forumvancouver.com/threads/clickable-links-not-working-on-windows-live-messenger-2009.577/
http://www.generationmediagroup.com/blog/re-enable-links-in-messenger-09/


ATR Open House

Ok finally after a looooooong loooooooooooooong time I decided to update it (Nili kept bugging me D:< )

Few weeks back there was an open house at ATR, the company that I'm working for, together with the other companies nearby.
The open house was amazing!! So many high-tech research stuff :D like 3D-screens, robotics and other fancy stuff :3
Made some photos and videos so I'll just explain those (can't really recall the rest or too lazy for it :3)

This setup here was to simulate grabbing virtual objects. You had to grab the device and pinch it with your fingers to grab to object on the screen. They could then set the density of the object which you could really feel when you're trying to grab the object :D
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