This week, I’ve finished (sort of) the animation for “The trilobite hunters”. It’s all rendering now – only since I’ve switched to 64 bit and a new version of 3ds max, I’ve only managed to get one system going on it so rendering will be slow.

That’s OK because I could do with a break on this project. It’s about time I finished it, and it’s close enough that I can almost see the result…. I don’t mind taking a breather and getting rid of some of the admin and other things on my desk while my trusty PC renders away at the animations.

It turns out some of the DVDs I’ve sent out of “how to colonise the stars” have not worked (I should have tested them before sending, but I was in a rush) – so I’ll have to do them again. Also, the drive with the master on I took in to be dubbed onto tape didn’t work either, so I’ve had to get a new drive and do a new master.

No problem – and actually quite a good thing because although I spent £60 on a new firewire 800 drive and took a night of rendering to create my uncompressed SD master, doing it that way made it a lot easier for Stanley’s to copy it – so the cost is going to be about £250 instead of about £550….


In other news, I’ve decided to have a go at 3d printing – via www.shapeways.com – if you’ve not heard of this, it’s a way of creating real plastic objects from your 3d designs. Basically you send them a model and they return it as a real object – for a price. The price seems pretty reasonable, so I’ve decided to give it a go. If it turns out well, I think this is going to be big… I might even start inventing some products… might be fun!


The European elections are taking place with the government falling apart – quite literally – the cabinet is looking more like a colander with people quitting left, right and centre.

We’re all supposed to be angry about the expenses scandal, but I can’t muster the energy to be outraged – I’ve never met anyone who didn’t stretch what was possible on their expenses and although it’s clearly something that needs sorting out, it’s a symptom of bad organisation and the fact that we don’t pay politicians enough rather than dishonesty, I think.

There are lots of things that were wrong with the culture to cause this and lots of people doing things they shouldn’t have, but it sounds as though all the civil servants were telling them it was all fine right up to the point where they all got told it wasn’t – and that’s a bit rubbish.

Strange though it may seem, I don’t think they’re a crooked lot – I think they generally try to use everything they get to it’s best advantage and they’re keen to push the limits they’re given, but then we wouldn’t want politicians that didn’t, would we?

Anyway – what’s interesting to me is that this whole thing has caused an explosion in little parties – maybe I should make a documentary following some of the no-hope candidates around before the election next year (or next week, which seems more likely)…. It’d be interesting to explore what democracy means when you’ve got no hope of being elected…

Mind you, I vote Lib Dem, so what does that tell you?