Curiosity Has Landed!

The first picture received from Curiosity upon landing.
A 250x250 image from the rear hazcam.
If you look closely, you can see a wheel in the lower right of the picture.

The Mars Science Laboratory Rover landed safely on the surface of mars at 10:41 pacific time.
Every part of the multi-step process of descent and landing went as planned, and the team at JPL is as happy as possible. Their years of work has finally paid off!

I got to watch a live video stream from the mission control room during the last few minutes of the landing process. This was, of course, the infamous 'seven minutes of terror', where the team can watch the incoming telemetry but cannot intervene in the landing process, since the signal transmission delay from Mars means that the incoming data does not reflect up-to-the-minute the state of the rover. If anything were to go wrong, by the time we knew about it on Earth, the rover would already have crashed. The tension was palpable, but there was also a confidence I felt from every person at mission control. I think they had confidence in their work, and in the creation they have so carefully crafted over the last few years. The excitement grew as each successive message from the lander indicated that everything was running according to plan. All the way down through the skycrane maneuver, everyone was nervous but anticipating a safe landing. At the signal that the rover had achieved "wheels down on Mars" the room absolutely erupted in happy cheers, and for the next ten minutes chaos reigned as the tension released, and everyone expressed their feelings freely. I observed quite a few damp eyes, as well as the most hugging and high-fiving I think I've every seen. I can only imagine the relief of stress that the team experienced. I have to admit, I was close to tears myself.
Now it may be extremely nerdy to cry over a machine landing on another planet, but I am by nature a slightly romantic person, and I think of it not as simply another rover, but as possibly one of the biggest scientific achievments of the century. And it may stay that way, if budget cuts continue to limit space exploration in the future. I may have well been witness to the beginning of the biggest extra-terrestrial exploration mission in my lifetime! And while it's still nerdy to cry about that, I think it can be excused. After all, I didn't get to be alive during the moon landings. This is at least some compensation.

Well, I don't exactly know what's next for Curiosity. The signal relay satellite, Odyssey, which was positioned to in orbit over the correct spot at the time of landing, has now gone over the horizon from Curiosity's position, and communication with the rover won't resume for about forty-eight hours. When the data link is reestablished, I assume the team responsible for controlling the robot and navigating it to it's scientific destination will take over, and Curiosity will head out across Large Gale Crater, to start exploring her new home.

Curiosity, from all of us here on Earth, your home planet, I would like to wish you "good luck, and good hunting". May your discoveries be many, your health excellent, and your mission successful.
Godspeed!

Curiosity update!

Less than 24 hours to Curiosity's landing! The spacecraft is now a little less than 200,000 miles from Mars, and everything is looking good according to the updates on the mission home page.

I really think that Curiosity's landing will be the highlight of my weekend.

That's such a nerdy thing to say, but it's true. The moment of truth, to see whether 2.5 billion dollars of equipment will make it safely to the surface, or end up as a metal pancake on a marian mountainside, will really be a thrill.

This is excitement you can't get in a movie theater. The only thing more exciting would be to be part of the project itself. Maybe, one day...

All of us (or at least we who know of your existence) wish you a safe landing tomorrow, Curiosity. Stay safe!

Mars Rover Curiosity Nears Landing

Call me a nerd. It doesn't really bother me. But if you're going to call me a nerd, wait until a moment that really deserves it. This is one of those times.
I may be a science fiction addict and Star Trek geek, but today I'm totally excited about a real-life piece of science; the newest Mars rover.
Nasa's collaboration with CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has produced many of the mars rovers, most notably Spirit and Opportunity, two rovers launched in the early 2000s. Their most recent project, the Mars Science Laboratory rover, named Curiosity (aka "the Curiosity rover") has been one of my real-life science geek objects of geek-dom for quite a while now. I was reading blog posts and watching videos about it back in 2010 when it was just beginning construction, at the same time that I was keeping up with JPL's valiant attempts to free the Spirit rover from a sand pit. Now we have less than a month to go until Curiosity's landing on Mars, and public awareness of the project is ramping up. I just thought I'd post this little video released by JPL, part of their "The Challenges of Getting to Mars" series.



Seriously, I feel for the guys at mission control. Seven minutes of fingernail-biting nervousness; watching the telemetry come in, and knowing that no matter what happens, it's too late to do anything.
Those guys deserve some credit for this project, no matter what the outcome.

In Space...

I'm sorry, but I laughed. So I have to share these.

The Blender Zone, Ep. IV: Alien Asteroid Hunt

This is something I whipped up yesterday evening while our internet was out. I couldn't get to my online Maya tutorials, so I decided to go back to Blender.
I had a lot of fun building the asteroid; it is an extremely high-poly sphere with two displacement maps, a color map and three bump maps. The alien ship was fairly simple to do, even with the lights. It was just a pretty quick little project, but I'm surprised at how good the results are.

Moar Pictures!

All right, I'm back with a whole new load of goofy photos.
If you laugh, leave a comment...

Late Night Funny Animal Pictures

I can't believe it's 12:30 at night and I'm posting animal pictures to my blog.

There must be something wrong with me...

I'll try to post more at some point, but for right now, this one pretty much sums me up:

G'night...

Pretty Fair Maid: behind the scenes

I finally got this up on YouTube last night, so at long last you guys can see how much we didn't know what we were doing! We had a lot of fun, and I hope Wade and Jocelyn didn't mind all the standing around while we figured out what to do...

Anyway, enjoy!

Alien Mothership, Pt. 2

Not much of an update. More hull plating, and the new tubing and related detailing in the back. I also did some work on the engine area (which isn't visible). When I get the engine assemblies built, I'll post some images of that, too.
There are going to be some weapons bays in here, too, at some point...

The Blender Zone, Ep. III: Alien Mothership

So this is the latest Blender project I've been kicking around recently. It took me a few weeks just to settle on the general shape, and detailing it is a learning experience in itself. I finally found Blender's snap function, and it's absolutely saving my life. The new version, 2.63, with it's fully integrated support of n-sided polygons (FINALLY!) is also extremely nice, although it sometimes causes smoothing errors. I could not have done this in the previous versions of Blender, but with the new features it's actually fun. (imagine that...a hobby that you enjoy)
Anyway, here's the latest. You can see the point on the hull where I haven't started detailing it yet. Quite the difference. I've already probably put in 15+ hours on this model...I finally understand why the CG post production on films takes around six months...

(click to see larger)

Owl City new EP

Yesterday Owl City released a preview of his coming album! His four-song EP "Shooting Star" seems to be about preparing people for the more electronic and european dance-y sounds his new album will provide.
Frankly, the repetitive synths and far-away sounding vocals or Shooting Star were not to my liking, and the edgy tone of Dementia didn't strike my fancy either. Take It All Away, while having nice, if slightly uninteresting music, doesn't seem to say much except something or other about rejected love; not terribly interesting. Gold has to be my favorite, apart from the impossibly-modified chorus vocals. It seems to mix the new sound and the old elements we love in a very successful way.
While I must admit that I'm not thrilled with the change in style, I am certainly willing to let it grow on me. I hope that "Shooting Star" contains only the less-amazing songs from the new album, and that this summer we will be treated to some more of Adam's incredible work while enjoying his foray into new musical territory.

Pretty Fair Maid music video

We finally have an award-winning video!

This video won 1st place in the 15-18 age category at the Central Oregon Film Festival.

Now, the backstory. (since I can see those puzzled faces from here)
So...about a month ago I went over to Redmond to film a video with my friend Sara-Anne. I probably should have posted about that as it was happening, but I forgot. *apologetic face*
Yeah...so we spent three days filming a music video for a film contest. It was a total blast, and everything went really well. A couple from Sara-Anne's homegroup volunteered to act, and they were phenomenal. And such good sports about standing around in 40-degree weather while we figured out what to do next. (anyone who's every directed something will understand that)
I didn't post the video before because the film contest just had the showing and judging about five days ago. So, now that the contest is over I've posted it to the internet and I'll be whipping up some behind the scenes at some point here.
So, enjoy the product of our work, and be looking for the BTS video here at some point!

~Pe†er

A Grand Strategy, Sir!

"One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."
     –from a Russian document

"The reason that the American army does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the American army practices chaos on a daily basis."
     –a German general officer

"If we don't know what we're doing, the enemy certainly can't anticipate our future actions!"
     –1st Canadian Division officer (World War II)



Sounds like a wonderful plan, sir!

More Maya Tutorials

This is the result of the second tutorial. By the time I got done building this I was thoroughly sick of the project. It might just be my preference for the Blender interface, but Maya is beginning to really bug me. If Blender I had some of Maya's advanced modeling tools, I would just stick with what I know, but Maya's better tools might make it worth the headache of the clunky interface.
Anyway, behold the monochromatic steam engine:

I still haven't figured out Maya's rendering settings, so this was done with it's default setup.

Behind the scenes of The Box

Hello, faithful followers (all three of you)!
This is your reward for your faithfulness.
Remember that little film Paul and I did for a film contest last year? Well, I've finally gotten around to putting the behind-the-scenes footage together.
Enjoy!

The Blender Zone, Ep. II: Empress Class Starship

The ship class 'Empress' is only a temporary working title. For all I know, there already is an Empress class starship in the Trek universe.
I drew up the ortho drawings for this ship a week or so ago, but I wasn't sure how it would actually look in 3D space, so I rough-modelled it Blender.
I know the proportions on the model aren't quite accurate to the drawing, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the results
The original drawing:

And the rough model:

The Blender Zone, Ep. I: Suzanne and the Infinite Gray Void

Just something that happened while I was trying a lighting setup test.
I really only meant to spend a few minutes on this. (he says, emerging after an hour of work)

This is what my computer does when I want things to go quickly:

This is AWESOME!!!

My jaw is literally on the floor. Well...idiomatically speaking.
Oh, to be able to play piano like this...

My favorite Star Trek films

Sorry for the long absence. Life has been kind of crazy.
I wouldn't even be on here now, but I have a confession to make:


I am a Trekkie.


There. I said it. Now I am a self-confessed Trekkie.
Not that there's anything wrong with liking a tv show. . .but Star Trek is different.
I've seen every single episode of Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise. I've seen all but a few episodes of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I'm working on Star Trek: Deep Space 9. I've also seen 7 out of 10 star trek films. (The newest film, "Star Trek" does not count as Star Trek canon and should never have been made, in my opinion, because it is the first film since Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Star Trek 1) to have no heart value or deeper message woven into the action film part of it.)
I wish I could rank the TV series for you, but there is so much variation between episodes, and I haven't seen much of DS9 yet, so it wouldn't be complete. My advice on the TV shows is to watch them all. They're all different, all have their high and low spots, and their individual quirks. But the heart and beauty of Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future shines through in every episode, every human interaction, every adventure the crews encounter through every series. They're all beautiful.
But every person on the planet needs to see Voyager and The Next Generation.
:-D



However, I can rate the films. And here, for your perusal, are my top five favorite Star Trek films, ranked from last to first.

5: Star Trek: Generations

Captain Kirk is presumed lost on the maiden voyage of the Enterprise-B, when an encounter with a strange energy ribbon sweeps him into space. Seventy years later, Captain Picard is sent on an urgent mission to stop a madman before he destroys an entire solar system. Through a strange set of circumstances, Picard finds that Kirk is alive and well, and the two greatest captains in history join forces to fight for the protection of an entire race.

4: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Admiral James T. Kirk takes the Enterprise – officially under the command of Captain Spock – out for a shakedown cruise, and possibly his last mission in space. But Khan Noonien Singh (a villain introduced in the original tv series) has captured another starship and is bent of revenge. Kirk takes command of the Enterprise due to the emergency situation, and must prevent Khan from acquiring the most deadly weapon ever invented.

3: Star Trek: Insurrection

Captain Picard uncovers a conspiracy to violate the prime directive; and ends up a little more involved than he expected. But, being "Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation starship Enterprise", and having a stalwart crew of the best in Starfleet behind him, he is, of course, equal to the task of righting every wrong. Absolutely classic.
This one is almost #2, except for the quirky charm of The Voyage Home.

2: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

The crew of the original Enterprise, under command of Captain Kirk, travels back in time to 1980s century San Francisco to –what else? – save the whales. Only, this is Star Trek, so of course more than the future of one species is at stake. The whole earth will be destroyed in the twenty-third century if Kirk can't save the humpbacks in the twentieth...
Highlights include watching Kirk and Spock try to adjust to the culture of 1980s San Francisco, and dealing with the crudeness of twentieth century technology.

1: Star Trek: First Contact

The Next Generation films were famous for having nice, complex plots, and First Contact is one of the best. The finale of the conflict with the Federation's greatest nemesis, the Borg (introduced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation tv show, and continued through Deep Space 9 and Voyager), seeing the Enterprise E put through it's paces in a time-travel scenario (which Star Trek is famous for); all wrapped up in a story about Zefram Cochrane and humanity's first warp flight...what could be better?