Its true that sometimes cops have nothing better to do than harass people at night. I was heading home from a friends party on Saturday night and two cops pulled me over. It was about 2:20 am, and they claim my license plate light was out. Yeah, BS. But they made me do the whole song and dance drunk test. Man that was a nerve racking and embarrassing experience! Ok, I had been drinking most of the day, but I stopped about four hours before I drove home. I was also drinking light beer at a very slow pace and played about six games of volley ball during that time.  I know my limit and when I shouldn't drive if I've been drinking, and I knew I was ok to drive that night. But you never know. Even when you feel sober enough when you have had a few drinks earlier in the day, some trace might be in your system. Long story short, I passed all the tests, even the breathalizer and they let me go with a warning to fix my bulb and renew my registration. My Bday was two weeks ago and I never got around to that yet. The cop was actually really nice and he didnt write a ticket for the registration and the bulb because he said I was really cooperative. But damn, it was an experience I dont want to go through ever again.

A while back I posted a blog about a feature film I worked on. I wish I could say, go out and see it, but the film was made for Asian markets. There is no distribution in the US yet. The Film is call, Red Cliff part 2. The Battle of Red Cliff is a tale of two ancient Chinese factions that went to war with each other...etc. Oh, and there was an epic naval battle with 10,000 burning ships. The part I worked on was lighting and texture mapping the fleet of ships. Other members on my team populated the scene with a variety of ships, sailors, and props using a Thinking Particle propagation system. This was one of the largest series of FX shots in the entire film, yet we didn't really get the credit. We are a 3rd party working with Frantic Films who did the majority of the SFX on this job. So they get the credit.  At least we got paid :)

http://www.itsartmag.com/features/redcliff/

I had some down time so I decided to add some life to these toy robot models we had in our library. I am using 3dsMax and vray 1.5

   Let me start by saying, I like my PS3. For the past 13 months, it has been a very entertaining experience. As I took care of my PS3, I made sure to give it enough air to ventilate, and handled it gently. Back when I decided to purchase a "next gen" system I was faced with a serious choice. Should I buy an xbox 360 and have access to an established software library and connect with countless friends already connected with xbox live? Or should I go rouge, and get the system with a lot of potential, but still in a struggle to find its place? A big part of my decision was hardware reliability. Many of my friends have already experienced the RROD incident more than once. Enough of them went through that fiasco and it turned me away from the xbox360.
     So here I am, one month past warranty and my PS3 is dead. Yes, I should have forked out the extra money for the extended warranty at Best buy, but I was on a tight budget last year and I didn't think it would be an issue. After all, most defective products go bad before the first year...most. It seems Sony has designed a Fail-Fail clock in some of their PS3s  that Fucks over their customers once the warranty runs out. Kidding of course. This is just poor timing on my part, however it shows that MS doesn't have a monopoly on poor hardware quality. Sony could care less that my $400 purchase warrants another $150 after just over a year of normal usage. In my case, Sony has failed to deliver the quality product they claim their company represents. Yes I was naive to think a sony product was more reliable than MS, good/bad PR will do that to people. This is wishful thinking, but I feel companies should be more respectable to the trust their customers give them when we are willing to pay good money for their products.

     So, as gamers we should stop arguing over who has the better hardware quality. It seems to be a moot point and only pushes our community further into tribalism. Just go with the product you think will give you best experience, and have fun with it. Pure and simple. We have to accept the faults of mass produced electronics, assume all are poorly built, and always purchase the extended warranty.

January 17th, 9pm Est on ESPN. North Carolina vs Miami. We did all the pregame intro animations and transitional graphics for the game. The game was sponsored by Infiniti.  A few months of work for thirty seconds of show. Its crazy how this business works.