Posted on March 24, 2000

• Security. I’ve finally grown tired of the script kiddies with their little “hacking” programs. These programs basically bombard this server with login requests using a premade list of usernames and passwords. I’ve done some research into this and I’ve noticed that most of the hack programs do not support SSL.

  I’ve gone ahead and removed the “public” link to the member’s gallery from the homepage on this server, replacing it with a link to a page in a password protected area of my secure server. If you click the link on the homepage, you will be asked for your username and password as usual and once you have entered it you will be redirected to this page whereupon you will need to enter the username and password once more to continue. This should stop most of the crack attempts cold (though not all) because the crackers will not have a non-SSL URL against which to fling their login attempts. Their programs will not be able to use the URL I give them.

  Not a 100% solution, but it’s a start.

  You can get around all of that by bookmarking this page and not using the homepage link to access the members gallery. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments please write me. I’d remove the public link altogether, but I need to think of those members who only visit once in a great while and may not rembember (or have bookmarked) the proper URL. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and I assure you that my actions are in the interest of better download speeds for all (and a better night’s sleep for me).

Posted on March 23, 2000

• Added three alternate versions of “Idyllic” to the Pickle Jar. The first two bear very little resemblance to the version posted on Monday, but if you look close you’ll see that I took elements from both to create the “final” image. The third version was actually rendered yesterday, after I spent many hours reconstructing the scene from an old save. Upon looking at the latest version though, I’ve decided that I still like the first one better. The latest version is somewhat darker than the first, and I tried to add some texturing to the leaves and the tree bark.

  Of course I want to hear your opinions on the matter, so feel free to drop me a line if you have something to say.

Posted on March 20, 2000

• Added Idyllic to the Day Scenery gallery. Your comments are welcome, but I should note that the latest beta version of World Builder totally ate this project when I last tried to save it, so you probably won’t see any updates in the near future. Progress can be a double-edged sword.

Posted on March 17, 2000

• Something green for your desktop?

• A quick note about the pickles I posted earlier this week. The “Red Rocks” image (available here) is not a new version of “Red Planet”. It was rendered in Bryce last November. Unfortunately there were too many rocks in the scene and Bryce refused to open the scene file so I could work more on it.

  The torch (available here) was modeled for “Omadon” (using Amorphium). Each statue is holding one.

  Your comments were pretty much unanimous that the second Jelly Fish was the better of the two. I tend to agree with you, and I’ve added it to the Underwater Gallery.

• Looking for software demos? Metacreations has released a trial version of Poser 4 and E-onsoftware has released a trial version of Vue D’Esprit 3. E-onsoftware sent me a newsletter yesterday in which they hinted that Vue 3.1 would be available soon and that it will support dual-processor rendering. Oh yeah!

Posted on March 14, 2000

• A few new items today. The first is a different version of my Jellyfish. Ironically, the jelly fish is helping me to learn about bones. What are bones you might ask? Here is a nice technical overview of them. Put simply, properly parented bones (leg bone connected to the foot bone…) give structure to a mesh and allow you to pose it by moving its skeleton. Great for animation (since you can keyframe the bone movements), but it’s also great for stills because you can model an object once and then deform it to suit your needs. A big time saver.
  This version of the Jelly was rendered in Lightwave 6, and (as you can see) looks much different than the first one. Opinions?
• Look here and here for some new “pickles” (you’ll see which ones are new by the “last modified date”).