Raiméis

This is from today’s Crossword of the Day which appears on Google’s personalised homepage…

Anyone else offended by that?

p.s. crossword is by Puzzlerscave not Google.
Edit: direct link to crossword

Update: I decided to submit a complaint to Puzzlerscave. I just received a response … basically a fob off:

“Please report your complaint to the crossword’s submitter by leaving a
comment on the crossword.”

… so i’ve left a comment, I don’t expect any action though.

Update 2: Result! They have changed the clue …

Two famous Irish men ‘passed on’ this week.

The first is Roy Keane who, as you know, has fucked hips and now has to go on the dole cos his soccer career is over. Keane was one of the best Irish footballers ever and is on my favourite footballer of all time list along with Frank Stapleton, Bryan Robson & Sparky Hughes (note the obvious connection). All the best in future Roy, hopefully we’ll see you in charge of the Irish [ROI obviously] team before too long.

The other fella that passed on, as you also know unless you spent the last few days on the (bean-)jacks, is Charles “Thieving Cunt” Haughey. You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead so I won’t tell you what I thought of him.

Edit: A number of other Irish people passed on this week also. Spare a thought for the two people killed on our roads yesterday, the pensioner killed on Sunday, or the three young lads who died on the roads at the weekend or the young hurler who collapsed during training. No state funeral for these people but they were every bit as important as Charles J Haughey!

DUP’er gets elected in Nationalist stronghold. Stoop gets elected in Unionist stronghold. Nationalists and loyalists in North Belfast reach historic deal.

What the fuck is going on??

Nationalists and loyalists team up to beat the shit out of Lithuanians.

What’s with all this lovey dovey stuff up North these days?

Pricking around with … A new series on Raiméis, one which will probably die like all the other grand ideas I’ve had because of pure and unadulterated laziness, where I take sumthin’ (usually software) prick around with it and see what happens…

Makehuman prealpha 0.8 demo
In short, MakeHuman is a application for making accurate 3D models of human (and in future fantasy) characters. It started off apparently as a plug-in for the excellent Blender but now they have made it a standalone application, which has me overjoyed because Blender totally crawls on my computer. It is quite similar in intent to Poser I guess (for those of you familiar with Poser).

“Its purpose is to provide a versatile, professional and extremely specialized application for parametrical modelling of three-dimensional humanoid characters. By specialized, we mean that MakeHuman’s sole purpose is to model and pose a 3D humanoid, complete with hair, accessories and high quality UV maps.”

MakeHuman at this stage is little more than a demo but is usable. You start with a base model of a human and using point and click you can modify all aspects of the model to create your own unique human[oid] which can be exported for use in other applications. It’s a very simple program to use, it literally is point and click (or point and drag in most cases) and dead handy for those of us too useless or lazy to learn how to create human 3D models from scratch.
You can modify all the basic aspects of the character such as age, weight, muscle mass and you can also focus on specific areas of the body such as hands, eye brows, nose, arse etc and tweak each of those. In future you will be able to customize a lot more such as ethnicity and also change facial expressions or add clothes. The program is currently quite basic and although you can download some extra “targets” from their website, it is full of bugs. Plus the only gender pre-installed at the moment is female so avoid clicking on that icon or your model will be prone to mood swings and will always be right even when she’s wrong. The “male target” available on their website is worth downloading as it functions fine even at this stage.

A few of the negatives include not been able to remove certain objects such as eyes or teeth (which are quite high poly and not always needed), the lack of a male gender, some targets cancel other targets, the ‘all or nothing aspect’ of the fat and muscle targets and a dozen other bugs. But bear in mind the program is little more than a demo and a lot more development work has yet to come.

The program is available for free download from their sourceforge page and in my own humble opinion is a must have for lazy bastard modellers.

Here are a number of screenshots I made earlier (links open new windows);

• Standard view of the program as it is when you install it.

• tweaking some eye settings.

• Adjusting the boobies … for the perverts out there.

• Your average male torso, model exported and subdivided in Anim8or.

• Some of the bugs I mentioned, a Caucasian with two different ethnicities (downloaded targets) applied, results in a face only a mother could love.

In conclusion: A good tool for aspiring and/or lazy modellers. One to definitely watch out for in future.

I ordered a wee yoke off the web last Thursday, it should arrive by tomorrow. I hate waiting though, I totally suck at waiting. I keep checking the DHL website every 5 minutes for an update but the package hasn’t moved all day. I probably should take DHL’s advice; “It’s still in fucking Paris, it hasn’t moved, give it a rest ok???”. Eternal damnation in hell for those who make me ‘remain or rest in readiness or expectation of something’.

Edit: Interesting thing, it takes longer for customer care to answer 1 email (5 days) than it does to send a parcel from France to Finland.

Why am I getting Russian ads displayed in my sidebar such as the one on the left there? The website is Finnish … the ad displayed presumably because my ISP is Finnish. Mmkay, makes sense. But why isn’t the ad text displayed in Finnish or English then, especially when the website itself defaults to English when I visit it? Could it be that my Irish language browser has Google a tad confussed? I guess Russian and Irish are so alike that if it looks like Gaeilge, is spelled like Gaeilge then it must be Russian. Tá sin ceart, nach bhfuil?

I’ve turned into a music download slut. Can you believe I downloaded 25 albums this week!?! 25! Plus a pile of individual tunes! Now I need a new MP3 player cos it’s already full even without these 25 new albums. They weren’t all for me though, herself wanted some girly stuff like Shakira and Coldplay, I prefer real music like Audioslave/Chris Cornell, Live, U2, System of a Down, RHCP und so weiter. To try something different I got Johnny Cash’s 1976 album At Folsom Prison & San Quentin, i’d highly recommend it, it’s an excellent live album.
I still have a few quid left on the account, any recommendations?

…Phytoplankton Bloom off Ireland. Isn’t she a beauty?

Click image to see full pic & article…

Image fleeced off NASA

A couple and one of their four children are believed to have died following a fire at a house in Co Waterford this morning.
A man in his 20s has died in a single-vehicle crash in the Bridgetown area of Co Clare overnight.
..a mother and her two grown-up children … died in a drowning tragedy in north Cork yesterday, a post mortem will also be carried out today on the body of a man in his 20s who drowned in the River Shannon yesterday.

Wouldn’t want to be [damn!] prone to depression or anything like.

I was travelling back from Helsinki Saturday night and had a tyre blow out, my car went off the road but luckily enough I hit an old couple walking on the side of the road which prevented the car from slipping into a ravine. Still the car ended up on it’s side and unfortunately my legs got stuck and I couldn’t get out of the car. Flipper the Dolphin was passing by at the time but there was little he could do as he was in a large tank on the back of a truck being brought to the “”dolphin retirement home”".
It was just a short time later that Skippy the Bush Kangaroo hopped by, I asked him to call the police but he just scratched his sack and jumped away. Finnish Bush Kangaroos are notoriously apathetic animals and they have fuck all English anyway.
So I was there about two hours playing Soduko to pass the time when Lassie ran by, he was on his way to save Timmy who’d fallen down a well for the 53rd time. That poor child really has problems, I don’t know if he has a well fetish or he’s just really stupid or what but he should be taken into care, someplace where they have no wells … like in Nowells Place, Pukekohe, Auckland, NZ … just keep him away from Wells, Somerset, UK. Anyway luckily Lassie was able to call the Police and the Fire Brigade who had me out in no time at all, well actually it took some time of course, like half an hour or something. He also collected me from the hospital yesterday AND he called my boss to say I’d be late for work today! What a pal … and a great looking dog for his age.

These cialis I bought off the web aren’t having quite the effect I expected, although I do feel a stirring in my loins everytime I see that girl from Lordi. I think i’ll lie down for a while.