Archive for August, 2007

I’m completely wiped out so an early night tonight. If I wasn’t I’d be playing with Vue using three new cool things that have become available this week:

• Incredibly Lush Wheat Fields
• TerraPakâ„¢ toolkit for Vue 6
• New Replacement Wood Materials for Vue SolidGrowth Trees

All of which I’ve coverd on the unofficial Vue News blog but I thought were worth a mention here too.

1. Architecture – The waterfront, the cathedrals and William Brown Street are often mentioned but there are many more distinctive buildings throughout the city
2. Music – From the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to a band you may have heard of called the Beatles
3. Sport – Notably Liverpool and Everton football clubs and the Grand National at Aintree
4. Visual Arts – From the varied collections in the city galleries to the SuperLambBanana and Turning the Place Over
5. The night life – Although I’ve not been out clubbing in years
6. Education – There are the three Universities (the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and Liverpool Hope University), the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and an assortment of schools and colleges.
7. The people
8. Poetry – including famous poets like Roger McGough and Adrian Henri
9. Eating out – the choice of types of food to eat in Liverpool is excellent and so wide I can’t list even a fraction here
10. Museums – Liverpool has Merseyside Maritime Museum, World Museum Liverpool, the International Slavery Museum, National Conservation Centre and Sudley House
11. FACT – A great little cinema
12. Festivals and Events – from the 800 celebration this year to the capital of culture next year and the various regular festivals there is usually something happening
13. Did I mention the people?

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

I’m celebrating Liverpool’s 800th birthday from the air with my favourite photograph I took on my recent flight over the city in a Dakota.

I was digging through past projects looking at the nets I’d designed for paper buildings but never finished off when I came across something I’d actually finished. A sheet of sixty-five Victorian and Edwardian advertising posters resized to fit on to a sheets of mini address labels. They work with Avery Inkjet Labels Code J8651 mini address labels. Be careful when printing that the printer doesn’t resize the sheet down to a different size as the pictures and the labels won’t match if that happens.

Update: The PDF is now available free from the Miniature Posters Page.

I’ve had some requests for new categories in the Vue link directory on the impworks site. I got round to adding them today including vue training, vue books, vue merchants and vue free stuff. I’ve not finished adding links to them yet (especially free stuff) but I didn’t want to wait to put them live.

There was a question on Cornucopia 3D’s vue python forum about setting all the objects / instances in an EcoSystem to point in a direction possibly with a bit of variation. So here is a quick python script for vue to do just that…

Download: EcoRotate (3KB)

She sleeps, bosom slowly heaving. Moonlight casts a strange hue through swirling curtains. From nowhere the irregular shade comes to brush her hair aside. Her neck revealed. Pale skin greets sharp ivory teeth. She is his.

I started work on a set of simple, cardboard building models using pepakura originally for Serious and Organised but which, like Serious and Organised, I’ve yet to finish. A discussion on the SFSFW mailing list kicked me into finishing a simple one of a house. It can either be used as a single, semi-detached house or by putting several together a terrace. I’ve got additional bits that can be used to customise this model in the works including chimney stacks and extensions for the ends and rear but I’ve not textured them yet. I’ve made versions for 28mm, 25mm and 15mm gaming and I suggest printing them on thin (160gms) white card for use. Assemble the walls together first, then add the roof and finally add the base. You can leave off the base if you want as they are reasonably rigid without it.

Download the PDF of the models:

• 28mm House Model
• 15mm House Model

Any comments or suggestions either drop me an e-mail or leave a comment on my blog.

Update: The 25mm model is now out of Beta and available free from the impworks web site cardboard buoings page.

I’ve not pulled my Thursday Thirteen together in time for this week so if you stopped by looking for it sorry. I’ll post it next week when I’ll hopefully have over come my ideas shortage or renamed this blog to "Where did all my ideas go?"

Elsewhere on the wibbly wobbly web my friend, Kim, has a new book, To Summon a Demon, out.

The figurehead of the Bounty II