Recently there have been some articles that take a look at what it's like to work for a production company.  Well over at Techland, they show some videos from the Toy Story DVD.  The DVD shows the experience of some of the people who work at Pixar.  I'm not certain how old the interviews are, but its quite interesting to watch.  To those that do CG animation or VFX,  remember you don't need it to be perfect because there are people whose whole job is to make it not perfect.  Head on over to Techland to view their article.  Now, what I'm wondering is how many of their employees were interns before they got hired?

Well, more likely I'm a multi OS person now.  As you know, I've been using Window7 beta on my netbook.  It will soon been turning off ever two hours and after that sometime in the summer it will totally be unusable.  I know that there are ways to circumvent it.  I just don't want to deal with.

I've been looking at Linux and more closely Ubuntu.  If you want to give it a shot and you're on windows, check out Wubi.  It's an Ubuntu installer and is all done in Windows and acts like an app.  All you do after installing it is restart your computer and boot in Ubuntu.  You can even uninstall it in Windows if you don't like.  This is probably the easiest way to install Ubuntu or the other way is just to use the live CD, which boots from the cd.  It is somewhat slow though.

Probably the hardest thing with Ubuntu is installing drivers.  If your components are built into Ubuntu you're all set.  If your not familiar with the terminal (command window), then you should probably stick to windows or mac.  If you're lucky, they will probably have an automatic installer, but I've haven't seen it yet for the drivers I need. I tried to set up my wireless network usb adapter (purchased separately).  Note, that adapter didn't have a Linux driver, so it made it harder to get it noticed.  I had to look around.  Found a similar device with the same chipset.   Did all that was instructed.  Ubuntu detected it, but I didn't know how to input my network settings.   It did install, but there was no GUI for the device.  The built in network manager didn't see it.  So, I eventual went back to my built in wireless card.  That was detected upon install and worked with the network manager.  No problems at all.  I did lose my Broadcom Crystal HD (didn't matter as installing it's drivers in Ubuntu was more than I could handle).  The gist of it is that if you're unlucky, you gonna have to find the linux driver, and either just install or compile, make the installer, and then install it. As far as installing the software, it was a cinch.  There are a lot of how-to's.  If they don't have an automatic installer, you would just install using the terminal.  A lot of them are just cut and paste.  All the Linux software that I installed didn't have any issues.  The only one were a Windows app running on WINE, but other than that all smooth sailing from there.  Web browsing works the same.  Flash works well and Quicktime/mp4 works well too.  It uses an open source version and it still works as well as the original. The best thing about Ubuntu is customization.  It took me awhile to get it to look right after installing theme managers and so forth.  The best thing is it doesn't seem to have reduced my system performance.  I'm running this on a netbook (Samsung NC10).  It doesn't feel clogged or stressed out.  I've made mine similar to Windows7, but with a black glass look.  It's pretty neat. I've also added the Expose of OSX.  I didn't use the multi desktop (very specific to Ubuntu/linux) because I just couldn't get used it.  Maybe later when I've matured with Ubuntu. I do have to work out some kinks.  One is trying to get all permission to a storage partition for a non-administrator user.  The other is trying to find an anti-virus software that is easy to install and will also detect and kill the virus.  You're asking why do you need an anti virus software for Linux, well I do use Windows.  I'm also on a network that has Windows so there could be problems.  Also I've read that you can still get rootkits/spyware especially if you just download programs that aren't in the Synaptic package thingy.

As far ditching Windows, well that probably won't happen.  I use software that only works in Windows or OSX (Adobe CS3 Master) and WINE doesn't work well for those types of programs.  Also the driver thing is a big turn off for me.  I'm sure they could sort it out in the future, since you can already install programs just like how you would do it on OSX or Windows.  If I didn't need software that only worked on Windows and the driver installation wasn't so hard, I'd have it on all my computers.  Yes it's that good.  Just another thing, Ubuntu feels so much snappier than when I had windows7 except for the boot time.  So check out Ubuntu or the other Linux OS.  You won't be disappointed.  Check out the video below for a how-to.

The 2010 Chicago Auto Show took place this past week at McCormick Place.  Since the event is literally a few blocks from my place near Soldier Field, I thought I'd check it out and hopefully get some design inspirations from the concept cars.  Unfortunately, I thought the show was a bust!  There were little-to-none concept cars, so the place felt like one giant auto dealer showroom with every car company housed under one roof.  Volkswagen had nothing new to show, so there was no "new" New Beetles to be found.  I did enjoy BMW's showings though.  They had the 135i and it looks so spiffy - not too small or too large and not too sporty or too conservative compared to the other BMW models.  The "I Love What You Do for Me" Toyota Company had the FT-CH model, which was the only concept that caught my eye.  It's pretty nice and will surely satisfy all the small car lovers out there.  That's all for this year's Chicago Auto Show.

If you haven't known, I'm a pretty big fan of anime and the style.  Just wanted to show you a very talented artist.  He goes by the name FaustSktxr.  The guy has a nack for really dynamic drawings.   What do I mean by dynamic.  Well the character  poses are very good.  From prespective to motion, it all looks just right.  You never wonder why this is here or why that doesn't look right.   All his pieces flows very well.  Add the colors in with the lines  and you get images that are worthy of magazines or wall exposure. If you looked at his Deviantart page, you can tell how much the guy has evolved with his skills.  It's totally night and day.  Watch out for this guy in the future (he's still pretty young at 18 yrs).  He could be the next Disney or Gainax artist.

Here's another videos as well:

Deviant Page : sketcher2007.deviantart.com

Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/user/faustSktxr

So today I have put up the new design.  I still have some tinkering to do, especially the featured window up above.  You're wondering why eveything is so big.  Well I was just thinking since everything seems to be going to the touch interface, I think now is  a good time for a change.  Bigger buttons make it easier to navigate.  Words will be eligible without having to zoom in.  Hope you guys like the new look. I'm still checking for any errors.  There are a lot of browsers out there and it's really hard to make it all look good.  If you're using IE6, you shouldn't be.  This site isn't optimized for it.  It's time to upgrade.  Like Google stated, they aren't supporting IE6.  Whatever Googles say they know what they are talking about.  Oh yeah, coding or checking for coding is hard work.  Oh yeah, don't forget to watch LOST tonight on ABC.

This weekend, the "Snow Days Chicago" festival is taking place at the Windy City's Grant Park.  It features snow sculptures on display, a demonstration of dog sledding, and some snowboarding performance jamming to some pop radio music.  The snow sculptures were huge, some of which were at least 5 feet tall. Fortunately, the freezing temperatures outside helped kept the sculptures from melting.  Props to the artists that made these such cool things.  There were also some Huskies for the dog lovers out there.  Of course, none of them compared to RenderPhase's own in-house husky - dog boy DK.