Graphicsile

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drumroll…:

http://kotaku.com/5486729/the-first-ever-gloriously-big-gloriously-detailed-shots-of-an-ipad-game/gallery/

\o/

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I started to use JIRA and GreenHopper for scheduling, estimating and logging hours for personal projects and tasks somewhere around December 2009. It has now proven to be valuable tool for that. Before that I have had a bunch of different experiences with different softwares. I’ve used several different online and offline TODO-programs, Calendars, Wikis, etc. Of course that is kind of a wide variety of different applications that are meant for different uses but for task estimating and tracking it seems that JIRA is the thing. Although I think it is worth mentioning that I wouldn’t use it without GreenHopper Agile plugin anymore. I have plenty of professional history with JIRA anyway so it was easy to get going with it.

Now I have actually started to timetable my personal tasks at home etc. to quarters so that I have some kind of clue what I have planned to do even that I would not do that. =D Anyway the best part about that is that I can see if I have overbooked myself and can postpone things. Actually one of the very first things I noticed that when I am really being honest estimating the hours I would use for a task and put them in the line, I realize that I think I can do almost double the things that I really can and even when I estimate the hours I still underestimate the time they take. Being able to track that has an serious impact on stress levels and prevents the “everything is due at the same time and my walls fall on me when I lie awake feeling like tied with handcuffs inside a coconut”-phenomena. And those are probably the first and maybe the only reasons you should use some kind of hour estimation/task tracking at work. It helps you. When you know how and why you use it, it will not be an evil plan from your boss to track your breathing but a tool for you. _{(Of course it does not hurt to know how much time was used on which things and micromanagers tend to ditch the processes anyway as they do not want to get their micromanagement tracked.)}

Let’s take a small scale company with couple of guys working. They have excellent communication as they work together in a small office and they think that they can handle every issue with a small chat. That far it works well if the chemistry is in synchronization between the guys. But estimating hours might be a painful thing to do; in most cases the guys just decide that we do X and Y in T time. It goes by gut-feeling or the guys break it down to smaller pieces and estimate. Anyway in this way the estimating and communication may still work. Even calendar is used and they mark that milestone Z should be ready in T time. So far so good. If the guys did all this they are already reaching the basics (simplified it a bit though.) But this is not the stage where the stress pours in.

The stress pours in when a) the estimations do not hold b) goals are not met c) unknown factors arise. The guys will possibly meet a, b and c by the time of T in some form – it may be now harder to go back to estimations, see the whole picture and see that yeah: Here it went wrong or that thing X takes too much time and can be dropped. Disagree? Yes, it can be done but the difference in using tracking tools is that you get a new pair of goggles which give you a future vision to see the wall before you hit it. It is always a less painful experience to say I was wrong and we have to adjust the sails a bit instead of hitting the wall and then turning. Also fast turns are more stressful than slight and peaceful turns. If you’re in the IT-industry you probably have the picture there. =D

Also having a system that gives you a bit more versatile view on the big picture of an project that is ongoing may help with an adhoc-hog. If the adhoc-hog can be given a even a glimpse on how the “small things” that he tend to drop in affects the development he might reconsider in some cases. Of course this is not possible with all the breeds. Task tracking systems are not really tools for dropping tasks in randomly so there has to be some guidelines.

—

JIRA & GreenHopper

Pros:
- Easy to use
- Enough plugins (not plenty but enough)
- Solid and simple to customize to your own needs
- Cheap for my level of usage (as I have up to 10 users-license)

Cons:
- The Agile plugin (GreenHopper) has some problems working with Sprints (Moving issues forward from sprint to an another needs duplicating issues per sprint if you want to keep time tracking on track.)
- JIRA needs the Greenhopper to be good so why is it sold separately?
- takes 500M of RAM to run. / Java application

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I am slowly getting through my photofolders from 2009. Now that my backlog is only one month instead of over six months it already seems that it is really possible to get it done some day. =D

I updated my Portfolio at random.kuvat.fi but as I am not done with the 2009 yet you can assume some more later on.

The publicly available trips from the recent developing sessions are listed here:

Vilnius Part I
Vilnius Part II
Fall 2009
Winter 2009-2010 (Not finished though)

And here is the quick selection of stuff I have been working with lately:

After getting portfolios done and some stock photo things on the way I am going to lean on the digital 3d side for a while. ZBrush provides a bunch of quite interesting 3d workflows these days…

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We had a small fast painting session with friends and the randomized theme for it was Cyborg Banana Interceptor. We had a 1 hour deadline and I probably used at least 45-50 minutes to the painting which was kind of effective as it normally tends to be a bit lower.

Here is what I did:

Also I have been sorting out a lot of photo-backlog lately and here is some picks from the whole set:

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We had a small fast painting session with friends and the randomized theme for it was Cyborg Banana Interceptor. We had a 1 hour deadline and I probably used at least 45-50 minutes to the painting which was kind of effective as it normally tends to be a bit lower.

Here is what I did:

Also I have been sorting out a lot of photo-backlog lately and here is some picks from the whole set:

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Another issue with Strobist stuff is to find gels that are good for ya hot shoe flash. As I live in Europe I bought my set of gels from Flashgels and can recommend that easily.

You can read a bit more about using gels from here. But in short if you are up to white balancing your shots, some of you keep it on automatic and that is not white balancing – it is more like white randomizing with a guess, you might want to keep the flash same colored as the surrounding light to minimize the oddities in color already in the shooting phase. That is actually very easy by sticking that gel with a Velcro on your flash. By having Orange (CTO) gel for Tungsten and (Window) Green gel for fluorescents you’re already covering 95% of the situations. It is worth it.

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As I might have noticed I have been looking in to the Strobist stuff lately and I bought a bit of cheap hardware to get started and to know what I really want from my equipment.

While a go I bought a new flash. What was particularly different was that this time the flash was a brand called Yongnuo and it costs under 40€. Which is cheap as butter for a flash. The accurate full name is Yongnuo Manual Flash YN460. So what are the drawbacks?

The flash ain’t particularly powerful – Guide number goes somewhere around 23. (If you don’t know what the guide number means, check this.) Even though, when shooting inside, I do not use it in full power anyway.

Another thing is that there is no way to set the focal length or “zoom” for it. I should do some straight-to-wall-tests to get some kind of feeling of the beam spread.

I do not know if I can use it on my camera hot shoe and am afraid to do so. It might be that it is not safe for that.

The flash is manual only. For me this is not a drawback – rather something I am really up to. It is actually easier to use in manual than my Canon 430EX because it is dedicated for that. It is always manual and the buttons in the back are always accessible. With the Canon 430EX I need to hold buttons to get to set the manual ratios.

It might sound that my Canon 430EX, costing 6 times more, would be expensive in comparison, but you have to take in account that it is more powerful, can adjust beam and have all the automatic syncing stuff etc. the price is probably in the right spot for both of them. Currently I’m using both flashes but both are always on the manual mode. They both do have their own usages.

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planetmule.com

planetmule screenshot

Finally! An excellent remake of a legendary game called M.U.L.E. One of the first multiplayer games developed originally for Atari 400/800 and from where the 4-player gameplay originates from, but then also ported to C64 (and some others) on which probably most remember it from. It is dated to my birthyear and the cover graphics for the original is great in an phenomenal level. It doesn’t stop there: The game itself has one of the best tunes to my remembering from the 8-bit era.

Following text is about the 1.0 version of the game:

The java-version is developed by Blue Systems and Turborilla and is played over the internet while being an very accurate copy of the original gameplay wise. There is some slight cosmetic changes though and the graphics and sounds are totally new. What this really provides is to play the great original game again on a modern computer with friends sitting in their own homes. Which is one of the biggest downsides: This game was designed to be played together in real life. Even though this version does have the in-game chat there, it is still just a vague illusion of talking about the game in real time. Also what tells about the lack of intensity on that side is that every time there is waiting period in the game, it feels like forever even though it might be less than in the original. One downside is also the A.I: It currently cripples the gameplay by selling all the good straight away. But in general the game is very good and well done. Some slight bugs are still to be tackled but the 1.1 version is already on its way.

Skip this if you’re familiar with the game:

Although the gameplay probably attracts more the nerds of us it is still a great simplification of economy. In the game you buy M.U.L.E.’s to gather resources from your land plots and then use, sell and buy them between players and the common storage. Most of the resources have connection to the gameplay in clear ways and the value of certain good is dependent on the needs of both the common store and other players.

Wikipedia – M.U.L.E.

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I have not revealed or summed up for a while what I am currently doing and I feel that it helps, and probably does not do anything else, even myself to organize my thoughts to write something down. Normally in my year cycle I am a bit depressed in the fall-time when there is a lot less sun and I actually see it like once in a two weeks… With a luck. So this year I have been concentrating to not start that many projects and slept a bit better. Although I have been buying new hardware and learning new things. Learning and fiddling around with new things always gives a small mood-boost. All together I have again noticed that I should always do one project at the time and remember to have some time off. Which I actually did by visiting Lithuania for couple of days.

But currently I’m actually on to these things:

Started an oil painting course. 1/2 of it behind and 3 practice paintings done. Mainly those concentrated only on mixing colors and the subjects were still life cups and bottles. It was good to concentrate on on simple things subject-wise first as the color mixing was the real concern. I do think this was the best thing this fall. Every session gave me really good feeling. Continues on January and possibly then we move further on from the color mixing practices. Really worth it. Probably helps in a lot of other areas of my jack-of-all-trades nature in arts.

Built a new computer. I already wrote about that. 10Gb RAM, Windows 7 etc. Really made my living easier after got it working.

Modeling 3d for a game. Modeling just real-time 3d objects might sound like eating porridge at this stage of my career but the modeling part is actually just the process of carving out an idea. Plus there is some special stuff that matters in this project. Same as in any job – there is always a lot of specifications that can not be seen by people not familiar with the particular subject. Which makes it interesting and dull at the same time. It is a paid job though so dull things goes fine in my radar. In scale from dull to misusing icicles I have been a lot to the icicle end lately and this is not so much of it really.

Creating a layout animation at work for a real-time short/demo. Really nice project otherwise but I do get stuck a lot – especially having creative locks. Layout animation is the first time in the project that I gather up the placeholder stuff on the table to a more whole set of things. That makes it possible to get stuck on anything in the process even that it sounds easy. Although I do like to go on with a process as that might make it a lot more progressive to work with in the future. The layout animation I try to go for is much like what Pixar is doing in their process. Everything is collected to be in placeholder stage together to get some kind of idea of the whole package. Then it is refined for over 3 years in different levels and pieces by hundredfold of people and the end result is the movie. The article I wrote about that creative work should be teamwork really, really, really underlines all the problems in this project. Yes I am doing it alone and no change to that in the radar. So if you are still with me – remember the talk about icicles in the last paragraph? I do not wonder at all why even this short took 8 years: The Passenger.

Learning lighting. The thing I would like to spend a lot more money and time on anyway. Loses for oil painting as for level of interest but a subject where I can be learning forehead-deep for infinity but it does not actually make it go further without the practice. I am now in the stage that I do have a light-scale set of Strobist stuff and played around a while with it but I would need to test things more in practice. Quite sure I have red enough of the theory-side for now. I am planning to take on a project later on to do portraits of some close relatives. Moving slowly with all the photography stuff anyway as I do not have the time to run for full-time photographer-job anyway. I hope this way could teach me a lot faster about 3d-lighting too – the same way as starting photography in the first place has gave me a nice boost in understanding a lot of different creative and technical things connected to composing, painting, 3d, physics, etc.

Rethinking my photo workflow (which is made possible by my new comp.) This kind of a backfired after I found out that my super-indestructible-workflow would not really manage to fly that well. I first planned to have a pipeline where all my .CR2-files would be converted to .DNG’s and after development opened as smart-layers in Photoshop and all the edits would be done non-destructively on top of the smart layer as smart filters and additional layers, saved as .PSD’s and then when needed flattened and resized according to needs in to different sizes and formats. Actually there was only one particularly weak part and it was the filesize and saving/opening-time of the .PSD. *flush* Not entirely though. I will probably move to use DNG’s as it is better and faster than my ancient way of using TIFF as an intermediate-format.

Bought some advanced texturing tutorials from Eat3D.com. Just to go it through and learn in practice. I really need some prep-up on that one. Might drop a word or two later on. Requires some undisturbed time.

Bought JoeyL Sessions Photography tutorial DVD. Already watched a bit from the start. This is totally more “serious” kind of a thing than the first one (which I did buy too and liked a lot.) Probably will drop line or two about it when I have more to say. Link

Bought 5 books on 3d, photography, drawing and animation. The Photographers survival guide almost done. I can recommend for anyone trying to push to advertisement and such business as a photographer. Written by two art-buyers so it is kind of a different perspective but a very valuable one for understanding the business. It does concentrate mainly stating couple of points: Get to know your style, be coherent with it when marketing yourself (using a outsourced designer mentioned at least 500 times), market a lot. In addition to that there is also very practical stuff and scenarios that might happen and everything. Bundled with the book is a bunch of forms to use in different stages. Very well laid out book so it really does not feel hard to carry on. Other ones bought: Ideas for the animated short, Dynamic figure drawing, Force – dynamic life drawing for animators, Digital Lighting and rendering.

Created a maxscript exporter. For a fileformat that started from Ambrose but got tweaked so far that it is not anywhere close to it anymore. Might give it out if I get it cleaned up and simplified a bit and someone is interested. Currently it pushes out a lot of raw data and is very vulnerable for nonspecific data. Got a big help from Phaser when doing it.