The koala's breakfast

Where am I?

Here ->

It's where I work, Animal Logic.
Looks a bit weird because it's inside the Fox studios, what used to be a theme park a few years ago...

Inside the fox studios there are a few shops and a couple of cinemas

.

I also bought a new pair of shoes to better integrate with the locals:

So far so good : )
(yeah, the shoes are great I know)

is cool, they give you a free host name, and uploading pictures and tagging them thinking that someone will see them one day is fun!

So, I started uploading my pictures, some old, some new, you can find them here:
www.flickr.com/photos/andrea-i/

Polaroids

Bought for £10 from ebay after Laura seeded this idea in my sick brain, incredibly enough you can still buy the film for this camera...and taking pictures with it is so much fun, I think I'll buy a new model for when I get in Sydney.

So, let's bring back the 80's!

Loving it!

Fire Coming Out Of A Monkey's Head

Once upon a time at the foot of a great mountain,
there was a town where the people known as Happyfolk lived,
their very existence a mystery to the rest of the world,
obscured as it was by great clouds.
Here they played out their peaceful lives,
innocent of the litany of excess and violence that was growing in the world below.

(the Happyfolks)

Continues...

(lyrics from the gorillaz' song "Fire Coming Out Of A Monkey's Head")

New camera and some pics

(my new canon powershot g9)

(Palermo! Laura suggested to take this picture...whatever)

(weird...)

(a boat in Messina)

(ciao Martina;)

Polpo & Riccio

Here is Polpo...

...and here is Riccio

New blog and home page

Hey there!

This blog has become my only web page, you should update your bookmark to: www.andrea-i.com
My old website will be online for another while at: www.ray-t.net/old.html, but the plan is to slowly move all the content of that website to this blog.

Another note:
If you don't want to read any boring work related post, just use the labels, I'll be labeling each not-work related post as Misc.

Don't be lazy and update your bookmark before I get lost in australia, or you'll miss my life by the other side of the planet!!!

Cuber Heroes

Here is a quick explanation of the project, very simple, from time to time I'll be posting cubes which *should* resemble super heroes or random characters which I consider to be super.

Let's start with kill bill!

No, I have no idea why I'm doing this, nor what to do with the cubes, but they are so cute!

So long London,

And thanks for all the rain...

Mistero a caffe' nero

Il solito cappuccino domenicle rivelo' una sorpresa inquetante quella mattina.
Una voce bassa, cupa, ed una serie di vocalli alla fine di ogni parola suggerivano che la lingua fosse l'italiano.
Spalle larghe, una costituzione non troppo imponente e quei capelli ricci, scombinati e rossi non lasciavano dubbi sulla somiglianza, ne ero certo.
Il ragazzo di mia cugina era seduto dall'altra parte del bar caffe' nero, li, a londra! Abbassai il mio cappello un pó piú sul viso, e finii l'ultimo sorso di caffé macchiato senza neanche preoccuparmi di aspettare che la schiuma venisse giú.
Avevo un mistero da svelare adesso, che ci faceva Alberto a londra...

Three months from now...

...and I'll buy one of those:

And if I cannot buy one, I'll leave up the tree with him!

Patapon!

What you doing here!?!?! go and buy this game! now!!!

watch what it is about

: )

Care for the environment...

MPC really cares for the environment, I've found this on our kitchen's door:

Laura's plant

I bought this toy-plant for my friend Laura for Christmas:

Here is what happened when my colleagues saw it:

Well, actually one of those is mine, she's named Pippa and she's now on top of my monitor (I know someone who would find that name quite original).

From Mork

Mork: Hi Orson, this week I've learnt about trust.
They believe they can't trust one another.
Orson: why is that Mork.
Mork: Well, I guess they are afraid to be hurt.

Mork & Mindy, first season DVD set.

Nano nano.

My cousin in london!

Nice memory of yet another summer with my cousin:

Well, time to pack my things now, tomorrow I'll be back in Palermo for a couple of weeks, sun, here I come!!!!

Time to say good bye to a friend...

This is how my firend Marco decided to say good bye to me and our italian collegues working in MPC:

If you are wondering why my hair is pouring money, well, is a long story about an expencive haircut I had in soho, the whole company is still laughing about it ; )

Marco, enjoy your new baby, good luck and say hello to Roma for me!

the forest at home

Linux at work, Os X at home

The more I use linux at work the more I love Os X at home.
By using fink or darwinports I can install on my MacBook pretty much all the open source tools I use at work, today I've installed dia (great application for creating diagrams).

When you start messing around with the terminal, Os X really looks like nothing more than a unix distro, a really really good one...

Anty style!

Me in soho wearing one of Marco's design t-shirts ; )

The cronicles of my new job

In the remote possibility of someone actually reading this blog to find out what I'm up to lately, here is the answer:

MPC will be in charge of quite a lot of creatures and crowd shots, I'm sitting in the R&D department (what a waste of space : ) working on some cool and innovative animation technologies.

Italian comments...

At the end of the day that's what a blog is for, getting insults in italian from your italian friends : )
So, don't be surprised if you read some obscure comments in italian, just bet they are swears!

Soon I'll post some updates about how it's going in MPC and all the exciting projects I'm working on...

XSI-Blog

It looks like xsi-blog has managed to find my blog automatically, or may be there's Patrick behind this. Anyhow, if you are into xsi or CG in general, that blog is worth a read. It hosts articles about xsi, the industry in general and some interesting technical discussions.

Is christmas time and I'm on my last few days of holyday, I better switch off my laptop!

Best toys ever

Oh my God, I'm just lucky I've run out of money.
http://www.muttpop.com/
http://www.futureplastik.co.uk/projectneptoon.html

Switching to Linux #2

In my previous post about my succesfull switch to ubuntu on my MacBook, I mentioned I was going to miss visual studio as a dev tool.
Actually, I don't miss it at all, here is the perfect alternative, eclipse!

I'm using eclipse to develop maya plugins in c++ and python, and surprisingly enough, it makes me feel at home!
Not a single feature is missing, autocompletition for c++ and python, robust environment, easy to sue, free!!!! I promised to my self I would never say such a linux-geek thing, but is true, is free and is as powerfull as visual studio, at least for the kind of things I do.

So, if you are reading this post but you haven't tried it yet, go for it!

A big thanks to my friend Daniele Niero who told me about it : )

I've found my notebook!

www.tiddlywiki.com

I've found this little piece of genious around the web, while I was looking for a notebook to collect thoughts, code snippets and random things to remember.

TD in love!

Tinkerbell's Pippo!

Tinkerbell gave Pippo a nice and softy shape,
introducing Fabric Pippo!!

Yeah, I know, is prettier than mine, but that's why I became a programmer :\

MacBoontu

The final switch is done!
Now running ONLY ubuntu and os x on my MacBook (brave me : ) .

Visual studio, I'll miss you so much...oh, so much...

Going back to maya #2

Ok, having an object oriented scripting language in maya is possible and here is my integration of python in maya, had lot of fun playing with it.

Even my beloved visual debugging tool for drawing openGL stuff from scripting has been ported successfully, I've called it openGMel.

Now the real issue is, having proper scripted nodes in maya!

Sketch of the month!

I've decided to post a sketch from time to time, to keep my brain's artistic side trained (pretending I still have one :).

And this month's sketch is "Pippo"!

Going back to Maya

Going back to Maya after spending a long time on XSI, I really feel the need of a few things:

- Object oriented scripting language.
- Scripted Nodes, I mean, real scripted nodes to do whatever you can do with c++ nodes.
- Visual debugging tools like this.

Lets see where I get stuck first!

First post

Hello World : )