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Life has been eventful; this blog has not reflected that. Random noteworthy happenings from the last few months:

High school friends visited for a Sonics game a couple of months ago, and I was dragged out to the golf course for the first time in my life. On a beautiful Saturday morning, I shot 68 – albeit on a short 9 hole course. The one shot I managed which actually had any loft to it was ironically out of a bunker; picture perfect, with barely any sand flying. Otherwise it was a lot of ugly short hacks, but it was still fun – I feel like some time spent at the driving range might be in my future.

Two good friends from university got engaged. It’s spring, and matrimony is in the air.. anyways, congratulations Greg and Agi, and Jeff and Cathy!

Susan introduced me to horse back riding a couple of visits ago. I remain convinced that I radiate an aura that broadcasts loudly: “here is a man uncomfortable with animals larger than a cat”. My horse – a resident of the Sea Horse Ranch – completely ignored the annoying human on his back, and proceeded straight for the hay bales or pawed his hoof in the tall grass rather than trot along the trails. We were forced to get a guide, whom the horses obviously respected; and it was fine after that.

Speaking of transportation modes: after the first two awkward sessions (where I had difficulty with turning radii), driving lessons have been surprisingly smooth. I’ve had four and a half lessons and will be hopefully passing the test soon, and that will draw to a close a ten year era of forced transit and mooching of car rides. Apparently, this will be disappointing to some; not at all to me, especially with the renovations I’d like to start soon, the climbing and taekwondo that I’d like to get back into, and the general frustration I have with wasting so much time waiting for the bus on weekends.

I spent last week in London, mainly to talk shop with customers. After three days interacting with the UK studios (who, by the way, do excellent work – go watch Troy or Harry Potter 3 for evidence of that), I had just one day to myself which was spent in Westminster Abbey, the Victoria and Albert, and the Tate Modern museums. I’d been to London, when I was twelve and still in orchestra; we dropped into London for a couple of days after three weeks in and around Bath, Wales, so I’d already been to some of the landmarks in England as well as the British Museum. Lasting impressions? Well, London has the greatest museums on the planet, a pretty good subway system, real CG production jobs, and friendly people (as evidenced by an animated chat with the ex-CEO of Scottish & Newcastle who was sitting next to me on the Heathrow Express) – but the sheer population in the city and the cost of living is just astronomical, even by Bay Area standards. No, I don’t think I could live there.

Susan bought a house!

Finally, PRMan 12.0 was announced today. Yep, work was computational geometry and data structures for a very long time. If you have any questions about Loop subdivision surfaces.. well, at the very least I know what papers to point you at.

The new Incredibles trailer came out today!

The house guests who came during the early part of the month for the Northwest Garden Show decided to make my house a miniature gardening and interior decoration project. As indirect and direct results of their visit, I’ve learned how to make thin crust pizzas, install insulation, prune fruit trees, and how to coordinate area rugs with walls. My slacker bachelor existence is in jeopardy, I think. We also discovered that Ikea makes their most promising furniture from repurposed kitchen cabinets and custom sawn counter tops. Think the one nice looking floor model that isn’t made of particle board is representative of a standard boxed take-and-assemble kit? Think again.

The birthday came and went. I’m 26 now, which means it’s a slow steady slide until I’m 30 and I lose all my hair. Susan came up during that weekend to make the birthday much more bearable. After Susan’s travel nightmare with Alaska Airlines, we still made it in time to an early Valentine’s dinner at Le Gourmand, and finished with a ride home from Cab Elvis, which was memorable. It’s too bad we both somehow forgot about the holiday that was President’s day.

Work continues in its current vein: busy. I’m proud though that we did just win the best animated film Oscar. Yeah, I have credit on an Oscar winning film! Woo! Too bad our short “Boundin’” didn’t make it. Yes, it’s a Pixar short, and no, you’ll have to wait til November to see it when it’ll be attached to the Incredibles. Although I still haven’t seen Boundin’ myself (drawback of working up here), I believe it was the first bit of footage by us that showed off our kickass PRMan raytracing technology.

There, that’s my entry for February – didn’t let the leap day go to waste. March should be a more happenin’ month.

Five years ago today I started work at Pixar. I can’t believe it’s been half a decade already.

Actually, I’m not sure it was exactly five years ago. The INS refused me entry into the country the first time around, turning me around before I even got on the plane; so I can’t remember if the 21st was my supposed, or actual start date. The immigration lawyers blamed me for volunteering my cover letter to the custom officers – apparently the language on it wasn’t strong enough to show that I wasn’t filling a temporary position (which was a criterion of the TN visa I was under). A week later I went back to the airport by which point some magical smoothing by lawyers had occurred. This time around the same cranky customs officer just stamped my passport, and away to California I went.

Yeah, I started before my 21st birthday. My first beer bash and my employer was serving alcohol to an underage minor. (Drinking age is 18 in BC.) Not the most auspicious of beginnings, but still – it’s mostly been a good trip over the years, even if it’s taken me down the coast and up again, almost back to where I began. Even when I’m whining – in person, or here – or irritated at some political bullshit at work, or despite being stressed out of my mind on occasion, I still have to admit: in the end, I like my job, and have enjoyed it over the last five years. And yes: being less curmudgeonly wasn’t on this year’s resolution list, so you can take this statement at more or less face value.

Since it’s also the eve of the Chinese New Year I thought I’d have something deeper to say, but I’m drawing a blank, so I’ll just leave it at “xian nian kuai le”!

Despite the blissful respite from gloom afforded by the visiting girlfriend this last weekend, I face reality – November is here. I seem to whine about this every year. I don’t think it’s seasonal affective disorder; I just hate the shift from daylight saving time back to normal time, and suddenly finding myself having to trudge home in the cold wet darkness after work. Am I turning into a sun worshipper?

Earlier in the month I had a small hernia scare – almost couldn’t sit down for a good hour and then dull pain in the upper thigh which lasted through a weekend. Saw a GP about it; first time in years I’d been to one. She referred me to a specialist, who told me in all likelihood it wasn’t a hernia, more likely some mysterious muscle tear and that it’d go away in a month. So far it hasn’t completely gone, but it’s better.

That was followed up by the plumbing emergency. After the heaviest recorded rainfall in Seattle history, my sewer line backed up due to tree roots, causing seepage in my basement. Fortunately it wasn’t a catastrophe, and was solved with a quick call to Roto Rooter, a root cutting machine, and some magical powder flushed down the pipe; but water did crawl through my basement, ruining around twenty of the tiles in the piano room, and leaving a foul-smelling mess of soaked insulation behind that I have yet to fully clean up. As this seems to be a recurring problem, I may eventually have to kill some trees on the property, or worse yet dig up the sewer pipe (which is of course underneath the wall of ornamental rock in the front). And of course there is now some mysterious leak in the bathroom which I suspect is due to cracks in the wall of tile which will ultimately need to be replaced.

Housing is sometimes overrated.

We moved offices to Smith Tower. I was grumpy about the move at first (I pushed for suites with individual offices – sometimes I really just want to close a door and geek out uninterrupted, heavy metal in the background), but I’ve adjusted to it now – I’m in the corner farthest away from everybody else, away from the windows, and I get work done same as ever. It’s very nice to have daily cleaning service as opposed to, well, no cleaning service whatsoever – no more dust bunnies on the verge of intelligence! Unfortunately we’ve traded hardwood floors for carpets with a dizzying pattern, and the neighbourhood isn’t great; we’re a few blocks away from the scarier denizens of Pioneer Square.

For some reason, I have accumulated a todo list a mile long, work and personal and otherwise, and I find myself paralyzed trying to figure out what I should be doing next. House maintenance of all sorts. Thinking about getting that driver’s license. Reading I should be doing. Volunteering I keep putting off. Recreation and exercise. Blogging more often. Argh! At least I did buy a lot of candy tonight to hand out tomorrow. First time I’ve been able to do that in more than a decade – the last Hallowe’en was tragically cut short by the explosion of stink bombs at the grocery store.

Despite being a procrastinator in everything else though, I did manage to add a RSS feed to this blog tonight – proving once again that I’d rather be a geek than be productive.

Susan came up last Thursday and visited over the long weekend, which was very nice. We went to Bumbershoot on Saturday where we saw a lot of people (many of whom were dancing energetically to their own beat), a couple of buskers, some pretty slick break dancing, and the Dusty 45s. On Sunday we took the water taxi over to West Seattle for the walk to Alki beach. The 2.5 mile stretch leading to the beach felt a lot like being back along the boardwalks in Southern California. It was perfect beach weather, surprising for the Northwest in September, and the first time I’ve been to a beach after moving here. It was great to just lie there basking in the sun and read. Afterwards, I tried to create the traditional Labour Day barbecue followed by apple pie and instead made a minor disaster of things (broken dishes, raw corn, bad pie crust). In spite of that it was still an excellent weekend.

It turns out my picture did get published! No scan of it yet, but I’m sitting behind the monitor with the usual glazed expression. Only the “lica” in “Metallica” showed up, but on the other hand you can just about make out the 15 Lego skeletons on top of the monitor prostrating themselves in my general direction.

Since Eurographics 2003 is this week, I can finally put our raytracing paper online – check out the addition to the output section. Woohoo, I finally have an author credit in my field! Note that Per actually did all the work on the paper, but I’m still happy to be the Al in “et al”.

I’m quoted in today’s Los Angeles Times article about Pixar (registration required). Kinda cool, except I sound really stuffy and I don’t think I said anything quite that stuffy during the interview with Ms. Huffstutter (which took place two Mondays ago). They took a lot of pictures of me and Dana, most likely because I was wearing a very loud St. Anger Metallica t-shirt (Pushead artwork both sides, “I’m madly in anger with you!” on back). I wonder if the print edition has some pictures of me slouched in front of my computer – anyone have their hands on a copy?

With Mimi here I’ve been doing homeowner-like stuff. In three separate trips during the week we bought a new bed frame, mattress, and bedding; the snickering from house guests about my pathetic twenty-year old twin bed and mattress was starting to get to me. Then yesterday she and I tore apart the desk in the basement piano room, ripped out the filthy carpet and underlay, and went to Home Depot twice to buy vinyl tiles and other goodies (including some chintzy yet cute Caribbean themed lighting fixtures). I then cleaned the concrete subfloor, patched and primed it, and started laying the tiles in place this evening. It’s half done, looking not half bad, and finally turning into a room where I can sit without having an allergy attack. After that I have a broken bathtub drain fitting to replace, and some more furniture to get, and this house will start approaching respectability at last.

Unlike previous years, this year’s SIGGRAPH flew by quickly. The shortened schedule helped, and since I didn’t have to work the booth I was forced to schedule things carefully in order to figure out what I wanted to see.

The trip started earlier than usual. I flew down to LA two Fridays ago (July 25) where I met up with Jeff and his girlfriend Cathy. After the annual In-N-Out feeding ritual that evening, the next day we went to Disneyland where we spent most of the day lining up for rides. On Sunday we met up with Susan, her friend Anne, and Jamie, and spent the day at SeaWorld. The highlight of the day was the dolphin show, although the river rapids ride was fun – if only because we all got soaked. SIGGRAPH proper started in earnest that evening when I tried to check in at the Marriott next to the convention centre and discovered my reservation hadn’t been made.

Monday to Wednesday was a blur of sketches, courses, and paper sessions. Highlights included: a the hair course, especially Steve Worley’s talk about a new illumination model which captures colored secondary highlights; the ILM special session, where animators showed off homebrew animations from their youths; two Lord of the Rings shading sketches by Weta (highlighting PRMan!); the entire paper session on shadows; and the high dynamic range monitor by Sunnybrook technologies.

Somewhere in between I managed to sneak in some time to join the Pixar team in volleyball against PDI. Despite playing for only one and a half games, my legs hurt for days afterwards. I felt old.

As has been the case for the last couple of years, the parties in the evening weren’t great. This year’s annoying twist: the facilities threw the partiers out early – by midnight, or even by eleven in one case, security guards would descend and ask us to leave, even if it was pretty clear we were all willing to continue to pay to consume alcohol.

Wednesday evening was the RenderMan User’s Group meeting. I was required to talk for a minute or two, and Mach’s sketch was marred by machine issues, so I was in minor panic mode for part of the evening. In the end though everything went as well as could be expected.

By Thursday I was bored of the technical side of things and decided to work the booth, and was surprised to find myself enjoying interacting with the exhibition goers. Our booth looked great with very large Finding Nemo images, the shiny walking teapot and poster giveaways this year were hits, and people this year were for the most part surprisingly well behaved about picking up posters in the morning (although we also enacted crowd control measures this year). And the PRMan on the G5 demo was very popular – I’ve never seen people so excited just to watch buckets render. By the afternoon though, the incessant pleas for teapots grew wearisome and we were glad to pack it in.

SIGGRAPH was over a day short, so on Friday Susan and I just tried to relax. We took the ferry over to Coronado and lounged on the beach for a while. Saturday was spent at the zoo with Susan and Anne. It was a bit rushed since I had an early evening flight, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience – although I should mention that the Seattle zoo does compare favourably with San Diego’s.

All in all, a better SIGGRAPH than last year. The venue helped a lot: San Diego has a much better climate than San Antonio, and seems like a much more livable city in general. Being able to spend free time with Susan for a week also helped greatly. As for the organization itself: attendance this year was higher, and I’ve heard it turned a profit, thanks to cost cutting measures (no panels, one apparently very bad reception) as well as last minute exhibition registrations. Since we’re stuck in the hellhole that is LA for the next two years, this SIGGRAPH may have to last us for a while until it returns to San Diego in 2006.

Coming down with a cold at any time is unpleasant. Coming down with one the night before an important business trip is bad. Trying to discreetly deal with the nasty symptoms in front of respected customers and peers is very bad.

Descending from twenty thousand feet in a plane while suffering from total sinus blockage is utter screaming hell.

I half-jokingly predicted at the office that Nemo would rake in $65 mil over the opening weekend. Well, it currently looks like it’s on track to surpass that.

Kudos to everyone at Pixar for an amazing five successful movies in a row.