Hallowe'en 2K8 | 8:56 PM >

I'm betting that every blogger around the world is focusing on the Obama / Palin election (yes, that's tongue in cheek), so I'm going to just talk about me.

Firstly, I just passed my three-month mark at Red Rover. I've had such a good time there. Yesterday one of the things I've been working on was sort of wrapped up; in the grand scheme of things it's a small part of a very large picture, but I'm glad that I get to move off it today. It's also nice to look at the folder of little pieces I've built and see both the progress I've made and the list of tasks I've finished.

But the last few weeks were pretty busy, and I was glad to get a long weekend away to visit with Therese, Stef, Fran, and the family that orbits them. The one thing I hate about my visits home is it's always that much harder each time I go to leave at the end of the trip. I don't think that statement has ever applied as strongly as it does this time.

Maybe I should pull a John and create a fool-proof plan to get hired by Bioware or Blizzard North in Edmonton. A three hour drive is way less trouble than a four-hour flight and four thousand clicks of empty prairie.

I sorted through some of the photos last night from the Kilbourne show at the Palimino. I think I got some really nice shots from this mini photo shoot we did, but I still need to do a bit more color work before posting them.

I want to talk about two more things before get off the streetcar.

First, Lightwave 9.5 came in the mail yesterday. I had some trouble getting it licensed, but now it's all registered and humming along happily. It's an odd feeling to load it up, kind of like seeing an old friend after a really long time. You recognize their face, but there's that moment of disconnect while your mind updates it's stored image and reassociates the person before you with the correct memories. I haven't used LW on a daily basis since v7.5c, which is enough for me to lose the muscle memory I had for buttons workflows in Modeler, but not so far back that the quirkiness of the UI throws me after a day of working in Maya. I'm really looking forward to playing with the new joint tools and the node-based stuff in the renderer, but I'm planning to get through the modeler and layout manuals first. All thousand pages of them.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is the new Tinker Bell DVD that was made by DisneyToon Studios in India. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Peter Pan, not the original story or Disney's interpretation of it. I think it's dated and hasn't withstood the test of time. However, Tinker Bell has always been a favorite character of mine. She's pretty much the only character in the story who experiences any real emotion, leading to her Faustian bargain.

The new DVD tries - and succeeds - to add to that universe by introducing a new island where the fairies prepare for and tend to the changings of the seasons. The plot's not Shakespeare but it's cute and both the animation and the rendering are much higher calibre than I expected for a direct-to-DVD release. I highly recommend it.

Alright, I lied about not talking politics. As I type this polls are coming in and Obama seems to be in the lead. I really hope he wins.