Random Awesomeness

Vampire dude

David — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 05:22:05 +0000

Practice practice practice

ala Vorge from Lunchcrunch http://lunchcrunch.org/2011/06/first-crunch/

David — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:51:19 +0000

A quick study break messing around in Zbrush

Quick head

David — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 06:11:38 +0000

Saw a sweet concept of a cyborg over at androidarts, Niklas Jansson is one of my favorite artists. Felt like doing a bit more 3d and this turned out pretty quick and crappy but it felt good to see it come together. The ear needs work and the texture for everything as well. Still haven’t figured out how to properly do pelt mapping for an unwrap with seams, I am still using Unfold3d which is a great program on its own.
Might work on the texture a bit more.

Wingskull Flying Monster

David — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 05:36:50 +0000

I had an itch to do some 3d today, and was able to test out 3d Studio Max 2011′s new viewport canvas feature which lets you paint directly on the model. Freakin’ amazing! The wings are pretty crappy and there is lots of stretching and seams problems going on but I really need to get back to studying.

I was in a Doom/Quake sort of mood as you can probably tell.

Found some old model files

David — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 03:50:59 +0000

Went through and added some pictures to my Quake mod page, some low poly models that I was working on before medschool. Was able to get the drone in game as a replacement for the Wizard model but without a proper texture. He is about half way unwrapped, and just needs a new texture.

Tested out 3d studio max’s new Viewport canvas feature, really amazing! Will have to break out the old wacom tablet and give it a proper whirl some time. Was able to make an occlusion map and apply it as a multiply layer in only a few quick easy steps. I love you technology.

Second Trip “Extreme Couponing”

David — Mon, 30 May 2011 15:00:34 +0000

Yesterday morning, Brandi from savvystudentshopper.com put up a post saying that a local grocery store was doing a special sale where they would triple manufacturer coupons up to 99 cents, and also put up a list of items with great coupon match ups. Being my day off from studying, I decided to give it a whirl. When I got to the store, many of the sweet items had already been bought up. I was only able to find 1 Ketchup bottle remaining, there were no Cheerios to found, and the soft drink tear off coupons were all gone. I still managed to score some good items, and had my biggest savings yet.

Total was $120.97, spent $18.03 out of pocket, saved $104.94, total savings 86.7%

The cashier congratulated me, and I felt like the king of the castle, but then the lady in the isle next to me announced that she had saved $180 some dollars, holy moly!

Sorceress Skyla

David — Fri, 20 May 2011 06:26:25 +0000

She whooped Superman and Green Lantern’s arses in Time Masters (2010)

First try at “Extreme Couponing”

David — Mon, 16 May 2011 23:26:53 +0000

This past week I decided to try out “Extreme Couponing”, after watching several episodes on TLC. I did some googling and bookmarked the following websites:

I kept an eye out throughout the week of good deals and printed out the coupons. Each computer is limited to 2 coupon print-outs, so I ran around the house, we have 6 working PCs in the house (of course, 4 of them are mine) and an awesome wireless laser printer.

I got everything in the following picture for free except the Brownies, which were $0.55 each (instead of the listed price of $1.55), and the Hydrogen Peroxide bottles were $0.02 cents each. Free bottles of ibuprofen, free double blade shaving razors, and free Scotch Tape, woohoo! The ibuprofen and hydrogen peroxide were from Target, and the rest was from Walmart.

The experience was fun, but it felt bad when I got denied at Target by the manager who limited me to purchasing only 2 of each items. I was frustrated but kept my cool and told him that it was against the store coupon policy and that I would let corporate know about my experience. I drove 10 minutes down the road to the next Target store and was able to use my remaining coupons without a problem. It felt awesome when a rather attractive customer standing behind me complimented my couponing skillz, I was all like, “yeah, I coupon, what’s up?”

Free Comic Book Day 2011

David — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:35:23 +0000

Visited my local comic book store, Cards Comics & Collectibles in Reisterstown Rd, Maryland. They had a huge rack of free comics, most of them crappy and worthless, but the real kicker was that they had $1 back issues, everything in the racks. Pretty much any comic that was older than 2 months. I made my way through and decided it was too good of a deal to pass up. Most of the comics I picked up had $5 stickers on them. Here is a list of what I picked up for mad cheap:

Mass Effect Evolution #1, figured i’d read the comic since I just got the game on steam for $5
Uncanny X-Force #1, badass new comic where Wolverine leads the group, great art
Wolverine #75, the title of the comic switches to Dark Wolverine as the comic now follows his evil bisexual son named Daken, he has two claws that come out up top of his wrist, and a third that pops out below his wrist
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #48, had a cool cover
Star Trek: Alien Spotlight: Romulans, romulans are awesome because they are like evil vulcans
Secret Six #27, it had Bane riding a T-Rex on the cover
The Punisher MAX #71, he gets stuck in the bayou of Louisiana and has to deal with a screwed up red neck family, something out of Pulp Fiction
Deadpool MAX #1 (The MAX label is for adults, has explicit content)
Brightest Day #0, cool cover
Invincible #75, awesome space battle on the cover
Justice League of America #50, looks like it has a battle between the Justice Lords and the Justice League
Green Lantern Corps #52, Cyborg superman on the cover, he is awesome because he is like an evil troll version of supes
Ghost Rider #1 sweet art
Shrapnel #1 sweet art
After Dark #1 sweet art

The free ones I got from the stand were:

The Darkness: Confessions #1
Magic the Gathering: Path of the planeswalker II preview
Elric #1
The Avengers
Locke & Key
Shonen Jump Manga
Blackest Night #0
StarWars: A Jedi’s Weapon

Can’t say no to around $75 worth of comics for only $16 bucks. Oh and today on Steam they have Dead Space for $5, just got it, but too scared to install it for two reasons: 1) It is another distractor from studying, and 2) IT LOOKS SO SCARY, don’t want nightmares…

New host, domain, blog

David — Sun, 01 May 2011 06:57:46 +0000

A few months ago I noticed that google.com had marked my webpage as an attack site, and when I tried to view it at school, the school’s built in web security wouldn’t let me even attempt to view the page. I had to wait until I got home to check out the problem. It seems that my old blog system, simplephpblog (which has been discontinued and left unsupported), has been overcome and got hacked. I am unable to login using my old admin user and password, so I figured I would start fresh on a new host using WordPress. Hopefully I can import all of my old blog posts and transfer everything here smoothly.

It seems that the converter that transferred my old posts from the simplephpblog did not attach the dates successfully, so I’ll have to spend some time going in and adding the dates to each one. Also, the comments got disconnected to their posts, so that will take a little bit more time. Other than that, very happy with this new WordPress system.

Studying for USMLE Step 1 is my current task at hand, it is pretty grueling and requires my full attention.