One of my fondest wishes has finally come true: I’ve gotten my eyes repaired! I had my LASIK surgeries (one eye at a time) by Dr. Peter J. Cornell on July 28th and 29th (we celebrated my son Charlie’s birthday two days early because his cousins and grandparents from my wife’s side of the family were in town). Within 24 hours after the second surgery, the vision in my right eye is 20/15, while the left eye is currently something near 20/25 to 20/20. However, the left eye was much more traumatized than the right one during surgery, and I expect both eyes to improve over the next three months.I have some halo effects – it’s kind of like watching an old black and white Humphrey Bogart movie, not unpleasant at all – and some starburst effects, particularly at night. However, the intensity of these effects come and go as my eyes heal, and of course my corneas have only begun the healing process. I’ve been told that these artifacts should disappear as my vision improves over the next three months, and I may see improvement in the quality of my vision for up to a full year after the surgery.
I’ve been told I can’t go swimming for a couple of weeks, and to sleep with protective goggles on for the next half week, and to use antibiotic, steroid and lubricant eye drops till then. After that it’s just lubricant drops as needed, and I have to remember to blink more often when I’m working at the computer. But that’s really it. It’s amazing to have clear vision, sharp as a tack, from one visible edge to the other. It’s like sitting front row, center in the Cinerama Dome!
I’m also still drawing. I did a drawing of somebody at the local bookstore, and she paid me a $20 bill for it, so we got our copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince basically for free. Quite a feeling, to have somebody go that apeshit over my art like that!
Oh, and by the way, if you’re considering getting LASIK yourself, just do it. There are a few things not to do:
If you get told “no” by a doctor, don’t shop around till you find one that tells you “yes”. That’s not getting good medical advice, that’s fishing through the draw pile until you find the ace. Some people are just not good candidates. If you’re over 65, you should probably skip it. Likewise if the doctor tells you your corneas are too thin, or if you have lupus or some other immune system disorder, you should probably not go through with it. I’m not sure about diabetics, ask your doctor.
Don’t listen to the wild stories about the quacks and malpractice suits against them. The only reason you hear about them at all is that they’re so rare that when it does happen it makes the headline news. The rest of the time these operations go off without a hitch – it’s actually far more dangerous to have a bunion removed. Most of the horror stories are from South America where they do your eyes and then give you no follow-up care. Then they run to this one clinic in Florida to see if the American doctors can save their eyes after a screwed up LASIK job, and about two thirds of the time they can, but about a third of the time they can’t. So if you’re hearing about these horrible situations, most of them come from that. Or the stupidity of the people getting them in the first place.
Don’t expect a miracle: if you’re 50, expect to need reading glasses. I didn’t at first, but I did later – but it’s normal. What you’re after is normal vision, not perfect vision. Still, that might be miracle enough for you. It was for me.
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john carver out of his depthConnect the PC to the HDTV using the HDMI cable or the VGA and speaker cable. If using the HDMI cable, plug one end into the HDMI output on the computer and the other end into an open HDMI input on the rear of the HDTV. Cheap Jordan 11 If using a VGA source, connect the VGA cable to the VGA output on the rear of the computer and connect the Discount Oakleys other end of the VGA cable to the VGA input on the rear of the HDTV. Secure both connections by tightening the screws on the sides of each end of the cable. Plug the speaker cable into the headphone output on the computer. This port will typically feature a green ring, and will have a picture of a pair of headphones or a speaker for identification. Plug the other end of the speaker cable into the audio input jack located beside the VGA input on the HDTV.Williams, who subsequently said he’s “sorry if it offended anyone,” was on Fox Friends this past Monday when he compared the round of golf that President Obama played this summer with House Speaker John Boehner (R Ohio) to “Hitler playing golf with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.” He also referred to Obama and Vice President Biden as “the enemy.”Explain to the children the fundamentals of basketball. They should understand that each team has five players on the court at a time. There are two guards, two forwards and a center. When playing defense, Knockoff Oakleys they will either play man to man defense, which means Replica Oakleys each player will stay with a player on the other team and try to prevent that one person from scoring, or they will play zone defense. Zone defense is when each player is given an area of the court to defend. They are not allowed to touch players on the other team. They are not allowed to run without dribbling, and once they cross the center line, they are not allowed to cross back. These Wholesale China Jerseys are all things the kids should understand before you get them on the court to actually play basketball.Brady claims many of the other ideas for the Olympic stadium when the Games finish are “bonkers”. One idea is to rip off the top tier of the stadium to bring it down to a more manageable 25,000 seater arena, more appropriate for athletics. “Bonkers,” says Brady, simply. “Complete lunacy. Why would you do it? It’s a sin too great to bear to have to rip off the top after all the work that has gone into building it. Just taking off the roof is estimated at 38m. All that stuff about the athletics track being in the sight lines is a red herring. Even the huge media centre could be turned into a sports academy.”
There are new images in the gallery; I’ve recently finished my first life drawing class here at the studio, so I thought I’d put up a few of the better images. I love to draw! I didn’t realize just how much until I got the opportunity to study under Glen Vilppu. What a remarkable teacher!
After having interviewed at a number of places within the last three weeks, I’ve accepted a position at Rhythm & Hues, a major studio here in Marina Del Rey, California. So far, they’ve treated me like visiting royalty. What a great place to work!I’ve also agreed to speak at this years SIGGRAPH, the international computer graphics conference, in San Diego – that’s coming up on the 26th. (I was possibly going to speak at the Mensa conference again this year, but it’s been cancelled microsoft project alternative free.) And on the 28th, our son Charlie turns five years old! Things are still a struggle financially, but they’re finally starting to get a bit better. I’ll write more when I get time to breath.
When I first started, they were interested in somebody to edit a few web pages. However, what they really needed was an information distribution infrastructure of some kind, and they don’t have one. I have some ideas that I think will work out pretty well for them. We’ll see how receptive they are.
Almost ten years later, in 2013:
Post Mortem
I worked for Rhythm & Hues for very nearly 10 years. I went from web page editor to technical writer, to trainer, to technical animator. I wrote a total of 584 pages in a combined reference and user manual for the studio’s Academy Award winning hair and fur system, taught the studio pipeline for every discipline (including FX, which meant I had to learn Houdini too). Some of the animators I trained went on to win Academy Awards for their work on “Life of Pi”.
Then they laid us all off, at the same moment our lads were on stage accepting their BAFTA awards, they were getting pink slips back home. They laid off about 285 employees at the El Segundo studio with only 16 hours’ notice, which violates California State law. There was a class action suit to recover at least some of the money, and we won. I got all the back pay and accumulated vacation pay that was owed me, but most of the rest of them weren’t so lucky. Some of the senior people were owed $160,000 or more, and they’ll probably never see most of that money. Rhythm & Hues still exists, but they work on commercials and do single scenes on movies now, where they can get the gigs at all. They will never again be what they were. I was there during the studio’s golden years, and worked on more than sixty motion pictures, mostly uncredited.
That was in 2013. I was so hyperspecialized that I was unable to find regular work in the animation industry after that, and had to wander off into other fields, as many of my compatriots did. Some of the finest artists, illustrators and animators the world has ever seen are now doing their best to get buy selling real estate and whatever else they can get work doing. I was certainly not alone.
I’m still friends with many of them. Some still work in the industry, and are doing okay – but a lot of them just drifted off like steam from a kettle. I have no idea where most of them ended up.
That was Camelot.
It was not the first time I’d been at a company during its golden age, and hopefully will not be the last. Perhaps the next one will be one I make myself.
SIGGRAPH is coming up fast, folks – I’ll be speaking at the Art Center on the 26th on the past, present and future of computer animation (as if I actually know something about it – go figure). The lecture will be roughly based on one I gave at a Mensa conference a couple of years ago. If you see me at the lecture or on the exhibit floor, walk up and say hi!
This month I’ve won Artist of the Month at 3D Gladiators for some 2D work I did.
Also, I’ve just been hired to do preproduction work on Battlestar Galactica by a small company in Pasadena called Cinema Pacific. It’s a lot of fun, and very challenging and demanding gig. I’m having a great time so far. I can hardly wait to get to work in the mornings!
The winning entry for that contest is shown below. It was originally painted on posterboard in acrylic, and got a B, rather than an A, because the teacher thought it didn’t have a clear center of focus. I argued that it did, because for any face, the first thing you look at is the character’s eyes, so of course it did. The teacher didn’t agree, but I have an award for this painting that disagrees with her.
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