The things that bother me about #1 relate to the canvas texture. If you use it, ti should be equally evident in the sky. And the texture is most evident in the face of the building where you would expect brick and that texture just happens to be close to brick size. So for me, there is less visual ambiguity in #2.

Hope you are keeping your head above water. I just returned from Bangkok and Pattaya. Have been suffering from Jet lag for the last week.

Can I ask what school you attended in Thailand. I created over 700 photos while I was there.

My best friend from college days teaches design at King Mongkut's University - School of Architecture and design. It has to be well underwater by now.

Sawadee Krap
--Roger

Dave, I assume you teach the class. Would you care to share a course syllabus?

Regardless of technical brilliance, I think David's greatest rendering asset is his power of observation.

The problems you run into when thinking about these issues:
People who do not vote and then complain.
People who do not actively participate in politics and then complain.
People who vote without the capability to analyze or the energy to research and vote anyway.

What the cartoonist/philospher Walt Kelly was talking about is that we the people make the decision in our choice of politicians or in our own decision not to participate in orderly politics. That is what he was referring to when he said, "I have met the enemy and he is us." He was saying look in the mirror for the source of the problem. Too many of us don't vote or are not willing to stand for office ourselves if we don't like the choices. It is us that is the problem, not "them."

My son-in-law's religion is free-market capitalism. He argues that the market is similar to the laws of physics or the law of nature. I argue that the universe is a oneness and it is an artificial construct to separate the laws of social interaction from the laws of economics. They both have to be put into a blender until the resulting juice is homogenous and inseparable. Of course, this means neither side of an issue will be happy or at least not for long. The trick of leading is to balance economic imperative with social justice. Hard work as no one will be entirely happy with the result.

And sadly, instead of modeling I am going blind entering almost invisible data into a spread sheet so I can model, model model instead of read/model, read/model, read/model.

"Accountants and grocers, they weigh everything." --Zorba the Greek from the movie "Never on a Sunday"

Sad news folks the plane was stomped by a former spouse. Se la vie. But the good news is I will be able to show some photos one of these days.

Follow me people. "Sangria no sangre."

@unknownuser said:

Charlie Chaplin final speech in The Great Dictator - YouTube
is even more relevant today.

[flash=480,385:1qaaeyz9]http://www.youtube.com/v/QcvjoWOwnn4[/flash:1qaaeyz9]

I never saw this before. I find it fascinating.

I am driven back to a quote from Walt Kelly the creator of the cartoon strip Pogo, the man who put the words "I have met the enemy and he is us" into Pogo's mouth. Kelly wrote, I distrust the extreme left, the extreme right, and . . . . the extreme center."

My take on it is to distrust any train of thought that you can attach "ism" to. As in communism, socialism, capitalism, liberalism, conservatism, catholicism, protestantism, ad infinitum. Like architecture, you need to balance your constraints against your opportunities.

There is no "right way," there is only the way that works best with what you have.

As Jesus said, "Blessed are the cheese makers" and "The Greek shall inherit the earth."

Is the rotation of the branches based on a Fibonacci series? I guess the branckes are a png file. Regardless, it is a very nicely modeled tree.

I will send an email and see if I can get a copy to post. I am not sure if the model still exists. It could have been destroyed or lost in a move, but I will ask.

Rich, it is neither boring nor trivia. It is a fascinating insight into the dynamic relationships in history. But then, I think you knew that.

It looks like WWII and its high accuracy / high volume production was a tipping point between the low tech world and a high tech world. Planes designed at the beginning of the war were done on Inch fractions down to 1/32 or 1/64. However, anything done outside that fraction world was done in decimals. But it was not long before everyone went decimal. And finally, the hand held calculator put the final decimal nail in the fractional coffin.

@numbthumb said:

At your service
Knowing how much details went into El Tigre, I really hope you´re planning on modeling that Flying Tiger. It would make a terrific model.

I am on my way to Thailand to meet up with a college friend whose father was a photographer with the American Volunteer Group of the Flying Tigers. He spent about 1,000 hours modeling a P40. I think I will not do any physical building myself.

Ogan, if I dropped a garbage can of multicolored ping pong balls onto the surface it seems I would have many identifiable targets. Or perhaps dye packets.

I was observing a golf driving range the other day and it occurred to me that once the range was loaded with golf balls, it would be and easy surface to model. It also occurred to me that I could send a laser through a diffraction grating and instantly project registration marks onto a subject to be captured by simultaneous multiple cameras.

You calculation would only hold true at a 1:1 reproduction and only for motion entirely parallel to the film plane. My Pentax's top shutter speed is 1/4000. Radio signals move at light speed and electricity in a cable (any wiring distances would be extremely short) is about 2/3 the speed of light so camera synchronicity is negligible assuming the circuit is not designed with an intentional built in delay.

Lastly, accuracy, in LAPX's case, is less of a factor than simply capturing the essence of a typical wave shape.

@numbthumb said:

@roger said:

What would make you think that?

Oh,just a hunch
This in fact: http://www.network54.com/Forum/149674/message/1317706027/Help+Need+info+ASAP,+Curtiss+blueprints+---Mixed+fractional+and+decimal+dimensioning--Why-

Special agent numbthumb.

@vidy said:

@junior_architect said:

3. Use classes (cant believe I didnt use this before!).

can you be more specific on this step.. what is exactly "classes".. is it a code?? like ruby?

thanks

I am the last person to speak to about programming, but I will give it a try. The concept of classes in programing is to organize things by shared characteristics. For instance all lumber is rectangular and long. So you can define a class called lumber. Now each time you want a board in your drawing you refer back to your class definition and just add the unique elements like length and type of wood. By storing that in the class and not in each individual instance of a board your code become much shorter and more concise. This decreases the program overhead that has to be handled by your computer. If your not a coder, then just remember class is an inherited characteristic that can be used by subclasses.

@dave r said:

Pete, those images are really nice. the glare certainly adds something.

Roger, I missthose thick films. And my old Graphic View 4x5 with the red leather bellows.

I still have one handy. You can tell I was enjoying the process. But over the Atlantic highlands at 2000 ft with the door open in late fall, it was cold even with double gloves.

Sweet.

Radial glare is partly an artifact of the good old days of film where it was called halation. We may forget that film has thickness. Light enters the film to make an image but the strong light from highlights hits the rear of the film and bounces to the front and is then redirected to the rear. On longer exposures this excess light bouncing migrates away from the original point of contact just like a drop of water on a paper towel spreads out. Modern films have an antihalation backing to absorb excess light but it is not 100 percent effective, hence the halation (as in halo).