Yes, the next morning Blue Lake in Mt. Gambier was still BLUE! We didn't hallucinate the night before. Well, we did, but not about the lake colour :-}
But let me start off this post with a picture from my youth. My waaaaaaay back when youth! I do believe this'd be 1967 or 1968. We were still in the trailer (yes, I grew up in a trailer but we wuzn't trash!) and I'll have you know that my dad (Superman) built this entire addition to the trailer along with of course all the shelving and storage.
Here's proof (180!) that I was young once.
Go'an, guess which one is me!
Shall we get back to Blue Lake? Why yes, yes we shall.
If you'll be so kind as to notice, it is still a cloudy sky the next morning! And the lake is still of course a vibrant blue.
Did you know that the residents of Mt Gambier all got together one day and built a hugely wonderful (and huge) lookout and retaining wall along the edge of Blue Lake. Yep. It's true. Hey now, would I lie to you? The retaining wall itself is over 200 metres long! And the Rook Tower is awesome!
How did they do it all in one day? Lotsa muscle and know-how!
Yeah, that woulda been a sight to watch!
And just what does this neat Rook Lookout look like? Glad you asked mates!
Don't forget it stretches around 180 metres along up the slope to the right of the picture.
As you may be able to tell from this next shot, it was raining!
The main stairs leading up aren't steep at all.
Especially if you have nicely cut calves like this bloke! Cool shirt, eh?
The view from the top of Rook Tower is nice. Don't need to add a frame to the shot in photoshop, that's for sure!
Shall we just zoom in a bit on the lake as to not have the framing? Yes, we shall.
At this point I just can't resist posting a piece of 3D artwork down by Yours Truly --don't swoon ladies, I'm human!
Oops, it looks much more better at full size!
And let us not forget the whole reason for the trip: Da 12 Ahhhh-Pistols!
No, this is not a stock Interwebs photo. It's a pic by Yours Truly. Go ahead and swoon.
But before we head along The Great Ocean Road (there are only 50 kilometres that are great, trust me!) we need to explore Mt. Gambier a bit. Such as Cave Gardens right smack dab in the centre of hustlin' n bustlin' downtown Mt Gambier!
Butt befour we get to this particular chapter in my completely true Alien Abduction story, I think it's best if I actually put up a few pics (and maybe even a video!!!) of some Aussie critters.
Why, you ask? Cuz it's been a while since I have, that's why! Or didn't any of you notice? No? Perhaps that's because I haven't been as much of the prolific posting personality as I used to be?
Well, whatever the reason, I shall now just shut up and show you some pics of Little Corella Cockatoos!
Obviously that morning was pretty overcast. Hey, we do sometimes see clouds down here! Those little corellas were part of a slightly larger flock:
And that was about a tenth of the flock!
Some of you may know (or knot) that when you get a fairly sizable group of birds together that they like to talk amongst themselves. Well, parrots are no different!
Would you like to know what the sound of a flock of little correllas sounds like at 7:00 AM?
Would ya?
Woodja woodja woodja?
Of course you would. But first you have to make sure your computer sound volume is turned to maximum as you want to make sure the whole office building or subdivision can share in your joy at hearing these bird.
Now on with my true alien abduction story! With everything recreated by Yours Truly (don't swoon ladies, I'm human!) with his awesomely perfect photographic memory! Yes, this is what REALLY happened! *wink*
In case you missed some earlier acts due to hanging out in the lobby chatting up the sheila or bloke behind the popcorn counter or perhaps toking up in the bathroom, here's a quickie recap!
Note: some of my astute readers may recognize the following paragraph verbatim from Act XII but I don't mind plagiarizing myself!
Yes, it's time for another installment in the completely, 100% true story of my alien abduction. Don't you remember? This was after I died after cutting myself shaving with a meat cleaver in the pool and was then brought back to an undead, brain-craving, zombie state from a lightning strike and then was transported up to the A.S.S. (Alien Space Ship) cus I struck the pyramid on top of my roof with my lightning-charged sledgehammer and was then transformed into an undead, brain-eating, hulking beast with a club roaming the cave-like corridors of the A.S.S. that had the rego number of C4P-PFP2012.
Whew! And just in case any of you need sausage lynx to the previous acts...
Now for a very brief picture recap! After which you'll get to see (and read) Act XV!
And here are some of those great, full-sized NON-PHOTOSHOPPED pics!
This one is from the passing, cloaked, Chinese spy satellite.
And here's one the Russians took from the ISS!
This is the one where I distinctly remember seeing the rego number on the A.S.S.
And remember, the Chinese spy satellite got a pic of the TOP of the A.S.S. too, also.
You may remember that after I materialized inside the A.S.S the aliens then activated some sort of hologramaphic device that changed the corridors to caves. I distinctly remember charging through the caves and encountering this sign:
I quickly hung a left (me being rather left-leaning) and as I charged down the cavern the rock walls changed back into the actual, real corridors of the A.S.S. However, I was still my lightning-charged, zombie-ized, club-wielding, brain-eating undead self. Fortunately, my body had retained it's original, studly self!
Now begins Act XV of my TRUE Alien Abduction!
Whilst charging down the corridor onboard the A.S.S. in search of alien brains to eat as I was still in my zombie state, I passed through several doors that opened and closed automatically as I raced towards what I hoped was the control room of the A.S.S. so that I could eat some tasty alien brains and just hopefully find an escape pod to get back to Oz and perchance find a way to get back to what passes for normal for me.
*Isn't that an awesomely great sentence from Yours Truly (don't swoon ladies, I'm human!) that I typed all by me oneses and Wifey-Poo (Most Wonderful Woman In The Entire World) tells me is actually grammatically correct?*
Just as I was beginning to think the A.S.S. with the rego number C4P-PFP2012 (remember kiddies, Gene Roddenberry proved that all space ships have rego #'s painted on the outside in English!) was totally deserted, I arrived at a pair of doors that hopefully led to the control and some tasty alien brains... and the door was GUARDED!
By aliens!
Imagine my surprise as my zombie self became the first Earthling to come face to face with REAL aliens!
Just
imagine
the
shocked
look
on
my
face!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Yeah, I'm quite sure I looked EXACTLY like that!
And what did I see in front of me?
Glad you asked mates!
And now we finally get to see what the alien guards who are guarding the door which may or may not be an entrance to the control room look like!
Are you ready?
Are you sure?
As you can tell, this is about to get... shall we say... Interesting?
Stay tuned for Act XVI as more silliness comes your way from the merry old land of Oz!
Not sure what I'll do with this, just monkeying around this arvo and thought I'd share. Please click on it to view it full size, the detailing is primo!
Yes indeedy mates! I know it's been a while since we've had a picture caption contest here, so we may as well have one now!
I'll be putting the picture up via whatever service blogger uses now, along with the flickr pic so hopefully one of them will load for you.
My caption is this: Ah, excuse me sir but it appears that Planet Ulkhurr has installed a brand new, state-of-the-art defensive mechanism and I do believe it's trying to tell us to kindly bugger off!
Of course, that caption just might make a wee bit more scents if you actually saw the picture. Right?
Just scroll on down to have a squizz at the pic, then feel free to come up with your own caption in the comments, no worries.
Didja ever wonder where Sarah Palin came from? Was she hatched from an egg or born live? Or did she spring out of pixels, processors, and programs in a 'puter way back when?
Hmmmmmm. Well, no matter as I happen to have a picture of Sarah Palin hatching from an egg. So now you know: She hatched from an egg. Proof:
Please click to embiggen the picture, you'll be happy!
But how did this start? It first started with me playing around in Bryce 7 Pro. I was learning the terrain sculpting tools and came up with the main "egg" and also the "top" of the "egg" overturned to the side. The material used is actually a sea ice material with some coloration changes to make it look cracky.
After that I went over to DAZ and made a cool looking Ice Dragon whilst applying various add-ons, textures, bump maps, etc to get what I wanted. I also went WAAAAY overboard on the bump mapping of the skin, horns, teeth, etc as I knew the dragon would be used in a long shot in Bryce and that Bryce has a tendency to "soften" the DAZ textures. I had to forgo the glasses as she didn't start wearing them till she was all grown up. Some would argue that she still hasn't grown up.
Here is a close up of the dragon in DAZ. Compare it to the dragon in the finished picture and you'll see why I had the bump mapping in DAZ turned up to "bloody-well high, mate!" as I knew it would soften with distance in Bryce. As always, please click to embiggen.
How's abouts them blueish sparkley things around her body, wings, egg interior and egg top? They were easy. Each one is actually a squashed sphere with a texture applied. No lights were needed and it makes for a very cool effect.
I'm going to show you a screen capture of the Bryce workspace showing the meshes for everything. You'll note that there is a squashed sphere on each wing, one large squashed sphere in the middle of the egg, and a smaller one of the egg top that's been tossed aside. Click to embiggen, of course.
The blobs on the far left and the far right are the other two eggs in the picture. I did those as object instead of terrains. Since they aren't hatched there was no reason to sculpt them, right? You may have also noticed the two yellow lights in the middle. The lower one lights up the egg interior along with the dragon body, and the other lights up the head from below. The light falloff is logarithmic so it's not "fakey" bright and the top one has a very low intensity as I only wanted it on her head. The size of the light mesh has NOTHING to do with the light itself, it just makes it easier to find in the jumble of meshes.
We'll now move to a left side view. You'll see just how far back the unhatched eggs are and you may also make note of the 2 light positions to illuminate the egg interior and the dragon properly. Make the picture larger with a click.
Notice the top red line that is just below the dragon? That's a layer of thin clouds. Go look at the very first picture and you'll notice some thin clouds just above the fog. Now you know what the red line is. It's a flat plane with a thin cloudscape applied to it. Oh, the low fog is an atmospheric effect so there's no mesh to see for it.
The top view is interesting as you'll see two things. The unhatched eggs aren't in the shot cus they are soooooooo far back. I made them huge and placed them waaaay back for two reasons. One is that the haze atmospherics will be more visible and the other is so the "eggy" textures look right. Small sized ones placed just behind the main egg DO NOT give the illusion of depth. Trust me, I tried.
The other thing to notice is that the terrain texture appears flat from above since you are viewing the terrain as a mesh. Valuable little tidbit to keep in mind, that is. Don't forget to click the pic.
I'm going to give you a cool shot of the back of the Ice Dragon rendered in DAZ. Why? Because I think the tiger strips look sooooooo cool! I think it looks neat at full size. Do I need to tell you how to bring the pitcher up to full size? No, didn't think so.
The last bit of nuts n blots for you: I made the scene on my old, decrepit P4 with 2 gigs of ram and a crappy video card. It was rendered on a modern quad core with 4 gigs built in ram, 4 gigs external ram, and a 1 gig video card. It still took 7 hours to render! Why? The sea ice texture used for the eggs is very complex (so's the blue sparkley stuff) and we cranked the rendering options sky high. However, if I had it set for total, top-of-the-line rendering it would have taken DAYS on the quad core. Just another example of software ALWAYS being light-years ahead of hardware. Well, at least affordable hardware.
Thought I'd put up a work in progress. I'll be making a new terrain backdrop, put in a lava lake, etc. Also I've got a few hours of work still on the main bloke. Loads of detailing still to do on him, lighting, etc.
But I figured I'd better put something up so y'all didn't think I was blowing smoke about all the cool software goodies I got.
Please keep in mind this is in NO WAY complete. Just click on the image to embiggin it.
This is part of a work in progress. I won't be doing anything on it today as I am still sick. Only 2nd day and I'm already sick and tired of being sick and tired!
I feel like I've been shot at and missed, but shit at and hit. Yes, I feel like crap. I am also finding the taste of strepsils (anti-bacterial throat lozenge) to get worse and worse. And pure echinacea extract? Nasty stuff!
Anyways, enough about me. Here's the work in progress.
I saw this bloke at one of the glacial entrances to the Harding Icefield back in '48. I'm surprised the photo turned out as well as it did considering it was a gloomy, overcast day.
I think they've all headed way further north now as all the glaciers have been retreating and these critters really need ice and cold temps to thrive.
Anyone else ever seem em? Titanium just got back from Harding, I wonder if she saw any of them...
You'll also be happy to know that I had one of the first widescreen cameras way back then so the photo is the perfect size for someone's widescreen computer monitor.
Just click on this picture to embiggen it and feel free to save it, no worries!
Yes folks, it's time for yet another installment of my completely true story of my very recent alien abduction! Whilst I was a lightning-charged, undead, brain-eating, sledge-hammer wielding zombie, of course.
Confused yet? Don't worry, it happens to me all the time.
And I'll even give you a quickie text recap: I cut my neck whilst shaving in the pool with a meat cleaver. Wifey-Poo gave me a burial at sea (pool) with my sledgehammer and duct tape. Lightning storm re-animated me. Charged me and sledgehammer with lightning. Whilst I was on the roof, I bonged the pyramid (we really have one on the roof) with the charged sledgehammer which then transported me to the A.S.S. (alien space ship) with the rego number of C4P-PFP2012. Upon my arrival the aliens activated a type of illusory hologram so that I appeared to be in a cave complex and yet I retained my actual appearance!
Just scroll back up and open the links to see real photographic evidence of all these happenings, no worries.
When I last posted, I had just stumbled upon this sign:
Ahhhh, perhaps a nice retreat to a clean, beautiful, serene, sub-arctic lake would be nice... Perhaps it's springtime and there's a few other lakes around with a bit of rotten ice still around. Ahhhhhhhhhh...
Ahhhhh, bliss. Enough to melt anyone's heart... Ahhhhhh, day-dreaming of Lake Lucille
But wait! What if...
if
it's
the
actual
R E A L
Lake Lucille
in Wasilla!
On NO!!!!
Obviously an alien creature that large and powerful must have a HUGE brain! And since I was still a brain-eating zombie at this point, I decided there was only ONE (1) (won) thing to DO!
And just when you thought it was safe to go back into outer space! Bwuhahahhahahhahah!
Yes, it's time for another installment in the completely, 100% true story of my alien abduction. Don't you remember? This was after I died after cutting myself shaving with a meat cleaver in the pool and was then brought back to an undead, brain-craving, zombie state from a lightning strike and then was transported up to the A.S.S. (Alien Space Ship) cus I struck the pyramid on top of my roof with my lightning-charged sledgehammer and was then transformed into an undead, brain-eating, hulking beast with a club roaming the cave-like corridors of the A.S.S. that had the rego number of C4P-PFP2012.
Does that ring any bells?
Perhaps this handy list of links will refresh your mammaries --oops, memories!
Everyone caught up now? No? Seriously, if you haven't read those posts about this entirely true episode in my life then when you read Act XII you'll be even more confused than you are now.
So just, at least, go back and skim them posts, eh? I'll wait, no worries.
Aaaaaaannnnnd for those of you who didn't read those posts, how's abouts a quickie photo recap...
Here's me dead in the pool
Then I come back to life in my zombie, lightning-charged state:
Contacting the A.S.S.
Here I am blasting into orbit
A Chinese spy satellite caught this pic from afar
See, it really is the name of their ship!
I got a good look at the rego number:C4P-PFP2012!
And here I am on board the alien ship! This was, of course, after they had activated some sort of holographic illusion thingy to make me think I was underground! For some reason they kept my body just as it normally is...
Ok! Is everyone "up to speed" with the story so far? I'm an undead, brain-eating, HUGE zombie on board the A.S.S. (rego # C4P-PFP2012) and I'm just about to step out of the holographic cave and into a holographic cave corridor in an attempt to somehow find my way back to South Oz, become NOT undead anymore, and hopefully eat a few alien brains along the way!
Whew! I need to give my fingers a rest... They are SSSSSSSSS-MOKIN'!
Alien Abduction Act XII
It was at this point I decided to leave the "cave" I was in and try to find either the control room or the engine room! And I felt sure I was to meet up with some aliens along the way and eat their brains!
I
c a u t i o u s l y
c r e p t
o u t
i n t o
t h e
c o r r i d o r
Grrrrrrr! Where's the alien brains? I's feelin' HUNGRY! Feed me Seymour, feed me!
I raced down the corridor, hair flying in all directions!
As I rounded a corner...
... I skidded to a screeching halt in front of this signpost!
To say I was shocked would certainly be the understatement of the millennium! AAAAAAAAAIIIIIII-EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
I quite obviously realised that one way led to the control room, and the other led to the engine room. But which? And why the code and the weird lettering?
As I pondered which way to go, I heard a faint whirring of motors. Like the ones that control a hidden camera!
I. Was. Being. Watched!
But by whom?
And why?
And when was I gonna get to eat the alien brains?
And just WHAT is controlling this whole illusion that makes me see things that aren't there?
And why the cave system? Do they think I'm a mushroom and want to keep me in the dark and feed me b*llsh*t all day?
Who.
Could.
It.
Be?
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . Eeeeeeee, hee-hee-hee! I'll get you, my pretty. And your little bloggie too, also! Hee-hee-hee-heeeee!
