let’s face it: bears are scary. and they want our honey.

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 02:28:00 GMT

Today Tristan was asking me about Transformers again. This pleases me because this is the list of the things that I am somewhat expert in (no particular order):

Transformers
C/C++
Star Trek
Perl
Doctor Who
Photography
Thursday Next
Never Being Confused

Anyway, he was asking me about where the Transformers came from and I told him about Primus and Unicron, the gods of the Transformers. This is sort of how it went:

me: Primus and Unicron are the gods of the Transformers. Primus created the transformers to battle the evil Unicron.
Tristnan: Did Unicron create the Decepticons to fight the Autobots?
me: No, Primus created both the Autobots and the Decepticons
Tristan: Why did he create them just to fight each other?

I really love the questions that Tristan asks. Now, granted we are talking about a mythology that nobody believes in, but you could easily recreate this exact same conversation using a number of “real” religions that I can think of, and this is exactly the sort of abstract thinking that should be applied to the subject.

2005

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 20:23:00 GMT

2005 was supposed to be the year that Decepticon's attack Autobot City on earth (as chronicled in The Movie. I took this as a sign that it was time to quit my job at The Company and go back to school and study computer graphics and distributed computing and maybe one day get a job at Pixar. I still think even being a "lowly" system administrator at Pixar would be a fun job. Being a software developer for the rendering farm would be awesome.

Appropriately enough, last Thursday, the last Thursday of the year, I went to the MoMA with e and they had a special exhibit on the art of Pixar. Most of what they showed was models and sketches that were made before anything gets done on the computer. Seeing the artists' names and countries of origin clearly labeled by each piece, one is reminded that computer animation is not just a form of entertainment, but also an art form. It's fascinating to me, because I have always been passionately interested in the interaction of expression and technology.

Highlight had to be seeing the early sketches of the Edna "E" Mode character from The Incredibles, who has been my favorite Pixar character since I saw the movie because of her energy and humor. I had one of her quotations engraved on the back of my iPod to remind me that "I never look back; it distracts from the now." In the gallery e told me she was her favorite character, to which I responded, "really? Me too."

Anyway, 2005 is coming to and end, and Unicron never attacked Cybertron and as a result, the Decepticons were not driven off as was for told in The Movie, and I'm not going back to school, just yet, but I am on my way back to Australia. (many more words and things...)

The Twilight Report

let’s face it: bears are scary. and they want our honey.

2005