My computer probably hates me right now... or maybe it's happy to stretch its processor for once, it must be frustrating to have the power without being allowed to use it much. In any case, In the last 20 or so hours it's been rendering animation for a solid ten. It's not a long animation, just 530 frames, but it's got a few spotlights with high resolution shadows so the frames take on average about 35-40 seconds each. I set it to render it last night, but stupidly did some last minute tweaking of a spotlight without making test renders of all parts of the animation. So when I woke up this morning I didn't like the result and did it all over again. It was probably a good thing though, because I changed most of the light setup before starting another render. The render time was about as long though.
Why did I make this animation and what is it? The why is easy; I was bored and feeling uncreative after giving up on trying to finish my F1 in time. The problem is that to get out of an uncreative mood I kind of have to make something, which isn't all that easy when you're feeling uncreative and that brings you back to the problem again. So you make something simple. The what: I decided to see if I could make something interesting out of the design Norm drew around the "e" in plaristocrates for the 3.0 version of his site. It's got mostly circular shapes, so it shouldn't be too hard. It got a little out of hand and ended up being a 21 second animation. Nothing great, but I'm feeling better because I know I can do better if I try harder.
So why don't I show it to you? you think. Well, look down a few posts and you'll see that I managed to lose the password for my webspace. I suppose I'll write my brother to try to find it and send it to me.

Oh, and I'm reading Salmon of Doubt. It's a compilation of unpublished text by Douglas Adams. I just started on it, but already came across a quote I really like: You can't ignore someone who isn't there, because that's not what "ignore" means.
I've also learned that Adams once worked as a body guard for the ruling family of Quatar.