Stray Dog Strut

When i’m not dipping my toes in banking hell, i’ve been messing around with more tutorials – mostly on spline modelling – watching Stargate dvds and playing Pro Evo 5 on my PS2.

I went to see Cars at the weekend which was excellent – very funny and beautiful animation (hence the renewed interest in all things 3D lately). I went with Soul & Fe and we took Fe’s two nephews who were a handful. It’s all good though.

Tonight I’ve scanned my pc for spyware (since I’ve recently been told I was on MSN when I wasn’t?) and made a fantastic monthly budget in Excel. This one is much like the sheets we use at work to work out customer’s mortgage redemption figures – it’s a locked sheet with certain boxes for user input and nice formulas. It’s all very simple but hopefully it will help me keep on top of things since i’m worrying about saving up spending money for this holiday in September.

Anyhow, i’m off to play more Pro Evo and revisit some more Stargate worlds – oh, I just found out last night that a Stargate Worlds mmorpg is in the very early stages of production! This is a seperate game to Stargate: The Alliance which is further into production and will be an action-based 1st/3rd person game. [update - SG:TA was cancelled in 2006]

I think Stargate is the perfect medium for a mmorpg as you can literally dream up any world you want – once you step through the Stargate you can literally end up anywhere and it would be cool to explore the SGC. I don’t know how it will work with character selection though- surely everyone wants to be part of SG-1?lol Perhaps you will choose one of the main races: Tau’ri, Goa’uld, Asgard or Tok’ra? Only time will tell but I may finally give up (the intermittently played) Eve Online…

I‘m trying to kick start myself into learning 3d modelling/animation again. Here’s the results of a tutorial I followed from Cosmic Pearl. I haven’t experimented too much, although I did fiddle about with some of the reflection and luminosity settings and I changed some settings as I didn’t get the same results as the tutorial. I may go back again and change the backdrop. I like the simple reflections on the ring – it’s essentially the backdrop picture but it works well. Enjoy=)

I’ve gotten to thinking that words are like jigsaw pieces. They jostle each other to fit into a sentence – some have sharp edges and alter the destination of the sentence in a direction the speaker did not intend, while the right words have soft edges and flow smoothly.

Other words have to be included, they are the corners of the jigsaw puzzle if you will, while alot of people seem to have more jigsaw pieces than they need and therefore use more words in a sentence than is really necessary. Sometimes when you have almost completed a sentence you will find that there is one piece of the jigsaw missing – a word that is there on the tip of your tongue yet inevitably eludes you.

It seems to me that we fabricate sentences everyday and how many of us have stopped to consider them? Some are ready made sentences that everyone uses – they are the “safe” sentences, the sentence flows easily, almost automatically, these words fit together well. They are the pieces that make up the fluffy cloud in the nature scene. They are usually statements or language specific to that topic. It’s when we try to pin something down precisely that the challenge becomes which pieces of the puzzle to use.

The safe sentences will only get you so far and people can see through them – you have to evolve those sentences on the spot, sometimes saying exactly the same thing but in a different way to achieve a desired effect. Other times you have to invent a completely new sentence (not actually new but new to the conversation) and maybe you have to switch direction mid-sentence. It’s quite tricky, use the wrong jigsaw piece and the picture turns out wrong – say the wrong thing and suffer the consequences.

What am I blethering about? Phone calls in particular require us to think fast and get it right. We don’t always have to get it right first time but getting it wrong can be costly. It can be something so simple as using a word that means the same thing but comes across in a different tone. I’ve had some pretty hellish calls at work this week and in almost every one I’ve used a word I wish I could take back. But the damage is done and it’s the difference between a happy customer and an angry one. Right now the ratio is about 1:3 happy customers.

So consider those words, those shapes, when you’re speaking. Does the spiky cactus fit in beside the soft marshmallow? Or could you use another row of shapes altogether? Think about the effect you want to achieve and the impression you want to give. Some jigsaw pieces come across as condascending while others are too blunt. Choosing the right piece for the right puzzle is something we all have to consider at some time.

Yes, I am a lunatic. I have the certificate to prove it.