f-log

I revisited the Blueprint unfurl. Although the blueprints mesh shifting issue had been mitigated by using a Track To constraint with the lighting and camera it still felt messy. So I deleted everything and started over.

I am pretty sure the issue was with the Scaling of the Curve not being applied, because this time around I was meticulous about applying any changes ASAP. It seems to have worked.



I also added to two additional Curve modifiers to subtly have the starting corners curled.

The blueprint image was added via Image as Planes with a copy of the mesh positioned a tiny bit down and with the same modifiers for the backing.

Finally I added some subtle noise to both the image and back textures to give it all some depth.

As per usual I would have loved to do more, but I MUST GET THIS PROJECT FINISHED!!

Could have had a Raspberry Pi mesh pinning the start of the blueprint, or falling at the end, or coming out of the image ...

It was nice to have such a simple render that it took 3 minutes per frame and not 3 hours.

Note to self, the Subserv Modifier in Simple mode must be applied in many circumstances to work properly.

Who got hacked now?

We got an email from Google informing us that the company website had been hacked and was hosting "hacked" content.

1: why is Google referring to content as "hacked"?
2: is the company website OK?
3: have we been hacked?
4: what are we going to do about it?

1: worried me, as that did not seem to be the language Google would use. But all the headers and links checked out as being real Google

2: Loaded up my secure VM for web browsing and the main and secondary web sites seems fine. Closing the VM reverts it to the previous state.

3: The Google email is referring to a sub domain that I do not recognise BUT has the name the company might use. It was industry specific and extremely unlikely to have been generated randomly.
Visiting the sub domain showed a Ferrari image and references to e-book mirroring. Uh Oh!

4: Loaded up the web hosting admin panel. There is the sub domain, but all it has is a DNS record to redirect. It is not a web site with files we own or can get at.
Ring hosting provider and ask when DNS changed, no records are kept for sub domains! But they could tell me when the main domain had been updated, which was 9 months ago and no relevant, drat.

After some back and forth it became apparent that the DNS could only be changed by the user and the user had not changed the DNS. Mysterious ... and nobody claimed responsibility for creating the sub domain.

Deleted the sub domain but only after copying the DNS details. IP pointed to Digital Ocean, a well know hosting provider that we have never used. I filled in their abuse feedback form.

Then I ran wget to mirror the dodgy site. Even though the DNS was deleted the Digital Ocean server was still accepting Host Headers

Fishing through the downloaded file I was surprised to find nothing. All the 30+ pages had the same non-content talking about e-book mirroring but having no actual e-books.

There was a "report DMCA" link that ended up at a Google form, so I reported that.

Conclusion; hacker would monitor the site and if undisturbed would then populate with whatever.

But then I searched on the text the hacker had used and what turned up was unexpected. The vast majority of results were host name checkers that had indexed domains with the hackers text. Trying to visit the actual site lead to DNS errors and 404s.

But there were a couple still up and hosting ... the same ... nothing! Pages and pages of empty pages, no links, no files, no exploits or codes or anything obvious.

Conclusion; no idea ...

But now someone had a tiny memory that maybe that sub domain had been setup to point to a free trial of some software. Of course there were no details and it would have been ages ago, double drat!

Yay! all the frames are done.

I have been planning an intro and I need to make sure my ideas are not to involved or it will just take too long.

The blueprints I did in April will unfurl under a spotlight.

I created a POC by adapting a Bezier Circle and adding more vertices so it resembled a spiral. Applying this curve as a Curve Modifier to a plane and you get the page curl effect.

But not so fast. First I rotated the Curve and then manipulated it's local location and then secondly I had the camera and spotlight follow an animated Empty. Because each time I animated the page curl curve the page itself would move.

18 frames done, 12 to go.

In other news I was ill most of last week and yesterday the kids tried to burn down the house via microwave popcorn. sigh

Good enough Raspberry Pi HiRes project

I really REALLY need to put the whole Raspberry Pi HiRes project to bed. With that is mind, here is the completed "The Persistence of Pi"


There are many bits that are not right, but I have been tweaking it for a while now and I am marking this GOOD ENOUGH!

That image rendered at 1920x1080 2000 samples took 2hrs 38mins and I have a animation planned to give the image a sense of depth.

Speaking of samples. I was getting a lot of fireflies on the tree from the Pi pins on the branch. I set the Preview Sample to 0 and just let it keep on going. By 1000 samples most of the main really string white fireflies had gone and by 2000 it was just not that noticeable anymore.