357 days

Yes it has been that long since I've blogged. Christmas day, 2008. Crazy!

This year has flown by. I've been at Pixar for a year and a half. I still enjoy my job and would love you all to come visit. Friday this week will be my last day working on a project that I started on back in June. Unfortunately, I still can't actually say what it is. But, Starting in January I will be working on Toy Story 3. I think it's really fun that in my first 2 years at Pixar I will have worked on all 3 Toy Story movies. Speaking of which, I hope you were able to go watch Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3-D back in October. I worked really hard on those, and it was all worth it.

Now, beyond work. We moved to Emeryville back in September, and I like it better than Walnut Creek. It is very nice being within walking distance of work, a mall, and tons of restaurants and coffee shops. Hopefully, we will get some pictures of our apartment online at some point. Speaking of which, I haven't taken many pictures lately, althought the other night I took a pretty cool pic of San Francisco and the bay bridge at night from the walkway at our apartment.

Tomorrow is my 5th Anniversary! Absolutely amazing to think back to that week and all the craziness. I love my wife more than ever and I am so blessed and happy that I've been able to share all of these adventures with her! (College, moving to RI, grad school, Pixar internship, moving to CA, and everything else)

Well, I need to get going now, but I will try to blog a little more often. We are headed to Italy in just 4 days to spend 2 weeks with my parents (who live in Naples). Fun times will be had, and hopefully I'll remember to upload some photos.

Why don't I want to blog?

That is a good question, and I don't know the answer. We'll see how long this ends up being, cause right now I really don't feel like writing.

Well the job is great! Living in a hotel is a little odd right now, but I fly to Rhode Island in just 5 days to be there when the moving truck gets loaded and to help move the cats. We're finding it to be an interesting task to fly with cats across country, but Pixar has been extremely gracious and have helped us find the best flights for us to take the cats. (I must not want to write, I just spent about 20 minutes on seatguru.com looking up our flights, seats, leg room, cabin space, entertainment info, as well as the pet options and seat layouts for several different carriers...talk about easily distracted)

Well, we have an apartment, I will sign the lease and get the keys early next week. It is in Walnut Creek, which is about a 15 minute drive east, from Pixar. After we looked at apartments last Saturday, Jessica and I spent some time exploring the town and were very pleased with our decision. It is a family friendly area that has a lot of shopping, entertainment, and things going on, even though it is only about 60k people. We hope to get a guest room situated pretty quickly. Although, we won't have a car for a while. I just realize that I hadn't mentioned it on the blog, but we sold our car about 2 weeks ago. We decided it would solve a lot of hassle, and when we replace it, we want to get something that's cheaper (to buy, maintain, and fuel). Therefore, I will start commuting to and from work on the BART.

It's been a little weird coming back to work and having most of my friends gone (all the summer interns), but it has been a lot of fun to hang out with the other friends I had that are still here, and I'm already meeting more people. I'm so happy to think about the stability of this job and our future. I like knowing that after we get settled into our apartment, things won't have to change much. I think we are both looking forward to that feeling with all the constant changes we've had over the last several years. And most specifically, there was always some date down the road when another change was going to occur...but not anymore. It's nice.

Well, I think that's it for now. It's going to be a very busy week for Jessica while she finishes the packing without me to help. And then once I leave here, the end of this week will be hectic and crazy for us both. Then we'll have a week of relative clam while we wait for the truck to make it cross country, then we'll be super busy unpacking and getting moved in. Exciting times!

Still alive

Yep, I'm back in Providence, and have been for 2 weeks now. Jess and I are super busy packing boxes and spending time with friends. We fly to Oakland on Friday to do some serious apartment shopping. Jess will fly back to Providence the following Wednesday, but I'll stay in California to start work this coming Monday! Then we'll officially move in just a few weeks.

I am very excited about the entire thing, but it is still very unreal. I look forward to getting back to work and starting to get settled in the area. I'll try to keep you updated on what's going on. Our big goal right now is to find an apartment this weekend.

The biggest news of my summer!

Well, it seems my dreams have come true. And the one thing that I thought had no chance of happening this summer did. I got asked if I would be interested in staying on at Pixar full-time in a regular, non-intern, position! So after a week of interviews with important people and lots of waiting, Tuesday morning I received an official offer letter from Pixar Animation Studios!

I've worked it out with my supervisor and I will be "starting" as a regular employee in 3.5 weeks, on 9/22. I'll continue working with the same team doing exactly what I'm doing now, but this time there is no end date. After I start and find a place to live, Jessica, along with all our stuff, will move to California to begin the rest of our lives. Sometime in the next couple years I will continue, and finish my Master's at a school near Pixar, maybe UC Berkeley.

It's all happened so fast and I still don't think it has sunk in. I'm already deep in the process of moving, initializing many of the processes that have to be complete.

So, now I can extend an invitation to all of you to come visit us in California after October, and see some of the inside of Pixar's studio. (Or just come to see us, that works just as well) We are both very excited about this opportunity and all it means for our future. I think we are both relieved to have a sense of stability and peace in knowing that I have a permanent job. And above that, the job I've wished, hoped, and prayed for most of my life.

God has completely orchestrated this and his fingerprints are all over everything that's happened leading up to this opportunity.

Long time in coming

Well, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then according to wikipedia, I've already written a novel this evening. Meaning, I just posted 60 pictures on facebook which I hadn't updated since 6/15! I also added several pictures to the web album that all have been taken since the last time I posted on this blog.

Well, the end is near. Friday is my last day and it will be a fun and busy week. Our team has a review tomorrow with our director, John Lasseter. Exciting. I also have to get all my stuff packed up this week since I fly out Friday evening right after work.

Hopefully the pictures are self explanatory, feel free to leave comments on here or on the pictures if you have questions or want to hear more about specific things I've done since I last gave a detailed account of my adventures.

It's been fun to become pretty good friends with many of the interns here, and it has been a little sad to say good-bye to so many of them already. But hopefully many of us will return for full-time employment.

Sorry this is so short, it's already after 10 and i really wanted to get a work-out in today, so I'm off to the gym. Talk with you later.

Reid

Finally

So, this weekend I am down in the Southern part of the bay hanging out with some friends from Brown. I am currently in Redwood City and my friend, Korhan, had an SD reader in his laptop, so I finally was able to upload some pictures! He's on his way back here and we are going to go to lunch and then head to Monterey to go to the beach! I'm super excited. Enjoy the pictures, they can be found in the Album.

Gotta go, talk to you again soon, hopefully.

Yikes, I'm falling behind!

Well it's been 10 days since my last post! And I only have a couple minutes cause I have to catch the bus that goes by in 6 minutes to get back to the apartment. I purchased a new power jack for my laptop! It should be here in the next couple days and then I can try my hand at desoldering and soldering a part on my motherboard. Sounds scary and it is. Hope it works.

Jess and I had a wonderful time together this last weekend we got to go to the SF zoo and had a lot of fun! I have pictures, but currently no way to transfer them. I hope you are all doing well. Feel free to leave a comment or even better, send me an e-mail and let me know what's up with you! I am still enjoying work, got over a couple hurdles today that have been plaguing me for upwards of a week. We have some fun team reviews this week and some other things going on too.

Talk with ya later.

Feeling settled and a little romance

This weekend was a lot of fun, and work today actually felt pretty "normal", in a good way. We had a team meeting to overview some details of the pipeline for our work and to just make things more standard for all of us. I felt more like a part of the team and started to get some real work done.

Yesterday was a lot of fun too. I got picked up for church and we headed over to the Mission district of San Francisco. The building was smaller than I expected but they have 4 different services each weekend. I was very impressed with the church in many ways. I will certainly be going back and will probably write more about it in a week or two. After church, on the way back to my apartment, we stopped at a very authentic burrito restaurant that had very good, and inexpensive, food. I was dropped back off at my apartment and relaxed for a while.

After an hour or so I suggested to my roommates that we head over to Pixar to have some fun. They agreed that they didn't just want to sit around all afternoon so we took off and had a lot of fun all afternoon. We ended up throwing a frisbee for a while, then playing a little soccer, and several games of shuffleboard. Other options that we considered were basketball, ping-pong, pool, foosball, and guitar hero. I took a few outdoor pictures while we were walking around the Pixar campus, and updated the photo album with them.

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I kind of breezed through the account of this weekend cause there's something I wanted to talk about that I'm feeling much more strongly about right now. So, I'm going to totally change subjects and talk about something more personal.

And that subject is my amazing wife who I miss and love so much! And there is a reason for me to bring this up other than just the fact that I haven't seen her in more than 2 weeks. Tomorrow (in just 1 hour), is our 3 and a half year anniversary. Now, we don't usually "celebrate" half anniversaries, but today, I want to verbalize some of the thoughts I've been having and really let you know how much she means to me.

Every time I think about Jess (which is a LOT), I am so thankful that God brought us together. Not only is she the most gorgeous woman I know, but she shows me her complete love so frequently. In the little things and the obvious ones, she is so encouraging, helpful, and amazing. Earlier this week I was letting myself feel overwhelmed and was feeling sorry for myself and how difficult my assignment has been here at Pixar. Jessica was able to say a few words to me, which at first hurt me and made me want to get frustrated, but her honestly was from the heart and she knew that it was what I needed to hear. It has made a big difference in my attitude and her words were a blessing from God. I am so thankful I get to hear her voice everyday when we talk on the phone.

Everyday that passes while I am here in California I realize, not just how much I miss her, but how much she is part of me. We share everything all the time and it has been harder than I expected to explore new places and have fun without her here to share it all with me. I miss sharing milkshakes and meals, sunsets and scenery, laughs and smiles, hugs and kisses, and so much more!

It is getting late so I will wrap this up. Jessica, I know you will read this, and I just want to say in front of our friends and family who read this, that I am more in love with you than I've ever been. With every passing day I realize a little more clearly how much you mean to me, how much I long to make you happy, how much I love everything about you, how much I know that I will never love you less and how you are everything that I've ever hoped or longed for. You are part of me and these last 3.5 years have been so much better than I thought they could be. I am so excited that we get the rest of our lives together! So, have a great Tuesday and remember that I am thinking about you and can't wait to see your beautiful face again. In just 31 days now.

Goodnight my love.

Another long day in SF

It is very late, but I am waiting for more photos to upload and I want to update you on my day. Earlier this week some plans were set in motion to meet up with some of my fellow Brown graduate students in San Francisco. Some couldn't make it but I was able to meet up with my friend Mayank at about 5:00. Since I was planning to meet up with him and possibly some other friends from school I headed over to SF late this morning because there were a couple things I wanted to do and see and also, my roommate, Andrew, wanted to go with me to scout out some good spots for photography. Anyway, we got over to the city and I wanted to find the main Old Navy downtown which is the largest Old Navy store in the world. It ended up that they were having some awesome sales and so I got a couple different pairs of shorts, a couple polos and another pair of flip-flops.

After we were done at Old Navy we headed north through the city. I showed him some of the cool places I found last weekend and we had a lot of fun casually hiking around the town seeing the sites. We ended up down by the water and got to eat lunch at an In N' Out burger!! I love that place, and I should have got a picture. After we ate it was about time for me to meet up with Mayank so I started walking south and Andrew decided to do some more scouting. Mayank wasn't quite done with the lunch he had scheduled with a friend so I hung out at Barnes and Noble for a while. Fun and relaxing.

Once we tracked each other down, I found out he hadn't been to the waterfront at all so we went down there and strolled around Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. After we decided we were sick of the crowds I thought it would be fun to climb up Telegraph hill to the old Coit tower since it was the one major hill in SF I hadn't been to the top of. We didn't pay to go up the tower but still got a great view of the bay and the city. We then wandered some more and took some goofy pictures on the steep hills.

One of our other friends from Brown, Korhan, called and wanted to meet up with us too, so we headed back South through downtown to meet up with him. He ended up getting a little lost in the crazy traffic, so Mayank and I wandered through the Virgin Megastore while we waited and I was amazed at their massive CD, DVD, TV on DVD and video game collections. Korhan finally got to the area and parked just in time for us to say hi and for me to head back to the transit station to head back over to the East Bay. So, I got to talk with him for a short bit of time about his new job (He just finished his Master's degree and is now working in the southern bay area).

I had to head back to Emeryville cause the last bus from the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station to my apartment left at 9:30 and I really didn't want to walk through that part of the city after dark.

Feel free to check out the pictures in the album on the right, or on my Facebook page. Lots more pictures of the bay, Alcatraz, and downtown. But, I really tried to get more pictures with people in them.

Now tomorrow, I am headed to church with some people that work at Pixar that are related to one of our friends in RI. I haven't met them yet, but they seem very nice and I'm looking forward to going to their church that looks very good. I will report further on that tomorrow. Here's the church's webpage if you want to check it out. http://www.cornerstone-sf.org

Hope you have a great Father's Day.

The real deal

I can't believe it's been four days since I last posted. Sunday was a very slow day except for the fact that my roommate arrived from Boston. He is a fellow Brown student and we had a class together this spring. He and the 2 other Brown students that are here just finished their Junior year. Other than that, we all had a very mellow day and tried our best to find things (besides the TV) to keep us busy. We ended up driving into Oakland to hunt down a Redbox to rent a movie.

Earlier in the day, I did try to get into the lab at Pixar to work on my final project, but the building was locked and I didn't feel like hunting down the number for security to have them let me in, so I just walked back to the apartment. Besides, our teacher strongly encouraged us to not come in on the weekend. So, I got up a little bit earlier than I normally would and got to Pixar at about 8:30 to continue working on the final. Last week, on Friday, we had to create a story, make storyboards, and submit them for a story review, then we weren't allowed to begin working on the project until our stories were approved. So, once I got that finished I began creating the set for my story using the 3D objects we were given to use. Once I had a decent set I added the lights to create a lit set. I got that much done on Friday, but I still had to layout, animate, shade, light and render the 4 shots for my film.

So, it was a long day, and even though I got "done" by about 5:00 I had some serious problems getting the renders to look how I wanted and ended up not leaving until shortly after 10:00. But, I got it completely done and submitted, so I got to sleep in since we didn't need to be at work until our film review at 10:30am. It was very cool, our teacher and several other veteran employees, as well as the 40 new interns that started this week all were present for our review. We even got to use one of the "real" screening rooms. I was very pleased with my final short and by the laughter and comments I think everyone enjoyed it. I got some very helpful suggestions from the veteran employees but was very happy with how it went.

Immediately after the review, I was scheduled to meet up with my department supervisor for lunch to get an overview about our current project. It was very informative and even fun to sit with him and talk about the history of Pixar and the life-cycle of our current project...Toy Story in 3D.

It's a relatively small group working on this project, but there is a lot of hard work to get done to get the whole movie ready for 3D. I'm sure I'll be busy all summer and if we happen to get done by the end of August, I will get to start work on Toy Story 2 (known as TS2) in 3D also.

Sorry I can't give more details about what I'm doing or the rest of my experience. Obviously this is a competitive industry with lots of secrets.

On a super exciting note...just this evening I bought the tickets for Jess to come to California and visit me in July. We are both very excited that it worked out. It will be fun to do some exploring with her and just to get to see her smiling face in person! Well, It's past my bedtime and I'm gonna exercise early tomorrow before work (something I've been pretty consistent with since I got here thankfully) so I should say goodbye and get to bed. Have a great rest of your week and I'd love to hear how you're doing since I haven't talked with most of you recently.

A fun day

So, being that this was my first Saturday in the Bay Area, I really wanted to get over to San Francisco. Fortunately that happen and I have pictures to share. I've updated the picture album that is linked on the right side with some of the better pictures I took today. The day started with me heading to Pixar and swimming in their Olympic size pool for a while. It was nice exercise and relaxing at the same time. I then showered in the locker rooms and stopped by the just opened updated Pixar store and purchased some Pixar clothing (including an awesome 'track jacket').

Once I walked back to the apartment I relaxed for a while and then headed out to San Francisco on the public transit train with my roommate Jeremy. We got off at the Embarcadero Station and walked all the way up the waterfront through and past Pier 39. Then we took off up the northern hill I'll San Francisco called Russian Hill. It had some great views of the city, the bay, and the bridges. We found ourselves at the top of the famous Lombard St and continue to just walk through the neighborhood. We finally came to a peaceful cul-de-sac atop the hill that had an amazing view to the northeast and to the east. We headed down the hill towards Chinatown just to see what it was like then zig-zagged back towards the station we got off at. All in all we walked about 5 miles over the course of 3 or 4 hours. It was awesome to create our own tour and to get the exercise of hiking up a large hill.


Once we were back in Emeryville we decided to just walk from the train station back to our apartment which was another 2.5 miles. Then I decided to relax in the hot tub, and also went for another short swim. So, I think I met my exercise quota for the day and had a lot of fun doing it. I've included some of the pictures in this post, but feel free to check the rest out too.

I'm still very excited to start in my department on Tuesday. I will write more once that happens (if not sooner).

A real update

Well, it's time for a real update. It is very late on Friday night so I will probably finish this in the morning. I started the week out with a full day of orientation to the company, a tour, and lots of paperwork. There were several people starting their internships, or full-time jobs, this week so we had to split up for the tour and some of the other things. Pixar has a very family type atmosphere. The employees are eager to share their knowledge and it is a very open atmosphere to all employees.

Since Tuesday, I've spent all day every day at a quick start training class for technical employees and interns. We've been given an overview training of all the steps in the animation process and how to use their proprietary software to create and modify the film shots. It's been a lot of information, but we are now working on our final projects that we will turn in on Monday evening.

Already there have been some amazing opportunities at exposure to the film community and animation. And I know that will only continue throughout the summer.

More interns start this coming week (including my roommate who isn't here yet) which will make things a little different. Between our orientation day, lunches, and our training class, several of us have already become friends and gotten to know each other pretty well. It will be interesting to see how that changes this week with all the new interns.

Also, I thought I'd extend an open invitation for any of you (as long as I know you) to be my guests (up to 3) at a pre-release screening of Wall-E in the Pixar theater (on Pixar's campus here in Emeryville) on 6/26 (the day before release)! Seriously, I'm allowed to bring some guests and I could get you free tickets if I knew ahead of time you were coming. So let me know asap if you're at all interested and we can discuss it in more detail.

Well, it is now really late and I hope to have some fun tomorrow so I should probably get some sleep. I'll go ahead and post this and maybe add more tomorrow if I have time. I think I'm going to go swimming in the morning for exercise and head over to San Francisco with some other interns in the afternoon. If so, I will post pictures soon.

Mid-flight

I'm currently somewhere over, what I think might be, southern Iowa. I left Providence about 3 hours ago and I've got another 3 hours to go until I arrive in Las Vegas. Then an hour layover for my short flight into Oakland. I have such mixed emotions right now, but I know that this will all be much more real at 9:00 AM tomorrow morning when I walk through the front gates of Pixar animation and begin my summer internship with a full day official introduction to Pixar.

It was very hard to leave my wife behind knowing that I won't see her in person for probably about 6 weeks. It is by far the longest we have been apart from each other, but I am thankful for technology and I know no matter how busy I get I will be able to talk with her frequently.

She was kind enough to let me take our new camera with me and I am looking forward to documenting and sharing my expereince to the best of my ability. As soon as possible I want to look into using a site such as flickr to easily share my pictures with you. I will probably post some pitures along with my posts in this blog, but will probably leave the bulk of them on flickr (unless I find a different service I like better, maybe Picasa?).

Flying over this part of the country strongly reminds me of the last time I was west of the Apalachians...driving a Penske truck across country through the middle of Iowa, among 13 other states. I will never forget that trip, and it is so hard to believe that I've completed my first year of graduate school since then! A lot has happened in my life and in me since then. I feel like I've grown much closer to my wife and to God since then. And as hard as it is already to be away from here for these next couple months, aI already know that God is going to use this time for teaching, refreshing, and cleansing me.


If you are a praying person, I really would appreciate your prayers through this summer. I don't know what to expect and I am nervous about what awaits me this summer. I think the biggest source of anxiety for me right now is actually living with 3 other guys I don't know for three months. I was happy to only have a roommate for 2 weeks of my college life, and I really don't know what to expect.


That last thought makes me realize that many of you probably don't know much about what I know about this summer. Obviously I will get a lot more details after i start work tomorrow, but here's what I know so far. My first day as a Technical Director Intern for Pixar is tomorrow, June 2, 2008. They have provided me and the other interns with housing for the summer that is fairly close to the Pixar campus. My address for the summer (yes you can send me letters or packages if you wish, wink-wink) is 1465 65th St. #359 Emeryville, CA 94608. It is a two bedroom apartment and there are three other male interns living with me for the summer. One is from Utah, another is from the University of Illinois Chicago, and the last one is an undergraduate from Brown who I've had one class with but don't really know.

Last week I found out that I have been assigned to the rendering department for Toy Story 3D (which is scheduled for theatrical release on October 9, 2009). Pixar is updating and re-releasing both of the Toy Story movies for 3D in anticipation of Toy Story 3 which is scheduled to be released in the summer of 2010. I don't really know what they are doing to update the Toy Sotry movies or what the rendering department is responsible for on this film, but I will soon find out and let you know (assuming I'm allowed to tell you).

Several of my friends from the CS graduate program at Brown have summer internships in Silicon Valley (which is South of San Francisco). Emeryville is located across the bay, to the East, of San Francisco, but only about an hour to 90 minutes away from most of Silicon Valley. Therefore, I'm hoping to meet up with some of them at some point this summer to hang out or to do some sight-seeing together.

That's about all I know about this summer at this point. I've looked into the public transit system in the bay area and so far I am very impressed. I think I will be able to travel around the area very easily without having access to a car. If any of you have suggestions for things to see in the area, please feel free to let me know.

That's all for now, hope to upload the first pictures tomorrow evening perhaps.

(The picture was from later in the flight when we had a great view of the grand canyon. I'm posting this from the Las Vegas Airport)

Three weeks of blah

So, I just realized that it has been a very long time since I've posted. It feels like the last three weeks have been days and days of the same stuff. At least in the school department. My wife's been wearing a foot brace for a week now, and so that involved setting up a doctors appointment and some other out of the ordinary events.

But, school has been time consuming and not very exciting. I have a final demo day for a group project in my graphics class. It's been very time consuming and pretty frustrating, but it is looking kind of cool. It's a program that loads 3D models and renders them like they were drawn with different styles of artistic strokes. I'll try to post the program itself or at least some screen shots at some point... maybe I'll do that now. Ok, I just made a couple screen shots. These just demonstrate a couple of the possibilities with our program. I moved the camera to show that these are real 3D models. The other cool thing is it does this all in real time, so you can move around the 3D world and have everything rendered like pencil art, or whatever. Once we have this presentation on Thursday, all I have left is to finish my other final project which is way too complicated to try and describe here. Have a great week.

Publish via e-mail, Pixar, Links

This is the first time I've tried publishing a blog post via e-mail. Hopefully it will work just fine.

A few things today. First, my wonderful wife has finally started a blog. It is located here if you are interested. Also, to go along with that, I've added a post to it in the sidebar section entitled "Friends". Which brings me to my next point which is to let you know that I also added a feed reader that is being populated by my shared items in Google Reader. So, this will contain the last 5 things I've shared. Which will hopefully remain a selective list and won't change too often. But, today I wanted to point out the link to the story about Pixar. My dad e-mailed me the story this morning and I was very pleased at the detail CNN gave about the future releases of Disney and Pixar. Here is a full list of the upcoming Pixar releases and there respective release dates:

Wall-E
(the following are being released in 3D)
Up
Toy Story 1
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Newt
The Bear and the Bow
Cars 2May 2008

May 2009
October 2009
February 2010
June 2010
Summer 2011
Christmas 2011
Summer 2012

So, this summer I will be working on one of these movies (or possibly one of the shorts that will go with one of these movies). Which still makes me VERY excited.

Also, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I have a list of interesting/fun links on the side bar as well in the section titled "Cool Sites" Feel free to check them out.

Mom, california, and school

Another quick update. First, I picked up my mom from the airport (Providence airport) last night and she will be staying with us until Monday which is fun and exciting since we hadn't seen either of my parents since graduation last May. It's hard though because I have school all week still which I will discuss in more detail in just a minute. My mom went to work with Jess today which should make the day more enjoyable for both of them.

To answer a question...the Pixar internship is paid, and it in itself is a huge answer to prayer. Before I was offered the position I knew it was paid, but I had no idea how much or any of the other details. Well, it turns out it pays better than any other internship that I know of! And since Jessica's 36 hour a week nanny job has been supporting us all year, it will be very good to have some more income that will help us survive the next year until graduation next May. So, that's a huge praise...oh and the position has a "standard" work week of 50 hours. Which could be interesting if I get a job there after school (they expect at least 50 hours from their employees). But, for now it is a blessing as well since anytime over 40 hours is time and a half. Also, since 50 is standard for them, you get paid for 50 even if you don't put in quite 50. So, that is good for me too. And, housing for interns is provided by Pixar in furnished intern apartments. So, I will have a roommate or two, but I don't have to worry about the cost.

Also of note. My school year ends the second week of May. Between then and when I leave for Pixar, Jessica and I will be moving into a new apartment. It is just about .5 a mile from where we currently live, but I think it fits us better than our current one. Mainly, I think the cost of utilities will be a lot more manageable. And there is A/C for the hot/muggy parts of summer. I'll try to remember to post pictures once we move.

Finally, I wanted to update a little about the current status of school. I've had a lot of programming projects this semester and that won't change until the semester is finished. I'm trying to finish the last regular assignment that I have. And then I will be working very hard on two final group projects. One for each of my classes. If you are at all interested in the work that I've done in my graphics class this semester, they are listed on the assignments page for the course. It can be found here. Also, since each of these assignments were based on one or more research papers form the last few year, the papers themselves can be found here. Image Analogies was the hardest, followed closely by Photon Mapping (my output at right). I won't go into details about these unless one of you want to know. But, they make some cool pictures. Both of my final projects are going to be a TON of work, but hopefully I will do the best I can and get it all done in the month that is left of school.

It's true ... and I'm happy

I got it. I am still in shock, but it is true. I am headed to California this summer to work as an intern at Pixar! Who would have thought!

I start on Monday, 6/2! It's a huge blessing in so many ways, with the only negative being that Jessica has to work this summer too, so she will be staying in Rhode Island while I am in California. Pixar is located in Emeryville which is next to Oakland, just across the bay from San Francisco.

I got hired as a Technical Director Intern and will be working on some upcoming Pixar film. I will be doing a lot of programming that will provide the animators with the tools that they need to make the movie. I will obviously post as I know more and continue to keep this updated while I am gone.

It is amazing to look at how this came about because of so many things happening in my life. I can only point this opportunity directly to God and the way he has directed my entire life. I really hope that this internship goes very well and opens up the perfect opportunities for me after I'm done with my degree next May. Thanks for keeping me (and Jess) in your prayers.

Pixar...I hope!

I'm submitting my resume for an interview with Pixar next week. They will be on campus doing recruiting for summer internships. I really hope it works out...this is my dream internship. I'll make this post quick, I also should have a demo reel of some of my work for the interview, so I spent some time in the last 24 hours getting some of my work more put together, then threw it all into a video. Here it is, enjoy the music...odd choice, I know!

How exciting!

I do have readers! 2! Well, at least I know someone sees this. And just so you guys know, I read your as well...and have them both in my google reader list.

So, for an update. First it snowed last night. It was so peaceful and nice, then this morning...rain and frozen mush all over everything. Oh well. And we are supposed to have flash-flood conditions today and tomorrow.

Enough about the weather. So, first cool thing I found recently. A firefox extension that turns photo galleries into something truly amazing. It's called PicLens and if you have Firefox you can see what it does and get it for free at: http://www.piclens.com. (If you don't have/use Firefox, you should!) Here's a preview:


Also another firefox note, I really like this theme.

Ok, more personal now. Classes have really started and are extremely busy. Both classes are more work than I anticipated, but, in my graphics class we get to make some really pretty pictures in just a couple weeks. Using a technique called Photon Mapping. Essentially we model the characteristics of real photons bouncing around a scene and then render that on the scene. more about this hopefully once I get there. For now I'll say that I've been very slightly involved in work that has continued from my Vision final assignment last semester. Just a reminder that I did my final project on processing video for a multi-touch display system. Here's the final video output that I produced at the end of the project. And I will also link to the final research paper that I wrote and turned in. It is pretty technical, but feel free to at least look at the very professional format and the nifty pictures.

Obviously, with what I had to work with, my results were not perfect. The idea was that we simply want to keep track of any fingers touching the screen over a series of consecutive frames. Since I finished this project another Master's student has started his Mater's research by taking my results and some other ideas and beginning to create the software to actually allow us to use our multi-touch table. I will probably be helping out occasionally with this project, and it just might be the research I do for my degree also.

Here's the paper: http://cs.brown.edu/people/reid/VisionFinal.pdf

And the video:

How sad!

Deep down I knew it really wasn't a good idea to start a blog when I was pretty sure that this would happen. I have no motivation to post. I honestly don't know if a single person has found this blog. (Except Selam who left me a comment.) So, if you read these, would you mind leaving a comment, I enjoying keeping people up to date on stuff, but it's hard if I don't know if there are very many people even here to update.

Well, classes started back up this week. Break was long and nice. I didn't have classes from 12/12 until 1/23! Jessica and I went to Disney World for almost 2 weeks! It was very relaxing and wonderful to get a real vacation. Now I'm back into classes and assignments. I am taking CS224 - Interactive Computer Graphics, and ENGN291 - 3D Photography and Geometry Processing. Both classes are graduate level (200+) and will be challenging! Lots of fun.