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.

More pictures

It is late so this will be short. I updated my pictures from today. We had a long day of orientation and I am officially an employee of Pixar. Serious training the rest of the week, so I will be busy. The atmosphere of collaboration at Pixar is amazing!

Pictures!

Please notice the album link i added to the right. I have it set up so I can update the pictures very easily! I've already added the pictures from today (my travel day). Tomorrow will be super exciting, and now it's time for bed. Goodnight from California!

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)

Events

Well, it has been a while since I've posted. As usual I am slower than I'd like at updating this blog. But, there is still lots to say. First, I finished my first year of graduate school last week and I am excited to be on my last summer break. It's very fulfilling to look back on all of the things I've accomplished this school year and i look forward to finishing it all up next year.

Second, we've moved into a new apartment and I like it more everyday. We rented a small u-haul on Saturday and, with the help of several friends, got all of our furniture and most of our stuff into our new place. Last night Jess and I brought the cats over, and they have adjusted very well already.

Unfortunately, my body is getting mad for working so hard on Saturday (I'm sure that's not what it is, I'm just making something up) and I've been sick with a fever since last night. I wasn't feeling real great yesterday but I thought it was a mild cold or just allergies. But, I was up several hours through the night trying to keep my body cool. All that to say I am relaxing in our new apartment today and finally have some time to catch up on the internet.

But, that is only possible since I finally got the wireless working with our new internet service. I'm glad it wasn't to hard and that I was able to get it connected even though I'm not feeling real great. Jess or I will hopefully get some pictures of the new place posted sometime soon.

Two weeks from today will be my first day at Pixar! I am still very excited and have started to get pretty nervous about it. But, I know it will all work out and will be lots of fun.

That's all for now, have a great week.

"The World's Hardest Game"

It's an intimidating name I know. But this game is a LOT of fun if you like puzzle games. I got to level 26, and decided I had spent enough time with this game and should instead spend my time on other things. However, since there is no time limit, you can just leave it open in a tab and come back to it later. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

from: http://www.addictinggames.com/theworldshardestgame.html





If you are reading this through a rss reader, you can load the actual blog or goto the following link:

The World's Hardest Game

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.

Another update

So, I keep meaning to update this. I had the interview at Brown with some folks from Pixar on 2/28 (the day after I turned 23). It went really well. I finished another school project on the 26th (called Photon Mapping) and was able to add some resulting images from that to my demo reel. I also read through the tips on Pixar's site for what they look for in a reel and changed mine quite a bit. I like it a lot better now and here is what it looks like.




Also, yesterday morning I was contacted by one of the Pixar recruiters letting me know they wanted to set up a phone interview! I was super excited and they called me last night at 6:45. I felt really good about that too, and I should hear back in about two weeks as to whether or not I got the internship.


School has been VERY busy lately I finished another assignment this week that was very long and very hard. It's called image analogies and was a concept that was presented in a research paper a couple of years ago. If you actually care the paper can be found here: http://mrl.nyu.edu/publications/image-analogies/analogies-300dpi.pdf
If nothing else I'd suggest you open it up and look at all the cool pictures they "describe" what the paper is about a lot better than I could. (Just for clarification of the pictures, we give the program images A, A' and B, and it outputs B'). Very cool but very complicated.

Now, I'm starting some more fun projects. I get to do the math that allows animators to manipulated digital 3D objects. The technique is called character deformation and is used all the time in computer graphics. Hopefully I'll update on other things besides school sometime soon. It's just that it seems to be most of what my life consists of right now, unfortunately.