My birthday!!!

Today was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I turned 26 today, and it was fantastic. I went our for lunch with my team from work and they gave me a new Indy hat which rocks! Then chilled in the afternoon and got some drinks after work. Then to a bad movie night which was fun as usual, and then off to Chestnut St in the Marina to get some food and drinks. Then off to an Irish Pub that was pretty good and we hung out there for a bit too, it was fantastic.

I'll post some more soon about the recent activities I've been doing.

What's with the lack of blogging?!

Hi friends,

Those avid Jutan Clan blog readers of you out there sent me a few emails/random phone calls with a "what's the deal with the no blogging over the past week and a half" style of message. :)

My parents are visiting and we are zooming all around the Bay Area a whole bunch, seeing lots of cool stuff.

Quick updates:

• Indiana Jones 4 is freakin' amazing. I've seen it twice. Probably better than Temple of Doom and Last Crusade, but nothing can really ever be better than Raiders of the Lost Ark. :)
• I saw Speed Racer again, siiiick effects. I revise my original review to make it more intense: Speed Racer's visuals are AS revolutionary as the first Matrix film. Boom. The effects are far different from any other recent movie. It's like Sin City, but with 16.2 Million Colours blasting in your face for 2 hours. Amazing, awesome, worth seeing on a Digital Projection screen.
• I got a Mach 6 Speed Racer Hot Wheels car at Target tonight, awesome.
• Did I mention Indy 4 rocked?
• Jutan Clan is still here, they are awesome, and we're doing a whole bunch of fun stuff.
• I have a bunch of photos from Big Sur last weekend, Carmel, Monterey, Pixar friends at my house, and a bunch more that I'll post soon.
• Word.
• I'm going to South Africa soon and it is going to be awesome.
• It is my 26th Birthday next Wednesday!!
  

Alrighty that's it for now, more blogging next week.

Wall-E Toys!!!!

Toys R Us finally has the new Wall-E toys online!! This is awesome because I just ordered a bunch of them, and I didn't have to resort to buying them overpriced on Ebay. Sweet. These are freakin' awesome!!!

I shaded some of the garbage and trash cubes in Wall-E and so it makes it even more awesome and crazy that these are all in toy form now!!

Wall-E with garbage cubes


Wall-E in awe


M-O


Eve


Captain


Wall-E!!!!!!

And 6 hours later... my apartment is clean

I got home from work tonight at about 7:30pm... and immediately started doing stuff. I've been going pretty much non-stop since then, and now it's almost 3am. Insane!!

Here's what I did:

• Order a ZipCar to use for 1 hour 30 min
• Put some towels, blankets and bath mats into the laundry
• Take out the garbage and recycling
  
• Have a spoon of peanut butter (my "early dinner")
• Go back to the kitchen and have a 2nd spoon of peanut butter
• Walk to the ZipCar parking lot
• Drive to the grocery store
• Shop for an hour
• Pile groceries into ZipCar
• Drive home, part at my apartment
• Unload the car
• Put the melting stuff or milk into fridge and freezer
• Get back into ZipCar
• Drive ZipCar back to parking lot
• Walk to other grocery store
• Get 2 things I couldn't find at first grocery store
• Walk home
• Get laundry
• Hang up laundry because dryer is broken
• Boil some water
• Unload groceries
• Put pasta into water
• Make museli cereal in new plastic container
  
• Sit down, check my email
• Eat dinner, finally (now 10pm)
• Wipe kitchen counters
• Clean floor
• Wash dishes
• Order bottles nicely, clean counter
• Empty out the garbages
• Move all my disorganized boxes into the closet
• Dry Swiffer the main room, the kitchen, the dining room
  
• Wet Swiffer the kitchen
• Wet Swiffer the main room
• Wet Swiffer the bathroom
• Clean the bathroom
• Wipe the mirror
• Clean the toilet
• Clean the sink
• Clean the bathtub
• Clean the stuff around the sink (the soap dish)
• Clean the tiles on the walls
• Take out the garbage
  

So I think that's what I just did. And it only took... 7 and a half HOURS?!?!??!?!

Man, no wonder I'm tired. :) Awesome day tomorrow, off to get some decent sleep for tomorrow.

Movie Reviews: Iron Man & Speed Racer

Yesterday I went to both Iron Man & Speed Racer and they were both, shall we say, freakin' awesome.

Re: Iron Man...
Robert Downey Jr. just rocks the house in this movie. The acting is totally solid, the computer gadgets, cars, architecture, robots, suit, etc are just so insanely awesome!! The story is sharp, the script is witty at just the right moments, maaaaaaaan is it good. Great story, great acting, awesome effects (yeah ILM!!!!!!) All around awesome movie.

Re: Speed Racer...
Boom!!!!!! An explosion of colour and energy, it's like watching an animated kaleidescope. Worth seeing just for the effects, which were really unique, insane, and mind-blowing!!! INSANE!!! The Wachowski Brothers did the same kind of revolution in visual storytelling that they did with the first Matrix movie, I think. It was pretty freakin' radically different than any movie you've ever seen. Amazing work. The story felt like it was more for younger kids at some points, but the movie often didn't take itself very seriously and that was good. Really solid, interesting effects and just totally new and awesome. Well done!!

KFOG Kaboom 2008 fireworks and movies in San Rafael

Last night was sweeeeet. I went to the KFOG Kaboom concert and fireworks show with Aliza and maaan what a cool show!! The music was pretty sweet, and the fireworks were insane!! It was a good 20 min of fireworks to music, and just sooo cool. Afterwards we met up with Stephan, Katherine and John for some drinks.

This morning I met Stephan and Katherine again and we drove up to San Rafael to meet Frank, Jess, Eric, Seth and Alex to go see a "double feature!" We got some food, and then went to see Iron Man (awesome). Then more food, chillin' and then back to the same theatre to see Speed Racer (also awesome). Good times!!


Wahoo picnic!!


The fog rolls in


Awesome fireworks


Sweeeet


Lots of cool ones like planets, hearts and 3D cubes!!


The Bay Bridge


Stephan laughing at Katherine for some reason :)


Haha, the Mini Cooper that Frank thinks I need to buy


Stephan and Katherine at lunch


Wall-E bench!!!!!!!!


Frank and I out for dinner


Alex and Eric


Word

Eduardo's going-away party

Our good friend and co-worker Eduardo is leaving ILM and moving to Boston. We are gonna miss him!! So we had a great excuse to party hard and get some nice food.

Thursday lunch we went to get Dim Sum in the Sunset, then off to Pres a Vi for dinner on Thursday night (it was sooooooo fancy!) Then Friday we went to Final Final for a "final" farewell. Good luck for your move, Eduardo!


Scott, Jianmin and Julien out for Dim Sum


Collette, R.Rose and Eduardo ready for lunch!


Yisheng, Zoran, Aaron and Scott diggin' in


Eduardo testing out the wine selection


Mmm... cheese plate


Fancy wine tasting... in a mechanic shirt :)


The pile of moolah we paid with?!!


Awesome group picture of me, Eduardo and Julien


Alex and I at Final Final


Haha great pic of Yisheng


Good times


Haha


Classy shot of Julien and Eduardo


Me and Louise

More Grand Canyon pics

Here are some more Grand Canyon pics from Julien's camera.


Workin' it in Flagstaff


A classier version of the picture you just saw


At the Grand Canyon!


Awesssoome


Some deer


Just amazing


This "rocked"


More views


Haha this bird was so fat and hilarious, and was wobbling down the road


Fred and a sign at the lookout


Julien bustin' a move at the Canyon

Maya API Developers Conference: Day 3 and our ILM Presentation

The final day of the conference was even more fantastic than the first two. A couple of good reasons for that were...

1. Amazing Autodesk presentations about threading and viewport manipulation
   
2. Martin Watt's presentation was exceptionally interesting/awesome
3. Dean Edmonds is as good a comedian as he is an API Programmer :)
4. Julien and I presented our talk!!
   
5. See #4 :)

The sessions were:

• Developing a Production Workflow: Greg Elshoff, LAUNCH
• Leveraging the power of multicore machines by threading plugins: Martin Watt, Autodesk
• Rendering Tricks using the Maya API/Scripting: Jason Walter, Autodesk
• Solution Session: Dean Edmonds, Autodesk
• Maya & the ILM Visual Effects Pipeline: Julien Cohen Bengio and Mike Jutan, ILM

Awesome!!!!!!!!!!

We shared the final session timeslot with Dean, and it worked out really well. Dean's presentation was really interesting, useful (and really hilarious too), and then he handed it off to us and we did our presentation on Maya & the ILM Visual Effects Pipeline. Awesome.

It was such a great experience and we both really enjoyed presenting and sharing our experiences with everyone there. What a great conference!

Here are some pictures from the last day of the conference. Note that there are some of our presentation, and I've blurred out the content. I'm not sure if it's possible to post it, and I assume it's not, so I've blurred those images (sorry).


The hotel and the weather were amazing


Glorious


Lunchtime again


Julien going to town on a burrito


More lunch tables


Haha the "putting green" :)


Practicing our talk


More practice


Just before the talk


The room we presented in


Here we go!!


Discussing Maya usage


Julien laughing at one of my jokes


Q: "Why do we all love Computer Graphics programming?"
A: "Inspiration!"


Scott and I climbing the hotel pillars


At Chili's To Go at the airport


Good times