Sending out Birthday Greetings to both my sister Cai and my mother Marion (MeMe to anyone who has known here since the mid-1980s) seemed like an appropriate reason to get back to posting to the blog. Lot so other stuff to talk about, but I will save that for later. A little back story on the video. I created it using the 3D animation software called ALICE 2.0. If you have read (or listened to as was my case) to the book "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch or watch the clips on Youtube of the actual lecture, you will recognize ALICE from his chapter on leaving a lasting legacy. Dr. Pausch and his team were at the center of developing this programming software that allows regular folks (like me) to program in 3D pretty much by dragging and dropping small snipets of pre-written code. The main thing is that by simplifying the programming, as was the intention, ALICE makes it possible to do fun storytelling without (most of) the tedious code writing. I didn't get to do too much in terms of the wandering around in the world, but I hope everyone enjoys it. I wanted to have some pigs perform as well, but none of the great folks in the ALICE community has developed a pig so far. Developing objects is a whole different story from the programming and something that is way, way beyond my skill set. Since they had done peguins, I knew the launch date would need to January 4th, but the idea actually started in advance of Cai's December 29th birthday. As with most thing technological, making stuff is one thing and sharing it with people is somthing else again. Therefore, I apologize for the small size, but there were several steps to get the penguins into my blog and I haven't been able to figure out how to resize the player beyond what it is. If you want to get a copy of the original let me know and we'll figure out to get a bigger version to you
So here is my tiny gift, not the clip per see, but your brief introdiction to ALICE. Happy Birthday Cai and Mom
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