EC2, Amleto and LightWave

Amazon's EC2 service can be used as a LightWave renderfarm, simply and cost effectively. I will write up how it can be done, right now, just notes.

Elastic IP not needed.
Make sure instances have enough memory for the scene.
Amleto needs the master's IP address UDP does not work
Add extra drive to basic instance to act as content drive
install Dropbox and VNC
When creating spot requests name them with the last bits of the IP address to better identify them (eg. 56.74.243.12 gets named 243.12)
The security group needs stuff opened up, but I want to close ports that aren't needed down to minimize security risks
Terminate instances using spot requests and cancel the requests otherwise you pay
keep making AMIs as you refine your farm
Add Amleto Server and Client to Startup folder
Autologon for render nodes:Autologon

okay, so for a renderfarm you just need to install a LightWave trial edition on your first instance, which can be a t1.micro machine, it doesn't need to be bigger, Amleto (the render controller), Dropbox and umm, that's about it
you make an AMI from that setup and call it Farmer, then launch it again but this time load the Amleto client (and make sure it's in Startup) and Dropbox and Mark Russinovich's Autologon so that once you start those instances they begin rendering immediately
then you create an image of that setup and call it node and then you can request as many spot instances of that as you need and just view the Farmer computer and watch them come online and start rendering

Make your own Salmiari

If you have spent any time in Finland, or you have some friends from that snowy country, you may well have encountered a drink called Salmiakki Korstenkova, or Salmari for short. It's a vodka-based, salted liquorice-flavoured delight that will please any liquorice or aniseed lovers out there. It caused a stir in its native Finland when it was first put on sale because it was taxed as a liqueur but it had an ABV of 38% and thus had the largest alcoholic bang of the buck, or Euro, of any drink on the market. This meant it was the tipple of choice for hardened drinkers in Finland until it was removed from sale and put back on with a reduced ABV of 32%. This was how I tasted it in Los Angeles courtesy of a Finnish friend.

I thought I could perhaps make my own and discovered that the process was very simple. Take a good bottle of vodka, I had a litre bottle of Russian Standard, which maintains an ABV of 40% even though most have sunk to 37.5%. Drink about 200 ml to leave enough space in the bottle and furnish yourself with some Fazer Tyrkisk Peber from World of Sweets in Germany. The delivery was fast but expensive although the price of the liquorice seemed reasonable.

Have the vodka at room temperature and introduce one of the pastilles to the bottle every so often (I used about 80% of the tin in this bottle). Let them dissolve over the course of a couple of days, then put the bottle back in the freezer to serve at a low temperature in a few days' time. Yum.

Piracy encouraged

Cory Doctorow posted on Twitter about Lauren Beukes' new book (The Shining Girls) and I went to buy immediately since I really enjoyed Zoo City.

Amazon only sells a Kindle version naturally, so I wanted to find an .epub version. A South African site (Kalahari.com) sells it, but won't sell it to me because I'm not in South Africa. Piracy encouraged again! I will buy the paperback, which will sit on my shelf unread, like all of Cory's books, but I'll try and find a dodgy epub version to read. I want to shove money at this. I want to buy. I don't want Kindle format (and even the epub is DRMed).

No wonder the global economy is in a slump when people can't spend their money on things they want...

LightMaps in Unity from LightWave

 

To get realtime shadows in Unity needs Unity Pro, but you can get shadows for static scene objects easily.

1. Planes are single-sided in Unity like LightWave. Give your objects some volume to get shadows from all sides.
   
   
   
   
2. When you bring in your scene, use the Inspector to turn on "Generate LightMap UVs"
3. (Use the same Inspector to turn on Generate Colliders and switch Material Naming to From Model's Material - it will make your life easier).
4. Make sure the lights you place in your scene have soft shadows turned on, there will be a warning about Unity Pro being needed for soft shadows).
5. Unity doesn't show realtime shadows in the Scene view, so use LightWave to make sure they are well-positioned even if Unity's lights aren't directly comparable
6. You need to make that the Intensity and Range for the lights is good enough too.
7. Now select everything in your scene- all the lights and all the objects (you can delete the LightWave Camera since it is just a null, the Unity camera by default is called Main Camera).
   
   
   
8. Open the Window > Lightmapping window and check Lightmap Static, then click Bake Scene
9. A small window appears giving a progress bar, but this is only preparation for baking. The actual baking progress bar appears in the lower right corner of the interface after the initial one disappears and once that has done you then get a third progress bar as the lightmaps are applied to your objects.
10. Now you can turn off the lights in your scene content in the knowledge that their effect has been burned into the objects in the scene that can also be seen in Scene View.

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

Can I take a moment for a vital public service announcement? I absolutely insist you all read the book in the title of this message. It is nominally what is called a "Young Adult" book, being as its hero is sixteen, but don't let that put you off. I think Doctorow writes some great fiction that has become more and more assured and skilled as time has gone by (but even his earliest stuff is well worth reading), but this latest is a bit different, touching us lot particularly.

Now, Cory usually puts his books up on his website for free download (he says that piracy is better than obscurity) and he hasn't yet done so with Pirate Cinema (actually he has). I hesitate to do what I'm about to but I believe that he intends it to happen. I'm going to pirate his book and give it to you - it's that important. I bought the book as I have done with nearly all his earlier work and will buy Pirate Cinema when it comes out in paperback as usual. In fact I will buy three copies and give them to people (my version of a hail mary?). I would buy more, but in these benighted days I worry that I won't find readers for them (especially given that I am in France).

The book is set in England, Cory's adopted home, and talks about Trent who runs away from home in Bradford to the bright lights and big city of London since he's managed to get his family's internet connection cut because of piracy. The early chapters masterfully set the scene in a near future that is only too imaginable.

This is an ebook. Most people have a device on which to read them these days and if you don't I'm sorry but you do still have a computer on which you can read it. I know it will be less comfortable, but it will be worth it I promise. I have enclosed a link to a zip file
containing the book in four different formats: ePub, PDF, RTF and TXT. They contain the complete work in descending order of faithfulness with the original ePub format.

< Useless original link removed>

Please read it. I urge you, nay implore you to do so. I'm in the middle of a very serious work schedule right now and I have put asidethe time to write this email because I consider it important. Like theUSB keys with Lady de Winter 18 distributed in the book (it will makesense if you read), I want to get this out to as many people as possible and I'm starting with you guys, but that does not mean I'm stopping with you as well...

PS. The fact that this book has exceptionally not been made available on his site doesn't mean that the others have been withdrawn. Go to http://www.craphound.com and get (among others) For the Win about global MMORPG unions; Makers about building stuff; Little Brother about Big Brother and terrorism; Eastern Standard Tribe about living
out of your timezone; Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom about repurposing Disneyland...

This was a message I posted this morning to the movie mailing list I'm on. In a fit of conscience I forwarded to Cory who graciously replied with the correct link, which I shall now post:

http://craphound.com/pc/download/

Please read this book. It is very important.