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Duane Degn
Posts: 10,588
I've been on this forum much too long to not have an avatar. So I've been trying to decide on one.
I've noticed several members use a circuit board they have design as an avatar. While I've designed a few circuit boards none of them are very exciting. I have done a lot of projects so I wonder about using a picture of one of my projects as an avatar.
Here are a couple projects I'm considering.
The above LED array says "HI" as seen by the camera in the top left of the photo.
I also like my "Universe Remote".
I plan to use the Universe Remote to control everything from robots, ovens and sprinkler systems.
One circuit board I considered as an avatar is the QuickStart board. This next picture is from this thread.
I really like the QuickStart board. It's just so easy to use the same USB cable to program the board and to power the board.
Now we come to my top two avatar candidates.
The above photo is a screen capture of one of my latest robot video.
Unfortunately I have recently had my haircut. When my hair gets long I kind of look like this guy.
You can see him sing in the second half of this video.
Maybe the best option would be an animated GIF which transitions between the last two pictures?
I've noticed several members use a circuit board they have design as an avatar. While I've designed a few circuit boards none of them are very exciting. I have done a lot of projects so I wonder about using a picture of one of my projects as an avatar.
Here are a couple projects I'm considering.
The above LED array says "HI" as seen by the camera in the top left of the photo.
I also like my "Universe Remote".
I plan to use the Universe Remote to control everything from robots, ovens and sprinkler systems.
One circuit board I considered as an avatar is the QuickStart board. This next picture is from this thread.
I really like the QuickStart board. It's just so easy to use the same USB cable to program the board and to power the board.
Now we come to my top two avatar candidates.
The above photo is a screen capture of one of my latest robot video.
Unfortunately I have recently had my haircut. When my hair gets long I kind of look like this guy.
You can see him sing in the second half of this video.
Maybe the best option would be an animated GIF which transitions between the last two pictures?
116 x 125 - 6K
119 x 123 - 4K
125 x 127 - 21K
125 x 123 - 16K
98 x 125 - 11K
Comments
I'm not sure I like this avatar. The hair's right but I don't really scowl like that.
As a reminder of what could have been:
I think I'll try the other picture for a while.
I get confused a lot. My wife asks me why I have not raked the leaves or have not cut the grass and mostly I say I am planning to go fishing. The same works for when she says the toilet does not shut off completely or the drain in the kitchen sink is clogged. You gotta go out and buy a small boat and go fishing. Just imagine, a man and a boat with a rod and reel and a six pack of beer with the whole day to himself. When you come home all you have to tell her is you caught a mess of fish and thought it would be a chore for her to clean so you released them all! You can use my avatar.
The other problem is, now that I have my 50 year old man jowls, I look too much like the Heat Miser for it to be funny (to me, you all will laugh your heads off).
My wife used to joke about how I looked like the Heat Miser when my hair started getting long. Since I've started going grey, my hair looks even more like the Hear Miser's.
I previously used the H.M. as an avatar for a few minutes. I thought the avatar too distracting.
I'll use him for a while since so many people think it's the right thing to do. Besides erco is always annoyingly right so the H.M. must be the right choice.
I'm supposed to believe that was your goal?
Back before Lego made minifigures, we had to come up with our own people to drive spaceships made from Lego bricks. My cousin and I spent many hours making all sorts of buildings and vehicles for our trolls. And, no they aren't dolls! They're action figures like GI Joe.
I had considered using a minifigure walking as an avatar.
I'm sure I have the original renderings of the images in this video on an old hard drive.
I thought it would be fun to have an animated gif of the minifig as it progressed through one step and then just keep walking. I still kind of like this idea but I'm not a fan of animated avatars. They tend to be distraction. (Unless they're subtle like Casey's.)
I also have a video of myself completely engulfed in flames (part of a monster movie I made with a group of friends in college). I've wondered about using a screen shot from it as an avatar.
I'm not sure how long I can take the Heat Miser. He kind of stands out in a thread. He's too much.
That's an amazing video! I never knew minifigs could be so mesmerizing.
This video continues to freak me out. It seems to represent something much deeper than minifigs on the march.... plasma polaritons? surface plasmons? a Bose-Einstein condensate? What is really happening here?
Luckily Heat Miser is a very expressive character.
Here are some less angry options for you.
I assume you found the group of 100 minifigs marching the mesmerizing part?
Before discovering microcontrollers which allows me to make things move in the real world, I had fun making things move in a virtual world.
There's a CAD system for designing virtual Lego models called LDraw. A bunch of adult fans of Lego (AFL) modeled many of the Lego pieces to use with the system. One of the LDraw programs included a "minifig generator" which would let you pose a minifigure to make positioning the various pieces in the minifig easier than attempting to rotate the individual pieces in the main CAD section of the program. The modified minifigure could then be used within a virtual Lego model.
Previous to learning to use the LDraw tools, I thought it would be fun to do some stop motion animation with the Lego minifigs. It was really really hard. Trying to get the lighting to work correctly with a green screen was a real pain.
When I saw the LDraw tools included a way to export a scene to POV-Ray to allow high quality renderings, I decided to abandon the stop motion work and switch to computer generated images.
I wrote my own "minifig generator" in C which allowed me to position large numbers of minifigs at once. In the above example I had a 10 x 10 group walk the perimeter of a Lego baseplate. Since I wanted the group to stay together, the outside minifigs had to walk faster than the minifigs on the inside of the loop.
I had a batch file run the generated LDraw files through the LDraw to POV-Ray converter. Another program (I wrote in C) modified the POV-Ray files to set the camera and lights to the desired positions and orientation. I think the camera continually points at the center of the group of minifigs. I had several different lights in the scene. There was some overall background lighting and I also had several lights travel with the camera. One of the spotlights was programmed to wander around a bit (as I look at the video again it spends most of the time scanning back and forth along one edge of the group).
Another batch file used POV-Ray to render each of the generated POV-Ray files. This part could take a long time. I know the group walk scene took several days to generate. I think I used Adobe Premiere to join the individual jpg files into a movie.
I didn't model any of the individual Lego pieces myself. I did build the virtual models in the background using the LDraw tools.
The normal technique for generating animated action on a computer is to use keyframes. Where a model is positioned at several locations through a movement and the computer fills in the transitional frames based on these keyframes. Instead of keyframes, I wanted to try to come up with an algorithm to describe the desired movement. This makes it much easier to model large groups. I like the algorithm I came up with for the minifig walk. It's a bit exaggerated with the single minifigure because I wanted to make sure the subtle hand and head rotations were apparent. Each of the rotation amounts could easily be adjusted to produce varying walking styles.
I had finished the DVD in time to bring with me to show my family at Christmas. I had hoped some of my nieces and nephews would like the videos. It was a big hit. The video was played non-stop the entire Christmas party (starting when I initially showed the video (fortunately after dinner)). It became my nephew's favorite DVD (I was obliged to leave a copy).
Now that I know there's someone on the internet with sophisticated enough taste to appreciate my work, I'll try to find the original files and post a better YouTube video.
That's a relief. I was almost afraid to ask if the mass march was made manually or by computer. Had you told me you had done all of that via stop-motion, somebody's sanity would be under question.
Maybe minifigs could be used to teach quantum mechanics??? It's an amazing effect.
Don't call me Shirley.
I suppose those are less angry but he still doesn't look very friendly.
Maybe I should have several versions and rotate among them based on my mood?
Thanks Jen.
Shoes?
You get the idea.
Not the exact shirt but I am wearing my one and only red shirt today.
I'll have to keep my eyes open for the appropriate clothing so when I finally make it to a Parallax Expo, people will be able to recognize me. I'll also need to let my hair grow longer.
Thanks for all the non-grumpy Heat Miser suggestions but my wife vetoed any changes to the current avatar. She like how incongruent the current avatar is with my personality (she claims I never get grumpy).
Maybe one of Jen's would be easier to see next to my name.
Here's the reduced size version.
Kind of strange to see both avatars at the same time.
-Phil
Erco, you got overruled by my chief avatar adviser(wife). She likes the grumpy one. I think she has relented to letting me use something else. This particular avatar is driving me crazier.
I hate if when people change avatars. The avatar makes it much easier to recognize the forum member.
I broke out my "Lego Atlantis" 3D glasses and had a look at your avatar. It looked familiar in 3D. I'm pretty sure I looked at it years ago with 3D glasses. IMO it's a good avatar.
Erco's avatar is a bit distracting (my wife doesn't like it), but I think it might break my sanity if erco changed it.
I personally like it when people use a photo of themselves as their avatar like Mike Green and JonnyMac. My preference would be to find a photo of myself that I could bare to look at as much as I'd need to while being on the forum.
Agreed. I can quickly see which posts are yours in a thread. I like it.
Here, I agree and disagree. While I think I should pick one and stick with it, I don't think any I've proposed would be fine. Never mind, I think you're right (after looking back at the ones I've proposed). None of them are too bad. On the other hand, some of the ones ElectricAye has proposed. . ..
So I will likely pick one and stick with it but I haven't yet picked it. I'll leave the Heat Miser up until I can decide on a suitable replacement.
I'm sure this has been on all of your minds this New Year's Eve so I thought I'd give you all an update on this crucial matter.
...matter of fact, I was losing sleep over it!
:nerd: