Archive for February, 2007
Made it through Day 1
One full day under my belt here in the desert. Yep, I’m a badass.
Of course I didn’t have to work. But it was difficult none the less. My big goal for the day was to stay awake the whole day so that I’ll sleep well tonight and be able to put in a full day tomorrow. And I’m gonna make it. My brain feels like it’s made out of tile grout, but I’m gonna make it.
For those of you who don’t know, I am currently on an 8 week assignment to Abu Dhabi. Not the city, though. Nope. I get to hang around in the middle of the desert most of the time. Working on a gas plant out here. This is my first overseas trip with my company. It’s a bit of a shock I guess. I knew these plants are big, but you’ve really gotta see it to believe it.
So I get my ass up early tomorrow and go in to work. Work on a Saturday. Good thing I’m getting paid well for this.
OK, my travel tip for the day: Pack your toothbrush in the carry-on. No matter how long you’ve been in the same clothes, you can pretend you are human if your breath is minty fresh.
[EDIT] I keep forgetting. I’m not changing the timestamp on my posts to reflect the time here. My sentimental sounding reason is that I want to keep a connection to my home time-zone. The real reason is that I can’t be bothered to go into the settings and fix it. The time here is now 9:15 PM.
Live from Abu Dhabi
Well, here I am. In the middle of the desert. Here to wander for 40 days and nights. Hell, it’s more like 56 days. Eight weeks. The guys in the Bible had it pretty easy.
Flying business class nowadays pretty much kicks ass. You get your own little pod sort of thing, and you barely know that anyone is sitting next to you. We were late out of Houston ’cause some screwjob installed one of the wheels upside-down or something. Got to take a brisk jog through Gatwick airport. First time in a decade that I’ve been back to England and I wind up running through it. At lease I expect to take more time to enjoy the place on the way back.
Today’s our day off. I’m spending it exploring the camp, looking for a place that I can get a wireless connection to work. This little computer room in the Rec hall is OK, but I prefer a keyboard that doesn’t have small creatures living in it.
Stay tuned to this space to learn how to survive two months with no women, no booze, and worst of all: no bacon.
God I miss bacon.
Whoop! Texas Aggie Basketball!
It’s hard to believe that in just a few years the Texas A&M Men’s Basketball Team has improved to become a top 10 team. Keep up the good work, guys!
How to Construct a Tetrahedron in Blender
This tutorial requires basic knowledge of Blender.
Background
Blender’s three-dimensional rectilinear grid allows for easy creation of cube-based objects. But what do you do if you want to create a tetrahedron, a regular polyhedron with four equilateral triangle faces? My initial attempts at this involved trying to create one face on the X-Y plane and rotating a copy up. This turned out to be a lot more trouble than it’s worth because you have to deal with some very specific angles.
After playing with a magnetic toy in the shape of a tetrahedron I realized that it could be inscribed neatly in a cube, with each of its vertexes in a corner of the cube, and each of its edges running along the diagonal of one of the cube’s faces.
In short the coordinates for the vertices of a tetrahedron are:
(+1, +1, +1)
(−1, −1, +1)
(−1, +1, −1)
(+1, −1, −1)
Constructing the Tetrahedron
Create a cube, switch to vertex select mode and rotate the scene so that you can see and select any of its vertices. The image below already has a tetrahedron inscribed in it which should help you locate the new faces you will add. Each vertex of the cube is labeled “A” to “H”:
Select A, D, F. Press [F] to create a face.
Select D, F, G. Press [F] to create a face.
Select A, F, G. Press [F] to create a face.
You now have a tetrahedron inscribed inside the original cube. Let’s cut away the cube:
Select B, C, H & E. Delete these vertices.
You are now left with a tetrahedron:
