While working on the latest research project I have been trying to plan the coming weekend's RenderMan conference and my coming trip to LA. All that while having food poisoning I have been a little too busy to blog -yeah unusual I know!
Anyway stuff happens and a bunch of core members from some of the largest CG/Game/Movie companies will be attending Saturday's event, so I am sure we will get a community going. I even had some interest from the US, so we may have some foreign guests after all.

RSVP：＜info(at)rendersan.org＞　
当日RSVPが、無い場合はご入場出来ませんので、
あらかじめ、ご連絡下さいますよう、宜しくお願い致します。
皆様のご来場を心よりお待ちしております。
※尚、先着順となっておりますので、ご入場出来ない
場合がございますが、その際な何卒ご了承下さいませ。

時間： 6月28日(土) 18:30 - 20:30

住所： 103-0007 東京都中央区日本橋浜町三丁目37番1号 七号室

電話番号： 03-6323-9538

着席：最大 100人

東京メトロ日比谷線人形町駅下車A1番出口　徒歩15分
東京メトロ半蔵門線水天宮前駅下車4番出口　徒歩9分
東京メトロ半蔵門線水天宮前駅下車5番出口　徒歩10分
都営地下鉄新宿線浜町駅下車A2番出口　徒歩5分
都バス「錦11錦糸町駅−築地駅」浜町二丁目下車　徒歩2分

日本のRenderMan®ユーザーコミュニティーの成長を活気づけるための手段として、
新しいコミュニティーのご提案をさせて頂きます。日本RenderMan®コミュニティーでございます。

＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝

■ご提案内容につきまして

日本でRenderMan® standardの知識、また更なる活用をお求めの方、または日本でのRenderMan®使用に興味のある方、ここで言うRenderMan®とはつまり、特別にどのRenderMan®バージョンとというわけではなく以下に記載されている、
AIR, Aqsis, BMRT, Entropy, Gelato, Pixie, PRman, RenderDotC, 3delightや、そしてRenderMan® standardに伴うものを指します。
またRenderMan®に関連するトピックや次に記すその周辺関連開発についてもカバー致します。
（参考例）
C, C++, TCL, Python, Liquid, Renderfarms, GL tricks, DSO's, OS,コンバーター, ハードウェア等...
グループとしてはRenderMan®開発者へ、私たちのニーズを明確化し、業界の活性化と相互的な向上を目指します。

-------------------------------------

■第1回日本RenderMan®ユーザーコミュニティーミーティングの開催につきまして。

第1回目のミーティングは6月28日（土）18:30に開催します。

詳細につきましては下記にご返信ください。
＜info(at)rendersan.org＞
※先着順になりますので、定員を超えた際にはお断りすることもございますので、予めご了承ください。

尚、今回のミーティングでの概要は下記の内容になります。

①グループで参加者が含んでほしい項目のリスト作成
②コミュニティリーダー選出。
③グループミッションの概要。
④そして…私たちのような他のオタク（この分野の）ユーザーとの交流等。

-------------------------------------

■コミュニティーでは今年のSiggraphの際、ロサンゼルスで開かれるスペシャルミーティングについての情報交換を行います。

ミーティングは8月14日（木）13:30です。こちらも詳細につきましては右記にご連絡ください。＜info(at)rendersan.org＞
Siggraphでのミーティングは主に海外での日本のRenderMan®ユーザーそしてRenderMan®を海外でご使用希望の方対象です。また、外国の方でこのコミュニティに興味がある方も参加大歓迎です。もちろん全てのコミュニティメンバーも参加できます。是非ご参加下さい！！

＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
※これは全くの非営利の団体です。現在は私個人の寄付によって運営しています。
全ての企業、団体からの参加、寄付も募集しております。しかしながら開発者/
　プラットホーム(講演関連)/レンダラー中立グループに限らせていただきます。
　本コミュニティにおいて私自身または、自社を宣伝しません。
　このグループはとても重要で参加者全てにおいて公平なる利に成るもと考えております。
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝

尚、新規ウェブサイトは只今バグテスト中で、今後たくさんの変更が予想されますのでご注目ください。また、私はフォーラム/メーリングリストも開設しておりますので、やむを得ない理由において時差的な関係で正規サポートにコンタクトが困難な時や、日本のソフトとの相互性などによる問題などお互いに助け合い、ご協力できましたら幸いでございます。

さらに日本でRenderMan®ユーザーのRenderMan®使用法などを紹介するニュースエリアを開設したいと考えています。またコミュニティで活動をしたい方のためのコード、シェアイメージなどプライベートエリアも新設します。

また、もし翻訳のお手伝い可能な方がいらっしゃいましたら、サイトを出来る限りの多言語にすることによって私たちのコミュニティ外からの方にも、私たちの手懸けたものや影響力を理解頂けると考えております。

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

■登録ご希望、興味のある方は下記までお気軽にご連絡ください。
もちろん登録料は一切かかりません。＜info(at)rendersan.org＞


以上、何卒宜しくお願い申し上げます。

日本RenderMan®ユーザー
バナード　エドリントン

RenderMan is a registered trademark of Pixar

RSVP：＜info(at)rendersan.org＞　
This event is open all, however you must RSVP.
No RSVP means no entry on the day.

Tine: June 28 (Sat) 18:30 - 20:30

Address： Room 7 3-37-1 Hamamacho Nihonbashi Chuo-Ku Tokyo Japan

Phone: 03-6323-9538

Seating: 100 people

View Larger Map

Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line Ningyocho Sta A1 exit　walk 15min
Tokyo Metro Hanzoumon Line Suitengumae Sta Exit 4　walk 9min
Tokyo Metro Hanzoumon Line Suitengumae Sta Exit 5　walk 10min
Toei Shinjuku Line Hamacho Sta A2 exit walk 5min
City bus「11 Kinshicho Station − Tsukiji Station」Hamacho 2chome stop walk 2min

In an effort to stimulate growth in the Japanese Rendeman user community I am proposing a new community.
the RenderMan® community of Japan.

＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝

■The goals I propose are:
To further the use and knowledge of the RenderMan® standard in Japan and for those with an interest of RenderMan® use in Japan.
By RenderMan® I mean the technical specification and not any particular version of RenderMan®, so I mean:
AIR, Aqsis, BMRT, Entropy, Gelato, Pixie, PRman, RenderDotC, 3delight
and pretty much anything that follows the RenderMan® standard. Also covering topics related to RenderMan® and the development around it for it for example:
C, C++, TCL, Python, Liquid, Renderfarms, GL tricks, DSO's, OS, converters, Hardware etc...
As a group our needs will be clearer to vendors of RenderMan®, they gain and we gain.

----------------------------------------------------

■The first meeting will be held on Saturday the 28th of June at 18:30.
For more details please RSVP ＜info(at)rendersan.org＞

This will be an outline meeting the following will take place:
①List of the things you would like covered by this group.
②Vote for the leader(s) of this community.
③Outline our mission.
④And ..... meet other geeky people, like yourself.

----------------------------------------------------

■The second will be a special meeting in Los Angeles at this years Siggraph.

The meeting will be held on Thursday 14 August at 13:30.
Again for more details please RSVP ＜info(at)rendersan.org＞

The Siggraph meeting will be primarily to involve Japanese RenderMan® users who are abroad and those who wish to use RenderMan® abroad. Also foreigners with an interest in this community are welcome to attend. Of course all community members are invited, so please attend!

＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
※This entirely for non profit, currently paid for
by my own donations. Any corporation may attend,
donate etc., however I would like this to be
vendor/platform/Renderer neutral group. I do not
wish to promote my own or any other business in
this community, this is important so we can all
benefit in a fair manner.
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝

The new web site is in bug testing right now, so expect a lot of changes in the coming weeks.

I will also be having a forum/mailing list so we can try to help out each other with problems that are Japanese specific or time critical.
-within reason of course.
I would also like to have a news area showing how people in Japan use RenderMan®. I would also like a private area for those who wish to work on community code, share images etc..

If possible for those who can help translate, I would like to have the site as multilingual as possible, so others from outside our community can understand the power of our work.

You can contact me regarding interest to join - yes its %100 free at
＜info(at)rendersan.org＞

RenderMan is a registered trademark of Pixar

In all my years of working with Japanese, last night I made the most stupid mistake of all.
You see I pride myself on being impeccably on time, unfortunately yesterday I was a little early. Like exactly 1 week!
Recently, as you can probably tell by my blogs I have been fairly busy with meetings.
Some of my clients like to speak sometimes in English, that's fine as it's usually very rare. I almost made a mistake a few times recently with appointments. The mistaken conversation goes something like the person saying "next Wednesday ok?" I reply something referring to next week. Then the response is "no,no I mean the coming next Wednesday, the day after tomorrow".
I mean these are very typical problems I face every day.
So a couple days ago I had an email from Born Digital to have a small meeting. They asked if I could come "next Thursday", in a hurry I agreed and that was that. I assumed his English was incorrect, unfortunately for me his English was perfect.
The moral of the story, double check -always.
So now I have a policy to add clients to my scheduler, it auto mails them with a date and time confirmation.
Oh, how embarrassed I felt!
Anyway, I gave my apologies and a "see you next week" and went out to dinner with Nexus' Shimamura, all was good.

I just got back from sentō(銭湯) filled with the rest of the naked busy people from Shinjuku(新宿区) - that's where my office is.
Currently progressing with the grooming xml grooming files. Relearning some python a la immersion as my only experience was reading a single book about 5 years ago. This is my first real project with the language and so I am a little rusty. I sort of felt I am getting the hang of it.
Great for a messy bugger like me because my code usually looks like the inside of my head - a freakin' mess. You see you have to write pretty in python, else it wont run. Too bad it wont apply the same strict rules on my messy logic.

On Sunday I went mountain hiking in Tanzawa(丹沢). Although 2 hours from my place in Tokyo there are wild rivers, deer and drinkable running spring water. Recently I have been going to the mountains half for relaxation and half for getting my eyes on some nature to help my new project.
I don't know if this was a coincidence but out of 7 people 5 got bitten by leeches, the 2 spared had beer the night before. Mmm.. maybe I have found a new preventative medicine..
On Monday and Tuesday was the usual coding/business planning and a little help for FujiFilm, take a quick nap and so on.
Today its Wednesday and have been doing some research with ViPlus. Hopefully I can get home tonight, as tomorrow may be a very exciting day. Daytime ViPlus night with Born Digital.

It's Friday morning, well close to 3am and I am buggered. Haven't been home since Sunday(again 4th time in a row) so I will take a nap here get my weeks program finished -yes Kondo san I haven't forgotten FujiFilm's security list that is as I promised in the bag.
I have also implemented Pixar's stochastic simplification method in my new research project, so my current schedule is also on time.
I was supposed to go to an Autodesk seminar today but to be honest I NEED a beer and some sleep.
Sorry Autodesk, the (beer) can is calling.

Last night our friend from Sega had a canceled dinner due to a nasty cold so we took out our friends from RTT. Always great to go out with friends.
I love working with old friends, better when we have just a good night out.
Anyway tonight Sega's famous Jun Saito was a little better for health so we showed him what we could, within the limits of our NDA's.
I am sure he understood that our intentions of collecting the best TD guys in Asia was to his best interest. We all went out to dinner chatted geekily etc...
Anyway this guy is one of the best TD's in Japan so he sort of understood my blurb and hopefully we can get some great stuff happening.
After our chat my right hand man Shimamura san and I had a loooong chat. He is no doubt not only my best friend but my largest asset in my business, time with him is well spent.

Luckily during the last month I have had the pleasure to be working in the same research office with Pascal Barla from Inria France. Unfortunately he will be returning to France this week so I had him and OLM's Bill Baxter over my office. Later with the rest of OLM's ViPlus team we went out for the traditional Nexus Korean BBQ. Even though we are on different projects, it is great to be working with such inspiration around. Sayonara Pascal, I hope we can meet again.

When I program in actionscript I have to ba aware of the various updates each version of the plugin has. One new security feature(?) is when accessing an external url new versions of the plugin pop up with a security message:

"flash player has stopped a potentially unsafe operation"

well thats a pain in the @*$% if you have made a bunch of getUrl links in your script.
Anyway here is a workaround:
lets say I want to have 2 links, one to www.foobar.com and one to www.google.com hosted on my site www.lollipop.com I would usually have a line such as

getURL("http://www.foobar.com", _blank

and

getURL("http://www.google.com", _blank)

each referenced to a button.
Unfortunately this no longer is feasible because of the new popup "feature".
local urls are fine ie.

getUrl(/lovers/);

will get the local url and the path /lovers/ like so:
http://www.foobar.com/lovers/
So with a little help from php we call a helper script like so:

getURL("/helper.php?url=foobar");

and

getURL("/helper.php?url=google");

in the root of our php installed web server create the file helper.php:

/************************************************************************/

/* Simple forwading helper to external urls */

/* =========================== */
/* */
/* Copyright(c)2008 Bernard Edlington bernard(at)nexusinternational.jp */
/* http://www.nexusinternational.jp */
/* */
/************************************************************************/

// the following gets the url var passed to php and makes sure its lower case
$urlpass = strtolower($_GET['url']);
if ($urlpass == "foobar"){
header( "Location: http://www.foobar.com" );
exit;
}elseif ($urlpass == "google"){
header( "Location: http://www.google.com/" );
exit;
}else{
// for safety this last line will push all other vars to our web root
header( "Location: /" );
exit;
}
?>

Note similarly we could use javascript, asp, even modRewrite etc.. I just like php. The concept is always the same actionscript -> local url -> external url.
See no need for that silly security "feature" afterall.