Animation Mentor Student Showcase – Fall 2007

Simply awesome and inspiring!

Animation Mentor is an online animation school. How convenient is that? The instructors in this school are professional animators who work for big time animation studios such as Pixar Animation and Disney Animation. What better way to learn animation than to have those guys as your mentor!

One treat about this showcase reel: one of the students is Filipino. Wait for the sixth demo reel to catch the work of Magnus Vladimir Yu from Manila, Philippines. Mabuhay ka, Magnus!

I hope to someday find the time to enroll myself in this school. For now, just drink in all that animation goodness!

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My Amazon Adventure!

No, I have not been to the Amazon.

But I have shopped at the online store.

Sigh, the joy of online shopping. I’ve been wondering how to shop online and have always wanted to do so. Most of the things that I wanted to buy were only available through internet purchasing. In order to be able to buy online, one needs a credit card. I don’t have one when I was still in the Philippines.

Now that I am in Canada, I was able to get a credit card. I can now shop online!

(One curious thing here in Canada: it is easy to get a credit card. In fact, you do not exist if you don’t have one! You need one so that you can establish a credit history, otherwise you will not be able to get a loan to buy a car or a house. This is my personal opinion; the views of others may vary.)

My very first online purchase using my credit card was a Gundam model kit. I was so excited to have the item shipped to me as early as possible that I chose the expedited shipping option. The shipping cost almost ended up as much as the cost of the item being shipped!

I have since bought several more toys online (and I am wiser now choosing my shipping options). I even bought my wife’s iPods from Apple’s Online Store, just to experience Apple’s shipping service (they ship via FedEx).

Here is a list of the online stores that I have shopped with:

Modeledom (Gundam kits)
Digital Tutors (3D Training DVDs)
Lego Store
BigBadToyStore.com (Revoltechs)
Apple Store
Amazon.com

Which leads me to my Amazon shopping adventure.

It was an order for a Macross DVD Box Set. I’ve been scouring the web for one. It was available in other stores, but I chose to go with Amazon.com because, well, they are Amazon.com.

My first order arrived without a hitch, though I must say their tracking method is not to my liking (it does not say what time the package is expected to arrive so one is left guessing and is forced to wait the whole day for that doorbell to ring).

My second order was more interesting. I was not fully satisfied with the Macross version that I just got, so I decided to order a different version. I placed another order through Amazon.com and waited for my package to ship. When the package arrived and I opened it, it had the wrong item inside.

Well, well, well, so they do mix it up during shipping. I’ve read about shoppers getting the wrong item during shipping, but I never thought I would be in that situation at my very next purchase!

And so I went through Amazon’s Help Center to report my case. I became anxious at the start because I am being told to re-pack the item and send it back. Send it back? That I understand, but to be told that I needed to pay the shipping cost for the return (no matter if they say I will be refunded later) set off alarm bells in my head.

Not satisfied with the online process of resolving my dilemma, I decided to place a phone call instead so I can speak to a real person. The customer service agent and I quickly resolved my order. She reported my case and ordered a replacement for the item so that it can be shipped right away (I had an expedited shipping order in the first place anyway). I asked her how I can return the wrong item and she said that once the replacement item arrives, I can give the wrong package back to the delivery person and that I will not be charged for the shipping cost for that.

Oddly enough, the person at the other end of the phone call was Filipino! A call center from the Philippines took and handled my call. I had a slight hunch that she was Filipino but decided to talk to her in English as we proceeded to resolve my case. It was only when we got it all settled that I asked her if she was indeed Filipino. When she said yes, I proceeded to thank her in Tagalog, much to her surprise!

Later that day, I received an email telling me that I can keep the item and that the replacement has been shipped to me right away. Cool!

And so my Amazon adventure story ends. Not much of an adventure, is it? Well, it is sort of a prologue to my next post, which is a comparison of that two DVD box sets that I ordered. Stay tuned!

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RIP 12″ Powerbook

Today marks the day of the sad news that my 12″ Powerbook has died.

I gave it to my Mom several months ago so she can use it to video chat with us while she is working in Taiwan.

According to my Mom, the video card failed. That means the motherboard of the laptop is gone too.

We go a long way, my Powerbook and I. I bought it when I was still working for Top Draw in the Philippines sometime April of 2005.

When I moved to Canada, I used the Powerbook as my workstation by connecting it to an LCD monitor. I was able to complete a full season of posing work for Being Ian using that Powerbook.

My Mom now has to go without a computer for several more days before she finally comes back home to the Philippines. Hopefully, I would be able to save enough cash so she can purchase a replacement.

Adios, Powerbook. You’ve been a very reliable partner.

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Tagged by Gerry!

I’ve been tagged by my college classmate Gerry Alanguilan to share a screenshot of my current desktop.

The rules goes like this:

1. Upon receiving this tag, immediately perform a screen capture of your desktop. It is best that no icons be deleted before the screen capture so as to add to the element of fun.

2. Post the picture in your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop just below it if you want. You can explain why you preferred such look or why is it full of Icons, things like that.

3. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktop as well.

So here are the screenshots of my desktops.

This is from my Mac. I keep it pretty clean. I use a simple wallpaper to avoid screenburn since I keep my iMac turned on almost 24/7:

And this is from my PC. The wallpaper I use for this is a screen grab of my Mac desktop from months ago:

I am sure that there are more effective ways to make a PC desktop look and behave like it was a Mac. Mine is a very pathetic attempt!

Now that I need to tag 5 more people, I am in a quandry. As you can see from my blogroll, I only have Gerry and a certain Pascal Campion on my list. Pascal is a member of a forum that I regularly visit. He is a very talented artist. I don’t know him personally, but I visit his blog regularly. You can find it here:

Pascal Campion

I am not even sure if he visits my blog. But I am tagging him. And anyone else who happens to visit this blog. Feel free to add a comment to say hi so I can put a link back to you and your desktop screenshot! I would love to add some more of you on my blogroll.

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When Gremlins Make Precious Equipment Go Bad.

Yesterday afternoon, my regular Windows running PC workstation started having fits. Flash 8 suddenly started crashing. The same thing started happening with Windows Media Player, which I use regularly to preview my animation.

Right then and there I started to make back-ups of my current work. This is not the first time these fits happened. The last time this thing reared it’s ugly head, I had to bring my PC to the shop and have the technicians fix it for me. That resulted in a one-day downtime to my work, which is something I cannot afford to happen to me!

That last incident led me to purchase my first desktop Mac, a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 20″ screen and 1 GB of RAM (I just love mouthing off those specs). The purpose was primarily for back up in case my regular PC broke down again.

Now, here’s the beauty of getting a Mac: when I bought it and brought it home, I was up and running in no more than 10 minutes! Had I bought another Windows machine, I had to do a lot of stuff first before I can even get it working, stuff like running Windows update, installing anti-virus software for protection, and all the other things associated with a Windows Operating System. With the Mac, it’s ready right out of the box. So sweet!

Luckily, yesterday’s incident was not so catastrophic. The gremlins that played around with my PC apparently have left her alone for the moment. But unlike the last time when I was totally freaked out, I am more able to deal with the mini-crisis now because I know I have a reliable back-up machine in my iMac.

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