blendenzo.com

A Dog Named Pete (img) Pete The Dog
At an Old Flour Mill (img) At the Mill
Playing with a Magnetic House (img) Magnetic House
Fancy Micro-brewed Root Beer (img) Fancy RootBeer
Settlers of Catan (img) Settlers of Catan
One of my daughters (img) At the Park
Shaggy Inkcap
(Click for more. 21 images in this gallery)
First Cube Solve (img) First Cube Solve!
Radish Pods (img) Radish Pods
blendenzo Cubed! (img) A new hobby...
Guy at next door warehouse runs stuff over.(AVI 3.2MB)

November 18, 2010

It's been too quiet around here...

Today I decided to live edit the front page of my site just for fun. I've been using HTML5 and CSS-P for every other site I've written in the past two years, and it is starting to annoy me that my personal site (which I have greatly neglected) has a DTD of HTML 4.01 Transitional and is laid out with <table> elements. Please enjoy the broken scenery as I update things.

-blendenzo

May 13, 2007

I would like to welcome my good friend Matthew Chase of Pure Light Studios to the blendenzo.com team. I helped him out with his stage directing class by acting in a short play, and he is returning the favor by helping me execute the planned transitions to a more interactive and community oriented blendenzo.com. The new site is closer to becoming a reality with every passing moment! I hope you all will enjoy it.

-blendenzo

May 2, 2007

Ever get that horrible message "Error reading from drive C:"? It seemed like eternity before I could think straight enough to even respond. I hadn't backed anything up, and now my hard drive was dead. Looking for the silver lining some claim is on every cloud, I thought, Well, if nothing else good comes from this, it certainly is the perfect opportunity to switch from Windows to Linux. But then my Linux Live disk stopped working, which led me on a wild goose chase of switching motherboards (I had more than one of the same board lying around), RAM chips, and anything else I could possibly switch.

When I finally figured out that the disc was bad, I just put together a working system and used one of my other Linux discs. So now I'm running Linux Mint 2.2, upgraded to an Ubuntu 7.04 base, and I'm very pleased with it. Thankfully I was able to recover most of my files from the old hard drive (the motor was still running, I just think the head crashed on the windows directory or something). Best of all, the only program I needed from Windows (HTML-Kit Build 292, the handy web authoring tool I use to bring you this page) runs almost flawlessly with Wine (Windows for Linux).

All this to say: All of my updates and projects have been set back considerably, and acclimating to Linux has taken a few days. I'm resuming most of my projects now, so expect good things to come. As an added bonus, I will be looking for solutions to all of the "Windows only" Blender Game Engine issues. (Hopefully Wine will be able to handle most of them.)

-blendenzo

Just think what would happen if we did not have a set of rules. People might start putting Qs or Rs on the board. It would be pandemonium.
- Ryan Aycock, How to Win at Tic-Tac-Toe , p 4.

March 20, 2007

Quick update: A couple of tutorials have been added since the last update. Also, I finally took the time to learn how to set a custom address bar icon for my site. Seems that it only works in worthwhile browsers like Firefox. IE is blissfully ignorant of it. Plans are underway to update the site to a blog type format to allow for easier updating and community interaction (i.e. you'll be able to comment on articles and tutorials). Since this will take a considerable amount of effort, some other planned updates will be on hold temporarily.

-blendenzo

February 21, 2007

Sokoban Project 1 2 3 4 5

So it's been a while since I've posted any news, but a lot has been happening around here. The Tutorials section is really filling up with useful Game Engine knowledge, and there's so much more that I could add if I had the time. Clean3D just let me know that my Custom Cursors tutorial with script was featured on Blender Nation. Speaking of Clean3D, he and I have been working together for a few months now, and we're finally ready to show some of the progress we've made on our 3D Sokoban clone. Check out the screenshots to the right. Sorry I haven't gotten up all of the tutorials I've promised. I'm working on it as I have time, but life is busy, as I'm sure you all know. Hopefully there will be Scripts and Demos sections in Downloads soon...

-blendenzo

September 28, 2006

Custom Display Menu

Well, there's a lot going on. I've been working on centralizing my projects and priorities. Hopefully I'll finish the Hunt the Wumpus game soon. In the meantime, I've been working on more tutorials (I appreciate all of the encouragement I've been getting in that area, and I'm glad I've been able to help so many of you), and I've put together a couple of demos of some more advanced features of the BGE. I wasn't sure exactly where to put them on the page, so for the time being they're in Games. The first one is a "Custom Display Menu" demonstrating the use of Python to output commandline files, then execute them. Also, I'm almost ready to upload the second, which is an "Arcade Loader," showing how to run non-Blender programs from an in-game menu. Tutorials soon to come: "Programming Double-Click Response with Python" by me, "Full audio support with FMOD" also by me, and a guest tutorial by Social about pre-game planning (good stuff). I should be finishing up "How do I publish my game?" in the FAQ soon, too. I only have the "Tips and Tricks" section left to do.

-blendenzo

September 6, 2006

Hunt the Wumpus (in development)

Where should I begin? The Tutorials section is up (finally) and on its way to being well populated. I've also added a Games section with two games, one to download and one to play online. I hope you enjoy the random pictures of my life in the sidebar. There have been innumerable other layout changes, and a few color scheme changes are set to come (especially the link colors--they're disgusting in IE). More tutorials and games on the way to be sure, hopefully more Blender Library content as well. (I've been putting that off, haven't I?) Too much to do and not enough time...

-blendenzo

August 3, 2006

There have been a few unannounced changes over the last two months, but nothing major. I'm currently working on a large update, especially the addition of a tutorials section. Should be ready within the next few days.

June 8, 2006

I'm adding a few more items to the Blender Library downloads.

A solitare board by The Ness.
"Green Glass" from the Blender Texture CD.

May 31, 2006

Well, the problem with the images is fixed, thanks to the very quick tech support of my web host. No major additions for now. I'm working on posting the Battle Balls game (in Games) using the Blender Plugin. For now the link is inactive. Minor appearance updates to site.

-blendenzo

Hey all,

I'm doing a lot of work right now in my limited free time to get this site going and post more Blender Library files at the same time. More is coming in the Victorian Era reproductions series by The Ness. Also, I'm working on more of the materials and textures from NaN off the Blender Texture CD. I'm posting my first world file with this update. It's what I used for the background on the site banner. Enjoy!

-blendenzo