3D Pixel Shaders

WOAH! That does not look very "shady"to me!

There is a fun game you can play with 3D programmers. It is called "How many seconds until they start talking about Pixel Shaders?" The answer is always a VERY small number :-) It turns out that Pixel Shaders are just as important as your 3D Model or the pretty texture you glue on on it. So what is a Pixel Shader you ask? (Unless you are a 3D super genious, in which case you should totally be explaining this.) The term Shader originated from the company Pixar (Makers of the movie Toy Story.) The name is a bit deceptive, because a Pixel Shader is not actually something you can look at. It is actually just a bunch of code!  It is code that is sent directly to your video card and tells your video card to do special things on different parts of 3D objects. Maybe they should have called it "crazy detailed 3D special FX code." Minimal wrote several shaders which made our forest look like.... this! (compare to how it looked a few posts ago -- the one with the X on it. Just sorta, peak around the X) Now, if we can just get this new version to stop crashing when you minimize FireFox.

A special "thank you" to everyone who made my arms stop working

I have been catching a lot of heat from Galanoth & Zhoom about sneaking onto Twitter/Facebook using my iPhone at the gym. So last night when they caught me checking my @messages they said I had to do 5 more reps. No problem! So then Galanoth said "No. You need to do 5 more reps for EVERY message you receive since the last time you checked." So, I told everyone on Twitter thinking it was funny... but I did not expect EVERYONE to send MULTIPLE MESSAGES BACK! Hundreds. When I finally got home last night, very late... my arms were so sore that I had to open the front door with my teeth.

P.S. OMG MAIL DELIVERY! The final Artix & Sepulchure collectors action figures just arrived here... *goes to open*