I just did my online donations for the South East Asia Crisis. The links I used are "Doctors without Borders" http://www.msf.ca/ and "Canadian Red Cross" http://www.redcross.ca/. I encourage everyone to do what they can. I don't know how to put into words how sorry I feel for everyone who has been impacted by this tragedy. While the immediate needs of food, health and finding loved ones needs to be met, also, I think that this is really going to affect the quality of life of so many over the next decade. Tourism is the top industry of countries like Thailand and employs so many people. These countries do not have the same level of social security that we have in Canada. It will take time to rebuild the infrastructure and businesses, but even once they do rebuild it will take a while for the world to feel safe booking a trip to SEAsia. Maybe we do an anti-boycott, to get as many travellers to visit SEAsia to help rebuild the tourism industry, but of course not right away.
Although this could happen anywhere in the world and was completely unpredictable. Or is it? I know a lot of scientists have been studying earthquakes and volcanos trying to predict when they will occur. Just think of how many lives could have been saved if they had a warning. Maybe this will help to prompt more research into this field.
My heart goes out to everyone grieving for loved ones, and for those who are injured or still searching for missing people.

    Chris and I went to a Maya/Shake seminar last month and I got interested in 3D animation again. We got a learning edition disc at the seminar (also free on their web site) and I installed it and have done a few of the tutorials.
The temple is composed of basic elements: 8-sided cylinder, half spheres, torus, etc...
The hammer began as a simple cube, and then I extracted sides and made modifications according to the tutorials to shape the head.
The egg cup is made by create a curve, and then spinning it to form the shape.
Right now, I am working on the Egg Head, where I take a elongated sphere and push and pull sections to make a face.

    Another book I got for Christmas which I have just started so I can't do a review of it yet, but I love it so far. This book has been called the Harry Potter book for grown ups, but so far there has not been much in common except the existance of magic in England, and there are so many other magical books set in London so I don't think the comparison is valid. Except maybe I will find more links as I keep reading. However, I am still really enjoying the book. I have met Mr. Norrell, but not Jonathon Strange yet. The one problem with reading books that I really like is that I read them too fast and then they are over too soon. The last Harry Potter book I tried to slow down, but still finished it in three days.
I should remember to pre-order the next Harry Potter now that Christmas is over and I can buy stuff for myself again :)
I will review again when I have read more.

    Just got this book for Christmas and I really enjoyed reading it. I have not seen the movie yet, but I hear that the movie includes the first three books. Not a very happy book, as it tells you itself, but I like the kids and how they are good at thinking up solutions to their problems. The book uses big words (well big for kids), but then explains the words so kids can learn. Now I need to decide if I want to get the rest of the books, or just get them from the library, or just watch the movie. I think if I had kids I would want them to read these books, so buying them might be a good idea, but will kids in 5-10 years still be reading paper books?
http://www.thereviewzone.com/unfortunateevents1.html
The book had the new movie dust cover, which I don't like, but luckily it had the original cover underneath.

    Ok, so I finally got around to getting my Asia trip emails posted in my blog. Now I get to pick what to do next on my site. I am still not wild about the colours, but don't want to be too boring either.

Spent most of today working which sucked, but at least I got to work from home. Yummy documentation. We just had dinner. I cooked spagetti, and used all the left over veggies in the fridge. It turned out ok, but I need to buy some spices so I can do more with the next one. 4 cloves of garlic was not enough, need more.

Now Chris is working on our wedding DVD and I am working on my web site. I am loading my CDs into iTunes and my CD player is making really funny noises. Not good.

ttfn
Jen