I gave myself an early birthday present today - Rayman Origins!!! I love that game, hihi!

Since it’s the first of advent today, what else should you eat but saffron cake and drink a hot cup of mulled wine?

I know I said that this wouldn’t be a blog with girly stuff lite clothes and such, but when I see this I can’t help myself… Santa, I know what I want for xmas!

I just got the result back on my first paper in the SFX course - grade 5/5, thank you!

In the paper I concentrate on a specific method for artistic design and simulation of complex material behavior. The focus lies on the theory behind the method but not so much on the mathematical part, which will be referred to instead. The second part of the paper will be a short and casual overview of a second method which is an approach to numerical coarsening of linear elastic objects to allow for interactive and realistic physical animation of complex deformable objects.

If you are interested you can read the report here.

Once again its time for another lecture by Andrew Gardner. This time he’ll talk about “Production programming - Practical methods and philosophies of extensible software”.

He warned us that it’d be a lot of talk, talk, talk and no pictures at all this time… We’ll see if I manage to stay awake :P

This morning I attended a lecture held by Andrew Gardner. He was talking about “Mixing the old with the new (focus on Image Based Lighting)”.

Andrew Gardner, Senior Software Engineer at Tippett Studios

Andrew Gardner is a Senior Software Engineer at Tippett Studios, where he is responsible for the design, implementation, and maintenance of large scale studio tools. He recieved his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin with a focus on retargeting motion capture data, moved to the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies to develop novel image-based lighting and facial animation techniques, and later found himself at Tweak Films as a Senior Technical Director working on specialized shots in films such as “Superman” and “Spiderman 3.” His most recent work involves the practical implementation of fur, making image based lighting work for traditional lighters, development of the in-house matchmove camera solver, and the creation of an efficient visual effects pipeline to tie it all together.

This morning I attended a lecture held by Magnus Wrenninge. He was talking about “Fluid simulation for visual effects and Volume rendering for visual effects”.

Magnus Wrenninge, Senior Technical Director at Sony Pictures Imageworks

Magnus Wrenninge is a Senior Technical Director at Sony Pictures Imageworks. He started his career in computer graphics as an R&D engineer at Digital Domain where he worked on fluid simulation and terrain rendering software. He is the original author of Imageworks’ proprietary volumetrics system Svea and the open source Field3D library, and is also involved with fluid simulation R&D. He has worked as an Effects TD on films such as Spiderman 3, Alice In Wonderland and Green Lantern, and is currently Lead Technical Director on Oz, The Great and Powerful. He holds an M.Sc. in Media Technology from Linköping University.

This afternoon I attended a lecture held by Fredrik Limsäter. He was talking about “The history of SFX and Overview of the modern VFX pipeline”. Very interesting I must say

Fredrik Limsäter, Fido Film AB, Stockholm

Fredrik Limsäter is co-owner and CTO at Fido in Stockholm. Fido is the largest and fastest growing VFX facility in Scandinavia with currently 40 artists employed. Recent work includes The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Kick-Ass among others. Before he joined Fido he worked as Senior Technical Director at Sony Pictures Imageworks on movies like I Am Legend, Surf’s Up, Hancock and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. His experience also includes Research & Development, at Cinesite in London he developed proprietary 3D software and tools for V for Vendetta, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Hitchhikers Guide for the Galaxy and King Arthur among others. Fredrik holds a M.Sc. degree in Media Technology from Linköpings Universitet.

I’m happy to announce that drinkmixen.com is finally online! I hope you guys will enjoy using it as much as I enjoyed making it

Unfortunately the page is in Swedish, but I guess most on the liqueurs are the same in English so you should be able to at least make a nice drink or two If the idea turns out to be somewhat of a hit, I’ll think about converting it to English, but that’s in the future as for now.

Well, since I’m about to release drinkmixen.com this week, I really needed header that represented what drinkmixen is all about - sharing drinks, games, tips, etc while having fun I don’t know if I achieved that, but it’s colorful at least, and fluffy! I guess this header is just a temporary one and I hope to get some pro help when making a new and cooler one

I’ve spent a few hours in Photoshop today, playing around trying to learn something… At first I was planning on doing a header to drinkmixen.com, but for some reason I got carried away ^^ As you can see, it’s definitely not a header, I made a pretty neat background instead :P

Since my brother moved to Kyoto, Japan yesterday I ended up with a whole lot of games to our PS3! Uhhh, nice huh ;) Now I know what I’ll be doing when the rain is pouring down outside the window…

It’s been a while since I wrote something here and the reason for that is that I’ve changed design and rebuilt my other homepage - my blog nat0.se.

Some of the links might not work as they should, but I don’t have the time to edit each post by hand when there’s about 900 of them ^^ And compared to the old design, I’m now using disqus for comments there as well.

This time I’ve used CakePHP instead of Ruby on Rails, mostly since it’s more convenient when choosing web host. Knowing a little bit more about another framework couldn’t hurt either, right?

I hope you like the new design, which is a lot sleeker, and that you’ll stay tuned both here and there

One step closer to a working community, a new pair of shoes, a broken objective (f*ck) and CSDM… I guess that’ll sum up my sunday ^^

Iiik, it’s finally rollin’… Now it’s just a few more weeks of testing and then we can blow out the candles on the release cake

Today was the first day back at school on my final year. I can’t believe that it’s already been 4 years since I moved here… It feels like it was yesterday that I lived in a restoration project and did my math assignments while using my camp bed as a chair ^^

Anyway, it was the first lecture in the course “Advanced Techniques for Computer Games” today and I think this is going to be really exciting The annoying part though is that the course is held in Linköping which means that I’ll earn myself 6 hp in buss traveling this autumn… The lecture ended with a small questionnaire where, instead of using a normal paper and pen, we got to use a mentometer!

Since I’ve been working the past month and also been studying for an exam, there hasn’t been any time really to develop drinkmixen at all. But, the past two days I’ve actually spent all my time on finishing and/or improving different features on the site. God, I’m sooo near a pre release but it seems like it’s impossible to actually get there ^^ There’s always something to change or improve.

Today I’ve finished the advanced search system as well as the news system and I think it’s pretty user friendly

The past few days have been all about studying (when I havn’t been working ofc). I’ll be writing the exam in the course “Image Processing and Analysis” next week. Because of that I’ve put together a survival kit ^^ One document is a summary of the course, the second document is a summary of alot of frequently asked questions on the exams, and the third contains answers to every single asked question ^^

Oh my… I’m seeing squares!

I’ve been spending a few evenings on developing a feedback system for drinkmixen. This is mostly because the user should be aware of what´s going on with a new ingredient/drink etc. he/she has created.

By using a feedback system I can control the content on the community… I know there won’t be any inappropriate texts, ingredients etc circling. Another reason to have a feedback system is to make it easier on the administrators to maintain a pleasant attitude at the community. Just imagine having 20 different incoming objects that are waiting to be approved and then have to send a PM to each user with a message… I know that I would get so sick and tired of approving whatever has to be approved if I had to write a new message each time and then keep track of what messages has been sent or not. No, a feedback system is the answer to this problem…

I actually think this system will work. For administrators it’s quite easy to use, it’s just a few standard alternatives using check boxes and also a free text area to write a comment about what ever might be a problem (if you feel the need to). As an user you’ll notice the change as soon as something you’ve created has got feedback and the status will change for that particular object. When correcting the information, an administrator has to go through the object information again and either approve of it or resend feedback back to the user… And this is how it goes until an object is approved.

The idea is pretty simple but necessary in this case and I don’t see the point in making it any harder than it has to be

I'm home alone this weekend and this is my idea of a great friday night - candles, candy and Rayman @ PS3!

God, I’m just like a child… and I think I’ll never grow up either, not like I want to anyway :P

I just downloaded Rayman (the original from 1995) to PS3 and I’m totally sold - again ^^ I loved the game back then, I loved it when I relapsed a few years ago as well as last year and I still adore it! It’s the cutest game ever (apart from Little Big Planet). I might just hope for rain so that I have a valid reason to spend all my time in front of the PS3 ^^

Btw, can anybody guess what I’ll get myself for x-mas?

If Playstation Network can’t keep passwords a secret, how could I?

When developing drinkmixen.com I decided not to create my own login system where I had to store sensitive information such as passwords. I don’t want to be held responsible if anything happens and this is the main reason for choosing OpenID/OAuth through Omniauth as login provider. This also makes it easier for the user since he/she only has to choose a provider and (tadaa!) they’ve logged in.

For those who doesn’t know what Omniauth is, it’s an easy way to add many different authentication services to your Rails app. By using Omniauth I don’t need to store any passwords and I don’t have to create my own login system. Instead, the login is handled by software written by security experts at well known websites (I have a feeling they know way better than I).

Another thing that more websites should use is HTTPS instead of HTTP. Why? Well, it’s because HTTPS is a combination of HTTP with SSL/TLS protocol to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of a network server. HTTPS are often used when it comes to payment transaction over the internet, but also for sensitive transaction in corporate information systems.

HTTP session hijacking (sometimes called “sidejacking”) is when an attacker gets a hold of a user’s cookie, allowing them to do anything the user can do on a particular website. These attacks are extremely easy to achieve over an open wireless network since cookies are basically shouted through the air. So, if you do choose to use and make your own login system, use HTTPS!

Maybe Facebook should have thought about that before their embarrassing mistake with Firefox users downloading the Firesheep plugin. The Firesheep plugin was (is?) a Firefox extension that demonstrates HTTP session hijacking attacks…

On the other hand, it doesn’t matter how secure an app is when there are morons like these guys out there ^^

I must admit that I’m a huge fan of Big Bang Theory! I just love Sheldon… my god, he’s the best ever!

Unfortunately I only have two episodes left out of four seasons :( Makes me kinda sad tbh ^^ But, I know how to entertain myself until they release the fifth season this fall… hihi!

Last month Telia Sonera upgraded their logo which has purple as its signature color. What Telia Sonera was looking for was that the new signature should be modern, warm and lively.

However, I know another thing that is modern, warm and more than lively - the sex toy from Philips, their “Relationship care”… I wonder what Telia had in mind for real :P

Welcome to my new homepage! This homepage, compared to the other one I have, is more of a professional homepage rather than just a cute little blog.

nathalieek.com has a portfoilo (which is the main reason for this website) but also a blog. This blog, however, won’t contain girly stuff like makeup and clothes… No, this one will contain more technical stuff like nerdy jokes, code snippets etc.

If the latter sounds dead boring, just drop by my far more girly site ;)