This morning, I remembered that when I bought this new used Snow leopard desktop Mac, that a Bluetooth wireless mouse had come with it…At the time, I couldn’t get it to work, so used the wired one they gave me instead, thinking batteries were a headache…Anyways, I wondered if that mouse was a 3 button like I needed for Blender…Lo & behold I found the mouse, it was a 3 button mouse, & though on first try I couldn’t get it to work, I found some rechargeable AA batteries, put in fresh, then found a hint in a forum that said to pair your Bluetooth mouse you have to press a button on the bottom of it…Gee…Thought I couldn’t do it, started to feel unhappy again, by accident hit the scrollwheel on the mouse, & wow the screen moved…Ok so it did pair…Must learn to try harder & be more persistent with things…So, NOW I HAVE A PERFECTLY GOOD 3 BUTTON MOUSE TO USE FOR BLENDER!!! (Yay…)(That is CRUCIAL)…(Blender is free 3d animation software…But wow is it challenging to learn…)

Funny note: While trying to find this mouse, I actually went to my computer to do a search for bluetooth mouse in my condo…Then I stopped myself…My computer cannot tell me where things are…Hmm…I am really spending alot of time here…(Thank goodness I had put the mouse in a somewhat logical place-found it on my second pass…)

http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/2010-blender-training-series-intro-character-modeling/#header Ok, so today I spent most of it working through the first video in this series, Intro to Character modeling…I decided to take pictures of my Dragonfly sculpture to use as my character pictures…I was ABLE to do this tutorial…Much encouraged…But lo & behold, I discovered in the next video that I was stuck…Turns out I got stuck because I am using the newest version of Blender 2.66a & the tutorial was made in 2010, so the buttons are not in exactly the same place, which, believe me, can really hurt…So, after discovering that discrepancy, I resolved only to watch tutorials that use the 2.66a version, just to avoid heartache of not being able to find a button…Once again, had thoughts of trying an easier program…Despair seems to be a common feeling…Read a forum comment of someone else feeling sadness when they could not locate a button or do something…Feel better than I am not alone in my emotions…

(I took several images of the Dragonfly sculpture to use for the tutorial as my character reference…Funny thing, in Blender they call the right side when you turn to the right, but really what you see when you turn to the right is the left side of your body…So when Blender says “Right Side” you see the left side of the Dragonfly…I think the developer meant “turn the image to the right”, not right side, as they call it…Anyways, this made me feel very dyslexic…I was not able to do anything more with the Dragonfly as I abandoned at video 2 of the series…Their version was an older version & I got stuck…Oh well…

I consoled myself by going to Youtube & searching my exact version of Blender 2.66a & watching a guy in Portuguese tell me how to make hair…But the keys were in English so it was fine to follow along…Joseph seemed impressed that I could understand Portuguese…(which I cannot really, but I have a good ear for languages so I kindof catch the drift without really knowing exactly what is being said…)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6nxQeOnWiA This is a cool how to do hair video, I think it is Portuguese, but it doesn’t matter, you can just follow the screen to see what to do…Not as hard as some things I have tried & very cool looking hair…(while watching this I decided I must make my own hair glossier…Not green though…But maybe grow it in a bit…A fro maybe?) 🙂

Aside: Today Payd sent me a free card reader, credit card swiper to go with their free account I applied for to be able to take credit cards with my iPhone…That was neat…Though it cannot take chip cards, which I am guessing is most, so I will probably for now skip the swiper & just input credit card numbers in manually…I figure it will look bad if I try to swipe & it fails, so I will just type numbers in all the time until they invent a reader that takes chip cards too…I’m still thrilled…My iPhone is a 3GS & most apps don’t work on it but Payd one does…I also now have a way to take credit cards at point of sale which I didn’t have before…This is a huge step forward for Canadians…I say Canadians because the rest of the world already had card reader & free systems available for taking credit cards, but Canada, as always, is last…Not that I mind being last…By the time things get here they actually work…Drugs have been tested…Dangerous things have been filtered out…Last is not a bad place to be…If you are a Canadian artist & want to apply for Payd, they are handled by Moneris…So Google those two words, Payd & Moneris…