CG and more CG (Computer Graphics and Chasing Gators)

Hi All,

Last week I got to attend the siggraph conference in New Orleans and listen a lot of cool papers about how they made different cool movies like Up, Coraline, Transformers and GI-Joe (even the presenters joked about this flick). There were some wacky and totally useless research applications that people were working on like a Virtual Reality tactile feedback frying pan simulation and a taste interface game controller. Who cares how Halo or Super Mario Cart tastes!

During the week of the conference, after one days sessions, I wandered the french quarter and got to see some of the raunchier and less family friendly parts. Here's one interesting spot where they kept the front of the building but got rid of the rest. I don't know if this was post Katrina clean up or just I need some place to park my Mercedes.



This statue is in front of the conference center and was made out of random Katrina debris and dedicated to those who did or didn't survive it.



The Mighty Mississippi ran right behind the conference center. Here is a tourist paddle wheeler and a lovely sludge fountain they were spraying into the river. After about 5 minutes of black water it would cycle to white and then back to brown and lovely black.



After the conference was over my cousin Emily picked me up with her kids Huntie, Michael, and Elle and showed me the more family friendly spots in New Orleans.



We went to a market where i got stuff for Miki and the kids and a nappy hat for me. Do you think that it was sending the wrong message to get my boys voodoo dolls and mardi gras beads? The first thing that Caden said was: "Hmmm, who should I voodoo? I think I'll stab Robert in the arm and see if he likes it." Maybe so.


Emily took me to Drago's to get oysters on the half shell. The first thought of it seemed horrible but once I figured out that it was a local thing I thought that I'd give it a try.



Michael here shucked open a big one and handed it to me. It ended up tasting a little salty and well of course chewy. I can honestly say that it was the best less than 10 second's dead thing that I've ever eaten. We had roasted ones after that. I should have tipped Michael more I'm such a retard when it comes to that stuff.




Saturday morning Emily's husband Kevin took me on a swamp tour. This is Lawrence our illustrious tour guide with one of his little buddies.



Here's a typical swamp shot and one of me and Kevin. Kevin got me the best seat in the house (pontoon boat) for gator snapping excitement.




Here's a little one to get things warmed up. He's about 6 feet long just a baby. They said that all the ones we saw were males because the females were on their nests this time of year.



Here comes "crazy Jack" he's about 12 feet long. He was kinda jumpy because he knows he's close to the top of the food chain but not quite at the top yet.





A little video of Jack in action. I still have all my fingers and toes thankfully.

Swamp Tour Excitement from Rob Allen on Vimeo.

Now he's my little buddy too.




Thanks for viewing. Leave a comment so I can know you were here. Rob-

Low Key

A couple weeks ago I was up in Evanston WY for a kayak race. I got last place out of about 30 in the time trial. I think that my time was about 4:37 and the winning time was like 4:03 or something. I got turned around in a couple eddies and that killed my time. In the boater cross I got 3rd place out of 5 in my heat. I had a better line in that one, stayed away from the big eddy that time. Here's a link to a description of the race venue at the Evanston Playpark. It was a good time except for the big thunder storm between races.

After the race I shuttled my car back down to the put in and went back to try to surf a couple of the waves by the finish line. Got all my gear on and got back in the river for a few side surfs and such. Flipped 3 or so times. When I got out my key wasn't where I normally where I clip it in to my life jacket. I checked everywhere. I think I must have set it on my boat when I was putting my gear on and forgot about it while I was getting in water. Being upside down guaranteed the keys a special place in river bed.

Miki and Trent drove up there to rescue me. That was nice of them. I felt pretty stupid.

Hen-Tag Humblification

Hey All,

Last Wed. the 13th I got off work early and drove up to Heneffer to get my first run on the Weber this year. Jeff Bill Clay Buzz Dan and me met up about 5ish. I'd run this about 4 or 5 times before and the flow was an average 500 cfs.

On the first drop into the Rock Garden I thought that I had a good line on the right but I musta been too far right cause I hit a rock and flipped. I was pretty close to the side and when I tried to roll the first couple of times I was pushing up against rocks. I got a breath but was upside down again and thunking my helmet and arms and shoulders on rocks as I flushed down stream. Eventually, I remember having one hand on my paddle and sticking it up out of the water. When my helmet and other arm hit another rock I pushed off of them and flipped back up. I got both hands on the paddle and found the fist eddy. Both my hands were numb and my shoulder and neck were sore. After catching my breath I pealed out and headed down the rock garden. I flipped again but rolled back up with out incident and even flipped going into an eddy. I haven't done that for a long time. Bill kept trying to figure out what was wrong with my boat. I think that it is just a problem with what's in the seat.

Here is a video that Jeff shot of the last drop on the run. I was all settled down and back to normal by then. (orange boat and jacket)

Taggart Falls from Jeff Young on Vimeo.

kayak rolling - FAIL!

Well, welcome to another installment in the mediocre adventures of Rob. Last Tuesday I took Caden up to one of the few remaining kayak pool practice sessions of the Utah Whitewater Club. I was messing around and working on my off side roll which is coming along good enough to work about half the time. Caden was excited to come but he is still not ready to tip over and do a wet exit to get out of an upside down kayak, which is fine. There is no reason to push him to do something he's not ready to do. He spent most of the session just swimming around in the pool not even in a boat. As the session was winding down Jeff Young aka "smurfwarrior" asked if he could shoot a video of me rolling with his new waterproof fuji camera. He put on a mask and jumped in the water. He said that he would drop under the water and start filming and then I could flip over and roll back up. Sounded simple enough. I'd roll on my on side and I was in a long boat that was easy to roll, no problem. So Jeff went under, I flipped over and set up and proceded to miss three or four attemps before I got back up. Jeff told me that I wasn't tucked up enough so we tried it again and it still took three or four time to get back up. By this point I was feeling pretty stupid after some more advice, I tried it some more. Eventually I did one on the first try, which is the way it should happen every time. So bassically if I'm upside down in the river turn off all cameras otherwise it might take me a bit of work to get back up.

Here's the video that Jeff shot. Feel free to laugh at all the failed attempts.





A few weeks earlier a bunch of us went paddling on the Spanish Fork River. I flipped over a couple of times and rolled right back up with no problem. Jeff must have had his camera off at the time Guess. Here are a couple of videos that Jeff made from that trip.




Seal launching set up and execution.




Here's Jeff's video from the Spanish Fork Trip. I'm in there once or twice (red boat, blue paddle). He must have known to not turn the camera on when I might have tipped over.


Take out craziness.

Nice Ice for sale. 10¢ a pale.

Not sure why that little Dr. Suess line popped into my head as I started to write this blog post but it is about ice mostly. Gotta love the Doctor. I miss reading his nutty stuff to my kids.

Any way, Saturday was a busy one for me. Grant had a b-ball game at 9:00. I had one at 10:00. The team we played had 3 guys all bigger than me. Their center was about 6'7" and at least 50 pounds heavier than me. It was my job to take him and plug up the middle. I had two fouls in the first few minutes and it wasn't looking like I was going make it through the first half much less the whole game. Their center must have scored between 20 -30 points on me but I felt like I did a decent job defending him 'cause I was on him tight every time and got him to miss more than half the time. I got maybe 12 points and didn't get called for my 5th foul and we pulled out the win. The point of all this is that I was pretty tired/beat but the fun of the day hadn't really started yet.

At noon I met up with Austin Mills to do some ice climbing on the stairway to heaven in Provo Canyon. All of these pictures are taken and owned by Austin Mills. Thanks for the trip and the pics Austin. Here's a shot of the trail up to the ice where we were climbing. Bridal Veil Falls is on the far left. The top of the stairway is on the middle right. We were one the first terrace which you can't quite see in this shot.


After huffin' my way up the trail I met up with Austin and crew. They had all gone up a couple of times so it was my turn to strap on the axes. That's Austin on belay.



This musta' been my second time up this wall because Austin's dad Howard is belaying me and Austin is half way up the taller wall.

Yeah I made it to the top. By this point is was starting to drizzle and there was a bit of water dripping down the ice.

After the second time on this route, I got on the next one down and picked my way to the top of that one. Fun times.

New Year's Freezalutions

Hey both of you who see this blog. What up? It's been a long time since the last post so here goes.

For a long time the local paddlers around here have had a New Years Day tradition of getting together and going on a "start the year off right by paddling a local river" run. This year we ran the mighty Jordan river from 126th to 106th or something like that. It was the only thing that had enough water to paddle and in a few spots it was a lot of scraping through gravel. Most of these picture were taken by Ken Driscol proprietor of Peak UK store and website. Their gear is great. Thanks Ken!

Here we all are at the put in. Someone said that all of the graffiti cross outs mean dead gangsters. That's a lot of drive by's. I didn't even notice the graffiti when I was there I was just thinking about getting on the river.


I think that there were 20 or more of us crazies that showed up for the fun. I'm hanging around the put in waiting for everyone else to put on.


Paddling up stream for a ways.


Me Chris and Johnnie about half way through the run. By this time my fingers were numb despite my gloves. After a few times of pulling my fingers back into the palms of my gloves and paddling more I got the blood flowing and they warmed back up.


Here's me sliding over the beaver dam. This is about the only drop on the whole run. There was a lot of random stuff that the beavers used to build this up. One chunk looked like it was the railing off of someone's deck. I bet that someone was pretty ticked to wake up and find half there deck gone and nothing but gnaw marks left behind.


Those last couple of shots are by Craig Waddell, notorious Utah kayaker. Well as far a resolutions go I want to paddle more with my family this year. I bought an inflatable 2 person kayak so my wife and kids can come along on trips to the Green river and such. Trent should be ready to get his roll after some fun hard shell runs last year. All in all looking forward to a good 2009 season.

Cliff Dwellers

For the last couple of years we have been building a little bit of a family tradition by doing some down South exploring on the day before Thanksgiving. This year we decided to go some place new and headed down to Capital Reef National Park. I was shocked to drive into the park and not have to pay $10 - $20 of scenery tax. It was a nice surprise. I thought all the National Parks were pay per view.

We got down there about noon and poked around the visitor's center for a while. It made me laugh to see a bunch of animations that we did for the BYU Geology department like eight years ago on the screens in the visitors center. They still looked pretty good so I guess we did OK on them.

After some lunch we picked a trail and headed out for and afternoon of exploration. We picked Cohab Canyon. It Started out with about a half mile of switch backs up about 400 feet of elevation gain. Caden started to fall behind right away so I stayed with him while everyone else waited at the top.
Here are Caden, Grant, Mason and Trent in the little pass that leads down into Cohad Canyon .

Here's one looking down into the canyon.

There were tons of fun sandstone holes, pockets, slots and little caves for climbing and exploring.


and occasionally getting stuck.

or taking a rest or posing for a family picture.

We got to the valley overlook at about 4:30 it was an amazing site looking into the gorge cut by the Fremont river but I was getting worried about getting back out before it got dark. None of us had flashlights and there would have been some dangerous spots to get through in the dark. Miki and the older boys went ahead and Caden and I took up there rear. Caden was going slow but he kept at it. By the time that we got to the switchbacks he was saying that his feet and legs were hurting and was kind of shuffling along. He kept at it and we made it to the bottom when the last bit of twilight was fading away.

Personal Surf Spot

Last Saturday at about 4:30 I decided that I wanted to get on the Provo River by my house. For a number of weeks, I've been enhancing a small feature on the Provo River right below the Geneva Road bridge, building eddies, adding rocks to a small drop to make a wave more surfable (hopefully). There was only about 60 cfs in the river so it was pretty boney but it was good to paddle again.


By about 5:00pm I was on the river with Miki watching from the shore for "safety." Here I'm trying to paddle up into the sweet spot to do a little front surfing. The surfing is tiny but it will be fun to watch what the feature does with more water.


By about 5:30 it was getting kind of dark and time to throw a few more rocks around and then get out.

Chickens a-go-go!

Hey, here is this shot that I have been animating for the BYU produced film "Sheriff". I've been working on it in my spare time for a very long time now. I think that it is finally ready to hand off to the people who are going to do the shading, lighting, rendering and compositing.

It is supposed to show how completely this old west town has come together with a rooster as its sheriff and the people now free from fear of the previously running amuck bad guys. Peaceful and prosperous coexistence between people and poultry, that's the deal. There are 140 baby chicks, 29 mother hens and 5 roosters in this shot. Each rig has 6 or 8 animation clips that I animated in maya and then sequenced in maya's trax editor to match the gross transforms in the scene. This rough compositing was done in After Effects.


Let me know what you think or if you spot a chicken behaving badly. If you want to see a bigger version of it let me know and I'll send you one.

Cave Rats

Hey both of you who read this blog. Here are some lovely pictures of some cave climbing/exploring that I did last weekend with my son Mason and Austin Mills and his brother Jordan. They led us up rock canyon to Spanish Moss cave. When we were headed up there it was snowing steadily and I was worried about coming down the steep slope with a bunch of snow on the mountain. But Inside the cave was so amazing that I forgot about the snow and when we got out it had stopped and all melted.

Some cool formations in the upper room.


Mason off rappel in the bottom room.


Looking up the ramp to where we dropped in about 100 feet above.


Austin and Jordan at the bottom.


I think that Mason was attempting a potentially embarrassing "rabbit ears" but was thwarted by unanticipated helmet height.


Mason getting clipped in to start ascending out of this very interesting hole.

glass tastic

Hey well I got some more hours in on the window this weekend and finished it off. I think that it turned out pretty nice. Miki and I both like the simple, elegant design of this one. It is the first time that I have tried anything with this extreme of variation in the line quality or width of the solder joints. I wrapped an extra copper foil width on the ends of the grass segments. I'll have to mess with that more sometime.

grass a la glass

Hey here's a little project that I am doing in a round about way to raise money for UV united way. Everyone from work donated a good and or service into an auction and all the money bid was donated to united way. I donated a custom stained glass window. Suzy was the highest bidder and she is having me do a design with that funky grass that grows in segments. I'll call it monkey grass grass for know because there is a complete lack of right word in my brain at the moment. Anyway I got the last of the glass and the copper foil Saturday and put a few hours in on it while listening to the KRCL radiothon (commercial free in a very narrowly defined sense of the word). Anyway I think that it is coming along nicely. Some of the thin pieces have been a pain to cut because the piece I'm trying cut out is barely wider than the glass is thick. Does anyone have a diamond wheel glass grinder that they want to donate to a good cause?

First Rapid

Here's another shot from last month's Green River Trip. Miki and Caden were supposed to slip into an eddy and wait for me to help get Trent in his boat and then for me to get into my boat so we could go down the rapid together. Instead they went into the current and were into the rapid before Trent had his spray skirt on. I watched as they did everything right, lined it up straight and ran down the middle.
Photo by Craig Waddell.

Green River - Beginners' trip in the news

Back on August 23rd the Utah Whitewater Club sponsored a trip for beginning (first time ever in a hardshell) kayakers down Grey's Canyon on the Green River. I was thrilled to bring my wife Miki and my sons Trent and Caden along. A good friend Nate Swallow also made it down with us. Everyone had a good time in the sun and water.


Trent's on the left in the red shorts and white helmet. He made it down the entire run without tipping over. Nate (silver helmet) made it down too. Caden and Miki (big yellow life jackets) went down in an inflatable kayak and ran over some big rocks and holes that I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere close to. They cruised right over them and had a fun ride.

Maggie and Roxanne, to Salt Lake Tribune reporters came along for their first kaykaing adventure. You can read their article and watch their slide show here. It sounds like they were pretty scared but they did great and looked like they were having a lot of fun.

Hummer SKnE

Hey Here's the latest quickdraw from work. It was distorted birds. We had a pleasant return of the hummingbirds to our backyard after I sweetened the nectar a bit. Haven't had 5 or 6 at a time like last year but it is good to see them and have them peak in our windows to check us out. There are better ways to distort this now that it is over. Maybe I will try some more later.