Bits of Blender #39 and #40

My boy, Richard, and I have come out of a long hiatus. We just made two new episodes of Bits of Blender. We're getting back into the swing of things so pardon any rough edges. We're doing some things a little differently, the biggest change is we now publish at at higher resolution. I am also (finally) giving Vimeo a try (I've had an account forever but hadn't taken the time), they look so nice there.

For those of you not familiar with "Bits", it is a set of casual tutorials done by my 10-year old and me. We do them both for fun and to serve as a video reference of many Blender features. We're warming up so we are ready for 2.5. These cover in 2.49b. Enjoy!

Bits of Blender #39 - Environment Maps

YouTube

blip.tv
vimeo


Bits of Blender #40 - Making a Lego Head
YouTube

blip.tv
vimeo

iCrash

I have a first generation iPhone. For a long time, whenever I put my iPhone on my dock, iTunes would launch and freeze. It was very frustrating. On a couple of occasions I searched for solutions, finding none that worked for me. Each update to iTunes I hoped would correct the problem.

I had a workaround. If iTunes was already running, then it wouldn't crash when the iPhone was connected. It was not a desirable work around because I don't want iTunes running all the time. It was a drag having to remember to launch iTunes each time before connecting the iPhone.

I'm running Vista, and I my periodic searches (when frustration would peak) I noticed that Mac users also had similar problems. A few months ago, playing with my settings, I discovered how to prevent it from crashing iTunes (and went on my happy way, neglecting to blog on it). The solution was simple, turn off "Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected". It's not an ideal solution, but it fits my workflow very well. I don't need to sync the phone every time I connect it, so as long as I remember to do it once in a while, I'm good. Since most of my important info is kept "in the cloud", syncing frequently is not a necessity.