So I have this lovely friend, without whom I wouldn’t have been able to do these comics. They … basically … and don’t judge us on this … they pinched a render machine from their work for me.
I know, it sounds bad, but the thing is it was an old mainframe piece of kit, and the company had finished with it and it was just going to be left there in a cupboard and then in a few years they’d get round to recycling it as part of their IT kit cycle. So it wasn’t a strictly really bad theft, it was just a little one.
It’s a bit like taking someone’s worn-out tyres from the bin of a tyre shop and using them for banger racing. That’s how I justify it to myself, anyway.
Don’t ask me how my friend got this massive piece of kit out of their work, I think perhaps they are a ninja of some sort? It literally is a friend, by the way, I’m not really talking about myself … “Oh, my ‘friend’ has this nasty rash … err …” no – seriously, it was my friend who did it. They’re lovely, and they do nice things for me. Sometimes good things, sometimes bad things … bit of both. Friends are fun like that.
Anyway so this render machine, although old by cutting-edge standards, is an absolute colossus by domestic standards, with zillions of cores and buckets and buckets of ram, and means I’ve been able to whack out fairly high-res Superfly renders in about 30 minutes per pop (which is super fast, btw) – so I can leave it running overnight and it’s finished a scene for me!
Amazing! Now comes the bad news: it broke.
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Aaaand there are 2 renders I need to re-do before I can release OHB #5. Don’t blame me for perfectionism, it’s a disease and I’m not going to fight it. And I can’t release the comic until that machine is sorted so … we’ll have to wait a little bit.
I’ll try and fix it today, it basically just dies and dismantling it and saying a little prayer and rubbing its sweet spot usually helps, but right now it’s behaving a little grumpy.
I think maybe it’s become aware it was stolen from its original owners and it’s gone on strike.
I know, I feel bad.
But it’s like a happy retirement for it really; pumping out sexy images instead of literally rotting in a cupboard.
And the company which owns it genuinely hasn’t even noticed it’s missing from the cupboard of death, so, you know. It’s like taking a salad from Elvis, he’s not going to notice. Anyway he’s dead. Sorry to have to break that to everyone.
Am I too drunk to be writing this? No, it’s fine, it’s fine. Maybe *one* more mojito and then we’ll open up this poor machine and give it a good scrubbing.
Brb.
