New house, tron and work

Captain's log: Stardate 07111.5

We moved in to our new room last Sunday, and so have been here almost a week now. It's pretty nice. There's no hot water (as is pretty standard in Bolivia), however the shower has a heating element in, so if we turn the water pressure to basically nothing then we get some water that resembles warmth. The family own two dogs, a tiny fluffy thing called Paco and a much bigger one called Nico. I'm starting to get used to them although they still annoy me. Paco is actually kind of cute for a dog, and looks kind of like a gremlin, however is kind of hyper and seems to like trying to eat my shoes / feet. We have a kitchen outside which we can cook in, while Paco and Nico watch intently and get in the way. We have to get all the kitchen equipment from inside though, which is a bit tedious, so I'm planning on buying a few basics soon.

A stray cat that often sits on the window ledge.

Nico.

Our shower, so far it hasn't set on fire.

These are quite standard in Boliia, so hopefully it's fine.

Paco, being fluffy.

Our oven, 6 gas hobs + an oven.

The rest of the outdoor kitchen area.

The view from our window, you can see the city in the distance.

A giant cactus that appears to be held up by some string,

in our front garden.

Amy sat on our bed, below the captain America poster ....

We had a meeting yesterday with a charity that organises circus, theatre, music workshops for impoverished kids, as well as helping them get off the streets, into schools, and working with their families to improve their living conditions. We appear to be starting work on Monday, and they seem pretty flexible on stuff, so I'm hoping to do a 3 day week, and spend the other two working on my own projects and improving my Spanish. Amy is thinking of learning Quechua, so that she can do home visits and talk to the families, since no one else at the organisation can speak Quechua ATM. Additionally they close for a month from mid December -> mid January, so we'll have plenty of time to explore the country, learn languages and work on our own projects.

After the meeting we went to Migración to extend our tourist visa for 30 days, which all went well. However we aren't technically allowed to volunteer on a tourist visa, however nobody cares, and we should be able to sort out actual residency visas now that we have volunteering lined up :) So everything seems to be going to plan.

Meanwhile I've spent practically the entirety of the last week working on modelling a lightcycle in Blender, and texture mapping it. It's been pretty tricky and I've learned a lot. I'm not entirely happy with it, but it's good enough for now. The goal is to recreate the lightcycle scene from Tron legacy, and possibly turn it into a game. Now I've got the model sorted, I'm working on loading the completed object into my OpenGL application. To do this I had to sanitize the .obj file that Blender exported because the object loading library (ASSIMP) I'm using was having problems with a few aspects of it. The remaining plan is as follows: Show the light cycle, be able to drive it aronud. Add the light trail, add the multi level environment from the movie, improve the graphics, and finally make it playable over the internet with multiple teams and multiple bikes per team. It's a lot of work to do, but I'm hopeful I'll get it done over the next few months. I've set up a github account so if you're interested in the code, then you can see it there (get in touch for details).