Pleomorphic adenoma with neoplasm evident

[miriam_e]

I wasn't going to mention this here. I tend not to advertise my misfortunes. But it occurred to me that LiveJournal is a place where I should write about things of significance to me, and this is certainly an important event.

I'll start with a brief description, then talk more about what this means to me.

Last Wednesday I was operated upon to remove a tumor from my right salivary gland. It was benign, but growing very quickly so chances were that it "intended" to go malignant eventually. This is a very common kind of tumor that can grow benignly for years without presenting great danger, safely contained within the salivary gland, though it always has the risk of malignancy and once it crosses that threshold it can set up colonies anywhere else in the body... and, well, I prefer not to talk about that.

The operation was quick and effective. They took the grape-sized tumor out with about half my right salivary gland. The incision, while quite large (about 5 inches long) down the side of my neck in front of my ear to part way down my throat, will probably be fairly well hidden by the way I have my hair. One of the biggest (though fairly remote) risks of the surgery was possible damage to the facial nerve, but I escaped that completely. One slight hassle is that my right external ear is now almost completely numb. I don't know how much feeling I will regain there -- almost certainly not all of it. A disturbing fact is that this tumor has an annoying tendency to return. This seems pretty logical -- if a form of cancer is common it is because many of us are are routinely exposed to the cause. If someone develops it once then they have shown a sensitivity that is likely to do its nasty work again unless the cause is removed or lessened. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, nobody seems to have any idea why this particular tumor appears where it does.

What has this meant to me?

Like most of us I know that cancer is incredibly common in our society, but had not really considered that it would collect me in its vast, impersonal statistics. I tend to sail on through momentous events fairly easily so it was a surprise to me that I became somewhat ruffled on finding I had this tumor. I thought I would just handle it and move on, like I do with pretty-much everything. I mean, it is no big deal, right? I found the tumor before it was life-threatening and it was removed quickly and effectively with minimal side-effects. But it caused me to call into question my life and what I am achieving and what I am not.

I haven't reached any firm conclusions yet, but so far I can see that I haven't used my potential as much as I should. I have been on this planet for a few months short of half a century and considering the talents I was lucky enough to develop with the kindness and encouragement from others I have fallen considerably short of where I should be.

Where should I be?

• I am a passable artist. I should be making better use of that.
• I have fairly good writing skills and I should be accomplishing more there.
• I am able to articulate concepts and project them into people's minds in a way that few can. I should be using that to encourage more kids to learn.
• I am a moderately good (though pretty slack) 3d artist, and should have achieved far more with that, especially in view of my ideas on VR fiction and how VR has potential to repair most of society's and the planet's ills.
• I have an unusual breadth of knowledge because I compulsively learn almost randomly and almost constantly from a very wide range of interests. But this is not only good in that it exposes me to a plethora of stimuli, but bad in that I never really developed any ability to direct my interests, and in fact explicitly relinquished such control in favor of letting my attention wander free. My reasoning was that you can never know where important information can come from so it was best to leave myself open to as many sources as possible. I should be using this more to develop my other abilities -- drawing, writing, teaching, and VR -- by synthesising disparate facts into information that is denied others who specialise more narrowly.

So where does this lead me?

I don't know. I have to think on it more. I am tired and more than a bit sore just now.

Gonna have a nap to recharge.

Comments

Re:

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

Those samples look pretty good for free software, but too cartoony for what we need, unfortunately.

Still, we actually have After Effects so I guess we dont need free software. What we need are people who can use it in order to divide the man hours needed to render this thing. Dominique tells me that if you're a wiz at Photoshop, mastering After Effects should be a breeze.

If I understand raytracers, that involves creating your animations from total scratch, yeah? As in creating the wire model, animating it, then wrapping a texture map around it? If I understand the principle behind AE, it's giving depth and perspective to 2D objects, and then animating those.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Heheheheh. Cartoony? Those are raytraced pics. You will be hard-pressed getting better than that from any software no matter what the cost. The subject matter is fairly simple though -- that isn't the fault of the software. A more complex scene would look more interesting and more convincing.

When I spoke of cartoony I was referring to VRML. I will try to whip up some similar images using VRML for comparison.

Yep I think After Effects just lets you fake 3d by compositing 2d stuff... I may be wrong there... but I think that is how it works. I am not denigrating it -- any shortcuts are valuable! I should take a look at it.

Yes, VRML and raytracers require 3d models built inside the computer which you animate. It is totally different from 2d compositing, but it also needs some 2d image skills in order to create surface textures for the models. It is also pretty different from string-and-glue models in that you get to create mini-universes -- ya get to play god. :)

I am comfortable with Photoshop -- a whiz, by no means. I don't expect AE would be hard to get the hang of.

Re:

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

RE: cartoony.

The sub pic looked great, but it still looked - well - like it had been rendered. From what Dominique told me of AE, it's photorealistic. She pointed to a lot of the work done on Band of Brothers for examples. Massive, massive amounts of stuff on that 10-parter were CGI. That's kinda what we're looking at: subtle stuff. There's some major SFX setpieces, but any of the CGI we want to be unobtrusive and effective and convincing. So, for example, with a battle scene let's say, looking at a field of warring men, the vast plains of troopers in the background are CGI while those in the immediate foreground are actors. That's kinda what we're aiming for: seamless and invisible.