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Enhance Your Visual Experience
Come visit us at Booth #329. Experience our leading-edge platforms and software for Digital Content Creation. Learn from the accepted talks, tech sessions and courses with Intel researchers, engineers, and key industry partners. Drop by for a chance to walk away with a new Intel® Solid-State Drive as a door prize!
This site is your one-stop shop to experience the entire Intel showcase at SIGGRAPH 2011. Check back often to view the schedule of activities and download talk presentations and videos. Join us in the online conversation and stay connected with our Twitter and Facebook channels.
Download MLAA Code!MLAA is an image-based, post-process filtering technique which identifies discontinuity patterns and blends colors in the neighborhood of these patterns to perform effective anti-aliasing. It is the precursor of a new generation of real-time antialiasing techniques that rival MSAA. This sample is based on the original, CPU-based MLAA implementation provided by Reshetov in 2009, with improvements to greatly increase performance. Download MLAA! |
Intel Media SDK 3.0 Betahttp://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/media/
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Talks
Intel Tech Talks
Wednesday, 10 August, Room 216
Technical Objectives of the Intel Visual Computing Centers
Time: 9-10am
Presenter - Greg Leeming, Intel Corporation
Intel is investing heavily in the Intel Visual Computing institute (iVCI) in Europe and the Intel Science and Technology Center for Visual Computing (ISTC-VC) in the USA to accelerate advancement in visual computing. This talk will provide an overview of the technical themes and projects these centers are pursuing and the impact they are likely to have. We will also discuss the unique features of the ISTC-model and how it enables better collaborative research.
Slides: PDF (2.54MB)
URL: http://techresearch.intel.com/WorldWideSiteDetails.aspx?Id=33
Embree - Photo-Realistic Ray Tracing Kernels
Time: 10:45-11:45am
Presenter - Manfred Ernst,Intel Corporation
Photo-realistic rendering with Monte Carlo ray tracing is used in applications such as industrial design, architecture visualization and movie production. Intel Labs has developed highly optimized ray tracing kernels that take maximum advantage of the latest Intel processors. These kernels, together with an example rendering engine, are released as open source. This talk gives a high-level overview of the sample renderer and a detailed technical description of the ray tracing kernels (acceleration structure builders and traversers).
Slides: PDF (1.56MB)
URL: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/embree-photo-realistic-ray-tracing-kernels/
Increase your FPS with CPU Onload
Time: 2-3pm
Presenters – Josh Doss / Doug McNabb, Intel Corporation
With today’s high resolution displays and advanced rendering techniques, developers can often find their application GPU bound when targeting mainstream graphics platforms. This high level presentation will focus on approaches designed to relieve some of the pressure on your GPU by onloading common graphics workloads to available resources on your CPU.
Slides: PDF (1.37MB)
URL: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/mlaa/
Optimization Strategies for Intel HD Graphics
Time: 3:15-4:15pm
Presenter – Omar Rodriguez, Intel Corporation
Optimizing games performance is easy with Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (GPA). Learn how the developers of Darkspore™ used the newly released Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (GPA) to maximize game performance and target the widest possible customer base. Whether you're a veteran GPA user or you've never used it, you'll come away from this session understanding how easy it is to profile your own games using GPA, determine where the system, CPU, and GPU bottlenecks are with the new in-game HUD with rich hardware metrics, the System Analyzer, and the deep analysis Frame Analyzer tool.
Slides: PDF (2.67MB)
URL: http://www.intel.com/software/gpa
Visual Computing Performance Optimization: Tools and Strategies
Time: 4:30-5:30pm
Presenters - Scott DiMicco / Arnon Peleg / Omar Rodriguez, Intel Corporation
Learn how to utilize performance libraries, analyzers, and SDKs to improve your visual computing application. Unlock the performance of Intel hardware with the Intel® Media SDK, the Intel® OpenCL SDK, and the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers. Attendees will learn how to best utilize these free tools, and optimization strategies to help them differentiate their visual computing applications and access all the performance and power of Intel platforms.
Slides: PDF (3.57MB)
Intel® Media SDK: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/media/
Intel® OpenCL SDK: http://www.intel.com/go/opencl/
Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers: http://www.intel.com/software/gpa
Late Breaking Results!
Interactive Hybrid Simulation of Large-Scale Traffic
Monday, 8 August, 2–3:30 pm
Jason Sewall, Intel Corporation
David Wilkie, Ming Lin University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Automobile traffic is ubiquitous in developed nations and on the rise in developing countries. Traffic simulation techniques for animation, urban planning, and engineering design are of increasing interest and import for analyzing road usage in urban environments and for interactive visualization of virtual cityscapes. We introduce a multi-method simulation technique that combines the strengths of two broad and disparate classes of traffic simulation to achieve flexible, interactive, high-fidelity simulation on large road networks. To demonstrate our method, we show metropolitan-scale traffic flows on a urban scene, as shown in Figure 1. We also validate the simulation results using real-world traffic data and analyze the performance of our technique on modern architectures.
Papers
Intel Papers
High-Quality Spatio-Temporal Rendering Using Semi-Analytical Visibility
Tuesday, 9 August, 10:45 am–12:15 pm
Carl Johan, Gribel Rasmus, Barringer Lunds Universitet
Tomas Akenine-Möller, Intel Corporation
We present a novel visibility algorithm for rendering motion blur with per-pixel anti-aliasing. Our algorithm uses a number of line samples over a rectangular group of pixels, and together with the time dimension, a two-dimensional spatio-temporal visibility problem needs to be solved per line sample. In a coarse culling step, our algorithm first uses a bounding volume hierarchy to rapidly remove geometry that do not overlap with the current line sample. For the remaining triangles, we approximate each triangle's depth function, along the line and along the time dimension, with a number of patch triangles. We resolve for the final color using an analytical visibility algorithm with depth sorting, simple occlusion culling, and clipping. Shading is decoupled from visibility, and we use a shading cache for efficient reuse of shaded values. In our results, we show practically noise-free renderings of motion blur with high-quality spatial anti-aliasing and with competitive rendering times. We also demonstrate that our algorithm, with some adjustments, can be used to accurately compute motion blurred ambient occlusion.
The Area Perspective Transform: A Homogeneous Transform for Efficient In-Volume Queries
Tuesday, 9 August, 10:45 am–12:15 pm
Warren A. Hunt, Intel Corporation
Gregory S. Johnson, University of Texas at Austin and Intel Corporation
A key problem in applications such as soft shadows and defocus blur is to identify points or primitives which are inside a volume of space. For example, the soft shadow computation involves finding surfaces which pass in front of an area light as viewed from a point p in the scene. The desired surfaces are those which are inside a frustum defined by the light and p, and can be found by intersecting the frustum with an acceleration structure over geometry. However, accurately computing this intersection is computationally intensive.
In this article, we introduce a homogeneous transform which reduces the computation required to determine the set of points or primitives which are inside a tetrahedral volume. The transform converts tetrahedra into axis-aligned boxes, substantially reducing the cost of intersection with an axis-aligned acceleration structure over points or primitives. We describe the application of this transform to soft shadows and defocus blur, and briefly consider potential uses of the underlying mathematical approach in higher-dimensional problems.
A Perceptual Model for Disparity
Thursday, 11 August, 10:45 am–12:15 pm
Piotr Didyk, Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
Tobias Ritschel, Elmar Eisemann, École d’Ingénieurs Télécom ParisTech, and Intel Visual Computing Lab
Karol Myszkowski, Hans-Peter Seidel, Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
Binocular disparity is an important cue for the human visual system to recognize spatial layout, both in reality and simulated virtual worlds. This paper introduces a perceptual model of disparity for computer graphics that is used to define a metric to compare a stereo image to an alternative stereo image and to estimate the magnitude of the perceived disparity change. Our model can be used to assess the effect of disparity to control the level of undesirable distortions or enhancements (introduced on purpose). A number of psycho-visual experiments are conducted to quantify the mutual effect of disparity magnitude and frequency to derive the model. Besides difference prediction, other applications include compression, and re-targeting. We also present novel applications in form of hybrid stereo images and backward-compatible stereo. The latter minimizes disparity in order to convey a stereo impression if special equipment is used but produces images that appear almost ordinary to the naked eye. The validity of our model and difference metric is again confirmed in a study.
Spark: Modular, Composable Shaders for Graphics Hardware
Thursday, 11 August, 3:45–5:15 pm
Tim Foley, Intel Corporation and Stanford University
Pat Hanrahan, Stanford University
In creating complex real-time shaders, programmers should be able to decompose code into independent, localized modules of their choosing. Current real-time shading languages, however, enforce a fixed decomposition into per-pipeline-stage procedures. Program concerns at other scales - including those that cross-cut multiple pipeline stages - cannot be expressed as reusable modules.
We present a shading language, Spark, and its implementation for modern graphics hardware that improves support for separation of concerns into modules. A Spark shader class can encapsulate code that maps to more than one pipeline stage, and can be extended and composed using object-oriented inheritance. In our tests, shaders written in Spark achieve performance within 2% of HLSL.
Partner Papers
Tone Editing
Monday, 8 August, 3:45–5:15 pm
Perceptually Based Tone Mapping for Low-Light Conditions
Adam G. Kirk, James F. O’Brien, University of California, Berkeley
Sampling & Noise
Tuesday, 9 August, 9–10:30 am
Efficient Maximal Poisson-Disk Sampling Mohamed S. Ebeida Sandia National Laboratories, Anjul A. Patney, Scott Mitchell, Andrew A. Davidson, University of California, Davis, Patrick M. Knupp, Sandia National Laboratories, John D. Owens, University of California, Davis
Capturing Geometry & Appearance
Tuesday, 9 August, 9–10:30 am
Building Volumetric Appearance Models of Fabric Using Micro CT Imaging Shuang Zhao, Wenzel Jakob, Steve Marschner, Kavita Bala, Cornell University
Stochastic Rendering & Visibility
Tuesday, 9 August, 10:45 am–12:15 pm
Temporal Light Field Reconstruction for Rendering Distribution Effects Jaakko Lehtinen, Timo Aila, NVIDIA Research, Jiawen Chen, MIT CSAIL, Samuli Laine, NVIDIA Research, Frédo Durand, MIT CSAIL
Surfaces
Wednesday, 10 August, 9–10:30 am
MeshFlow: Interactive Visualization of Mesh Construction Sequences Jonathan D. Denning, William B. Kerr, Dartmouth College, Fabio Pellacini, Dartmouth College and Sapienza–Università di Roma
Example-Based Simulation
Wednesday, 10 August, 10:45 am–12:15 pm
Data-Driven Elastic Models for Cloth: Modeling and Measurement Huamin Wang, James F. O’Brien, Ravi Ramamoorthi, University of California, Berkeley
Example-Based Elastic Materials Sebastian Martin, ETH Zürich, Bernhard Thomaszewski, Disney Research Zürich and ETH Zürich, Eitan Grinspun, Columbia University, Markus Gross, Disney Research Zürich and ETH Zürich
Fast Simulation
Thursday, 11 August, 9–10:30 am
Sensitive Couture for Interactive Garment Design Nobuyuki Umetani, University of Tokyo, Danny M. Kaufman, Columbia University, Takeo Igarashi, University of Tokyo, Eitan Grinspun, Columbia University
High Performance Graphics
High Performance Graphics is a collocated conference accompanying Siggraph
http://highperformancegraphics.org
Paper Session 2: Parallel Ray Tracing
Friday, 5 August, 6 3:30-4:45pm
Active Thread Compaction for GPU Path Tracing
Ingo Wald, Intel Corporation
Modern GPUs like NVidia’s Fermi internally operate in a SIMD manner by ganging multiple (32) scalar threads together into SIMD warps; if a warp’s threads diverge, the warp serially executes both branches, temporarily disabling threads that are not on that path. In this paper, we explore and thoroughly analyze the concept of active thread compaction—i.e., the process of taking multiple partially-filled warps and compacting them to fewer but fully utilized warps—in the context of a CUDA path tracer. Our results show that this technique can indeed lead to significant improvements in SIMD utilization, and corresponding savings in the amount of work performed; however, they also show that certain inadequacies of today’s hardware wipe out most of the achieved gains, leaving bottom-up speed-ups of a mere 12–16%. We believe our analysis of why this is the case will provide insight to other researchers experimenting with this technique in different contexts.
Paper Session 5: Rethinking Rasterization
Saturday, 6-August, 3:45-5pm
Hierarchical Stochastic Motion Blur Rasterization
Jacob Munkberg, Petrik Clarberg, Jon Hasselgren, Robert Toth, Masamichi Sugihara, Tomas Akenine-Möller, Intel Corporation
We present a hierarchical traversal algorithm for stochastic rasterization of motion blur, which efficiently reduces the number of inside tests needed to resolve spatio-temporal visibility. Our method is based on novel tile against moving primitive tests that also provide temporal bounds for the overlap. The algorithm works entirely in homogeneous coordinates, supports MSAA, facilitates efficient hierarchical spatio-temporal occlusion culling, and handles typical game workloads with widely varying triangle sizes. Furthermore, we use high-quality sampling patterns based on digital nets, and present a novel reordering that allows efficient procedural generation with good anti-aliasing properties. Finally, we evaluate a set of hierarchical motion blur rasterization algorithms in terms of both depth buffer bandwidth, shading efficiency, and arithmetic complexity.
Adaptive Transparency
Marco Salvi, Jefferson Montgomery, Aaron Lefohn, Intel Corporation
Adaptive transparency is a new solution to order-independent transparency that closely approximates the ground-truth results obtained with A-buffer compositing but, like a Z-buffer, operates in bounded memory and exhibits consistent performance. The key contribution of our method is an adaptively compressed visibility representation that can be efficiently constructed and queried while rendering. The algorithm supports a wide range and combination of transparent geometry (e.g., foliage, windows, hair, and smoke). We demonstrate that adaptive transparency is five to forty times faster than realtime A-buffer implementations, closely matches the image quality, and is both higher quality and faster than other approximate order independent transparency techniques: stochastic transparency, uniform opacity shadow maps, and Fourier opacity mapping.
Depth Buffer Compression for Stochastic Motion Blur Rasterization
Magnus Andersson, Jon Hasselgren, Tomas Akenine-Möller, Intel Corporation
Previous depth buffer compression schemes are tuned for compressing depths values generated when rasterizing static triangles. They provide generous bandwidth usage savings, and are of great importance to graphics processors. However, stochastic rasterization for motion blur and depth of field is becoming a reality even for real-time graphics, and previous depth buffer compression algorithms fail to compress such buffers due to the irregularity of the positions and depths of the rendered samples. Therefore, we present a new algorithm that targets compression of scenes rendered with stochastic motion blur rasterization. If possible, our algorithm fits a single time-dependent predictor function for all the samples in a tile. However, sometimes the depths are localized in more than one layer, and we therefore apply a clustering algorithm to split the tile of samples into two layers. One time-dependent predictor function is then created per layer. The residuals between the predictor and the actual depths are then stored as delta corrections. For scenes with moderate motion, our algorithm can compress down to 65% compared to 75% for the previously best algorithm for stochastic buffers.
Courses
Intel Courses
Beyond Programmable Shading I
Tuesday, 9 August, 9 am–12:15 pm
Michael Houston, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Aaron Lefohn, Intel Corporation
There are strong indications that the future of interac¬tive graphics programming is a more flexible model than today’s OpenGL/Direct3D pipelines. Graphics devel¬opers need to have a basic understanding of how to combine emerging parallel programming techniques and more flexible graphics processors with the traditional interactive-rendering pipeline. As the first in a series, this course introduces trends and directions in this emerging field.
Beyond Programmable Shading II
Tuesday, 9 August, 2–5:15 pm
Michael Houston, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Aaron Lefohn, Marco Salvi, Intel Corporation
Steven G. Parker, NVIDIA Corporation
Chris Wyman, University of Iowa
There are strong indications that the future of interactive graphics programming is a more flexible model than today’s OpenGL/Direct3D pipelines. Graphics develop¬ers need to have a basic understanding of how to combine emerging parallel programming techniques and more flexible graphics processors with the traditional interactive-rendering pipeline. As the second in a series, this course introduces trends and directions in this emerging field.
Filtering Approaches for Real-Time Anti-Aliasing
Thursday, 11 August, 2–5:15 pm
Jorge Jimenez, Diego Gutierrez, Universidad de Zaragoza
Jason Yang, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Alexander Reshetov, Intel Labs
Pete Demoreuille, Double Fine Productions Inc.
Tobias Berghoff, Cedric Perthuis Sony Computer Entertainment
Henry Yu, Kalloc Studios
Morgan McGuire, NVIDIA Corporation and Williams College
Timothy Lottes, NVIDIA Corporation
Hugh Malan, CCP hf.
Emil Persson, Avalanche Studios
Dmitry Andreev, Lucas Arts
Tiago Sousa, Crytek
This course includes an overview of both research and industry filter-based, anti-aliasing techniques in games for all modern platforms (AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360), low-level insight to ease adoption of these techniques and give attendees a complete concept-to-implementation roadmap, and deep quality, performance, and ease-of-integration comparisons of each technique.
Partner Courses
PhysBAM: Physically Based Simulation
Monday, 8 August, 9 am–12:15 pm
Craig Schroeder, Stanford University
This course is as an introduction to the PhysBAM simu¬lation library developed at Stanford University and used in both academic and industrial settings. The course contains information on the release of PhysBAM as well as information on how to obtain the source code, set up the library, and use it to run example smoke and water simulations. It also summarizes a visualization tool and a rendering tool included in the release of the library.
Booth
Theater Talks
Tuesday August 9, Intel Booth
| 10:00-10:30 | Intel(r) Graphics Performance Analyzers: Get unparalleled performance for entertainment apps | Omar Rodriguez, Intel |
| 10:30-11:00 | Announcing Boxx's New Innovative and Affordable Video Editing Solution | John Civatte Boxx Technologies |
| 11:00-11:30 | Introduction to Intel Array Building Blocks | Michael McCool, Intel |
| 11:30-12:00 | PC Audio Labs: The evolution of musical production | Gina Moore, PC Audio Labs |
| 12:00-12:30 | Today the Photographer’s World is in the PC’s Hands | Shane Westbrook, The 3D Shop |
| 12:30-13:00 | Adobe CS and Intel Technology | Dave Helmly, Adobe |
| 13:00-13:30 | The Intel Science and Technology Center for VC; Defining the Future | Greg Leeming, Intel |
| 13:30-14:00 | Autodesk: Efficient Production Workflows | Mark Schoennegal, Autodesk |
| 14:00-14:30 | Embree - Photo-Realistic Ray Tracing Kernels | Manfred Ernst, Intel |
| 14:30-15:00 | Choose the best workstation for graphics animation effects and editing | Scott Hamilton, Dell |
| 15:00-15:30 | MeeGo SDK and MeeGo UX Components | Gina Bovara, Intel |
| 15:30-16:00 | Technology behind DreamWorks Movies | David Moore, DreamWorks Animation |
| 16:00-16:30 | Transform your web apps into Intel AppUp center apps | Raghav Darisi, Intel Corporation |
| 16:30-17:00 | Siemens - Real-time Cardiac Ultrasound Renderer on Intel Processor Bas | Oliver Kutter, Siemans |
| 17:00-17:30 | Harness the power of the Media Acceleration on Intel® 2nd Generation C | Craig Hurst, Intel |
| 17:30-18:00 | Alioscopy & Photoshop | Pia Maffei, Alioscopy |
Wednesday August 10, Intel Booth
| 9:30-10:00 | PC Audio Labs: The evolution of musical production | Gina Moore, PC Audio Labs |
| 10:00-10:30 | KeyShot - 3D rendering & animation | Thomas Teger, Luxion |
| 10:30-11:00 | Announcing Boxx's New Innovative and Affordable Video Editing Solution | John Civatte, Boxx Technologies |
| 11:00-11:30 | Harness the power of Intel® 2nd Generation Core™ Processors | Craig Hurst, Intel |
| 11:30-12:00 | Technology behind DreamWorks Movies | David Moore, DreamWorks Animation |
| 12:00-12:30 | Transform your web apps into Intel AppUp center apps | Gina Bovara, Intel |
| 13:00-13:30 | Incredible IK with Ikinema | Alex Perchev, Ikinema |
| 13:30-14:00 | Structured Parallel Programming with Parallel Building Blocks | Michael McCool, Intel |
| 14:00-14:30 | Today the Photographer’s World is in the PC’s Hands | Shane Westbrook, The 3D Shop |
| 14:30-15:00 | Intel(r) Graphics Performance Analyzers: Get unparalleled performance for entertainment apps | Larry Wickstrom, Intel |
| 15:00-15:30 | Autodesk: Efficient Production Workflows | Mark Schoennegal, Autodesk |
| 15:30-16:00 | The Intel Science and Technology Center for VC; Defining the Future | Greg Leeming, Intel |
| 16:00-16:30 | Embree - High Performance Ray Tracing Kernels | Manfred Ernst, Intel |
| 16:30-17:00 | KeyShot - 3D rendering & animation | Thomas Teger, Luxion |
| 17:00-17:30 | Parallel Software Development with Intel | Leila Chucri, Intel |
Thursday, August 11, Intel Booth
| 9:30-10:00 | Announcing Boxx's New Innovative and Affordable Video Editing Solution | John Civatte, Boxx Technologies |
| 10:00-10:30 | PC Audio Labs: The evolution of musical production | Gina Moore, PC Audio Labs |
| 10:30-11:00 | Technology behind DreamWorks Movies | David Moore, DreamWorks Animation |
| 11:00-11:30 | Embree - Photo-Realistic Ray Tracing Kernels | Manfred Ernst, Intel |
| 11:30-12:00 | Intel(r) Graphics Performance Analyzers: Get unparalleled performance for entertainment apps | Larry Wickstrom, Intel |
| 12:00-12:30 | Today the Photographer’s World is in the PC’s Hands | Shane Westbrook, The 3D Shop |
| 12:30-13:00 | KeyShot - 3D rendering & animation | Thomas Teger, Luxion |
| 13:00-13:30 | Intel Solid-State Drives: The Future of Storage | Kevin Crow, Intel |
| 13:30-14:00 | Autodesk: Efficient Production Workflows | Mark Schoennegal, Autodesk |
| 14:00-14:30 | Adobe CS and Intel Technology | David Helmly, Adobe |
| 14:30-15:00 | The Intel Science and Tech Center for VC; Defining the Future | Greg Leeming, Intel |
Booth Demos
| Demo | Description |
| Intel AppUpSM developer program | Find out more about the innovative developer program that serves as the launchpad for selling your apps in the Intel AppUpSM center for netbooks, tablets and future devices running Intel® Atom™ processors. |
| Intel Gaming and Graphics Technology Samples | The Intel Gaming and Graphics Technology Samples are code samples with supporting collateral that demonstrate specific techniques. Come see Dynamic Resolution Rendering, Morphological AntiAliasing and Game Engine Tasking! |
| Intel Visual Adrenaline / HR Recruiting | Intel is recruiting developers to partner with us through the Visual Adrenaline Developer Program as well as looking to hire top technical talent. |
| Dell Precision T5500 Tower Workstation & ADOBE |
Transforming moving images for delivery to theaters, living rooms, personal computers, and mobile devices. |
| Dell Precision T5500 Tower Workstation & Autodesk Creativity Decoded |
Experience new creative tools, enhanced interoperability with Autodesk® Entertainment Creation Suite Premium products |
| Intel® Parallel Studio XE 2011 | Intel® Parallel Studio XE development tools enable application performance and code robustness for the latest generation of multicore processors. We will demonstrate key features and technologies, including Intel® CilkTM Plus, Intel® TBB, and Intel® ArBB for parallelization and vectorization, performance analysis with Intel® VTune Amplifier XE, memory and threading error checking with Intel® Inspector XE, and threading assistance with Intel® Parallel Advisor. |
| Accelerate Video Performance with Intel® Media SDK | Intel Media SDK is tool for developers to access fixed function hardware that accelerates encode and decode of video streams on Intel 2nd Generation Core. |
| Unleash Entertainment Software Performance with Intel® GPA and Intel® OpenCL SDK | Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers give game and media developers insights into their applications in order to help performance optimize them. |
| Media Enthusiast | Video editing, multi-track recording, and photo editing for the enthusiast! |
