DISCREET COSINES

1:07 am

Busy coding:

It's hard to come up with a moral code on your own. The only really effective way seems to be "Trial and Error". Not in the sense that you go out and try the morals you've come up with and then decide whether they are good or bad, but in the sense that you look back on things you (or some other) have done and then think "That wasn't very nice". Or "I feel crappy about that thing." (Staying nice and vague here) It doesn't seem very plausible that you could start off with no moral ideas, make some shit up to live by, and wind up doing The Right Thing. No, you've got to see a mistake first. What have I got so far?

Andrew's big book o' morals:

• 1) Take responsibility for the situations you find yourself in
• 2) Live as you'd want others to live

  Number one comes from a past during which I constantly found myself a hapless victim of circumstance. It turns out I actually had at least a little hap, and in lots of twisty ways, I chose what happened to me. Now I'm doing real well, and everyone just thinks I'm lucky. They also think I'm paranoid and compulsive, but that's fine with me. I'm not gonna die by car impact or drug O.D. anytime soon.

  Number two comes from a present during which I am totally inconsiderate of the emotional/social requirements of other people. I pay attention to a few people, but not everyone that needs it. All those random folks aren't really my problem (see moral #1), but it's not hurting anyone to give other people the benefit of the doubt. Rather than attempt to treat other people the way I want to be treated, which is a kind of passive-agressive way of being nice ("you'd better be THIS good to me."), I would live as I wanted others to live. It's easier for me to imagine someone else's ideal behavior, anyway.

  I haven't really completely implemented either of these ideas. I'm not sure I really believe #2. Perhaps it's a better idea to do everything that I want to do, and forget about compassion and rightness. That would certainly make keeping up with #1 a lot easier. When you are kind to someone and they are a dick to you, it sucks to realize that no one ever asked you to be nice. It's like you betrayed your own respect, by letting an enemy into your consideration. On the other hand, if there weren't as many dicks in the world, that would happen less often. Hence #2.

Preparation A:

Using my newly gained 3-D math experience and C-programming skills, I'm putting together a simplish 3-D version of "Asteroids". It's very easy to make the shift from the 2-D to 3-D visualization in this case. Instead of a triangle, your ship is a little pyramid. Instead of flat blobs, you shoot at voluminous blobs. Simple. What I haven't really gotten the hang of yet is collision detection. How am I going to figure out when one thing is touching (or inside) another thing? I do not think I can figure it out at this level of wakefulness. I must go out to purchase caffeine (in the form of soda/pop (in the form of coke (in the form of liquid (with carbonation).).).).

(Becoming caffeinated)

Ya know, green against black looks great. The human eye is something like ten times more sensitive to green than to blue. And twice as sensitive versus red. The greatest contrast of pure saturation is acheived through green against black. Uh, something like that. Maybe none of that was true. Dang!
(Searching web for the truth)
All I'm finding are articles on television repair and perceptual contours. Dang. Well, the truth is out there. I'm sure of it.

(Wel1 C4ffeinat3d)

What am I now? I'm the clanging modern modular mythril alienated loner steppenwolf bemused distant meta-izing technocrat rationalist fucking shithead. Am I? Or maybe I'm a choking smoking naked baker. Probably not. ANyway, I guess one way to figure out if your bullet has hit an asteroid is to have the bullet be a line with length x greater than the distance it travels in one update. Then you can test if the two endpoints of the line are on different sides of a part of an asteroid. Sure. Now how to make the ship blow up when an asteroid hits it. Hey wait. I could make dot shaped bullets and just use the before and after positions of an update as the line endpoints. Duh. Hyurgh.

Now I'm all hopped up on goof syrup and I want to talk about girls. I spent a little time yesterday thinking about it, and I realized that I want a woman who can write mods. Or program a drum machine, or a 303. One who composes music. Maybe I should spend some time learning how to be a groupie in order to gain the advantages of propinquity. Sociology 101. Thank you, crazy wife-beating-obsessed teacher, for that q-having word.

Teachers, ah. I want to write to my C programming teacher and tell him that the stuff he taught me about binary trees is still useful. Then again, I dunno if he really taught it to me. He just gave me a pile of source code in a big hurry on the last day of class and said it was about binary trees. I was the only one who showed up for class once. "So, did anyone have any questions?"

I can buy video games now. I've got the european version of Incoming(remember my obsession with "Darklight Conflict"? Same guys.), Quake II, and the Core Contingency. (By the way, John Carmack is the most seriously programmerly programmer I've ever known of. Find out whats on his mind.)

There is a tie in between lummigraphs, multiple environment maps, specularity, convolution, and dynamic indirect lighting. Its nagging at me, but it hasn't come completely clear. -- John Carmack, 5.4.98

A "Lummigraph" is like a digital hologram. Flailing at this idea with what I know about holograms, I think that might mean that they're like a flat texture that has a different appearance for every possible viewing angle. Like everything in "Wing Commander I", but with better resolution in every sense. It is doubtful that its that simple.

Zero zero zero:

I love having my own room. I love having my own phone line. "Mine" is a good thing for stuff to be. I am a material girl.

My job involves database design and C programming. It is so boring, I don't even wanna talk about it. One day when I know more about video compression CODECs I will write ingenious windows video stream software and become big hero of company. I don't mean some day way off in the future. I study compression schemes every day.

(Getting sidetracked by the reality of "Kit Cars". Crappy cars with fiberglass shells to make them look like Lamborghinis. I don't know what to think. People project themselves onto their vehicles, that is all.) (That there is such thing as a fake Lamborghini is upsetting me much more than it should.)

It's the fourth of July. Yaaaay.

The other day I was exchanging email with my pal N. Space Man Spack about such things as Gus and Little Bastard. "Gee", I thought, "this could signal a shift in paradigm!".

(Why am I starting photoshop? I'm going to draw a single black pixel.)(or not)

Volume is impressive, like most excess. This is certainly a big pile of crap, for me.




Andy... I hate people.
I know, Michelle. People are stupid. -- Me, a million years ago.

Sucks to be a person, huh.