Articles
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Why do you use the software you choose?
April 16, 2009
Read moreMy last post led me to thinking about the software I use every day: “What am I using mostly? And why?” So I have tried to make a list. (Note - this is exclusive of any technical software, which these days doesn’t get used much anyway.)
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Making Trees
April 11, 2009
Read moreGenerative trees 
I’ve been making trees this morning.
Some years ago, I bought an intriguing book: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants, by Prusinkiewicz and Lindenmayer. I occasionally pick it up and read pieces, and always find it fascinating. The book does a great job describing the concept of L-systems, named for the second author, in which a few very simple rules can generate incredibly complex patterns. Studying how plants grow, the authors realized that the rules governing plant growth can be approximated with algorithms, producing very realistic-looking results.
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The Joys of the Command Line
April 8, 2009
I’ve found myself sliding back towards command-line interfaces (CLI) lately… it’s been more of a slow drift than a sudden shift, and I haven’t really given it much thought. It’s not like I’m late to the party, exactly – I started out on the command line, and now I’m coming full circle, or at least partially so.
I find I’m much more efficient when I can interact entirely through the keyboard – yes, one must use a pointing device for some kinds of tasks (and I love my Space Navigator for flying around Google Earth) but most of my time these days is spent reading and writing, in a bunch of different applications (list to follow) with little need for mousing if the interfaces are good. I do make an effort to learn keyboard shortcuts, and for the apps I use a lot that has definitely paid off.
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Fighting with FTP
April 8, 2009
Read moreSome things should just be easier than they are…
Anna has a bunch of GigaPan images she created, and wants to get them to the museum to be printed out giganto-size for the upcoming open house. Well, GigaPans are aptly named – each one is 2-3GB in size! Putting ‘em on a flash drive just isn’t practical; only a couple will fit on a DVD; and I didn’t have an extra USB hard drive ready to go.
No problem, I thought – my nifty new network attached storage (NAS) has a FTP server built in to it! I can just fire that up, and we’ll be off to the races. Yeah, right.
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Yay, Me!
March 12, 2009
Woo hoo, I got the first, and right, answer to Cyclelicious’ inaugural Tuesday Transit Quiz!