Articles
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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!
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Bicycle Bumper Stickers
March 10, 2009
If bikes had bumpers on which to stick things, I would plaster mine with some of the following phrases, inspired by innumerable micro-moments I’ve experienced while commuting back and forth to work. The sub-title to this could be “Retorts to the (mostly unsaid) thoughts of car-drivers, as implied by their driving and/or emotive glares from behind the windshield.”
1) “Thanks, but I do own a car; I choose to bike instead.”
2) “I sure hope you weren’t planning to apply for a job from me (yes, I’m hiring!)”
3) “Why no, I do not believe your [penis|breasts] appear larger when you [insert sophomoric car-driving action here].”
4) “Yes, thanks, I do like to think I own the road (at least the tiny piece I’m occupying, over here on the edge of it.)”
5) “I’m sorry, I didn’t notice that your [Hummer|Porsche|BMW|PoS] is secretly an [emergency vehicle|tank|starship|jet fighter].”
6) “So exactly what part of my six blinking lights, bright yellow vest, and innumerable reflectors did you not see?”
Feel free to tack “you selfish pork-face” on the end of any of these!