Two Become Something Better
This might tick you off… a plan for a $5 to $15 million dollar clock in San Jose that would count down the time until global climate disaster. Mentioned positively on FlingLog, along with a series of complaints about there being no decisive data on when the world is going to end, how it’s going to end, or how fast it is actually ending, making it very hard to build such a clock. We’ve really got to work on getting that data.
Lowercase Tees
Predictably, lowercasetees attracted its share of negative feedback. “Some people, mostly Conservatives, have criticised us for putting a political message on a child, but my boy Spencer’s mommy does want a new President, and my daughter Isobel wouldn’t vote for Bush, so there’s no exploitation at all there.” (CA)
Darn conservatives. You’ve got to admit its a fun idea - I’m thinking of buying a few up for my sisters just in case Rush is right. I doubt they’ll have them for sale if their tiny “Obama” tshirt is effective in winning elections.
The Punishment Theory of Blog Reading
Pattern I’ve noticed with my own blog reading - if a blog is posting on a regular basis, you’ll start checking it on a daily basis, or whenever you think about it (which could be more or less often, depending on how interesting it is). Here’s the catch though - every time you visit a blog and there is no new content there, the blogger is effectively punishing you for visiting their site. Bad reader. Bad.
You’ve taken the effort to type in the address and get excited. They’ve disappointed you. If this happens several times, the you starts to realize that you really shouldn’t be visiting that blog so much. And the bloggers hits go down. So that’s the theory. I think it might explain a lot of the hit dynamics in the blog world. I think it also explains many geopolitical crises. Not that I’m necessarily suggesting that you do anything about it, considering that would be somewhat hypocritical. Haha.
Blender 2.46 RC1
That. It’s out now for playing with and testing. The new particle system is much happier, now allowing things like multiple systems on one object, boids (kinda like birds, except different), and (somewhat) advanced particle physics!
Speaking of particle systems, here’s something I made with the older system.
3D Dynamite Fuse Burning from Alex King on Vimeo.
Well, on that note, I’d probably ought to get back to writing my paper on theology and church government. It’s about how if protestant churches just had a pope, then there’d be lot less confusion in the authority structure. Yeaaaaah.
I came across an amazing tool this weekend called Processing. It allows you to generate images or video using programming methods and data. This is nothing new, but its simplicity and ease of setup makes it the digital equivalent of a sketchbook. Granted, you still need an understand of programming to use it (the script is similar to Javascript), it doesn’t have a drawing GUI, but its far more lightweight than building a program from scratch with C++ or putting something together in Houdini (which, as a sidenote, is finally releasing a mac version).
So far, people have been using it in a wide range of projects that go from visualizing bursts of Yahoo search queries to making flocking imagery for music videos (as show in the picture). Another very interesting aspect is the ease that you can access video, even directly from a webcam. This makes it ideal for testing out analysis techniques without a lot of overhead. Overall, it’s a very cool program, and you should definitely download it and try out the list of samples included at the very least.
This is, Alex. And Kierstyn. They're courting. And this is their blog. It's not courting, but it is sort of a combination of Kierstyn's Politically Incorrect and Alex's Smart Homeschool. We think they'll go well together. Kinda like thoughts and letters.
