Open Schmuck Quest

I received an email from Gurap yesterday on releasing the source code for Schmuck Quest open source (third para of the bio). I noted back to him that it was the kind of productive and time consuming project I could really sink my teeth into. But seriously, it may be featured online after I find the original disks or the backup CDROMs.

Reformatting for AdSense...

As with OpenGL, I have a difficulty documenting my musings about AdSense. I am now completely addicted to getting an AdSense strategy that works but minimises site appearance impact. Part of my musings which made it to the December Mailout included the discussion of reformatting the Noble Ape site to maximise content on pages but minimise wandering pages. The Ocelot page is a great example of that;

http://www.nobleape.com/ocelot/

These days, Ocelot is so much part of the Simulation, that the rather tired looking Ocelot page doesn't add much to the development. In stark contrast, the mailouts are packed with information but this isn't evident from the mailout page;

http://www.nobleape.com/mailout/

My thinking was, if there was a way of streaming lead paragraphs from the past three mailouts onto the front of the site, then it would give initial visitors and immediate sense of the volume of stuff that was going on with Noble Ape.

The musing continues...

Cops vs Today

Michele has taken to watching the Today show in the mornings as part of the work departure ritual. This morning she noted a police beating video in St. Louis and pointed out, 'Everyone knows if you run from the police, you are going to get beaten up.'

I pointed out that perhaps Matt Lauer's social circles didn't inform him of this.

Michele replied, 'How do you know, if you run from the police you are going to get beaten up? You've seen it a hundred times on Cops!'

True wisdom. Good morning.

Playing with Polygons...

I started working on the True3D implementation of the Noble Ape Simulation a couple of nights ago. The full-screen OpenGL implementation seems to be the way to go. I've demonstrated the landscape for Luna and Michele. Luna pawed the back of the monitor trying to see where the landscape was going. Michele noted that this is the way it should have always been.

For all that I write about OpenGL, it is fun to write OpenGL applications. The idealism of polygons and the reliance on the GPU for the magic speed is great. The Celery machine has a better graphics card than my Pentium III laptop, a ratio of about four to one in polygon processing. Assuming the average machine (these days) is equal or better than the Celery machine, the True3D version of the Simulation could be something special.

The first issue I am running into is the best/optimum frame rate. My personal preference is around 30fps, but the current landscapes seem to lend themselves to 50-60fps.

Having developed Noble Ape for nearly a decade anything that changes the appearance of the Simulation can only add to the user-base. If the new interface produces vocal user support, so much the better.

SiteMap'in Biota.org

I turned Google's SiteMap on biota.org last night whilst I was listening to WeFunk and Luna was pawing the monitor. Interesting to see the words that people search for that lead them to biota.org;

natural form artists
biota
natural forms artists
organic art
organic sculpture
sims
biology project
the sims
charles ostman
karl sims
nanobiology
virtual creatures
organic artist
virtual pets
anomalocaris
cat sprites
organic artists
organic form artists
burgess shale
organic arts

Always interesting to see content translating to searchs.

Good night.

CRT CAT...