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Monday, 03:38 pm, 30 May 2005 Long Time, No Log... I have written four log entries online since the last one I put online. The main problem has been that I connect from my Log laptop to the internet through a dial-up connection, not broadband. This will be fixed in the near future. Talking to Mridul With broadband, I have been able to talk over the connection with Alex 'Gurap' Brooks and today, for the first time ever, Mridul P. It was nice talking to them both. Alex and I had a lot of catching up to do. Many friends to update on. Over email, the mundane is discussed, but a voice call enables much more. Having never spoken to Mridul, having worked through the Noble Ape Simulation porting over a year or so period, it was particularly interesting talking to him. Email is a very vanilla means of communicating. You don't get a realtime sense of a person over email. It was great putting a voice and a set of ideas to the name. Spell Checking for Logs... The greatest delay in getting log updates is the lack of a spell checker on my Windows laptop. To this end, I am developing a new application through Noble Ape; http://www.nobleape.com/freeengl/ It has been keeping me off the streets in recent days. Good afternoon. Sunday, 11:21 pm, 22 May 2005 It had to happen eventually. The Barbalets have broadband. After years of using dial up to do everything internet, broadband came around midday yesterday. So what does one do when one finally gets broadband? Explore streaming video. Initially I checked out Yahoo's Music video streaming. For a 15 to 30 second commercial, you get to pick what you want to view. For me, I went through the classic Cash Money Records videos from when I left the US four plus years ago. At the time, Back That Thang Up was a cultural phenomenon featured on late night talkshow comedy sets - it must be part of popular culture. I remember seeing a middle-aged comedian trying to impersonate the girls on Conan O. After some heavy dark south culture, I wanted to see the breadth of videos. New Order's Blue Monday is a strange favourite of mine. Having lived near Madchester, I do understand one Summer of Winter in that part of the world could inspire the depressive lyrics and beat. It is a pity that electronic beats are so heavy over the melody. It would be a great sampler. In any case, one thing I didn't realise was the song was released in 1991. So Yahoo claims anyway. 1991 seems way too late. Although it could be on the money. I remember watching the video as a live set and the actual video too on RAGE - that great staple of Australian yoof programming. We ventured out today in the 100F/37C+ heat to find a local mall. It was about 30+ minutes away. I though it was the law that all parts of the suburban US needed to have a mall within 10 minutes drive, max. Particularly in this part of the world. In any case, I found myself in the mall wandering whilst my wife went clothes shopping. I found myself in a Waldens' Books. I remembered I had a Waldens' Books card in a previous life. I probably couldn't reactivate it now. In any case, whilst perusing the isles, I overheard two teenagers sitting between the book stands discussing that the only knowledge worth having, indeed the only knowledge needed, was Biblical knowledge. It all came from the Bible. I felt like stopping and mentioning Plato and the Scholastics' influence on modern thinking and in fact the collection of these texts together with Biblical texts during the dark ages. A little literary smudging? Similar themes? Then I caught myself. This wasn't the best idea. One thing that did strike me wandering through the mall. Rather than all the branded nonsense toys and films in US popular culture, the country needed some circa 1950s style war comics about contemporary heroes. The US Army was losing the numbers war in recruitment. Rather than TV ads, perhaps they could consider comic books and films. I don't think GI Joe really cuts it in the realism stakes. I lost my bottle in the mall's toy store again about asking an attendant about terrorist/insurgent figures. It caught me that perhaps children were supposed to just focus on the US forces in these times. After all, any kid could add a car bomb into their play. Ironically, Germany leading up to and including the Second World War had toys of all the political figures as well as combatant toys. There are accounts of children discarding political characters as they were removed from the Reich. Although the Powell action figure would be retired as opposed to beheading or other grisly removals that German children enacted on their political action figure toys. One final, more upbeat note. I have been reading though my White Dwarf and Mad subscription. It is wonderful to have one familiar thing from the old world in my monthly WD. The White Dwarf demographic maps simply over to the Mad magazine demographic in some sense too. I'm in the linking Venn. Although in a truly lighthearted way. Mad now accepts external adds including Magic The Gathering ads for kids. I've never been that nerdy. Well painted little toy soldiers is as far as its going on my watch. Good night. Saturday, 09:39 am, 21 May 2005 Me and My Hund Our first Saturday morning in a new apartment. Charlie and I are larking it having been out for a walk around 5.50am and 7.40am. The move has been most interesting for Charlie who, in his ten years, has never been far from my wife's parents. For him, the trip has been a mixed blessing. Slowly it is sinking in that he is no longer the leader of a pack and is now just a retiring dog. Having an inside dog, full time, is a new experience for me. In part due to the move, he is requiring a lot of reassuring at regular intervals. Parcels of Life For me, the move is a return to apartment living. Something I was pleased to say goodbye to in the UK. US apartments are familiar but still isolating places. Parcels of people. Shared mail boxes. But not a very natural way to live. I reflect on the statistic that 70% of Americans own their own homes. What of the remaining 30%. When you live in apartments, they seem the world. For us, we are looking at it as somewhere temporary. A stepping stone. Certainly when our things arrive from the UK, a house of stuff into an apartment, we will see physically the contrasts of how we lived. You've Returned From Where You Were... A new move means new dreams, new explorations of what has been left behind. We are currently sleeping on air mattresses which doesn't add to our sleeping too much. I have been dreaming about the UK and Australia quite a bit. I talked to my brother in Australia last night, the benefit of a new phone with international dialling. I had two quite distinct dreams last night. The first featured my former co-workers in the UK working in a scrap metal yard. I couldn't put my finger on what this dream meant. I rarely dream about familiar people in familiar places. In fact, I never dream about familiar places. ... But Now You Are Not Back From Where You Were From The second dream was a series of vignettes on how I was living in a different place now so I could talk to all the people I knew. The two sided coin dream. You have gone from one place to another, now you must be back to the place you came from. Sadly no. The two people in the dream I talked with was my father's father. Now deceased. And my friend of old, Alex 'Gurap' Brooks. Could it really be nearly seven years since I was last in Australia. Last properly in Australia at least. I get an email or two from Alex almost every day. Although most of the time they are forwarded jokes etc. So I guess I feel some remote connection. I looked through the Regulars section of this site and thought it needed some serious updating. I need to write the next instalment of the Noble Ape Mailout too. Good morning. Tuesday, 09:36 pm, 17 May 2005 I have been thinking about moving from the somewhat flat Planet Noble Ape development to a galaxy simulation. The idea of infinite space simulation has some background. Watching computer game reviews on TechTV, I am struck by the lack of genres that were once the staple of game development. The star-search games that involved flying amongst stars and planets looking for particular planets and enemies were a staple genre. No more. In geometric speed terms, doing light rendering from stars and planets offer a number of optimisation options. Simulating infinite space has some interesting properties too. Light intensity governs the perceived distance. Simulating a 3 x 3 x 3 cube of visible intensity cubes at any given time offers some expansion. Using a generator and the x, y and z coordinates, and placing 5-20 planets and 1-4 stars in a cube offers enough visible reference interest. Now just 24 x 3 x 3 x 3 (= 648) intensity points (with some sphering effects if close enough). What more can be added in the spatial elements? Meteors? Other spatial effects? An interesting point about the original Noble Ape Simulation and Planet Noble Ape development, is that it is based around a conversation over dinner I had when I lived on campus at university. It was the idea from a science fiction book that a toroid planet could have a toroid half sun that rotated around it like two interconnected doughnuts with the light coming from half the sun doughnut. So playing with the physics of a universe - thinking of possible universes rather than our universe. I like the idea of the insane scientist creator. The ultimate science fiction universe. Imagine if gravity was a special effect made possible with tens of thousand of springy strings. Or perhaps that motion could be perpetual assisted with a giant wind-up spring. An interesting simulation I have been thinking about since I started the Noble Ape Simulation was a flexible dt simulation. Perhaps a simulation that was time independent. The central element of the Noble Ape Simulation (and most simulations) is that each simulation cycle exists in a fixed time delta (dt). All mathematical properties change with a flexible dt. The possibilities of simulation. Good night. Friday, 02:16 pm, 13 May 2005 More desert travel over the week. When I haven't been travelling, I have been working through the scripting changes and it has opened a number of delta changes between the Windows and Mac development of the Noble Ape Simulation. Occasionally I google information on the Simulation to see if there is any user feedback online. An interesting part of maintaining something that is for all intents and purposes free, you rarely hear back from happy users. Similarly, you don't hear about bugs/problems users may be experiencing. Going through my resume with the move, a small section deals with Apple's developer kitchens and their use of Noble Ape. There is nothing explicitly on Apple's site that says this occurs although I did find this on Apple's list. Re: Apple Dev Kitchen - Them's tasty vittles, Maw! On 1/22/04 1:32 AM, 'Craig Mattocks' eloquently wrote: ... Some really cool examples (especially the Noble Ape artificial intelligence simulation, with inquisitive Simians roaming about an island) are shown, which illustrate how to delve into your code and tune up its performance. IIRC, the speed of the 'ape thoughts' (flashing brain wave patterns) was increased by a factor of about 16 by multithreading and vectorizing their 'coginitive processes'. Ooh-ooh, now that's worth howling about! Always nice to find such examples online. University Preacher-Man Something I have been running through the BiotaAtHome mailing list is evangelising the development through Universities. The thinking is that there are a number of students at these institutions that may be developing ALife programs/projects and taking this collective energy and focusing some of it on BiotaAtHome would be terrific. If nothing more, to establish a community of ALife developers. How one moves from a list of potential contacts to an active network of contacts is interesting. This is something I would like to get feedback on from the B@H mailing list. WeFunk tonight. Always something to look forward to. Good afternoon. Monday, 10:15 pm, 09 May 2005 Long Road... More than a week since my last log entry. In part it is due to the substantial travel that I am midway through currently. Driving through the same areas of desert I'm struck with how beautiful the desert in this part of the world is. It isn't flat like the desert in Australia. There are well defined landmarks. Los Angeles Mayoral Election I occasionally turn on the television and see ads for the LA Mayoral election. Neither candidate seems up to the job. According to the ads, both are criminally corrupt and according to both sides, the other candidate should be imprisoned. It seems to me a post modern election in many ways. When elections become criminal mud slanging matches, is there really democracy? It should be possible for an election to include an 'I don't want any of these schmucks in a political post.' Forget Rock the Vote and other political party supported nonsense, we need Block the Vote. Scripting Beta Hits the 'net I put the Scripting Beta for the Noble Ape Simulation online today. I don't know how bug-ridden it is. But I have put it out for the developer mailing list to respond to through the list. http://www.nobleape.com/sim/nobleape667b0.hqx Or for Mac using Barbalet's Log readers. I can't promised polished. But it seems to work most of the time. Good night. Sunday, 11:39 am, 01 May 2005 WeFunk Live Although it is a day or so late, I wanted to write a few words about listening to WeFunk live every Friday. It seems like a little thing, but it certainly sets the weekend off in the right direction. I enjoy the fact that it is location independent. I don't have to be anywhere bar close to an internet connection. Linking experiences through long distant moves are always important. Code Works By Accident... Doesn't Work By Design I accidentally ran the scripting code last night inside the Noble Ape Simulation. It was quite a trip actually. On my old Mac laptop the brain cycles per second dropped from 32 to 4. This morning I decided to make it a little more robust. The first check I did was the infinite loop test which is supposed to allow system events and quit. Then I tried a syntax error test to see if it reported the error and switched the interpreter off in the case of an error event. Neither worked as planned. But I have tracked down the root cause. I'm planning on moving some of the development of my tired little Mac to a Windows laptop I have been breaking in over the past month. The Windows machine has a slightly better debugger which is what is really needed with this new scripting code. Viva... My wife and I are returning to the bright light city this week. Perhaps to pick up more PC hardware but more likely to get accustomed to the surroundings once again. Still no sign of our shipping although I have been promised it will arrive on land in the near future. About four and a half months after it left our possession. Longest shipping ever. Bruce Calling I've got a conference call with Bruce Damer today to work out the finer points with the BiotaAtHome transition and the white paper launch. I haven't spoke to Bruce for a couple of months although we keep in semi regular email contact. I have set a few administrative dot points although there is a lot of additional stuff to chew over. I'm hoping I will have a second or two to write up the dot points before we head out to LV t'row. I suspect it will be summarised to four paragraphs or so. Good morning. [ Previous Log ]
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