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News: ESCAPE
(10 May 2004 at 14:07) |
I'm currently helping to "proctor" an exam, which really just means sitting still for three hours watching the squirming, tortured faces. That's not very fun. (Although, in contrast, we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief when it's over!)
Aside from finishing up grading and being sick, I spent much of the weekend hacking on escape. Players can now rate levels that they play, which will (I hope) let me assess which levels are best so that I can create a collection of high-quality "Official" levels. The capability to submit puzzles that you make is already there, so if you're looking for something to do as your bored summer begins, I would love for you to try it out. Very soon will be a "1.0" release, at which time I'll make a nicer web page and try to expose the game to more than just readers of this weblog.
In other related news, Adam made a fantastic port of Escape to the Nintendo for his NES development class project. He managed to implement all the game rules, and all of the 18x10 levels are supposed to be included in it. I made some box artwork (complete with laser background) for the game. He's in the final polishing stages now... it will be available for download soon! | |
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Various things that happened
(17 Apr 2004 at 20:56) |
Yesterday I ran the "random distance run." I had free registration because I designed the shirt (front, back), so at the last minute I decided I might as well run. I was not prepared to run 2 miles on a hot day with heavy shorts and change in my pockets, but remember: 49th out of 50 is the last winner.
I saw Kill Bill #2. I liked it better than the first one, actually. It is recommended if you like Tarantino and kung fu.
A real use for polymorphic recursion: stable mergesort. In the split phase, tag each element with its index. Then the comparison function becomes lexicographic(old_compare, int_compare). By hoisting the indices out into a pre-pass, you can avoid having to recurse on a different list type each time, and despite this code being more efficient, it is somehow not as nice. (Think of a proof of its correctness--you get stability relative to the original list, not the passed in lists, inductively.)
Several of my friends from undergrad are here visiting, as is standard for carnival. We hung out some yesterday. In typical form I am spending the nice day working on projects. I got sidetracked from working on new escape server stuff, an unimplemented bit of Aphaisa 2 left me unable to write a program in the way I wanted to. So today I finally implemented constant patterns in Aphasia 2's massively complicated pattern compiler. This is not my first pattern compiler, but there are still things I'd do differently if I were to rewrite it from scratch. If only I could remember what they are...? | |
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Eat Poop, You Cat.
(13 Jan 2004 at 11:00) |
We played a game called (for real, this is the name it goes by on the Internet) "Eat Poop, You Cat" at a party last week. This game is a combination of pictionary and telephone, sort of. Basically, players pass a sheet of paper around in a circle (or, n-gon), and take turns either drawing a picture based on a caption that's on the page, or writing a caption for a picture that's on the page. You only get to look at the last picture or caption, so the ideas diverge quickly.
I made scans of our game; it was pretty hard to scan with our document feeder scanner at work, because the papers are all folded up to implement the reduced visibility rules. Also, we were inconsistent about flipping versus flipping and rotating, so some of the 2nd pages come out upside-down. Still, a fun read.
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UPD: Illustrated Notes from Computer Science
(09 Aug 2003 at 19:30) |
| Well, I spent the better part of the day (actually, I think it was the worse part, to tell you the truth) scanning and uploading and photoshopping the last year's worth of notebooks for my online Illustrated Notes from Computer Science. I also covertly snuck in a "lost episode" cobbled together with a few pages I found from my time in undergrad. | |
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August!
(01 Aug 2003 at 11:53) |
At the beginning of the month I always struggle to come up with something to stick here, since my weblog looks so dumb when there are no entries at all. (I keep meaning to make it display some of last month's entries, but, well, I keep meaning to do a lot of things.) Actually, this month I accidentally hit enter while looking for the 'A' key (as in August) and so there's an empty entry right there already making the weblog look even dumber. But I think that's pretty funny so it's staying.
Well, the entry that I was actually going to post is that I made an icon for Chris Colohan's kzephyr program, which I don't use, but I am a nice guy so why not. The icon is dancing around at the Tom 7 Ultimate Icon Emporium in its 16-color animated glory.
I am almost at a demo point for my Hemlock ML compiler for school. At this point it is fun to hack on because it actually does stuff.
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World Commerce Center
(12 Aug 2002 at 08:58) |
1165×854 version No matter your architectural and civil engineering background, you can now you can submit your proposals for new buildings at the world trade center site at CNN!
My proposal, like most of the others, is far beyond "structurally unsound", will totally ruin the skyline of New York City, and is dominated by a maudlin "America" theme. But mine's a different kind of America theme, can you guess what?
Here's the caption I sent with my entry:
I propose a spacious and aesthetic replacement for the twin towers. The inverted-pyramid design allows the area at the top of the tower to be twelve times as great as the actual area of ground zero. This gives room for a gigantic shopping mall and food court encased in a glass atrium on top, as well as office space for thousands! The entire structure will be supported by immense steel cables, as a testament to the iron resolve of our country.
-- Tom Murphy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | |
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NEW: Illustrated Notes from Computer Science
(23 May 2002 at 00:53) |
I finally uploaded Illustrated Notes from Computer Science, which is my notebook scans from my first year of grad school.
I think I am missing a notebook or two, though, because there are some drawings I can remember (like, "Paul is an Asshead") that I didn't find and scan... | |
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NEW: Notebooks 2000-2001
(16 May 2002 at 01:58) |
| Now available, the first 35 scans from my new scanning marathon: Interesting Pages 2000-2001! More soon, enjoy! | |
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Commerce Week 2002
(14 May 2002 at 23:16) |
Lots of commerce this week. Yesterday I bought a ping-pong table because it seemed like a good thing for my space-age bachelor pad to have. I'm surprised how well I remember how to play, since I haven't for several years.
I also bought a Scanner, and as far as I can tell that's the last peripheral that I need for my computer. Can you think of anything? IDE Raid? TV Tuner card? I don't need a new sound card because kx project has given me 5ms latency with my cheap-ass Sound Blaster Live!.
Anyway, a scanner means that I'll be finally scanning in the last three years of notebooks (1, 2, 3, 4). Thought I have given up? No, there are literally hundreds of pages left to go. This is going to be a real marathon...
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