What is this?

I was looking around on Google maps and found this, Southeast of Baja. What is it?

Turning road-blocks into new paths

I'm working on a small OpenGL game, and I use the old trick of drawing anti-aliased lines on top of a solid model for a nice smooth look. Well, if you're object is translucent, you've got a problem. When you draw your lines, they will be blended with your model - making them lighter or darker than the model.

After thinking about how to solve this problem, it occured to me that maybe I could use this to my advantage. It kind of gives the objects a griddy, spacey feel - some lines are darker than the model, some lighter - it's more than just lines on top of the model which I also tried, it's gives it more of a unique style. This reminds me of a podcast I recently listened to by Jason Fried, where he talks about embracing constraints. There's always more than one solution to a problem, so a constraint can actually help you find a better path. Ok, no more self help talk. :)

There's spam, then their's... what the?!

Subject: Re[7]:
From: Mccord Ernest

Most likely communism can't be established. But impotency can be treated!

Go on, give it a try. You'll sure enjoy it!
SPUR-m [Sperm pills]: http://bounding.net/

Discreet, unmarked packaging.

>>> NB: No prescription required

I dunno, communism has been established in the past :)

Archives fixed

Blogger was creating archives without an .html extension. This makes Firefox display the raw html instead of rendering it. If you have this same problem, make sure your "Archive Filename" is set in Settings -> Archiving. I use the default "archive.html", which blogger uses to create filenames such as "2005_09_01_archive.html".

Indy Song of the Week

PEAL - Back to Life

Inkscape prefs dialog revisited

It could use a bit more tweaking, but it think it's a big improvement.

A dialog ripe for usability review

I recently downloaded InkScape, an open source vector drawing program. It looks like a very powerful tool, but I see a few areas where the interface could be improved. Like this preferences dialog.

Links to laser or motion based input devices

http://www.mathworks.com/products/demos/imaq/applications/
laserTracking/demoimaq_LaserTracking.html

http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~karni/presentermouse/report.pdf

http://www.cameramouse.com

Who's a failure?

Search for 'failure' on Google to find out.

Unnatural Disaster: Reportback from New Orleans

REPORTBACK FROM NEW ORLEANS
UNNATURAL DISASTER

7pm Wednesday, September 14
110 Capp Street (@16th St) - buzz 202

LORRIE BETH SLONSKY is a retired emergency medical services (EMS) worker. She was attending an EMS conference in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck. She spent most of the next week trapped by the flooding--and the martial law cordon around the city.

Read about her experience here:

http://www.socialistworker.org/2005-2/556/556_04_RealHeroes.shtml

Bad Interface

http://www.joeuser.com/writings/VirtualOffice.jpg

What is that in the wastebasket, brains? :)

Flash makes me pull out my hair

I've tried a demo of Flash 5 way back when, and now I just downloaded Flash MX 2004 to take a peek at what's new. On the surface, it's still the most counterintuitive program I've used. You have strokes (lines) that aren't attached to the object itself, the arrow tool does too many things at once - try to hilight multiple objects and you end up 'splicing' them into subobjects; I can't seem to put anything into a Window control, my buttons only end up on the main form; there are multiple modes and types of components - shapes, symbols, instances. It seems unlikely that anyone can learn Flash just by playing around with it. I've learned programming concepts that were easier to learn, such as continuations and monads.

Quote of the day...

"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." -- Stephen Hawking

Job posting quote

"You're comfortable working long hours around deadlines, ..."

"..., and willingness to respond in a 24/7/365 environment (including working weekends and nights as needed)."

And I thought job postings were meant to *attract* potential employees.
No thanks. Work smart, not hard. :)

Marketing Techno-babble

All I wanted to know was the latest features of Citrix MetaFrame (now called Presentation Server?). Some of their pages are so buzzword ridden that I don't even know what they're saying. To management: please provide both executive versions and IT versions of your web site, I can't understand any of this techno-babble:

"Building an End-to-End Architectural Solution for On-Demand Access"
-- http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/ps2/technology/
index.asp?ntref=hp_nav_US

WTF does that mean??