Procedural Landscape Generation Revisiting the Language Issue Some time ago, I wrote a series [/2010/10/09/youre-speaking-my-language-baby-part-1-introduction] of [/2010/10/10/youre-speaking-my-language-baby-part-2-java] posts [/2010/10/11/youre-speaking-my-language-baby-part-3-c] about [/2010/10/12/youre-speaking-my-language-baby-part-4-objective-c] language [/2010/10/13/youre-speaking-my-language-baby-part-5-conclusion] choice for my Clockwork Aphid project. In the end I decided to start the project in Java, this being
Globe Trotter The Ol' Homestead You may or may not be aware that, though I now lived in London and previously lived in Edinburgh, I'm originally from South Yorkshire. Since I visited my parents this weekend for my father's 60th birthday[1], I though I'd take a moment to
Hacker Dogfood, Nom Nom Nom Dog food, the common noun, is reasonably self explanatory (pro tip: it's food for dogs). Dogfood the verb or dogfooding the verbal noun, though, might require a little bit of explanation. At the root of it is this: if you make dog food, you should feed it to
Cinephile Who Likes Short Shorts? I think I love almost everything about this short film. That being the case, I'll quit my chin wagging and just get on with showing it: {% include youtube.html video="4drucg1A6Xk" %} Mucho kudos to Dan Trachtenburg, Danielle Rayne, and everyone else envolved. No get back to
Bibliophile Book Related Blog Post I finally broke. I’ve been saying for some time that if the Kindle, or a similarly capable eReader, went under the £100 mark I would splash out and buy one. Until quite recently I had been quite tempted, but this condition was never satisfied. Had I seen one for
Blogger The Kaiser Chiefs Do NOT Get to Say They Called This... Well. These are certainly interesting times to be living in London. Interesting times to be living in England full stop, in fact. In particular, I definitely picked an ideal time to move to Clapham. I have a bad habit of being more or less completely oblivious to what's
Cinephile Film Related Blog Post “Given that you’ve just told us that the second one is one of the worst films you’ve ever seen,” asked Pete, “why on earth did you feel the need to go and see the third one?” It was a good question. In all fairness I do not have
Blogger The Sound of One Hand Clapping... ...would make significantly more noise than I have on this blog, as of late. There are a couple of reasons for this. The main one is that I don't actually have the internet in my new flat yet, and won't for another 9 days. Bloody Virgin
Bibliophile For Boobs, Mikael? Warning: this post contains a picture which includes boobs. Be prepared for that. If your manager is looking over your shoulder, don't click; or at least have an excuse ready. If you're offended by the sight of boobs... well... I'm sorry. But I probably
Hacker Full Nerd II: Nerd Harder It seems that people really enjoyed my post about the computer history museum [/2011/06/03/in-which-i-go-full-nerd-2]. At the time I wrote it, I was worried that it might constitute just a little bit too much nerd, so I held back on my initial impulse to put in more pictures
Hacker A Different Kind of Tourism If a person were to walk from downtown Mountain View (in so far as Mountain View has a town to be down of) to the Computer History Museum, and then kept going, they might find themselves wandering into Shoreline Business Park. This is where you would find the silicon in
Blogger The Process and the Platform The effort required to actually publish that last post [/2011/06/03/in-which-i-go-full-nerd-2] was... considerable. Several factors contributed to this: * I have slow internet access at my hotel; * Currently, my only (full) computer is my work laptop; * This doesn't have iPhoto installed (this is mostly for reasons of
Hacker ...In Which I Go Full Nerd Jet lag is a funny thing. Right now it actually seems to be working in my favour; it's managed to knock a couple of bad habits out of me. Specifically, these happen to be the not entirely unrelated habits of going to bed too late (then making it
Hacker This Morning. You're going to have to wait a little while longer for the Computer History Museum, Silicon Valley Wandering and San Francisco based updates I had in mind, since I still haven't found a good way of adding the images I wanted to. In the meantime, I
Globe Trotter A brief update Most people can definitively trace at least one or two traits directly back to one of their parents. In my case I can definitely lay the blame for two at the feet of my father: 1. I know the rules of cricket inside out; 2. Walking right across town doesn&
Hacker Fourteen Days in the Valley I can see the mountains, but I suppose that's only to be expected. I am in Mountain View, after all. As of today, I'm in Silicon Valley for my "noogler training," something which most companies would just refer to as an induction. At Google,
Bibliophile What's the Downside? I'm reading a Peter F Hamilton book right now. His work isn't perfect, but I like it. He achieves a fairly staggering level of scale, whilst corralling a considerable number of characters who are worth your time[1] and develop naturally, if exceptionally. His books are,
Hacker Day One This is going to be short. Suffice to say: almost everything you've heard about working for Google is true. That being the case, there is no slide in my office. I'm told they have them in Mountain View and Zurich, however, and I'll apparently
Hacker s/@seebyte\.com/@google\.com/g Yes. That's right. I did it. I used a sed [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sed] expression as post title. I've been very quiet as of late, though in my defence I've been very busy for a few months. In the middle of that
Procedural Landscape Generation Features So, in my last post [/2011/03/14/brave-new-worlds] I remarked that for procedurally generated landscapes to be interesting, they would need features. But what sort of features was I talking about? Population centres, in particular, tend to to be found close to certain kinds of... things. The first of
Procedural Landscape Generation Brave New Worlds If you were writing a taxonomy of stories you might choose books as a good place to start. Flicking your way through the world's libraries, time and the Dewey Decimal System would eventually bring you to the fantasy genre. There is a lot of fantasy writing out there,
Blogger Spicy! What, in your opinion, qualifies something as a good advert? Answers on postcard, or alternatively in the comments section below, if you find that easier. In the technical sense the main thing is surely that you actually end up buying the product in question. In terms of absolute results, I
Hacker The Day Job Part 2: Let's get SAUC-E! If you know when I started my PhD you'll be aware that it took quite some time for me to finish it. There are various reasons for this. One is that I spent quite a bit of time working and getting industrial experience during it. The other is
Cinephile Spins a Webb, any size... Okay, so there has been a shameful lack of posts here in recent weeks, and for that I apologise. I've had some stuff going on in both my personal and professional lives, and so this blog has really been put on the back burner. I swear to you
Procedural Landscape Generation The Elephant in the Room Since I haven't been able to do any actual work on my Clockwork Aphid project as of late, I suppose I may as well talk about the background behind it a little more. Those who talk about it the most are the ones doing it the least, and
