Hacker The Day Job: Autonomous Underwater Vehicles If you're reading this blog and don't actually know me in the real world then you might be wondering "who actually is this guy?" and possibly even "what is it that he actually does, aside from starting to talk about procedural landscape generation,
Hacker The Boardroom That important thing I was talking about before [/2010/11/03/a-short-note-regarding-the-deafening-silence]? It was my PhD viva, and it happened last Friday. Remember, remember, the fifth of November, indeed. It's possibile that given time I'll look back upon it as a positive experience (as many others
Blogger A Short Note Regarding the Deafening Silence For a while there it really looked as though I was on top of this whole blogging lark, didn't it? The problem is that writing this blog (and to an even greater extent, working on the Clockwork Aphid project) doesn't feel like procrastinating. It feels like
Hacker What todo? The return train ride after a visit to my parents' house is, if anything, more pleasant that the outward journey. This is not least, of course, because it ends in Edinburgh, rather than Doncaster*. Be that as it may, this is perhaps a good time to pick up the
Globe Trotter The Journey Home Authors note: This post was actually written on Sunday. As it turns out, writing it on the iPad was no problem at all, but actually posting it (with the picture and links) was a different matter entirely. You know, the train journey from Edinburgh to Doncaster is really quite beautiful,
Procedural Landscape Generation Fractal Errata Some of the particularly sharp/anal ones amongst you might have noticed that while the technique for generating fractal lanscapes I previously described [/2010/10/19/youre-speaking-my-landscape-baby] works (and works well), it's not 100% correct. Specifically, the fact that it uses the the same scaling factor for nodes
Procedural Landscape Generation Now In Eye Popping 3D! It took a little bit of fighting with bugs that weren't showing up in the 2D view, and a bit of time to figure out what was going on with the lighting system in JME [http://www.jmonkeyengine.org/], but I finally got the 3D display of the
Procedural Landscape Generation Some Random Landscapes I don't have any 3D views of the fractal landscapes I've been making [/2010/10/19/youre-speaking-my-landscape-baby] to show you yet, as I'm still working through the different implementation options. I did get a little distracted with the 2D views of the landscape this
Procedural Landscape Generation You're Speaking My Landscape, Baby. No, that isn't a typo... but yes, it is a bad play on words. That's the bad news. The good news: finally! A Clockwork Aphid implementation post! If you're building something which relates in some way to virtual worlds, then the first thing you&
Audiophile Epic Googleyep and Other Stories I'm currently doing some tests on a couple of different data structure implementations for Clockwork Aphid, so while they're running I thought I'd a bit of time to write a music related post, since I haven't done one in a while. So,
Procedural Landscape Generation Language Post Mortem and Some Other Notes A couple nuggets of knowledge came out of my "You're Speaking My Language, Baby" series of posts, so I though I'd just take a quick moment to talk about them. The first two are perhaps the most obvious by far. Firstly: if you actually
Procedural Landscape Generation There Can be Only... Several... As I've previously mentioned, my project (Clockwork Aphid) has been bubbling away in the bearded cauldron that is my head for quite some time. As a result, I have quite a bit I want to say about it. I want to blog about the process of building it
Procedural Landscape Generation You're Speaking my Language, Baby. Part 5: Conclusion So... what's the conclusion? It mostly comes back to the fact that I'm doing this mainly for fun (though you may have trouble believing it). That being the case I'm going to start working in Java. In fact I already have started working in
Procedural Landscape Generation Youre Speaking My Language Baby Part 4: Objective C The last language I'm considering isObjective-C. I know this language the least of three (which is to say: I don't know it at all). To make matters worse, while Java and C++ share a similar syntax, Objective-C is completely different in places. That being said, it&
Procedural Landscape Generation You're Speaking my Language, Baby. Part 3: C++ The second language I'm considering isC++. This is the language that I use the most at my day job. It's also the language that's used to build the vast majority of computer games and one hell of a lot of commercial software. I'
Procedural Landscape Generation You're Speaking my Language, Baby. Part 2: Java The first language I'm considering isJava. This is by far the language I'm most comfortable and proficient with. It was used for about 90% of my Bachelors degree, I wrote the entire codebase of my PhD using it, and it gets used here and there in
Procedural Landscape Generation You're Speaking my Language, Baby. Part 1: Introduction If you're about to start on a programming project of some sort (and I am), then the first choice you have to make is the main programming language you're going to use. Now, if you're carrying out this project on your employers time they
Geek WoW oh WoW Sooner or later, most people go looking for a bit of escapism every once in a while. There's definitely a spectrum of how far people like to escape. Some can't stand anything which steps outside the bounds of the possible, others practically require spaceships and dragons
Procedural Landscape Generation What in the Name of all that's Holy is a Clockwork Aphid? Clockwork Aphid is the name I'm giving to a side project I've had sitting at the back of head for a little while. I'm actually going to try and build it now. What it actually is is quite big and hard to explain, so
Foodie It's Hestontastic! Strangely, I don't think my good lady actually thought I'd attempt to make any of the actual recipes when she bought me a copy of Heston Blumenthal [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heston_Blumenthal]'s "Further Adventures in Search of Perfection [http://www.amazon.
Audiophile Musical Arithmetic Okay, so here's the formula: (A - B) + C = D And here are the variables: A = {% include youtube.html video="UZjf9C6atT4" %} Evanescence. More specifically: the original line up (as far as most of the world is concerned). I like Evanescence quite a bit, but that'
Geek Location Location Location One of the few things I've missed since abandoning the good ship Windows PC for the Mac... er... Zeppelin (why not?) is magazines. I used to really enjoy reading the PC gaming and hardware mags. Oftentimes they were pitched at about the right level for me. I felt
Cinephile A couple more... Further to my last post, here's a couple more films which caught my eye, though one of them is a ways off yet. Faster (trailer [http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/faster/]) - I will go and see Dwayne Johnson in any film which doesn't involve
Cinephile Looking Forwards The Cineworld unlimited card is a wonderful thing, especially given that I no longer have a student card (I am still a student, technically. Don't ask). It encourages you to take a much more "what the hell," type attitude to heading to the cinema, and I
Blogger Identity As you may or may not know, I'm currently in Australia. In fact, I've now been here for a little over a month. I'll blog about it sooner or later, but not yet. This is largely because I don't know what I&
