HarveyNick.com

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&

Cinephile

Trailer Trash

Every once in a while, a film trailer comes along that I can’t seem to stop myself watching repeatedly. I like trailers in general, which is definitely part of the problem, but some of them really grab hold of me. Two good examples of this are the final theatrical

Geek

...And Another Couple Of Things

Something I forgot to mention in my last post was my trying to look at the iPad from a developer's perspective. I talked before about a programming side project that I've had bouncing around in my head for a while. Previously, I mentioned that I wasn&

Geek

That iPad thing

Originally, right after I got around the watching the keynote presentation which launched the iPad, I was going to write a blog post about how disappointed I was. I thought they'd screwed the pooch and I, for one, was seriously underwhelmed. Needless to say, I didn't

Geek

The Goldilocks Dilema

Daddy Bear's porridge is too expensive. Baby Bear's porridge is underpowered. Mummy Bear's porridge is just right... but has a monitor in it. Hhhmmm... perhaps I should explain... It's reached that time. My computer is starting to show it's age.

Bibliophile

Just Can't Recommend Highly Enough

Today I finished "The Girl Who Played With Fire", translated by Reg Keeland from the swedish book of the same name by Stieg Larsson. It's the sequel to 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (which is called "Men Who Hate Women" in

Globe Trotter

The right kind of holiday

It has been, by my count, at least 18 months since I last had a holiday (aside from one weekend spent in Cardiff). It's getting to the point where I'm starting to feel that I really need a one. But what kind of holiday? Having stopped

Hacker

Web Frameworks, Desktop Application and My Newly Melted Brain

Let's get the preliminaries out of the way: Hello, long time no see, how have you been? Etc... So, whilst writing up my PhD (experiments finally finished!) and working three days a week (going fully full time at the end of September!) I have a fair bit on

Geek

Spending to make...

While it's a fairly common and reasonably accurate maxim that you have to spend money to make money, I find myself wondering if the same is true of energy. To reword and disentangle the metaphor: Can you save energy by using energy? Here's a my train

Hacker

Call by the what now?

Some not work related computery bits and pieces have been percolating around my head for some time now. I think we should talk about them for a while. That is: I'll talk. You listen. I'm probably going to write a couple of more techy blogs, all

Audiophile

Serendipitous Nostalgia

Today I was walking home from work and absent-mindedly listening to music, when I noticed that that my supposedly shuffled iPod was displaying a definite preference for one band in particular. A band I haven't really spared a seconds thought in some years. As I walked I hatched

Geek

Street Fighter Tutu

So I like computer games. This isn't news, really. Not in a hardcore live-to-game type way, more in a general fondness type way. That said, I did, as a youngster in an age before mobile phones, catch a bus to the next town so I could play a