brainwagon

First of all, I’d like to just say one thing: BONG HITS 4 JESUS How many of you felt that this phrase was trying to convince you to use illegal drugs? What if it were on a banner held by teenagers? The majority of Supreme Court justices thought this rather comical phrase was a sufficient […]

Over on Eric Wolf’s blog, he writes an interesting post about the Internet boom phenomenon: Lord, let there be one more tech boom, I promise not to blow it this time… I have a slightly different take. We all like to jump on the bandwagon when something is new and exciting. I’m a lucky man: […]

I was reminded that the deadline for cheaper prices for attending SIGGRAPH is this Friday. That reminded me that I had not gone out and discovered what papers will actually be presented at this year’s conference, so a moment’s Googling revealed: SIGGRAPH 2007 Papers Are any other brainwagon readers going to be at SIGGRAPH? Podcasters? […]

The Hydra Consome Game Developer’s Kit is getting quite a bit of play on various blogs. It’s a little game console based upon the Propeller chip created by Parallax (more here) which is an interesting little gadget. It has eight relatively simple cores sitting on a single chip, and is relatively cheap and fast. You […]

Slashdot had an article today marking the 25th anniversary of the release of Ridley Scott’s vision of Bladerunner, and points at Mythbuster Adam Savage’s claim that it stands at the apex of science fiction effects, created in a time before computer graphics. I think I agree. I’m tempted to add another Ridley Scott film into […]

I’ve read quite a bit about computer chess and checkers (although my own program, Milhouse, has been fairly stagnant for over a month). I’ve read somewhat less about systems which play games like backgammon, othello, poker or mancala. But it turns out I’m almost completely ignorant of the state of the art in programs to […]

If you wandered into my office, you’d probably be shocked by the vast amount of just raw paper I have lying around. I scribble notes, I use photocopy machines, I print stuff all the time. And I have lots of books and magazine articles I’ve clipped over the years. I’d like to do some optical […]

I was noodling around, and found reference to a patent on an early “mirror screw” version of mechanical television. Don’t know that that is? Don’t worry, this link is more for me than for you. REFLECTING AND SCANNING APPARATUS – Google Patents Addendum: It’s amazing what you can find online. Archive.org has a scanned copy […]

If you read the same blogs as me or if you watch the same nerd TV show as me, you might have an inkling about what code the following message utilizes. If you are as clever as me, you should be able to crack this code fairly straightforwardly, and tell me what the message is. […]

NASA has released their CLARAty framework for robotics to the public for download. JPL Robotics: News CLARAty is an integrated framework for reusable robotic software. It defines interfaces for common robotic functionality and integrates multiple implementations of any given functionality. Examples of such capabilities include pose estimation, navigation, locomotion and planning. In addition to supporting […]

Show a kid a 3.5″ floppy disk today, and he might look at you in quizzically. Show him a 5.25″ floppy, and he’ll think you showed him some kind of ancient talisman. But in the days before floppies, programs were typically distributed as audio on cassettes. (My recollection of programs on my Atari was that […]

Ran across this rather nice applet that lets you probe the Nalimov endgame databases to evaluate chess endgames. Very nice! Web Query for Nalimov Endgame Tablebases [tags]Chess[/tags]

It’s about a month until the ICFP programming contest begins, and I’ve found out that I’m scheduled to return from Vegas the day of the beginning. I think I’m gonna give it a try this year if I can get my crap together. I don’t suffer from any illusion that I’ll do particularly well, but […]

Tom and I have briefly discussed how someone might use a Wii controller in performing and controlling electronic music. Here’s a simple example, originally snarfed from the Make blog: YouTube – Nintendo Wiimote Theremin with Moog Little Phatty

This weekend was a double-movie weekend. On Friday night, I went out to see the new Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer movie with some of my peeps from work, and late Saturday I succumbed to the influence of the females in my house, and went to catch the new Nancy Drew film. The […]