Author: admin

In 1978 Douglas Adams explained that “The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!” I have often pondered whether life, the universe and everything would some day give us greater insights about what he said.

Then today I saw the picture of the WNBA all-stars, every one of them wearing “42” shirts in the second half of their game. They were, of course supporting Brittney Griner.

BG’s “crime”, as I understand it, was to inadvertently bring a small amount of a doctor-prescribed medication to a country that doesn’t allow that medication. As a result, she may be facing many horrific years in a work camp.

I understand how this tells us something terrible about life. But how does it tie into “the universe and everything”?

Well, it seems that I live in a country which has now started to criminalize doctors simply for trying to save lives — even the lives of 10 year old children — essentially for the “crime” of being female.

So apparently this particular flavor of politico-fascism is not just an aspect of life over there. It seems to be starting to pervade the universe and everything.

Maybe Douglas Adams was onto something.

Yesterday I posted a little computer program that allowed its reader to edit and change the code. I think this might fundamentally change the nature of the transaction.

For example, in yesterday’s code offering, you can simply change one number and suddenly the graph paper becomes an interesting perspective pattern. It recreates the illusion of a 3D scene without any actual 3D.

Instead of simply becoming something that I present to you, the programmable space becomes something for you to explore. It becomes your own learning nook, a kind of DIY classroom.

I wonder whether encouraging a systematic exposure of editable code could have a positive cultural impact. It might foster an general ethos of “If you can see this, then you can change it, and maybe make it better.” And that can’t be bad.

This week I’ve decided to go in a different direction with these weekly widgets. Instead of just showing you a computer graphics program, I’m going to let you edit the program for yourself and see how things change.

I’m starting this week with about the simplest example I can think of — plain graph paper. When you click on the link, you will just see a sheet of graph paper, in the traditional light blue color.

But then if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you will see that you can click on the name of the program — in this case graphpaper. When you do that, a code editor will come up.

You will then be able to see the source code (which this week is very simple), and you can change it to your heart’s content. If you get stuck, you can just reload the page.

You can check it out here.

There are so many problems here on Earth. Lately it seems that there are even more than usual — and that is a very high bar indeed.

But today the first images came back from the James Webb Space Telescope, and they are glorious. Absolutely glorious. Just looking at them fills me with awe and a thrilling sense of wonder.

Perhaps Oscar Wilde said it best: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

I’ve noticed that my first solutions to things tend to be way too complex. But the irony is that when I first come up with them, I generally have no idea that this is true.

I usually start out thinking “This looks like a really simple and elegant way to do this.” But then I start to implement the thing, and I begin to notice that various things are sticking out here and there.

So I say to myself “Well, I don’t really need this part,” and I take something out. Which means that now I don’t really need that other part either, so I take that out too.

After a number of iterations, I usually end up with something a lot simpler than the Rube Goldberg contraption that I had started with. At which point I generally ask myself “Hey, why didn’t I think of this in the first place?”

Good question. Maybe eventually I will find a simple answer.

I spent a big chunk of time today working through a visual problem. It was one of those situations where a number of physical pieces needed to fit together in just the right way to make everything work.

And I realized two things: First, that this kind of problem solving is fundamentally different from other kinds of problem solving. It clearly uses a different part of the brain from, say, verbal reasoning.

Second, visual problem solving is just really really fun. There’s something wonderfully pleasurable about arranging things in 3D space and getting them just right.

I wonder whether our long ago ancestors had this much fun arranging things in the cave. I’ll bet they did.

Sometimes the problem is just that you need to catch up on sleep. Today I finally caught up on sleep.

It was a very productive day. And I am very happy.

This just in:

      Moscow Official Accuses West of ‘Blatant Russophobia’

      Dracula Accuses Van Helsing of ‘Blatant Transylvaniphobia’

      COVID-19 accuses Human Race of ‘Blatant Microbiphobia’

      Adolph Hitler Accuses Allies of ‘Blatant Germaniphobia’

I actually saw one of the above headlines in the news today. But to tell you the truth, they all kind of blur together.

I just got finished implementing a tricky computer animation technique, and this morning I showed it to our research group. And I appreciated once again the gap between doing and showing.

The algorithm worked just fine, and it did all the right things in response to various data sets. But watching it working didn’t tell the real story of how it was working.

And that real story — the story of “hey folks, this is what is actually going on under the hood” — was the one I wanted to relate to the group. Which tells me I should go back and put in more graphics.

These are not graphics that an audience would ever see. Rather, they are graphics that show the cogs and wheels and pulleys that make the whole system possible. They are the visualization tools that one practitioner uses when explaining things to another practitioner.

It occurs to me that it might be possible to embed those sorts of “show what’s under the hood” tools right into the software. So whatever you implement, you can just flip a switch and get a sort of back-stage view of how everything really works.

I guess this all comes under the heading of “professional tools”.

For this week’s Widget Wednesday, I thought I would continue the idea of modifying the previous week’s offering, to see whether I could use the same general algorithm to make something really different.

In this case, I’ve taken the 1000 particle 3D swarm from last week, made all the particles white and much larger, and changed the reactive forces a bit. The result is a fluffy white cloud that responds to your mouse — it gets excited when you move your mouse around in the sky.

You can check it out here.