Author: admin

Thirty years from now, people who were little kids during the pandemic will talk about this past year as a defining event in their lives. Novels and movies will be made, and the process of mythologizing will begin.

And so civilization will do what it always does, as it collectively compiles the great cultural work that may eventually become known as the Pandemicon.

Children born in the years to come will have missed the direct experience of this last year or so of insanity and tragedy. All they will know is the perhaps somewhat mythological version that we will construct for them and for future generations.

Suppose you knew that you were going to meet with a group of people regularly, half the time in real life and half the time on-line. Armed with that knowledge, how would you organize the series of meetings?

Clearly there are things for which real life is better. People have a much greater intuition for each other when they can see and hear each other in the same room. Subtleties of intent and mental state can be effectively conveyed in person. Those same subtleties are often simply lost on-line.

But on-line is good for other things. Let’s look at just one example among many.

Suppose you wanted several dozen people to each give a presentation, complete with visuals, within an hour. Theoretically that could be done in person, although much of the time would be wasted just moving people around.

Yet on-line that is not a problem at all. People could just take turns sharing their screens in a Zoom call. I’ve done this sort of thing, and it works great.

So that suggests a possible structure: Have free-wheeling discussions in person, followed by more formal presentations on-line.

But that’s just one strategy. I suspect there are many others. And I suspect that in the years to come, we are going to have a lot more experience with all this.

Edward Lear, you were born on this day
In the year 1812, 12th of May
    I know you don’t need this
    Since you’re dead and won’t read this
Oh well — what more can I say?

I’ve noticed a pattern when I write new programming code: I often spend far too much time polishing it up before putting it out into the world.

At some point the changes I make are not really making the code any better. Yet I’ll keep on tweaking things for a good day or two, well after the law of diminishing returns has set in.

I suspect this has less to do with perfectionism than with anxiety. When you put something out into the world, you are ceding control over it.

Sure, you are being neighborly — sharing with the world, helping others, laying a path for what may come next. But you are also being vulnerable, because at that point any errors in what you’ve created become public.

At some point pride of workmanship veers over into a neurotic tendency. I wonder how many other computer programmers suffer from the same neurosis.

Enjoy all your Mondays,
They are named for the Moon.
But try not to dawdle,
It will be Tuesday soon.

Here are the answers:

Mel: Bee keeper Mac: Computer salesman Mal: Evil genius Rod: Fisherman Sol: Helioseismologist Kit: Hobbyist Bud: Horticulturalist Gil: Ichthyologist Lee: Jeans salesman Moe: Landscaper Sue: Lawyer Leo: Lion tamer Don: Mafioso Fox: Male model Pat: Masseuse Van: Moving company exec Job: Personnel manager Art: Portraitist Tab: Restaurant cashier Bev: Soda jerk Ira: Tax collector Rob: Thief

John Davis asked how to make bumpy textures using the Noise function. I figure that this is as good a place as any to answer his question.

Because the Noise function is a continuous function, you can always take a derivative of it, without having to dive inside the Noise function to figure out how it works. You can get a good approximation of a derivative by taking finite differences, using nearby samples.

First choose small distance ε, which is small enough that it is smaller than any feature in our scene. I usually use a value for ε of something like 1/1000. Then instead of using a single evaluation of noise at surface point [x,y,z], do four evaluations: One is f₀ = noise(x,y,z), and the other three are f_x = noise(x+ε,y,z), f_y = noise(x,y+ε,z), and f_z = noise(x,y,z+ε), respectively.

Now you can just do finite differences to get an approximate derivative. In particular, you can get a vector in the direction of the derivative, which you can then set to unit length by using the normalize function: B = normalize([f_x-f₀,f_y-f₀,f_z-f₀]).

Then you can just add this into your surface normal. The more you add (say, by varying a constant C), the bumpier the texture: normal = normalize(normal + C * B).

And that’s it. You now have bumpy textures.

This is all inspired by Jim Blinn’s Ph.D. dissertation — as is so much in computer graphics. In 1977 he pointed out that you can fake bumpy surfaces not by changing the surface itself but just by changing the surface normal.

And that’s just one reason we know Jim Blinn is a genius: His bump textures technique is simple, fast to compute, and produces great looking results.

I have been receiving requests to give the answer key to my “three letter names” puzzle of several days ago. But I’ve decided to hold off for another day or so.

I would like to give people a fair chance to solve the puzzle, and I figure three days should be enough.

So I plan to post the answers tomorrow. Stay tuned!!!

Today one of my students, Zhu Wang, successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. The research itself is brilliant, and his presentation of it was flawless.

The meeting was slightly odd, as meetings are these days, because it was held on-line via Zoom. But that didn’t take away anything from his accomplishment or the clarity of his ideas.

These moments, when somebody goes from being a student to having their Ph.D., are very large. It’s the moment when somebody gets their license to conduct their own independent research, whether as head of an academic research lab or of a corporate team.

I love this process — even though it can be a long and arduous process — because it helps really talented and hard working people to become even better at what they do. And then they can go off and help make the world a better place.

Each of the following names goes with a profession. Can you figure it out?

Art Bev Bud Don Fox Gil Ira Job Kit Lee Leo Mac Mal Mel Moe Pat Rob Rod Sol Sue Tab Van

Bee keeper Computer salesman Evil genius Fisherman Helioseismologist Hobbyist Horticulturalist Ichthyologist Jeans salesman Landscaper Lawyer Lion tamer Mafioso Male model Masseuse Moving company exec Personnel manager Portraitist Restaurant cashier Soda jerk Tax collector Thief