Month: July 2022

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.

Yesterday’s post was written with a certain amount of anger. I hate it when people, no matter what their political affiliation, decide that they have the right to become tyrants and start to dictate and micro-manage the lives of others, especially when they do so in a cruel and careless way.

It’s all well and good to vent anger, but ultimately anger alone is not going to help anything. The real goal is to channel that anger, to take back the freedom to simply live our own lives that scary fanatics are trying to take away from us. This principle applies whether those fanatics are on the Left or the Right.

If you think someone in political office is trying to take away your right simply to live your life in peace, you need to vote them out of office this coming November. But that’s not enough. You also need to pro-actively discuss that need with others, and give either time or money, or both, to help make that happen.

Your vote still matters in this country, even though there are bad actors spreading a conspiracy that all election outcomes they don’t like have been rigged. Don’t let them get away with it.

It’s hard to think of July 4 as a day to celebrate when I’m seeing the ideals of our nation being rapidly and systematically dismantled. The Supreme Court’s so-called “originalist” interpretation of our Constitution makes no sense.

Of course they know that. Even worse, they want us all to be aware that they know that.

The Court’s pretense of not knowing that the Constitution was meant to be a living document, adaptable to an ever-changing society, is a form of totalitarianism. According to their interpretation, I have no right to use this computer, because the right to use a computer is not explicitly enshrined in law.

Even worse, I am plugging in this computer, as an appliance, into a wall outlet and drawing electrical power to run it. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that I have the right to do that for any electrical appliance, nor is there an amendment which affirms such a right.

In the particular case of abortion, the “originalists” would have us believe that we still live in Colonial times, before women had the vote, and before our entire economy was structured around two income households. Out here in the real world, millions of Americans depend on those two incomes to feed their families, so applying “originalist” thinking is completely absurd, and pointedly cruel.

Of course the Court knows that its recent rulings are absurd. These rulings are purely political, and in reality they have nothing to do with Constitutional law.

But that won’t help the ten year old girl who has been violently raped by her abusive uncle. According to our Supreme Court, she now has two choices: Either become a breeding cow for her rapist, or become a murderer (with her mother becoming an accessory to murder).

Do I sound angry? That’s because I’m angry. Welcome to America in 2022.

I can see why the Theater survived
Even after the Movies arrived
It’s so low tech, I know
But the reason we go
Is because we are seeing it live

I just finished an ambitious programming project that I wasn’t sure I would be able to pull off successfully. It was a bit of a nail biter for a while, but now it’s done, and the working code is safely uploaded to the software repository.

There is a part of me that wants to jump right into something else, but another part of me wants to pause and take stock. Emerge from the jungle, blink at the sunlight, drink in my surroundings.

I think I will go and take a nice walk.