Here’s an interesting interview with Johnny Knoxville, in which he talks about the Jackass phenomenon. From my recent involvment with a Golden Words film, I can understand his perspective: “You could show Jackass without dialogue most of the time. If you run into a wall and fall down, people laugh.” Our audio wasn’t great, neither was the onscreen text, but there was lots of fighting and falling down. I was one of the people fighting and falling down, so I can understand the hurting yourself part. And the shitty filiming on digiital by people who don’t really know what they’re doing. The video will end up online at some point, I imagine when school work dies down.
Month: November 2002
No AI yet
IBM starts work on computer to rival the human brain
Ultimate Championship
For some reason, I was not informed of the Rock, Paper, Scissors Championship being held in Toronto. I would have been front and centre.
An Onion Parody
Mad Magazine created a spot on parody of The Onion. In an unrelated note, everything looks like ass in Netscape 4.51 on a Sun Ultrasparc. On the plus side, the keyboard has a ‘props’ key.
Hairless
For some reason, I hacked off the hair on my chin. I don’t really know why. The last time I did that was about three years ago and that lasted for a day. Prior to about five minutes ago, I hadn’t shaved in about a week and half. Go figure. I will post a picture at some point. I’ll also probably start growing my goatee again. And my apologies to Ryan, I will rejoin the club soon.
The Law of Leaky Abstractions
Here’s a good read on abstraction in software development. It’s on a level even people who haven’t taken reams of compsci can understand.
Math
Eric Weissetein’s World of Mathematics is a good math resource. It seems to have many things that you may want to know. Or maybe math just isn’t cool with the kids anymore.
Perlin Noise
Ken Perlin came up with this idea of procedural texture maps; adding noise to a basic pattern to make it seem more natural. His website does a pretty good job explaining things, the marble texuring is a good example, the veins look much more real with noise.
Studying for another graphics midterm. I don’t think I’ll do better than the last one, but it shouldn’t be too bad.
A Smart Man
I have to admit that my respect for Tom Petty has gone up a couple of notches, he has some smart things to say about the state of the entertainment industry. Irony can also be found in the ads I saw on the same page for the Christina’s ‘Dirty’ video.
I’ve been kept busy with a lot of school work lately, drawn away by group projects and whatnot. So, I’ve been neglecting my computer and website. They’re both hurt inside.