Adventures in Internet Publishing

New blog template and a bonus!

2011-02-17T17:13:00.001-08:00

Grey-on-black is an entirely 1990s anachronism on the internet these days, and painful on the eyes to boot. Here's a better theme for now.

I have been working on a set of programming tutorials for the Nintendo DS/ARM that I plan to serialize here. For now they are on the Something Awful Forums in the Cavern of COBOL, which is open to public viewing. Check it out here:

Misadventures in ARM Programming

ARM Assembly Gotchas

2011-01-11T17:13:00.000-08:00

31 is not the same as 0x31.

Immediate values can only be one (shifted) byte.

Why am I doing this?

2011-01-11T13:19:00.000-08:00

I'm getting sucked back into DS programming, because my expedition into Atari programming taught me some basic concepts that I just wasn't finding in the source material for DS stuff. I swear, I need to write a huge book on computer concepts from the ground up.

So the main problem I was having with understanding ARM assembly on the DS was the black magic / voodoo performed behind the scenes by GNU as. Specifically, that it takes labels and creates relocatable code, and that everything resides in memory, usually.

Well ok, so relocatable code means that only offset-based addressing is used, not hard-coded memory locations, so the code can be anywhere in memory. This is why the intermediate format used in compiling/assembling is ELF, I guess. The NDS header specifies where the code is to be placed, namely the start of shared ram, or 0x2000000. So how do we get graphics data in there?

Well, without using some kind of filesystem, all data has to be stored in main memory, either interleaved with the code (yuck) or in a blorb at the end (not as bad). Properly aligned, etc. So my next trick is to figure out what directives I need to use with as to accomplish that.

Update: Well, I figured it out, you can plop in data with either .word or .hword for 32-bit or 16-bit values, respectively. And it survives the objcopy process. I should be able to use output from grit, at this rate.

Update 2: Hooooooly shit it works

Update 3: There is something very strange going on with the code I'm using, time to do it all from scratch.

The Original RISC Chip

2010-11-28T13:22:00.001-08:00

I can see why the 6502 was once called "the original RISC processor." It's not, strictly, a RISC design, more of a parallel invention, but the BBC Micro used a 6502, and Acorn Research went on to produce the ARM architecture on similar principals. Looking at the instruction set, and how the registers work, it looks like you could even get it pretty close to the one-clock-per-instruction ideal, if you ignore the extra data fetches. It explains why it outperformed the z80.

I've only got experience with the 6502 and ARM instruction sets, and they're quite similar, the ARM being a heavily upgraded (and incompatible) version of the former. You've got arithmetic operations, memory operations, and program control, and that's it. ARM added multiplication which never gets used. Oh, and a bazillion registers.

Looking at the 8086 instruction set, it's got stuff that I don't even know what to do with. String operations, right there in machine language. An operation to compare two values in memory (the extra microcode to take care of that is probably slower than loading the values to registers, then comparing). Arithmetic shifts? Probably all useful stuff if C didn't exist and you don't have a macro assembler, though. Which was pretty much true with the original IBM PC.

VAX has a million different instructions, in fact it almost looks like it was created to run UNIX. Probably not too far from the truth. It has instructions to deal with polynomials.

Rambling now. I should probably go do something else.

Why Atari, again?

2010-11-27T11:11:00.000-08:00

Well, now I've finished reading Machine Language for Beginners, not so much because it's a quick read but because I read it all day. It didn't really teach me all that much that I didn't know, but it filled in a lot of gaps, I guess. I can at least say that I know what all the hashes and parentheses mean after a mnemonic, and I have a vague idea of how the stack works.

I come back again to asking why the Atari is so much easier to program than anything else, and I am reminded of why I was frustrated with programming the TI-84+: there's no easy way to program it on the device. Aside from Atari's assembler, Machine Language for Beginners came with a short-but-useful assembler written in BASIC, that lets you write small programs and get a feel for the processor. You can literally write a small, 6-instruction program, assemble it to a safe memory location, and execute it right there, then give control straight back to BASIC. So, let's say you want to play with the arithmetic functions, you can write a little program, save its output to memory, and then PEEK it back in BASIC.

On the TI calculators, well, you'd have to write the program on you computer, transfer it to the device, execute it, and heck I don't even know if there's an equivalent to PEEK and POKE on the thing. So you'd also have to write code that outputs your little test data to the screen in some fashion. The barrier to entry is a lot higher.

Same with coding on the DS, since it doesn't have a flexible runtime environment. You have to write quite a bit of complex code just to play with the thing. It's easier when you're piggybacking off of DevKitPro, but that obfuscates the hardware away and it's harder to see what you're actually doing.

I suspect this is also why Python is such a beginner-friendly language, since it has an interactive interpreter. You can play with functions before working them into formalized programs.

So yeah, BASIC is a pretty limited system by today's standards, but it gets the job done if you know what you're doing.

Misconceptions

2010-11-26T16:59:00.000-08:00

I just started reading Machine Language for Beginners, which looks pretty good, but it had this gem in the introduction:

"ML can use up about as much memory as BASIC does when accomplishing the same task. Short programs can be somewhat more compact in ML, but longer programs generally use up bytes fast in both languages. However, worrying about using up computer memory is quickly becoming less and less important. In a few years, programmers will probably have more memory space available than they will ever need."

Oh, who was it that said that programmers will always adapt to use up all the available memory?

Atari 8-bit Programming and You

2010-11-26T14:47:00.000-08:00

Wow, I have something to write about!

I've been doing some preliminary studies on Atari 8-bit programming. Which means I've pretty much come full circle, because the Atari 400 was really the first computer I ever "programmed." So far my studies have included:

Reading Racing the Beam, the book on 2600 games. An interesting read for a top-down perspective on early Atari programming. Yeah, it covers the Atari 2600, but the 8-bit computers were essentially based on a heavily upgraded 2600 design. It's still all player/missile graphics and playfields, and there's a similar general programming approach to them. While an interesting read, Racing the Beam isn't a technical manual, so it lacks a lot of the information that would be needed to actually write programs. It does give one an excellent starting point for getting into the Atari mindset, though.
Reading De Re Atari, ANTIC Magazine, and other old references. Turns out my dad actually wrote a comprehensive-but-terse Atari reference that's been floating around on the internet for a while, and it's one of the foremost documents on the platform now. Who knew?
Setting up a dev environment. MAC/65 and the Atari Macro Assembler are available on different sites, and it's interesting to try and work with them, line editing and all. I'm a bit of a purist in this regard, and I remember typing in programs from ANTIC when I was a kid* so... I'm not really tempted to write code in Vim and cross-assemble. I am, however, somewhat tempted to try and write a screen editor in the same vein, maybe even do some rudimentary syntax highlighting...

So, with my background in Nintendo DS hacking, it's interesting to look at the features and limitations of the old 8-bit computers.

For instance, in the more common graphics modes, you have access to "playfield" graphics, 4 players, and 4 missiles. The playfield is a bitmap that fills the entire screen, if you like. That's it. Then you have the players, which are 8-pixel-wide strips spanning the entire height of the screen. Your player graphic occupies a small part of this strip, you can move the strip horizontally through a register, and to move the image vertically you rewrite it to a different portion of the strip. Player graphics are accelerated in hardware and draw quite smooth. Missiles are similar to players, except they're 2 pixels wide, and take their color from the player they're associated with (or you can switch them into a special mode where they emulate a fifth player). What's nice is that collision detection is supported in hardware for all the players, missiles, and the playfield, so you don't have to write costly collision detection code.

Now, the thing about the playfield is that it takes a lot of computational time to change it around, so you can't really animate it that much. No scrolling backgrounds, then. You're also pretty tightly limited in the amount of stuff on the screen, though you can still employ tricks like flickering one player back and forth horizontally to make it appear to be two.

It's fun to look at the existing games and try to figure out what combination of playfield, player and missile graphics were used to put it together. The older-looking games obviously use the hardware without any special tricks, and newer games definitely have more interesting stuff going on software-wise.

*Ahhh, ANTIC. I think I managed to get a grand total of one game typed in and actually running. All I remember of it is vague graphics, though.

Whoa, I have a blog.

2010-10-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

Yeeeeeaaaah, it's been a while, hannit?

I've mostly switched over to Facebook for "personal" blogging, which is nice because I can pick who gets to see it for the most part. Which means I've mostly forgotten about Blogger. I guess I can still use this for my programming escapades, though, to keep on track somewhat.

Lesse. I got an HP 32S I haven't bothered to try and program yet (the battery is low anyway), and I've all but given up on my Tandy PC-3 because I got an awesome TI-83+ SE. A screen that can show real graphics! Multiple lines of text! Games! I've messed around putting software on it but I don't know how to program it really, hurrr. There seems to be some good documentation on Z80 asm, though, so I can start reading that. Still won't impress my dad though 'coz it's not 6502 asm.

I have done nothing with my big pile of 74xx chips, mostly because I haven't bought any LEDs and I'm afraid of blowing them out. Need to take a crash course on electrical engineering. I'll be doing that as part of my major pretty soon, though.

I guess what I need to do is keep working on the DS programming? The ARM architecture is a lot more flexible. I've got plenty of other stuff to keep me busy though, like Left 4 Dead.

Sometimes a phone is just a phone.

2009-03-23T06:11:00.001-07:00

Money tiem.

Palm Centro smartphone: ~$25 with "new every two" promotion.
Voice plan: $80/mo for 1400 minutes, extra line, and unlimited calling to 10 numbers. $960/yr
Data plan: $45/mo for unlimited data with secret 5GB cap, +$15/mo to tether to N800. $720/yr
Total: $1,705 for one year.

On the other hand, an equivalent iPhone 3G is $80/mo for voice, $30/mo for data, and a $200 entry fee (even subsidized), so it comes to $1,520/yr. Tethering is currently impossible but we can expect a similar $15 fee, bringing it to $1700/yr. So basically, Verizon is cost-competitive with at&t. I thought I was getting shafted.

T-Mobile's data plan costs $20 less per month, but you only get half the minutes at $80 per month. So basically, phones are expensive. The Palm Centro seems to be a solid choice, given that Verizon has the best coverage.

Well, I guess I might drop the data plan for my phone, which'd save me $60/mo. There's free Wi-Fi most places I need it, so the N800 does pretty well without needing to tether. The Centro is still pretty good at texting, and running Palm apps on it is pretty cool, even offline. I just need to get DosBox working so I can play Prince of Persia. Maybe if I can find a cool Nokia phone that works with Verizon I'll try it out, since they're opening Symbian's source. That'd be nice.

Anyway, end rant. I don't feel as bad about my mobile internet device choices now, at least.

Designing a 4-bit CPU

2009-03-05T05:44:00.001-08:00

Yup. I've finally been making some progress on the CPU design front. This all came from a couple of realizations:

1. AND and NAND gates can be used to effectively decode opcodes.

2. AND gates can also be used to activate or deactivate entire subcircuits.

I was hung up before because I couldn't really figure out how to make bits in memory cause the CPU hardware to assume a different state. But... it works! So far, this CPU only has a few opcodes, but I can add numbers together and store arbitrary values into registers. It's far from being Turing complete, but with a little more work I can get it to compute the Fibonacci sequence.

Basically, I need to get it to swap the two main registers and one register with the accumulator. Then I need to figure out how to implement branching. And some logic operations would be nice.

Oh, hey! Turns out there's an IC out there that does exactly what I'm doing with all the AND gates. It's called a demultiplexer. Hooray for parallel invention.

So now I just need to figure out how to do a branch. It's impossible with the simple counter I have - I need to design one that can take input (like a 74193). Yup, that'd do it.

PEEKing and POKEing

2008-10-27T02:23:00.001-07:00

My fiancee gave me one of these, and I've been playing with it a little. At first it was dead, and it wasn't the batteries; luckily, I was able to wake it up by reseating what I presume to be the RAM card.

It's older than me, and at first I thought a bit about the engineering: how come older technology, which is supposed to be bigger and clunkier, can be engineered into a form factor smaller than what we're fumbling around with these days? Quickly enough I remembered that today's handhelds have a much bigger screen, wireless radios, cameras, rechargeable batteries, and whatnot. This little PC-3 has a 1x24 character cell display and what may or may not be a serial port. If I'm lucky, the CPU has about the same power as the Intel 4004 (though twice the bits).

It has a BASIC interpreter, and it saves code as an unbroken series of commands. You can save multiple programs, though each program must have unique line numbers. It's interesting to get into the head of '80's tech-savvy financial workers - hack together some spaghetti code to speed up your calculations. You can map your own functions to the bottom keys on the keyboard, and the thing came with two overlays so you can keep track of what's what.

It has a port on the side to hook it into a printer and tape drive, so you can save your programs. Too bad I don't have one, if I try to write anything complex it'll be gone when I have to change the batteries. If it's a serial port it should be possible to hack together an interface for it, though that's somewhat outside of my abilities right now. On the other hand it'd be marginally easier than building a serial interface for the Nintendo DS.

I did however manage to write a little program using the information here. Makes a little man march across the screen, with very poor redraws. Proves that I can use it for more than just calculations, though. One of these days I'll have a full-blown text adventure engine running on it :D

Living in Rhythm with Python

2008-10-08T13:32:00.001-07:00

So I've started working with Python seriously again. I'm calling it an extension of my studies in computational linguistics, since that requires some programming effort, and I need to keep my skills up.

The best thing so far is that Python seems to take far fewer mental resources than C. I'm not totally sure why, but the object model and simplified syntax probably have something to do with it.

I'm thinking of writing a text adventure engine, to pursue one of my story ideas. The code practically writes itself - Python is set up for text processing. Basically, I'd be setting up a few objects and then just writing up the rooms and items.

I have to wonder what the market is like for text adventures, though.

And away again...

2008-09-24T15:50:00.001-07:00

Guess I'm still sorting things out for the programmin'. While I enjoy making computers do stuff, it takes up a ton of my free time, and the main reason I want to learn is to make video games; at the same time, I also want to be a writer, so programming might just be too indirect of a method to get my stories out there. Maybe I'll start with ScummVM or the Z-machine.

And away again...

2008-09-24T15:49:00.001-07:00

Back to the DS!

2008-08-24T01:30:00.000-07:00

I got my M3 DS Real back (loaned it away for the Summer) and I've been hacking around on the DS some more. This time I figured out how to control the backgrounds properly, and I'm trying to learn some of the deeper technical tidbits of the machine.

I found a free ARM disassembler and took a peek at the firmware for the M3; all I found out for sure is that the first slice of code is at offset 59000h, and that it isn't the code to initialize the DS hardware. I ultimately want to be able to put my own code in place of the stock firmware, but in order to figure that out I'll need to learn some ARM assembly and start tracing around to see where the magic happens. For now I'll have to deal with the clunky firmware, or figure out how to make nonstandard homebrew cooperate with M3Sakura.

I've also been scratching the surface of operating system design, because I'm overambitious. That, and I see a lot of wasted potential in the DS, and Linux takes so much memory and processor time that it's extremely limited. I'm looking to set something up more like RISC OS or AmigaOS, and to take advantage of the ARM7 chip by way of running a Vorbis decoder on it or something. No bloated, useless stuff like memory protection or security.

It probably wouldn't hurt me to do something a little more practical, though, like learning how the sprite system works again :/

Faster still!

2008-06-27T09:53:00.001-07:00

I got the new "Diablo" ITOS 2008 going on the N800. No massive changes, but there's a new mail client, an updated flash plugin, Japanese fonts from the get-go, and everything feels snappier. Ajax applications run a little faster, so Google Maps is more usable. Makes me wonder if I could write a native app, though. I haven't tried running mpd yet.

I also acquired the developer preview for Mac OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard." They've done absolutely zero cosmetic changes so far, but it's fast. There's better 64-bit support, and this new Grand Central devilry seems to make a real difference. They've also made the system take up less space, like they promised, though mostly by not installing the plethora of languages and printer drivers by default. To the relief of many, lipo still reports all the core utilities and programs as universal for PPC. Release is a year off, so I have high expectations for any more changes they make.

Posts?

2008-06-26T00:19:00.001-07:00

Okay, looks like I have written posts since I got the N800. It's hard to believe I got it back in late March!

A cool application that I'd love to see on the N800: Inkscape. It'll probably never happen, though. Why do all the "lightweight" programs have incomprehensble build processes? It's the same with Abiword. I'll have to write my own word processor that uses GTK+ and fairy dust.

Two for one!

2008-06-25T23:22:00.001-07:00

WordPy is a success, so maybe this'll get me to blog more. Now I just need to figure out if this is a personal blog or a technology/creative writing blog.

Microblogging!

2008-06-25T23:20:00.001-07:00

I have to wonder why I haven't written a blog post since getting my Nokia N800. It's a wonderful little device, and I'm getting more and more used to using it for stuff.

Then I heard ThoughtFix use the word "microblogging" and say he did it with an N810. Because it has a keyboard. This just won't do! I can type faster with the finger keyboard on my N800 than I could with the real keyboard on my Zaurus. Ha-ha!

I'm using a program called WordPy to interface with Blogger right now. It's neat, but it's written in Python, so it's not quite as fast to load as a native app. Still faster than PyGTK apps on the Zaurus, though. This thing is a real trooper.

Drawing, finally

2008-05-15T22:59:00.000-07:00

So, for the first time in a while, I did some somewhat complete drawing. Just a quick sketch, but it showed me that my skill isn't getting dulled too quickly. That, and I've pretty much purged myself of the overused anime style. Some of the concepts are useful, but realistic proportions are more fun. Cue fanbois chiming in with examples of non-typical anime.

Scanner no workee, so I can't share yet. Take my word that it looks better than the stereotypical DeviantArt drawing.

A Challenger Appears

2008-05-10T08:32:00.000-07:00

OpenSolaris 2008.05 came out a few days ago, so I tried it out, being that I am a huge geek. Initial results are pretty positive, surprisingly positive, even.

It has the requisite missing drivers, but it supports the "exotic" WiFi in my MacBook. No sound, no bluetooth, no iSight. However, unlike the various BSDs it has a custom-tailored Flash plugin, so if they fix the sound thing it could be a real competitor for Linux/OS X. It's already a good deal on hardware platforms it fully supports.

I didn't take a screenshot, but it just uses a standard GNOME interface anyway. It supports Compiz, so you get your desktop effects, though I had trouble getting it to work properly (it doesn't have the right render path for my video card, couldn't find the switch to change it).

At any rate, it has the potential to change the OS landscape, probably moreso than the BSDs, since it's backed by a megacorp and supports all the latest buzzwords. I'll be keeping my eyes on it.

I'm going to make a fortune if I ever invent some sort of mindbleach.

2008-04-23T23:12:00.000-07:00

Words cannot truly describe the mindfuck I just put myself through.

So, I got a Something Awful account, whatever. Which means I can read the forums that are invisible to outsiders. Little did I know of the horrors that lurk underneath.

Long story short: retard in Virginia develops a mannequin fetish that culminates in his eventual ownership of a small harem of RealDolls as well as a paraplegic girlfriend. The delusion is so complete that he thinks his dolls are real, thinking, breathing and eating beings, developing a massive persecution complex on the way. Needless to say he posts his every experience on various blogs and MySpace profiles.

The Something Awful goons find his blog, and hilarity ensues. At first. About a day into it, someone new enters the fray: a Canadian entrepreneur who sells his own stuffed representations of women, and who his allegedly working on a "documentary" using state monies. After the goons dig, we learn that he has been spending time "researching" by acquiring a "family" of sex puppets and even the doll prop from Lars and the Real Girl. All using Canadian taxpayer's money. Said entrepreneur throws a few vague and unsubstantiated legal threats at SA, which are promptly ridiculed.

The thread has turned into a shitfest of hilarity and depravity, exploring just how far this sexual obsession takes people. The whole thing went from to to to . I feel like I lost a major part of myself tonight.

Time for a stiff drink. Or a kick in the testicles. I'm not sure which.

Another Victory

2008-04-09T14:42:00.000-07:00

I just figured out how to connect to my college's WiFi properly: it seems the N800's extreme power saving doesn't work with the access points here, so disabling tthat fixes it. With it on, it has trouble grabbing an IP address through DHCP. Weird, but easy enough to fix.

In non-Nokia related news, I've been getting some good ideas for stuff I could make out of silver. I just need to figure out how to melt the stuff. Converting the unused garage into a workshop is looking like a really good idea now...

It's a Pocket PC!

2008-04-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

This time you get a video blog, because my iSight camera still works.

Week of... programming

2008-03-25T01:55:00.000-07:00

Well, Spring Break is over now. I learned a lot about DS programming, but I haven't done anything spectacular with it. I may, in time, but I've figured that programming with SDL will be more rewarding for now.

I've started formal work on the Open Tactics Engine, however. Got a SourceForge project and everything. It'll be some time yet before I release anything interesting, but programming in SDL seems a lot more fluid than the DS or Cocoa or what have ye.

In other news, I've also clocked in a lot of time on drums in Rock Band. Getting pretty comfortable on hard mode, to the extent that it doesn't feel like much of a challenge, but I haven't gotten to Won't Get Fooled Again yet. I might invoke my alter ego and make some music :D

Affine Transformations

2008-03-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

Why write your own scaling/rotation engine when the hardware has one built in?

I've been slugging through Patater's DS Programming Tutorial. It covers the concept pretty well, though I think his code is a bit too complex just to show off the basic features of the handheld. On the other hand, it sets you up for much more advanced programming, so I can't really complain.

Work is underway to better understand the Nintendo DS and move some of my game programming endeavors over. This time I'll try a more direct approach, since the hardware takes care of a lot of the organization; I don't have to write a general purpose engine before I can get to the fun stuff.

I have Spring Break before me, too, and I've declared it a week of DS programming. Here's hoping I can keep myself on track!

Edit: WOW YOU CAN TOTALLY SEE ME REFLECTED IN THE DS

The High Cost of Industrialism

2008-03-10T01:26:00.000-07:00

So I'm drowning in caffeine right now.

In this drug-fueled moment of clarity, it's obvious that caffeine is the grease that made the industrial revolution possible. You need loads of caffeine to keep up with modern studies and workflows. All the "competent" people I know are severe coffee or energy drink addicts, which leads me to believe that caffeine-free go-getters are freaks of nature.

Caffeine, however, also highlights some of the inequities of this industrial age. Living "close to the Earth" is becoming less and less possible, as bigger corporations take up more land to grow more food, using less labor and feeding more and more people. We've transitioned from a lifestyle where people mostly took care of themselves and made all their food and possessions (medieval), shifting more and more of the cottage industry to factories, until now everything a person needs to survive has to be purchased, using money.

Now, there's two major problems with purchasing 100% of the means of life. First being, the amount of overhead it incurs. Objects have to be manufactured somewhere, then they must be transported to a retail location, and the retailer has to store it and manage a staff to sell it. Granted, I'm probably missing some key pieces of the puzzle here, but this is just a rant; anyway, I have to wonder if this method is actually any more efficient than in-home production.

The other problem is that different types of labor earn very different wages, even though the amount of time spent is exactly the same. A retail job will just barely earn the minimum wage, which, in most places, is enough money to cover rent for an apartment (with roommates) and some dried noodles. Maybe enough gasoline to keep an automobile running. This forces many people working at minimum wage jobs to work two or three jobs, rocketing the work-week to well over 40 hours.

Skilled labor is another matter, often earning several times the wages of an unskilled job. Workers at this level can live "comfortably," though the proportion of people working "on-call" is somewhat alarming at this point. So, this "middle class" also seems to be overworked. On the other hand, they have enough money to purchase resources to raise a family and support "quality of living" activities such as vacationing and entertainment.

Now, this labor of the lower classes, which isn't apparently paying for their well-being, has to be going somewhere, and the only place I can see is the wealthy. Our labor, driving profits for people who don't always have to work as hard, lines their pockets and pays for "luxury goods," such as oversized houses, ridiculously expensive cars, and unproductive technical gadgets. Or it goes into cruise tickets and hotel stays. The problem is that much of this luxury comes off the backs of the people who have to work longer hours to earn a fraction of the wages.

I'm not entirely sure how it all works, but I'm not an economist. All I really have to go on is that Europeans work less and yet have a much higher GDP per capita. I mainly attribute that to better regulation of the industry and a better balance between imports and exports (America imports far too much). How the macroeconomic level affects the personal, I'm not entirely sure.

My current research, as well as my gut instinct, is telling me that the world we have now is all a farce. There's got to be a better way to live than money, or at least a better way of getting it. A way that doesn't involve the standard channels, which only serve to worsen the imbalance of rich and poor.

The best methods I can think of revolve around "going off the economic grid," analogous to producing your own electricity. Reduce expenses as much as possible. Use your body to get places, rather than funding the oil cartels. Room with people; it maximizes the space you pay for, which by far the biggest expense. Cooking your own food is cheaper and healthier than buying pre-cooked meals. Make your own clothes, or buy secondhand. Same for furniture.

Now, you might think, that's a lot more work. Maybe. But it adds variety, which for many, can make life less dull. Also, who said television requires your undivided attention, anyway? Cook during your favorite shows or whatever.

To pull in money from the outside, well... I'm still working on that one. Best idea so far is to take advantage of "the long tail" and sell physical goods over the internet. Or at your swap meet. Or you could join a band, if that's your schtick.

Rant too long. I'll do a part two when I'm less wired. As a parting note, I've been turning a lot of my attention lately towards learning how things are made. There's a reason so many 19th-century goods were made out of brass: it's really easy to work!

Super Secret API Calls

2008-03-06T00:11:00.000-08:00

Found this little gem in the SDL_video header:

Technically, I'm not supposed to touch it, but SDL_gfx uses it for its scaling. I have no idea how stable or fast it is, though I can always write my own using the Bresenham algorithm.

Speaking of, I still need to implement a rotation algorithm. Might skip it for a while, though, since the Nintendo DS does it in hardware. We'll see.

A Taste of Deselberg

2008-03-01T23:56:00.001-08:00

So I have a couple of websites I'm not developing, silver.datamachine.net and ikkakujyu.googlepages.com. Both are freebies, and both are just sitting there, because I can't really decide on anything to put up just yet.

Problem being that there's too much junk in my head. Characters, half-finished plots, much of an attempt at a historically-realistic but slightly fantastical world, music, code snippets, etc. Difficult to actually finish anything without deadlines or substantial external motivation. Sigh.

However, I've been playing with the idea of arranging everything around cities, since that's generally how I think about story and plot; i.e., the website would be a simple portal that shows icons of different cities, and you click one to see all the stories, character bios, pictures, and whatever I have that relates. I'd start with "Deselberg," my oldest and most developed city, and see where it goes from there.

Need to get better at drawing, though :(

And we're done

2008-01-30T00:02:00.000-08:00

Yeesh, do I really look like such an ass?

Anyway, the soul patch makes life a lot easier. Kept the sideburns, too, since they're usually covered, and anyway T.H. Huxley was a pretty cool guy.

Farewell, facial hair

2008-01-29T23:22:00.001-08:00

Holy tits, has it been that long since I blogged? I was just thinking about how I should start writing for the public more often, but jeez. Well, here we go.

Attached is an image of my face during this writing. I grew the beard out of a misplaced need to feel macho, but those feelings have passed. Shaving is imminent.

What I wanted to talk about was the current lack of balance in my life, to wit the battle between entertaining work and pure entertainment. I try to enjoy most things I do, even classes, but all too often I find myself reading Wikipedia (which is a poor substitute for real research), watching videos on YouTube, or, lately, playing Guitar Hero. None of these is bad in moderation, but there is very little moderation on my part.

Other things that I'd like to do include polishing up my German/Moonspeak skills, programming for the DS, writing, drawing, and learning to play my mandolin. Getting some more exercise would be nice, too. I've been struggling against the urge to consume (rather than produce) for a long time now, and I have made progress, but very little over the years.

Worst part is, I'm taking classes again, so I have to unlearn the habits I picked back up over winter. Best thing I can think of to do is get outside more; it's the only thing that has consistently helped me. So, I'm gonna be spending a lot more time at the coffee shop :)

Anyway, enough rant. I'll get better at writing as I get back into the swing of it. Time for a shave.

Whaaat? A post??

2007-11-28T12:09:00.000-08:00

I've been listening to (and analysing) Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. It's a surprisingly good album, and it's given me a renewed respect for Roger Waters (and Alan Parsons).

It's an interesting piece of work, mostly because of the depth of the themes it explores. It's pretty dark, when you look at it, living up to the title. The ideas it presents strike me as rather existentialist, though: Time seems to be an angst-ridden piece lashing out against the inevitability of old age and death. Breathe (Breathe in the Air) is less dismal, but carries a very existential message:

Long you live, and high you fly

Smiles you give and tears you cry

All you touch and all you see

Is all your life will ever be

I think this is a pretty nice summary of the concept of non-duality, one of the most central concepts to existentialism. Other themes in the album include the absurdity of money and a general lack of anything special in the world.

Of course, maybe I'm looking into it too deeply. It's not often that you see an album that's worth this sort of analysis, though.

From an auditory perspective, Dark Side of the Moon is absolutely brilliant. It's one of the first works to use sounds from real life in a musical context, and the juxtaposition against electronic sounds is intriguing. Time uses a flurry of chiming clocks in its intro, while Money uses the sounds of old-style manual cash registers to provide its beat. It's really heavy on instrumental parts, too, with most of the tracks going for over two minutes without any lyrics. The balance between the instruments and the singing is expertly done, giving it a similar feel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its notable deficit of dialogue.

Also neat is a recurring heartbeat motif, giving the album a sort of driving pulse of its own. You need something with good bass response to really notice it, though.

So, it's one of my favorite albums now. It's a classic, so you can get it on iTunes Plus for $10. Better yet, go down to your local swap meet and keep an eye out for the LP - since that's what it was originally mastered for, it has a different sort of character from the digital version. It was pretty popular in its time, so you can probably find it for just a buck.

Numb3rs

2007-09-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

I must say, this is an incredibly awesome show. It doesn't help that I'm already a computer programmer; now I'm getting interested in advanced number theory.

It's also pointing out some of the inadequacies of the school system here in America. I vaguely recollect working on prime factorization in high school, but it was all busy work - we never learned the significance of prime factors, or anything about mathematical theory, for that reason. Sure, we were all taught a lot of "advanced" stuff, like linear algebra, complex numbers, the Fibonacci Sequence, the Golden Ratio, but none of it was ever explained, or even really used for practical applications. It's like what I'm learning with programming now: you can't just learn an algorithm, you have to learn how it works, or else you'll only be able to apply it in a very narrow scope.

I've encountered linear algebra in my programming already. It forms the basis of the Bresenham Line Algorithm, which is central to graphics. The Golden Ratio turns out to be vital to art and aesthetics in general. Prime factors are the basic building blocks of all other numbers. So, to ask an open question, why don't American math classes explain anything about the actual theory behind mathematics before college (where explanations are still few)? Is it just another layer of control?

Gentlemen, behold!

2007-08-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally went and did it. Summarily fixed my little bluetooth problem, too. Would have gotten Linux in the shot, too, if I'd had it in the virtual machine (give it time).

At any rate, I have a laptop machine that outclasses any desktop I've ever had. This has huge implications for both saving time and wasting it. For example, now I can get to porn almost 2x faster. Not to mention MAME - this is the first machine I've had that can run G-Darius at full speed, as well as Radiant Silvergun. Now if I could only get it to accept input from the Wii Remote.

Neat little quirk I discovered: if the volume is muted, and you plug in headphones, it comes back on. Removing them mutes everything again. Quite handy.

CFS Impressions

2007-08-03T20:59:00.001-07:00

As you may or may not know, one of the new features to be included in Linux version 2.6.23 is a new task scheduling system, known as "Completely Fair Scheduler," or CFS. I've just installed the first release candidate, and, well, I've barely noticed anything. Barely. I think it might be helping a little, because things don't seem to slow up quite as bad when compiling heavy stuff in the background. So far, however, it hasn't cured cancer or given me any free blowjobs, and on the other hand, it isn't making anything any slower, so I fail to see why there's such a big fuss about it.

GIMP Usability Issues

2007-07-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

Hey there, intarweb!

So, recently an article hit Slashdot about a new version of the GIMP that will provide statistics to assess its usability. Probably not a bad idea, but most of the comments complaining about the GIMP's user interface start with:

"I'm a Photoshop user and..."

Well, I'm from the camp that never used Photoshop before trying the GIMP; in fact, the first time I encountered the GIMP was bundled with Mandrake Linux. Granted, I don't use the GIMP much, but I've been able to find just about everything I needed after a few minutes of poking around, and there is a wealth of tutorials available anyway.

Therefore, the only argument anyone's really making with that preface is "the GIMP isn't Photoshop." I say rightly so. I think diversity in software is paramount. When you resign to one way of doing things, you are sacrificing the potential for another method to be better for a specialized task. Or even for that other method to be fundamentally better in light of new technologies. For instance, one user commented that the GIMP's multiple window layout makes it well-suited for multiple screens or multiple desktops. The argument against that was that Photoshop was better suited for single screens, and most people only have one available; but hey, I can plug a monitor into my laptop. I may find it convenient to use that capability if and when I start doing heavier image editing. And with Mac OS X Leopard's "Spaces" on the horizon, more and more people will be exposed to the multiple desktop paradigm.

In fact, the X Windowing System has a pretty long history of multiple desktops, and the GIMP being developed primarily under UNIX, its multiple window paradigm makes a lot of sense.

Inkscape, on the other hand, could use some improvements, but then, I'm really just interested in adapting it to touch-screen interfaces.

We Are Getting Bored

2007-05-24T23:33:00.000-07:00

We could also use better lighting.

Rectangular Power

2007-05-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I got my hands on a Powerbook G4. One of the first model ones. I've already managed to drop it, too - nice big dent on the bottom panel. I'll be able to hammer it out eventually.

I've installed Linux on it, and it's fairly lackluster. The 3D card doesn't work properly (seems to be a problem with newer Linux distros - it's a Rage 128, and should be very well supported) and like most Mac laptops I've seen, it can only display at its native resolution. Come on! We neeeeeeds our gamezes!!

Also, the hard drive sounds like a jet taking off. Awesome.

I'd take a picture if my bluetooth module weren't dead :(

Downtrodden

2007-03-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, my situation has changed, so I am unable to run my WordPress blog. I'm thinking about switching to Dreamhost or something similar, but the expense bothers me (college student! poor!).

On the other hand, I've started my Etched Marble project. Check it out.

WordPress for the Win

2006-12-19T00:59:00.000-08:00

So, I installed WordPress today.

I'm sorry, but it's just about a hundred times better than Blogger.

I don't know how I'll do this. I might just mirror my blog posts on both sites or something, but that'll get tedious. WordPress is really a breath of fresh air. Worst of all, I didn't even know what I was missing out on.

So, this is the new blog. Look at it. NOW!

GET IT MORE

2006-12-16T16:51:00.000-08:00

My skill... is great.

Mmm, source control.

2006-12-16T10:11:00.000-08:00

I've set up a subversion server for my text adventure! Check it out for awesome awesomeness.

Just type svn co svn://ikkbox.dyndns.org/textadv and you're ready to go.

...but, if you don't know what subversion is, you probably shouldn't be messing around with it.

Beryl, Python, and More

2006-12-14T21:14:00.000-08:00

Quite busy I have been, yes. Going back to work makes a difference. Plus, I switched back to Linux, which completely thwarts my plan of getting a Mac-only peripheral (Mighty Mouse) to keep myself from switching back to Linux. The Mighty Mouse works fine in Gentoo, as long as you edit a few lines in the kernel source code, and connect manually each time you start up. Seamless integration! Loads of sarcasm!

The main thing that drove me back to Linux was programming. But before that, something that actually looks cool: Beryl.

Just a regular XFCE4 desktop with a custom skin, right? Well, in plain XFCE, you usually can't do this:

There's a lot to it, but it's hard to show in screenshots. I might do one of those newfangled "screencasts" and put it up on that newfangled "YouTube" at some point. There's already lots, but none of them are annotated, which makes them quite dull. So, just maybe, you'll get a chance to hear my voice! I'll try my best not to sound like that psychiatrist guy from the Mask. Or the "hip" announcer from the intro video for the Sega Activator.

So now for that other thing, the programming. I've been learning Python, which is an even better language for beginners than Perl. I'm currently working on something that will be quite nifty when it is done. Until then, here's a suggestive screen shot:
There's even source code for the daring, though it's pretty dodgy and if you know enough Python to bother poking around this code, you could probably make it yourself in about ten minutes. Hey, I'm learning!

Mightiest of Mice

2006-11-21T00:37:00.000-08:00

Yes, I said I would post some drawings... well, it's a bit late for that now :/

From now on, I'm not gonna announce anything until it's actually done. That should clear things up.

Anyway, I spent the most money I've ever spent on a mouse today. For very good cause - it makes panning through large image files many times faster.

Apple's Mighty Mouse is really a compromise between the one-button and two-button philosophies - it can tell which side you're clicking on, but you can only press one button at a time. Which is why it's a good thing I don't play games. On the other hand, it's more than enough functionality for Blender, which is the most mouse-heavy application I use.

Actually, I'd say the Mighty Mouse is a high-tech solution that ends up doing less than the lower-tech original. This -does- give it the honor of having no seams, though.

P.S. - I found my Bluetooth adapter... now if only I could charge my cell phone with it.

Holy crap I am drawing stuff!

2006-11-01T23:43:00.000-08:00

Man. I seem to have gotten myself out of my rut. Now if only I can keep it up... that would be awesome.

I have command over my abilities! I am fighting laziness! I will upload pics tomorrow!

The Strength to Move On

2006-10-19T23:03:00.000-07:00

I need to draw more, y'know?

I have a lot of pent-up creativity. Very little to show for it as well. But I also have some psychological issues blocking me up as well. It's very frustrating.

And then, of course, there's the question of whether or not I'm using these possible psychological problems as a crutch to avoid doing work.

What I know for sure is that it seems I'm afraid to chase after my own dreams, and it's very hard to break out of this mentality. I'm afraid to. On the other hand, I don't want to be weak and petty for the rest of my life.

I'll ask myself again, for the hundredth-odd time: how the hell so I get out of this?

Soubi-saaaaaaan!

2006-10-18T23:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I seem to have found Loveless. Took me long enough. For the uninitiated: 12-year-old boy Ritsuka Aoyagi loses his older brother to a brutal murder; his brother's best friend, Soubi Agatsuma, comes into the picture and saves him from being taken by an occult group. We learn that both Soubi and Ritsuka are destined to be magical warriors, ones that can cast spells with words. Not only that, but this occult group, "Septimal Moon," is behind the death of Ritsuka's brother.

These magical warriors can only fight in pairs, and must share a deep bond of love. Soubi was originally paired up with Ritsuka's brother (Seimei), and before he died, he commanded Soubi to become Ritsuka's fighter. Shotacon ensues.

Rather than making me go further into it, go and buy the book (volume 3 coming out soon!) or read the freakin' Wikipedia article. What's getting me so riled up is that this manga is damn good, one of the best I've seen. I want to see what happens next so bad I've gone so far as to import the Japanese version. The art isn't as cluttered as a lot of other manga (hello, CLAMP), the characters are beautiful, the storyline intriguing.

It's also made me notice one of the major differences between Japanese manga and Western comics - the Western stuff focuses more on justice, while the Japanese seem to care a lot more about love. The Japanese ideals of love seem to be a lot stronger, as well - pure devotion, the desire to sacrifice one's own life for one's beloved. I don't feel the same kind of conviction from Western stuff (though, I must admit, I've read relatively little of it).

Also, to anyone who objects to Soubi's and Ritsuka's union: grow up. It's nothing like NAMBLA. Soubi fell in love with Ritsuka because he was ordered to (a concept with its own questions) and without him, Ritsuka would be in a lot of trouble. In Soubi's words, too: "I can't get excited for a child, Ritsuka." Love <> sex, hard as that may be to imagine. :P

(And to clarify, the excerpted image is a case of Soubi teasing his roommate, Kio. Taking stuff out of context is fun!)

Business as Usual

2006-10-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

I was hoping returning to the ol' blog would maybe get my creative juices flowing. And it has; it's an outlet, even if nobody reads it. Guess I gotta hork it out to more people.

The big evolution today: C programming is hard. Why am I using C if Perl is so great? Well, there's a slight problem with Perl: all variables are represented as floating-point numbers. This causes serious problems for embedded devices, as they tend to lack floating-point processors. My beloved Zaurus is no exception.

Coming from Perl into C is a huge eye-opener: Perl does lots of stuff. C does almost nothing, instead opting to give you an almost direct interface to the hardware. It's really useful, but on the other hand, it's a lot easier to screw up because it isn't going to hug you and congratulate you for trying your best if you use an improperly initialized pointer.

Basically, what I need to do is toy around with text-based programs for a while, until I get the hang of manipulating data. I want to plunge into SDL soooo bad, but my first foray into it was not very promising (yay segfaults). So what we're going to see is yet another text-based RPG. However, I -do- plan to get it to the level of Thy Dungeonman. That'd be sweet.

(While we're sorta on the topic of embedded systems: Does the Zaurus really count? It runs a mainstream Linux kernel. It can run regular applications without modification. For all intents and purposes, it functions as though it were a desktop machine from 1996. Just smaller.)

Old Ways, Old Sites

2006-10-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

FIVE months.

How can I neglect my blog for five whole months?

Even worse, I have nothing to show out of those five months.

I don't even know what I've been doing with myself.

Ending the Long Slumber

2006-05-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

Maaaaan. Two months! How the heck did that happen?

Over the last week I've forsaken technology as much as possible. The reason being, it's actually getting me to draw stuff. Instead of talking about drawing stuff. What I've learned is, I have a loooong way to go before I'll be doing anything of professional quality.

That is, if I try to draw directly out of my head. I'm still pretty good at freehanding from photographs. I've been drawing girls in swimsuits.

Y'know, building a foundation. Getting used to the human form. Being a per.... uh, yeah. Important stuff.

Also, I've set up a DeviantART profile, where my username is SilverAlicorn. After a good four years, Ikkakujyu kinda got boring... plus I'm tired of using a name that is inherently misspelled. "Alicorn" is the alchemical term for a unicorn's horn, and I wanted to denote my other name ("Shiro", meaning white) in a way that avoids certain connotations. Silver being the white metal, of course.

I'm going to switch to DeviantART for some of my blogging needs, if it'll work with TPC's blog aggregator.

Switcharoo!

2006-03-30T23:11:00.000-08:00

I forget to mention that I have a new job at a large corporation, namely Borders.

Which means I'll be posting a lot less about technology.

And tomorrow I get to go take pictures of rocks. YEAH, BAY-BEEE!!!

Walt Whitman?

2006-03-23T22:41:00.000-08:00

Yeesh, it's been ten days already?

At any rate, work is very ongoing for Adventures in Public Transportation. It's going to be about 200 pages. It is going to be fun.

In a week or two I might have some concept artwork up. Don't know when I'll be able to start the real deal, but I still don't have a tablet, and I have to do a lot of romping around town to collect scenery, so it could be a while. Call it a couple of months.

And I'm probably making promises I won't keep again, but hey, nobody reads this anyway, so no loss. Wheeeeee.

Goodbye, Productivity

2006-03-12T23:17:00.000-08:00

Most of Kenta Cho's games have been ported to Mac OS X.

KENTA CHO. OS X.

These games are actually an example of OSS done right. Innovative designs, and they look pretty.

OH GOD THE PIXELS

2006-03-09T20:45:00.000-08:00

I got myself a Power Mac G4. It is awesome. It has firewire. It can play DVDs. It has a Rage 128 that, oddly enough, is faster than the Rage 128 I had for my PC. It's about a bazillion times faster than the iBook I have.

And, geez, it has PIXELS. 1024x768 of them. It's some sort of magic number that makes a hell of a lot of stuff more usable. For those of you not in the loop, the clamshell iBook's screen only goes up to 800x600.

Plus, I've been working on drawing stuff for my Lesbians on the Moon comic, and I will soon have one of those tablet doohickeys. Which means I will be able to get stuff on the intarweb.

Yellow

2006-03-05T22:21:00.000-08:00

So, I'm no longer a teenager. Shouldn't I be doing something different?

Well, I got a little bit of drawing done today. I need to work it up into a habit. I have a knack for drawing people, I'm just not used to it. Practice, practice, practice!

I'm revisiting my Lesbians on the Moon storyline, which is a lot less chauvanistic than it might sound. Trouble is, while I have a scanner, I don't have consistent access to it, and I really can't afford a tablet right now. I need to build up more work, though!

Incidentally, Viktor (my PC) performed his last duty tonight. He will soon be replaced by a new computer that will be christened Siegfried. After this, my transition to the Mac world will be complete.

Don't Panic

2006-03-04T22:22:00.000-08:00

Yeeeeeesh. I haven't updated in a while.

Here I am, on the eve of my twentieth birthday, and what am I doing? Comparing headphones and thinking of doing another comic book.

(I don't see what's wrong with the basic Apple earbuds. They sound great if you jam them deep enough into your ears. Sony's offering, on the other hand, has really good treble response. Good enough to give you a headache.)

Drawing and writing are pretty deeply engrained into my spirit, even if I don't have much motivation for either (writing is easier for me - I just finished a short story, possibly to be published later). Hence comes the Conflict brewing inside me: I have a tendency to either become absolutely obsessed with computers, or absolutely obsessed with art.

The question is, which side do I want to win? Given the choice, I would choose to have as little to do with computers as I could. But the Conflict isn't so simple... my obsession with computers is more like an addicition than anything else. Very difficult to escape.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? I mean, jeez. I've been struggling with this for years, with no improvement.

Dead-end

2006-01-26T21:34:00.000-08:00

I've run into a nasty Catch-22. The reason I went on the whole "art" thing was because people shunned me for playing with computers. And now... well, trying not to play with computers sapped away most of my creative energy.

Now that I have it back, I can do stuff, like programming a complex and potentially fun game engine. But I'm back to the people shunning me thing. So I can either be a deadbeat, or do something I enjoy and actually make a mark somewhere in the vaults of time.

I think I need to go to MIT. The people there are more in touch with my line of thinking.

Of Tongue and Pen

2006-01-23T21:07:00.000-08:00

German worked out a lot better than I thought it would. It's amazing how fast it can all come back.

On the other hand, I've forgotten so much about Perl that I've had to start studying it all over again. It's a bad idea to fall out of practice!

It's Oh So Quiet

2006-01-22T21:57:00.000-08:00

Heeey.

Gears are turning, books are being studied, typing done. With any luck the end project will end up on the IKKlib blog.

Also, one of my coworkers dumped his iPod to my iBook, so I'm swimming in pop-music.

On top of that, I start my German class tomorrow, so my brain will most likely explode.

YAY.

Area of Emphasis

2006-01-19T22:29:00.000-08:00

The website I tend to type in when I reach a dead end surfing is something.com. It's a totally pointless site, hardly worth owning the TLD, but it's random enough for me to like it.

Though for the past couple of days I've been reading books rather than websites. It's a different world offline, more concrete, easier to digest. And I can pretend I'm not addicted to the internet, which is a bonus.

On a totally related note (because of the books I have available) I've gone back to studying my old major, but with a twist: "linguistics with emphasis on the man-machine interface". I did a lot of work to gear myself up for linguistics back in high school, and departing from that for art was... harmful.

I've also resurrected the IKKlib blog, but spunoff to ikklib.blogspot.com. I'm not incredibly sure what's going to happen with this whole blog situation - they might merge, or they might disappear altogether in favor of a convoluted personal website like the Metaverse.

Duplicity

2006-01-12T01:11:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how much of the drama was on this weblog before, but I was mostly complaining about how Windows/MacOS/Linux sucks, so I'll assume hardly anything.

I ended up with two girlfriends there for a while. They both knew about each other and were supposedly both okay with it. Over the past week now, I've broken up with both of them. One left me for another guy, and the other one got too distant for me to stand.

So now I'm back in the world of not dating. I'm kinda glad to be back.

Eleven days ago I said to expect pictures... well, once again I'm overestimating my ability to produce things. I'm still struggling against this odd block on my creativity. I'm making some very meager gains against it, but I've been struggling for years now and it looks like a losing battle.

I'm getting some very very small amounts of work done on my super-secret project, however. It's called "Adventures in Public Transportation", and I'll let you figure out what it's about.

Maaaan, it's late. Coffeeeeeeeeeeeee does that to ya.

Edit: Hello? Elazul's Pad? Why am I the only one blogging in 2006?

I need a new calendar.

2006-01-01T00:18:00.000-08:00

Fifteen minutes into the new year and I've already begun fulfilling my resolution.

As you may notice, there's been a radical shift in design and title here. There's also ~~a huge gap in the~~ no backlog posts because I thought it'd be a good idea to delete all the older ones, and then I ~~got bored~~ took a nap and finished the job in the morning.

Eventually I need to make my own design for the blog, but this'll do for now. I need to focus on drawing more, anywho.

Expect pictures. For real, this time.