Miscellaneous

Building 3D models on the fly

2009-11-27 Dan

Want perfect lighting and super detailed realism in your next 3D game? Build a scale model of your world, then run it through a program like this!

The algorithm builds a point cloud (a whole science to itself) and then a Delaunay tetrahedralization over many frames. In normal speak, the comptuer recognizes spots on the model even when the model moves. Those spots are used to figure out the shape of the surfaces of the model. As the model moves the shapes are refined.

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Hexapod Spider Robot

2009-11-26 Dan

How cool is that?! I want to build one 5 feet tall and ride it around town.

Miscellaneous

Inventing hard to guess passwords

2009-11-24 Dan

Making up passwords is tough. There are so many rules you have to follow:

– They have to be a certain length, for no given reason.
– They shouldn’t be proper names, important dates, or words in any dictionary. (Sorry, no Klingon.)
– They should be a mix of numbers, symblols, and upper and lower case letters.
– They should be created under a blood moon while dancing naked around an open fire.

So how can you make a password that looks like gibberish and still remember it? I recommend what I like to call the shopping list method.

– Write out your shopping/todo list.
– Take the first letter or number from every item in the list, in order. That’s your password.

You can leave a grocery list in your desk and nobody will think twice about it. …at least until we’re a huge success and everyone knows this method.

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Forms, simplified, v3

2009-10-01 Dan
  • + Added form_date(), using Kevin Luck’s jQuery DatePicker.
  • ! Fixed form_static() error message.
  • ! Fixed form_select() to use set selected value.
  • ~ Changed includes to requires to force errors.
  • ! Fixed form_select() javascript died when required select had no options.

You can find it all here.

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Forms, simplified, v2

2009-09-29 Dan
  • + Added ‘changed’ class to input_blocks
  • + Added ‘confirm_unload’ class to make per-form abandonment warnings
  • + Added __form_cancel_warning to forms.js
  • + Added __form_abandon_change_warning to forms.js
  • + Added a diskette icon to changed elements for better feedback response.
  • ~ Clarified some comments

You can find it all here.