My wife and I are avid fans of dancing with the stars. It’s the only reality TV show we watch. The reason being that we like dancing and like watching other people dance – it’s also fun to see some famous people we like give it a go at dancing themselves. It’s the whole over-coming anxiety and learning to do something under pressure thing. It’s silly sometimes and the judges aren’t consistent a lot of the time. But overall it’s a good show and we generally have fun watching it. Cut to this season.
Recent DC Comics Features
Post by Jon | Posted in Artwork | Posted on October 26th, 2007Once again, in my incessant wanderings around the site of Deviant Art, I have come upon the treasure-trove of ultimate comic goodness. Searching from one side of the site to the other, I have laboriously gathered together some of the sweetest and purest DC Comic goodness from the data banks of DA. And I present it all here, for your viewing pleasure. Sit back, relax, grab a bag of popcorn and enjoy these might y morsels of geeky delight…
Introducing the Flex Ladder
Post by Jon | Posted in Blog | Posted on October 23rd, 2007I saw this on The Best of YouTube podcast today. A "Flex" ladder. What an idiotic concept. Besides folding up for storage, having a ladder bend in the middle is like thumbing your nose at the devil, or daring the high school bully to punch you in the face. You’re practically begging for trouble. Notice how after the sales guy find out what I’m talking about he still tries his darndest to sell the thing.
Recent Featured Top 10 – The Best in Angel, Demon, and Fantasy Art
Post by Jon | Posted in Artwork | Posted on October 21st, 2007THE top 10 recent angel & demon and fantasy art on deviantArt – courtesy of yours truly. All of these pieces absolutely rock. That is fact. So these are my picks for the most awesome angel and fantasy picks that I found while browsing around deviantArt. You’ll find all of these picks in my deviantart favorites list. Each pick is by a different artist. Most of the artists here are not the “famous” ones you’ll see around deviant art. No, these are fresh, new and creative pieces whose brilliance some have recognized and some which have been passed over. Since that would be a travesty, I hereby take it upon myself to make THE ONE LIST TO RULE THEM ALL. So it is written. So let it be done. Drum roll please! Here they are in no particular order: Read more »
How to Place a Character
Post by Jon | Posted in Artwork | Posted on October 21st, 2007How can you create artwork digitally that mimics how a photo might look if the subject is set in an environment with objects in the foreground and background? That is indeed the question! I wrote this tutorial to hopefully give you some answers. For this tutorial I’ll start with a custom character I did for a friend. I like to call her Rakko.
Tic-Tac-Toe Applet
Post by Jon | Posted in Programming | Posted on October 20th, 2007
Training in the remotest parts of the galaxy, TicTacToeTron (also known as T4 for those who are down) has relentlessly sought the highest point of perfection in the mind-bending process that some call the game “Tic-Tac-Toe”. Read more »
Puzzle Solver Applet
Post by Jon | Posted in Programming | Posted on October 20th, 2007
This is a an applet that implements a well-known Artificial Intelligence algorithm called A* search. The ‘robot’ is set up in a maze-like structure and must find its way to the goal. The robot has complete knowledge of the environment – meaning that it knows where the goal is and where the walls are. Read more »
Peg Board Solver
Post by Jon | Posted in Programming | Posted on October 20th, 2007
The Peg Board solver is a depth-first-search algorithm that will iterate through each potential configuration of the peg board that is possible – it will then store each solution that it finds. Since there are no loops in the search space, this method is complete and when the search is done all possible solutions to the game will have been found. See this link for a more in-depth explanation of the Peg Board game and its solutions.
A Priority Queue in C
Post by Jon | Posted in Programming | Posted on October 20th, 2007So I was writing an implementation of the A* search algorithm for a friend. He has a robot that must navigate a maze – the robot can obtain “complete” knowledge of its environment through an instrument called “ladar”. It uses lasers to map out the area around it. Thus, knowing the goal and the obstacles around it, the A* search algorithm proved to be a prime solution for automatically navigating the robot. Read more »
Are there such things as absolutes?
Post by Jon | Posted in Philosophy | Posted on October 19th, 2007What are absolutes? Their definition is self describing. They are truths; things that remain true despite any sort of circumstance. Things that we know, beyond any shadow of any shred of doubt, are correct. They are not relative to anything – they merely exist in their own right.
