Musing : Confusing : Deluding

I think I’ve made a very interesting friend. Well, she’s definitely interesting, and I hope the friendship continues. It’s been in my peripheral vision since… oh, I don’t know, October or November? But talking for more than 3 minutes at a time makes it more solid.

In other news, physics prelim went okay, and variance shadow mapping is still not working.

Next fall’s potential schedule. Keep in mind that’s the light version, without Discrete Structures or Computational Linguistics. One of those would technically fit, I’m just not sure when I would eat lunch or do homework.

PS: Chequerd is definitely cooler, but I can’t link the schedule out (yet).

Well, spring break has come and gone. It was a productive one, I suppose, but not long enough. I rewrote my entire graphics engine in C++, after just rewriting it in Objective-C last fall. I like ObjC, but if I ever want it compatible with anything not Mac, I have to use something else. So… I’m finally just using C++ like I should have been all along.

The main accomplishments of break were shadow mapping and deferred shading. It’s pretty basic (only spot lights, no VSM or CSM or anything fancy), but it does work. Deferred shading is an interesting idea. While the fillrate is a lot higher because of the number of buffers, there is no overdraw and it allows far more light sources than forward shading.

Someday I’ll have time to play with this again, but it probably won’t be until May. School is busy busy busy. Math and physics are going fine — physics is a lot of work, but I like it. Writing seminar is so-so. I would prefer to not have it, but it must be done. CS is actually kind of interesting, despite its 200-level nature. The professor gives thought-provoking homework, not just mindless coding assignments. Arabic is the same as always: easy class, difficult language.

I designed a new company/webpage to house my (future) wares, only to realize the domain was taken. Darn. Maybe I’ll think of something else (again).

The other main thing I did over break was practice piano. I practiced nearly two hours a day, but of course that’s not continuing now that classes have started. Anyway, I made good progress on the Schubert (Moments Musicaux #4), and I’m working on re-memorizing Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata.

So that physics exam I thought I did terribly on? Turns out I got the highest score in the class. Well… cool. I wish life worked like that more often.

C: #define BASE_DELAY 1000

C++: const int BASE_DELAY = 1000;

Java: private static final int BASE_DELAY = 1000;

24 characters, 28 characters, and… 43 characters. Blah.

Course list is now as follows:

1. Multivariable Calculus for Engineers (4 credits)
   Simple vector stuff so far, but supposedly it gets hard near the end.

2. Mechanics and Special Relativity (4 credits)
   Difficult problem sets, but interesting and doable with enough work.

3. Introductory Arabic II (4 credits)
   Same stuff as last semester, only more of it. Different instructor this time; she’s good.

4. Object-Oriented Programming and Data Structures (3 credits)
   It’s a joke, but at least it’s forcing me to learn Java. (By the way: eww.)

5. Transition to MATLAB (1 credit)
   Basically a teach-yourself-matlab course. 2 assignments, 2 tests, easy easy. Although I can’t think of a real-life situation where I would want to write a blackjack simulation in MATLAB.

6. Art Between Rome and the Middle Ages (3 credits)
   Interesting material, but too much reading things into works and then writing about them for my taste.

7. Project Team: MineSweeper (3 credits)
   Just started this. Intense interview, fun and dedicated people, resources. Should be fun. http://minesweeper.engineering.cornell.edu/

8. PE: Introduction to Ballroom Dance (1 credit)
   The instructor goes too fast, but I am learning, and dancing with Madhur is nice even if we don’t know what’s going on half the time.

9. Piano lessons (0 credits)
   Going well enough. I’ve been practicing between one and two hours each day, only missing one day a week. Lessons are worth 2 credits if you’ve previously taken a class in the music department, but they are worth zero otherwise. Lame.

10. Unofficial Urdu classes (0 credits)
    Taught by a few people in the Pakistani Students Association. It’s like Arabic, but not like Arabic. It’ll be cool, if confusing. More languages are always good.

Summary: 23 credits + 2 piano + 1 Urdu = 26 credits’ worth of work.

Current project list is:

1. PDF rewrite
   I think it might actually be good now.

2. OpenGL/shader work
   Of course. I got distracted from actual progress over break by shiny shader effects, but that doesn’t count as progress when I’ve done them before. Haven’t really had time since semester started.

3. Continuing work for Xsilva
   Shrug.

4. A new job for Tinrocket
   More graphics work. Fun fun.

Summary: Not enough time to work on my own projects, because of work.

So yes, busy. Hence the dearth of posts. Overall I’m pretty happy. Much of the schoolwork is easy, and the pieces that are hard are also interesting, so it is worth it. I’ve spent today playing with ridiculous combinations of compound paths (multiple subpaths) and clipping paths with my PDF code. It seems to be holding up pretty well. Results:

I’m not sure when I’ll have time to work on it again, though. I should have written my paper today. Actually, I should have written that yesterday. I should have finished my Java assignment today, but I can’t bear the though of

This… is a class! And this, boys and girls, is a subclass. Now, make a project in which you have several classes that interact. Remember kids, fields [known to the rest of the world as ivars or properties] should always be private in Java so that you have to type more to get the same amount done!

Well, an actual quote from the assignment:

You should have a class Bank to manufacture banks (and have at least two bank objects contructed), a class Person to make people (and have several different people built), a class Shop to make shops (have at least three shops), a class CredCardCo to make credit card companies (have at least two such companies), a class Employer to make employers (have at least two employers, and consider the possible relationship with the companies already built; think inheritance), and any other classes that you think might be helpful.

OMG, wait, inheritance? What do I do?! Yeah. Well. I’d so much rather, you know, make something useful?

Overall summary: Not enough time to work on work, because of homework. Not enough time to work on homework, because of sleep. Not enough time to sleep, because of work.

The PDF of the spreadsheet.

I really want to do this, but I’m not sure I want to do that to myself. I think it’d be okay if everything worked out just right, but I’m worried that at some point, lecture A and lecture B would be at the same time, and the whole house of cards would fall apart.

I currently have math + physics + fws + cs + arabic, and I’m adding another cs, which will make it 19 credits. I’ll be in a better position to evaluate whether this is practical once I’ve gone through a semester with 19. Weeee!

News.com.au

Australian scientists have reviewed a global pool of research into the effect of modern office design, concluding the switch to open-plan has led to lower productivity and higher worker stress.

Um… obviously? Working without your own sound space is stressful. You feel exposed and vulnerable, and your concentration is constantly being broken by little day-to-day sounds from the people next to you.

(via Joel on Software)

Shapeways is offering a 3D printing service:

(via The Register)

I bought CS4 Production Premium the other day. I haven’t had much time to play with it, but I did download a few Flaming Pear plugins and make this desktop background for myself. I designed it for my laptop, so the 1440×900 is the original, and the 1600×1200 is just scaled up (non-uniformly) from that.

Download 1440×900 or 1600×1200.