tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34096273332789999872012-02-16T08:49:09.632-08:00Being an accounte of thinges too protracted to be contained by yon <a href="http://www.plurk.com/user/BatCountry">Plurke</a>.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.comBlogger311100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-75072572848927756532011-08-22T07:13:00.000-07:002011-08-22T07:38:44.132-07:00

After being totally disheartened with the current state of OCR and layout detection, I started thinking about the problem.This is the sort of thing I do a lot: notice something that people have been working on for 50+ years still doesn't work, then start thinking maybe I have some (uninformed) ideas on the subject.As usual, I've come to a potentially spurious conclusion solely backed by a bit of

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-29381053318163199132010-08-21T10:39:00.000-07:002010-08-21T11:27:41.229-07:00

I've composed a release list of the best info available at the moment about release dates for stuff that seems cool to me coming up in the next 5-6 months.This was the result of about 2 hours of Googling and IGN-combing, so enjoy.I've linked to GameTrailers where there is no obvious official site or where the official site is useless (I'm looking at you, CAPCOM.)Shank08/24/10PS3Castle Crashers08/

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-49908503272630942472010-03-03T18:21:00.001-08:002010-03-03T18:34:31.430-08:00

It's unlikely that any of the Internet dwellers I know has managed to miss "OK Go," but just in case:The famous Treadmill video for "Here it Goes Again"So now that you know the band here's why I bring them up. They're fairly well-known for their imaginative do-it-yourself approach to producing their music videos. They (presumably with assistance) contrived this epic Rube Goldberg contraption as

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-87576563727788720092010-01-22T10:39:00.000-08:002010-01-22T11:04:48.123-08:00

It occurred to me today that I've made a number of useful observations on public forums about video games, AI and programming which I should really do something about in the future. I need a dumping ground for those observations, so why not here?From: amicusNYCL in response to Monkeedude1212| Because programming -IS- Logic. If you tell the program to do soemthing at Random, its not a very good

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-66531648270492110752009-09-21T21:06:00.000-07:002009-09-21T21:11:49.660-07:00

I originally started composing the following as a response to the article at Gamasutra, being a slightly less limp than usual Chris Remo interview with two gentlemen from Blizzard about Diablo III's development process.I realized that this was less a response than a screed, so I'll just put it here so that the only 2-3 people in the world who care about my opinion on the Diablo series can read

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-25622280168533762052009-07-02T09:07:00.000-07:002009-07-02T09:50:33.195-07:00

I'm still thinking more about the feasibility of Project Natal.Assuming you have a stereo camera setup with one infrared sensor and one camera with a high dynamic range and a very high sample rate even if the resolution is piss poor then I can imagine depth sensing working quite well. If the system has sufficient breadth (which by the pictures it probably does not) then it should be able to get

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-66785236049469802902009-05-05T08:05:00.000-07:002009-06-26T10:52:31.669-07:00

I had written some notes on a post of this sort some time ago and completely forgotten about it. I felt like blogging about something today, but my topic was completely stupid so I destroyed it. A recent conversation about this in Golden Teriyaki made me decide to resurrect this post however.In popular sci-fi there is a sort of overarching notion that aliens who have the highest technologies

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-17791424041292790122009-03-12T10:08:00.001-07:002009-03-12T10:10:13.774-07:00

I'm not the only webmaster who has problems with periodic DoSing.Even the mighty Microsoft must fail from time to time.

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-15014221185695061752009-02-27T09:56:00.000-08:002009-03-01T18:31:45.535-08:00

What do these two have in common? One is the reality of the future and one is the imagination of the future. Let's back that shit up, right? If you look at views of the future we live in today from the perspective of individuals from the late 1800s you'll notice a unifying theme (Besides ubiquitous flight... can you blame them? Do you know what Broadway looked like in 1880? I'll give you a hint:

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-17576228512710638182009-02-18T12:02:00.000-08:002009-02-19T17:48:21.140-08:00

When I was about eight years old and suffering from a particularly nasty case of mononucleosis, I spent a great deal of time at home. My Doctor prohibited me from school on the grounds that I would die due to my hyperactive behavior.I felt too miserable to go to school anyway - even sitting up caused pain in the back and guts, so I'd usually lay propped up against something and watch TV, play

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-15802008901370639742009-01-12T15:58:00.001-08:002009-01-14T09:00:21.892-08:00

In the interest of creating a filesystem which is more versatile than the default ones packed in with OS X Server, I spent some time looking at ZFS and was amused at the absurdity of the whole thing.Some observations:[stolen from]Although we'd all like Moore's Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-62906811689640837772008-11-19T12:57:00.000-08:002008-11-19T13:03:39.597-08:00

So I'm working on trying to build a backup NAS for my office, and I'm thinking of using a hardware RAID5 card (3ware 9650SE-4LPML) coupled with OpenSolaris.Any thoughts, Internets?

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-15322374669435876432008-11-19T10:59:00.000-08:002008-11-19T14:09:56.176-08:00

I've created a helpful guide to reading a 25-50 year-old man's personal ads for you ladies. Here's what they're actually trying to say.Hello. I am a male approaching an age where I am no longer confident in my ability to attract the opposite sex and am therefore stepping up the level of urgency of my requests. My own personal qualifications for being involved in a relationship are meaningless

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-21734515210605621722008-11-16T08:57:00.001-08:002008-12-01T18:44:42.504-08:00

I've been hooked on Fallout 3 in the spare time I've had in the 4 weeks since it was released, which between moving, meeting with real estate bastards, reading the Night Watch novels, papers for classes and a reticent RAID unit at work, has only been about 50-70 hours. No doubt about it, it's got its claws sunk into me.When I want to like a game this badly, its defects scrabble at me with their

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-74358444226663941422008-10-28T12:33:00.000-07:002008-10-28T12:53:45.363-07:00

As momentous an event as losing internet access can be for a person who relies on it for day-to-day living, the (I suppose) trauma of suddenly regaining it can be just as impacting.  The internet plays a very large role in my life, both as a good and a bad influence.  Being a little introspective about the effects of access to the Internet and deprivation from it reveals some interesting facts.I

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-9316271879783287352008-10-24T06:21:00.000-07:002008-10-24T06:42:00.107-07:00

I read really goddamned fast, going through 6 books in that 2 week period.This is annoying when you're too sick to go out and find books you haven't already read and only have 4 books you haven't read sitting around.Being sick and having no internet connection is like being stupid and having no Jerry Springer.I cannot read anything written by Terry Brooks without skimming completely past the

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-40603902043627772122008-10-06T09:15:00.000-07:002008-10-06T09:24:47.612-07:00

Sackboys are awesome.They can fall any distance without taking damage.They can drag an object many times their own weightThey run really damned fast.They have an unbreakable grip.The editor is awesome on toast.Stay away from building on the edges of the level - it looks tacky.You could probably build a steam engine analog in LBP without difficulty.Build from the foreground back into the screen -

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-85025469086912611772008-09-24T19:15:00.001-07:002008-09-30T08:29:40.154-07:00

Image redacted for the sake of eye-preservationI was searching for the name of the city that Jesus rode into on an ass (for purposes nearly as irreverent) when I happened across this image.This is a prime time to enter into the discourse the term pareidolia, which is a term which describes the tendency of weak and random stimuli producing a strong recognition response. When you see strange

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-46296427448464016152008-09-22T10:01:00.001-07:002008-09-25T15:50:41.494-07:00

When people talk about their formative years, they seldom refer to college. This is interesting because, on the whole, college and a person's first jobs are more formative of the personality they'll go around sporting for the rest of their lives than summer camp in 6th grade or how much time they spent being bored at Grandma's house on a rainy day.The term Alma mater is used to describe

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-48772613858317726292008-09-18T18:41:00.000-07:002008-09-25T15:50:51.582-07:00

I'd like to be the first to say "Fuck you, Apple."I've just spent the last week doing nothing but wrestling with OS X Server's incredibly fucked up postfix implementation.Here's the deal. When a message is received which is addressed to a bogus domain or mailbox name (that's the parts after and before the @, for you Philistines), it's supposed to be silently rejected. That's just how the

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-48590509604236677802008-09-10T12:03:00.000-07:002008-09-25T15:55:22.780-07:00

So I got a hair up my ass about what you call all those little traditional leafy and curvaceous patterns in illustrative work. I then set out to figure out what to call them. I encountered motifs, both vegetal and tessellated, insular illumination, drolleries, inhabited initials and various other curiosities.In the end, I was no more illuminated than I was initially.But I'll get over it.Ahem.

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-22819473308605336812008-09-10T09:44:00.000-07:002008-09-25T15:51:18.058-07:00

Tor and I had fome matter of difcourse yefterday about how awesome English was back in the days before there were any actual rules of grammar. You would Capitalize anything you wanted to Draw Attention to, tack the letter 'e' willy-nilly onto things in a highly inconsistent fashion, and just sort of randomly choose to insert the medial 's' which made it read as if it was an 'f' (now surviving

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-16558234705907295732008-09-07T10:54:00.001-07:002008-10-06T09:25:05.831-07:00

Goblins are child-thieving blessings in disguise.When the goblins start invading you, at first they're just annoying bastards who kill all the dwarves you need.When you have repelled enough of them, they start arriving with steel weapons and armor.These weapons and armor sell for a fortune to traders, and better yet, you can melt them down for metals (when on a typical map, you may be starved for

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-60490938512673524012008-09-07T10:43:00.000-07:002008-09-10T08:40:11.977-07:00

Putin is in the news now for doing something that sounds like Kim Jong-il-esque propaganda. However, the article has an interesting ambiguous modifier in it:He helped measure the Amur tiger's incisors before placing a satellite transmitter around the neck of the beast, which can weigh up to 450 kg (1,000 lb) and measure around ten feet from nose to the tip of the tail.Who else read that as one

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-31404190076629475842008-09-05T16:48:00.000-07:002008-09-10T08:41:42.356-07:00

I found a nifty publication from a team of scientists who are doing research which is just awesome.I quote:A large proportion of paranormal experiences occur in specific places. They are associated with a sensed presence, fear, odd smells, apparitions along the peripheral (usually left) visual field that “disappear” when directly (foveally) viewed, and auditory experiences (loud noises).

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-40980945964644803382008-09-05T15:57:00.000-07:002008-09-10T08:40:50.010-07:00

As the webmaster of The Evergreen's website, I get what we in the business like to call a "Sweaty Fuckton" of spam emails.Mind you, for the benefit of those theoretical people that Hormel have hypothesized might be confused by this usage, I'm not referring to the well-known food product which bears the same name and is favored by Vikings, but rather to unsolicited email.Of course, though

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-45752025492344462032008-09-03T11:47:00.001-07:002008-10-06T09:25:05.833-07:00

Unfriendly Goblins suck. Hard.Always build a wall around your important resources before building fancy tombs and offices for the mayor and complicated waterworks celebrating the richness and creativity of dwarven society.If you don't have a wall around your important resources before the Goblins show up, you should probably just start digging a lot of graves.Coffins are a useful thing to have a

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-41566363568027255592008-09-03T11:38:00.001-07:002008-09-10T08:41:17.311-07:00

I'm torn on the subject of Google's new and shiny browser.The UI for the new browser does all of the things I want it to do - minimizes the standard menus into a pair of buttons, leaves the bookmark toolbar at the top, turns the status bar into a floating tooltip whenever the status changes, takes up very little space at the top, usurps the standard Windows application window controls bar and

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-64551592412580215672008-08-20T10:46:00.000-07:002008-10-06T09:25:05.834-07:00

You can make valuable fertilizer from ashes or lye, and you can make lye from ashes.Dwarves like falling down wells.Digging into an above-sea-level aquifer when your entire culture is built into the side of a cliff is usually a bad idea.Camels really hate engravers.Friendly goblin tribes rock.Underground lakes are buried for a reason. That reason is snake men.

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-75159559205478614992008-08-17T09:21:00.000-07:002008-08-20T10:45:57.561-07:00

I'm certainly not one of those yahoos who agrees with the statement that you shouldn't need privacy if you have nothing to hide. Typically these people are the same ones who would condemn nudism but disagree that it's the same thing. Modesty is privacy practiced for the sake of other people.The typical argument against giving the government the right to routinely violate your privacy, and it is

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409627333278999987.post-90569586084071034262008-08-15T14:34:00.001-07:002008-09-25T15:58:15.728-07:00

Pheed!Barbecues always kick my ass. I always seem to work really hard at getting the place set up for one, but never seem to think about what we're going to do other than make food.I believe this is largely because my family barbecued often and we sort of made our own entertainment. We'd invite other family members over to play Pinochle and such. It was a big part of my definition of summer as

Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18364902029751864219noreply@blogger.com0