David Brunton
Friday, June 13, 2008
Long Format Response to Paul Graham's "Lies"
On my most recent visit to paulgraham.com, I was delighted to find three new essays for my reading pleasure. I imagine Paul Graham writes each one for me, and I always enjoy reading them, if only to disagree with them, which is what I did when I read Lies We Tell Kids. In particular, I disagreed with many of the conclusions, or at least the points made along the way toward conclusions, so I wrote a response and posted it on Jottit.
Allow me this brief endorsement of Jottit: Jottit is to web-based text editing as vi is to console-based text editing. Which is to say, "I like it." Hopefully will be able to stand up against the crush of traffic when all six people who read this blog go over there all at once. I posted it there both to try out Jottit, and because my server at davidbrunton.com seems to be dying a slow, painful death.
So, without further ado: http://lies.jottit.com. ¶ 9:43 AM Links to this post
Allow me this brief endorsement of Jottit: Jottit is to web-based text editing as vi is to console-based text editing. Which is to say, "I like it." Hopefully will be able to stand up against the crush of traffic when all six people who read this blog go over there all at once. I posted it there both to try out Jottit, and because my server at davidbrunton.com seems to be dying a slow, painful death.
So, without further ado: http://lies.jottit.com. ¶ 9:43 AM Links to this post
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Zebra Stripes in Processing 0135
The image to the right was not created using processing. However, it did serve as an inspiration for the latest in my series of natural-looking patterns made with cellular automata and Processing 0135.
My latest masterpiece is called "zebra" and I bet you'll never guess what it looks like. I changed the colors around from "goo" and added a further limit that each pixel can only swap with the pixel horizontally adjacent to itself. I didn't start from scratch, so it's possible there's still some green goo behavior lurking in there somewhere, but the code is included behind that link.
Without further ado, I present zebra. I lifted the zebra image from here on Wikipedia, and it's GFDL, so to be on the fair side, feel free to copy anything in this post under the same terms as that image. Thanks, Miraceti!
(edit: as with previous installments, click to randomize, space-bar to start)
The image to the right was not created using processing. However, it did serve as an inspiration for the latest in my series of natural-looking patterns made with cellular automata and Processing 0135.My latest masterpiece is called "zebra" and I bet you'll never guess what it looks like. I changed the colors around from "goo" and added a further limit that each pixel can only swap with the pixel horizontally adjacent to itself. I didn't start from scratch, so it's possible there's still some green goo behavior lurking in there somewhere, but the code is included behind that link.
Without further ado, I present zebra. I lifted the zebra image from here on Wikipedia, and it's GFDL, so to be on the fair side, feel free to copy anything in this post under the same terms as that image. Thanks, Miraceti!
(edit: as with previous installments, click to randomize, space-bar to start)
Labels: art, cellular automata, processing, programming
¶ 4:27 PM Links to this post
Friday, April 18, 2008
Crunchy Dads Choose Butterpies
In my real life, I have a wife, a one-year-old boy, and a two-year-old girl that occupy my attention approximately 100% of the time. Yes, even if I'm soldering or hacking or tinkering or writing, I'm usually thinking about them. As a nerd, I feel somewhat sheepish admitting this, though I know there are plenty of other nerdy dads out there, so...
My wife has this parenting site called Butterpies.com. "Butterpies" is not a reference to pies made out of butter, as good as that sounds. It's what our older daughter called butterflies when she was just learning to talk. I mention it here for a couple reasons. One, I hope it will drive some traffic that way. Look at it, link to it. Two, I write stuff there on occasion about making cheese with our kids and doing DC with kids. Three, I hope it will explain why this site is such an intermittent mess; not because I'm writing masterpieces there, but because of the whole two-kids-under-two thing.
Keeping a site like that makes me think a lot about how we live, and how we parent. So we're learning how do for ourselves, and how to accumulate less crap, because that's what we'd like our kids to see us doing. Heck, that's what I'd like to see myself doing: making more, fixing more, growing more, doing more, wasting less, and doing it all with my kids. It appeals to both the nerd and the dad.
Visit Butterpies. ¶ 12:36 PM Links to this post
My wife has this parenting site called Butterpies.com. "Butterpies" is not a reference to pies made out of butter, as good as that sounds. It's what our older daughter called butterflies when she was just learning to talk. I mention it here for a couple reasons. One, I hope it will drive some traffic that way. Look at it, link to it. Two, I write stuff there on occasion about making cheese with our kids and doing DC with kids. Three, I hope it will explain why this site is such an intermittent mess; not because I'm writing masterpieces there, but because of the whole two-kids-under-two thing.
Keeping a site like that makes me think a lot about how we live, and how we parent. So we're learning how do for ourselves, and how to accumulate less crap, because that's what we'd like our kids to see us doing. Heck, that's what I'd like to see myself doing: making more, fixing more, growing more, doing more, wasting less, and doing it all with my kids. It appeals to both the nerd and the dad.
Visit Butterpies. ¶ 12:36 PM Links to this post
