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January 31, 2006

Added a favicon.ico to the site.

I added a favicon to the site. Now everyone can see the cute little chibi hqx in their bookmarks.

It will probably not work until everyone's caches expire or they delete them manualy.

Posted by binhqx at 6:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 30, 2006

Perl One-Liner: Random password

I was trying to come up with the shortest possible perl script for generating random passwords. Here is the command line that I came up with weighing in at an impressive 48 bytes:

perl -e"@a=(0..9,a..z,A..Z);for(1..10){print@a[rand@a];}"

It will generate a random alphanumeric pass word of any length. The length is controlled by the right number in the for(1..10) loop. So for a 26 would look like this:

perl -e"@a=(0..9,a..z,A..Z);for(1..26){print@a[rand@a];}"

However, the script omits a newline at the end so you my want to just echo one in.

perl -e"@a=(0..9,a..z,A..Z);for(1..26){print@a[rand@a];}";echo

Posted by binhqx at 4:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 29, 2006

Weekend update 1/29

I do not feel like writing much, so I will give the quick rundown with strategic uses of the html unordered list tags.

Over all I did a lot of eating out. I should mention that those where the only three meals I had in three days. I hopefuly off set them with many hours of DDR.

Posted by binhqx at 10:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 28, 2006

Nebbish Fetishes

"Nebbish Fetishes" is a term that SB and I came up with after miss-hearing a MC Frontalot song. The term means a collection of all the items and actions that would be desired by a nebbish persons. If you do not know what that would be, look at the definition of nebbish:

nebbish
noun informal
a person, esp. a man, who is regarded as pitifully ineffectual, timid, or submissive.
--Source: New Oxford American dictionary.

Think the worst connotation of term Otaku and you will know what I mean.

The reason I bring up the term "Nebbish Fetishes" is because of a short film a recently saw that reminded me of it. It is available to be watched free on google video service:

Fear of Girls

The film is funny but for me, it is also very sad. The two main character are a satirical examples of table top role players. However I see parts of myself in them. If I where to just let myself go and do whatever I wanted, I would probably turn in one of these characters. That thought scares the bejesus out of me.

"I must be mindful of my nebbish fetishes for fear of them consuming me". That is what I think each time I pick up a D20 Perhaps I am being a bit alarmist and irrational. But watch the film and see if that is the type of person you would want to become.

Posted by binhqx at 11:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 27, 2006

Quartz Composer: The coolest App in OS X 10.4 that no one knows about.

I was messing around in the apple dev tools today when I found a program called Quartz Composer. It generates realtime 2D and 3D scenes using OpenGL, Core Image, Core Video and other Apple APIs. The scenes are constructed using a graphical programing language that allows non programers to generate complex visual programs called Quartz Composer documents.

This app is frik'en crazy. It can be used to create stunning interactive visuals very quickly. Take a look at some of these:
zugakousaku.com
quartzcomps.com

To bad my home Mac does not have a video card that supports Quartz Composer. I will make some compositions of my own later and post them here.

Posted by binhqx at 3:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 26, 2006

Empire des loups, L' (The Empire Of The Wolves)

SB and I rented Empire des loups, L' only because it had Jean Reno in it. The movie was pretty good as a action thriller. However, I think it says more about the way cultures integrate and clash on the European continent.

Jean Reno gets to play his usual "bad ass French" routine that I can not get enough of. He also gives a intriguing tour of some parts of Paris that are not in the guide books. France like to maintain its proper French image, but you come to find that it is just as integrated and gritty as all other first world nations.

So if you do not mind listening to the French language and like to see Jean Reno kicking ass, I recommend this movie. Everyone else will probably skip it.

Posted by binhqx at 3:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 25, 2006

Cool Tool: SSHKeychain

I was recently looking for a method that would allow employees to have superuser access to certain Linux servers. I did not want to setup separate accounts on each server for each person who needed access. Nor did I want to have one password to access the same account on different machines.

The easy solution was to use passwordless authentication using encrypted key pairs. But a encrypted key still requires a pass-phrase be entered each time it needed to be used. On most UNIXs this can be dealt with using ssh-agent. But we are using OS X and I would like each users to only have to remember their keychain password to authenticate everything.

Say hello to sshkeychain. This is a GUI front end for ssh-agent that allows you to store the private key pass phrase in Apple's keychain. With it I can quickly setup as many encrypted keys as I need. Then to use them, the user only needs to enter their keychain password. Finally, all the security of ssh without the need for a ton of passwords. Just make sure that no one ever learns what your keychain password is.

Posted by binhqx at 1:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 24, 2006

Painting reality; one stroke at a time.

The reality you know is the reality that exists in your mind. It is only fragmented shadow of the true reality, the reality that is governed but the laws of nature and is vast beyond comprehension. Why have we been given such a narrow view? Why can we only see that which is in front of us and not the complete truth of existence? It is as if we are attempting to pant a mural but have a brush consisting of a single hair.

Our five senses are remarkable, but as small transient beings we are limited by magnitude and time. What does a insect's elbow feel like? How dose a mountain taste? What sound does the moon make when it orbits the earth? What is the smell of nuclear fission? These are not impossible questions, but they are impossible experiences. Our physical bodies prevent us from experiencing these things. However, the mind can take the little bits of information and attempt to postulate the answers. A brush of a sing hair can still paint anywhere it wants too.

So are we limited by our body and mind or are we liberated by them? Look around you and for those who are trapped within the limits of their senses and those where are freed by the boundless possibilities the mind.

Posted by binhqx at 3:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 23, 2006

Wellcome to the Instant Message federation.

I had a "snow day" today because apparently where I live and where work is are not hight priority areas to be plowed. However, a full day of uninterrupted time are rare and precious.

I had read about google talk's move to open their IM network to other XMPP networks. Thinking about that, I decided it was time that I make my own XMPP network and see if it hooks up to others. Besides I can calm I am setting up a secure IM network for the company so I will technically be working.

This group of IM networks that can intercommunicate is called the IM federation. And who does not want to be part of a federation?

I played with a few Jabber/XMPP servers and eventuality settled on ejabberd. It is not the prettiest or the easiest to use, but it did advertise the greats XMPP compliance with its 1.0 release. It is programed on a platform called erlang. I had never heard of it till now, but this is what it is:

Erlang is a general-purpose programming language and runtime environment. Erlang has built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance.

Sounds good for a IM system platform. There was only one feature that had be stumped for a while. After staring it the first time, the changes I made to its config file where not used. Eventually I found out that it only reads the config file the first time it is started to build its database. After that the config file is ignored. To override this behavior the following line must be added to the config file:

override_global.
override_local.
override_acls.

Now the config will overwrite the database. After that getting everything I needed was easy. I setup a secure client to server connection using some self signed certificates. Now I can use IM to send and receive confidential information with out fear of eavesdropping. Pretty cool eh?

It is also very easy to IM with other XMPP networks. ejabberd handles connecting to foreign host transparently. It was no problem to hook up to Google talk users and chat with them freely. You just need to remember, that the connection between the servers is not yet secured. So just be careful what you say.

Posted by binhqx at 2:32 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 22, 2006

Tisk, Tisk...

I was reviewing my logs and found some people hot linking stuff from this site. I do not mind people copying any of the images, but I must save bandwidth.

Anything hot linked from the gallery will now return a 404 not found.

Too bad...

Posted by binhqx at 8:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Weekend update 1/22

Spent just about all of this weekend putting things into boxes. The moving process is long and arduous. Basically it involves weighing items usefulness versus it physical weight. From that we can determine if t is worth moving or should be given away or thrown out.

Even though I am not moving myself yet, I must keep in mind that everything keep with me now will need to be moved later. So I am packing boxes of thinks I want to "keep" but not "keep with me." These item will be moved to the new house and will stay in boxes until I deiced to retrieve them.

It is an interesting activity to scrutinize each of your family's possessions and instantly judge its fate. You can not second guess your self too many times or the task will never be complete. Because in the end you do not want to keep something you do not need and you do not want to loose something you do need.

Posted by binhqx at 4:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 21, 2006

You can never do it again

I am particularly talking about video games. The very first time a person plays a video game, it is a unique experience. It contains many elements of learning and discovery that are an important part of the gaming experience.

However, once a person experiences it the first time, they will never be able to reproduce the experiences again. Once you know "how to play", there is no longer joy in learning "how to play." This is why I have difficulty getting excited about game sequels. They tend to just be continuations of the original and do not change the game play mechanics. So the player starts the game knowing already how to play it. How fun is that?

But this is not always the rule. A good example is Resident Evil 4. Its gamely play mechanics are very different then all the other Resident Evil games. It had to be relearned because the old strategies and styles of game-play no longer would work. Compare it to all the other sequels Resident Evil had and you will see that all the other where just vague repetition of the original game.

Lets also take a look at a very original game called Animal Crossing. The first time through the games was full of discovery and achievement. I know that a lot of my friends where very excited about Animal Crossing for Nintendo DS. It had more stuff and networking, but what they really wanted was to re-experience the joy of the original version. But even though there where many changes, the game is fundamentally the same. So we already know how to play and what to expect. The feel of the first time through can never be recreated.

So I have pretty much given up on sequels. In stead I look forward to new original games that I will once again need to experience for the first time. Because you can never do it again.

Posted by binhqx at 4:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 20, 2006

The Yes Men

On Thursday night, SB, Cap, and I watched The Yes Men.
It is a documentary of a few of the hijinks played by the Yes Men. They are both humorous and eye opening. In the documentary, Andy and Mike pose as spokespeople for the World Trade Organization. What they say and do are outrageous, but coming from well-spoken men in business suites, people just accept what they are saying.

The purpose of the The Yes Me is to increase awareness of the immoral directives of organization like the WTO. They keep the whole thing light and funny by being satirical and outrageous. I would highly recommend anyone who doesn't know of the WTO's immoral practices, please watch this.

Posted by binhqx at 11:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 19, 2006

Perl hacking a provisioning server (Update #2)

The content of this article has been removed at request or threat of legal action.

Posted by binhqx at 4:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 18, 2006

Fisher/Moving-men

The moving company sent a truckload of empty boxes and packing materials accompanied by three men to unload them to the house today. When the moving men arrived, they looked like they had just stepped off a fishing boat. I swear you could not have cast three men who look as if they have been hardened by the salt wind and north seas. When I fist saw them I thought they where here to pull edible sea-life from the mirky deep.

Apparently these are fishermen, or specifically lobstermen. They get work with the local moving company during the off season. I guess if they can handle carrying lobster around, they can handle moving boxes.

Posted by binhqx at 4:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2006

Perl hacking a provisioning server (Update)

The content of this article has been removed at request or threat of legal action.

Posted by binhqx at 12:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 16, 2006

Perl hacking a provisioning server.

The content of this article has been removed at request or threat of legal action.

Posted by binhqx at 10:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 15, 2006

Weekend update 1/16

The house is bustling with activity in preparation for my family's move to Maine. Stuff is being packed into boxes and whatnot. Sense this house has not yet been sold, we now have the luxury of moving in stages.

Over the next few weeks small and fragile items will be packed into our van each weekend and transported north. That way we will not need to worry about it when the movers come to pack the furniture. However, that part of the move has not yet be scheduled.

Sunday, we drove to Boston to visit the grandparent. These trips are nice, but long car rides that start early in the morning make me sleepy all day.

For me, weekend tend to be sleepy in general. I love taking midday naps on Saturday and Sunday. Some might think that they are a wast of time, but I get so much out of them. During this short sleep periods i tend to have vivid and intense dreams. It is better then going to the movies and can be a source of creativity.

Posted by binhqx at 11:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 14, 2006

The Game I want to make. Part 1

Back during high-school, I spent a summers studying at Phillips Exeter Academy Summer School. It was a purely academic experience where one could learn just for the sake of learning. Without the normal pressures of high-school, I was amazed by the amount of fun that could be found in academic activities.

One summer I randomly choose a a course in archaeology. The class covered methods for learning our past using the artifacts left behind. Using logic and deductive reasoning to take the physical remains of a lost culture and reconstruction it in the minds eye. The most important things I learned from the class are the following:

1. Though we have extensive written history of our past, very little of the whole of human history is known.
2. New discoveries can and will completely change the way we see our own past.
3. Anyone can make these discoveries if they keep their eyes and mind open.

Beneath our very feet there may lay something more valuable then precious stones and metals, there is lost knowledge just waiting to be rediscovered. The lives of individuals long dead and forgotten can be once again remembered and their legacy to humanity will be restored. That is what makes archaeology so exciting. Each piece of artifact is a clue, a piece of a puzzle as old as humanity itself. Once enough pieces have be found the culture that created it is reborn in ones mind.

This is the feeling that I wish to express to other people. I want to find a way to use interactive media to share my enthusiasm and appreciation of archaeology.

How I will do it is still a question.

Posted by binhqx at 9:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 13, 2006

Perfect Dark Zero

Thursday night, Cap brought over his Xbox360 to show us Perfect Dark Zero.

It is a short game, SB and I finished the game in one evening. It has all the standard elements of this generation of first person shooter; wide gun variety, vision modes, vehicles, multiplayer, etc. However, it was just par for the course. It is a "standard" first person shooter. Nothing about it stands out from all the other FPSs.

That being said, Perfect Dark Zero does show off some of the 360's processing muscle. The per-pixal processing that allows for bump mapping and normal mapping looks really good. It has overly extensive use of specularity mapping that "plasticize" surfaces. Perhaps the level artists where only concerned with making everything look "CPU expensive" (like the scene took a lot of computing power to generate). This gives the game a feeling of a tech-demo.

Posted by binhqx at 1:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 12, 2006

The Intel Macintosh

There is something a little bit odd about the release of Apple's Intel based MacBook Pro and iMac.

Historically, Apple has put its newest CPUs into the highest-end models. The first PowerPC, the G4s with AltiVec, the 64 bit G5s; have first appeared in the top of the line models. However, the Intel chips have be introduced in the consumer grade machines.

This leads me to believe that the Intel chips do not have the "real world" speed increase that Apple marketing suggests. If they did, Apple would have put up a major marketing campaign demonstrating the time/money that could be saved in applications like Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Shake, etc.

Right now, the PowerPC still has the advantage in multimedia processing. However, this will not always remain true. Intel now has proper placement to overtake the PowerPC when they work with Apple for their next generation of CPUs. But they must first deal with the chicken-or-egg conundrum.

Apple needs developers to create Intel native programs for the new Macs, but why develop for a platform no one uses. The consumers will not buy new Macs till the programs they want are available for them.

So Apple has pulled this early adopter ploy. Get the first generation of Intel Mac into the hands of consumers A.S.A.P. The early adopters will buy them even if only Apple software will run without emulation. Once the Intel Mac are out in the market the developers will have a target to do Intel development for.

It looks like a smart move to me.

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January 11, 2006

Quote of the week

I start playing DDR to loose weight. Becoming good at it was just a side effect.
--Binhqx

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January 10, 2006

Sin City

I watched Frank Miller's Sin City with the guys on Sunday. I am usually turned off by this category of ultra-violent films, but I really did like it. i thought about it for a while and I think I know why.

The the protagonists of Sin City represent the unbridled violence and power that come from the darkest parts of our own minds. In reality, these impulses are kept in check by our rational selves. However, in Sin City, there are no rules of society to restrict violent impulses. The character are stimulated by some act that violates their basic morals and are allowed to act-out unrestricted by society or physics.

These are our dark fantasies that we keep hidden even from ourselves. Watching someone else act them out on screen is a liberating experience. It is all just fantasy, so we can sit safely in the audience and experience it vicariously.

However, there is a lesson to be learned from Sin City. When violence is unleashed and allowed to amplify, the concussion is usually self destruction.

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January 9, 2006

Intresting reading from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

The CDC and National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) job is to keep tabs on the posable vectors or potential diseases. Here is a survey that sheds light on one posable social vector. This is just about the most interesting document I have read all week:

Survey results.

How do the findings of the survey compare the behavior of people you know?
How do the findings of the survey compare the America portrayed by the media?

Posted by binhqx at 5:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 8, 2006

Weekend update 1/8

I had a cray fun weekend. I spent the whole time with Al, Calli and SB. We have be going out to eat, watching moves and having a generally good time.

One particular movie we saw was Beyond the Clouds. The are scenea throughout the movie that are absolutely stunning. It has some of the best examples of animated lighting effects I have ever seen. Any frame of the animation could be put on the wall of a art gallery.

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January 7, 2006

HoloDek

The guys where down at Hampton today with nothing to do. Then I remembered about a place called HoloDek.

It was pretty cool. It had a ton of alienware gaming PCs hooked up to projection screens. All the PC are loaded up with all the latest games and for $6 a hour, you can play as many as you want.

SB and I played some Battlefield 2 on the big screen at full graphics and no frame dropping. It is a good opportunity to play games on a PCs that cost a few grand retail.

The only problem is the popularity of HoloDek. It can be hard to find a open gaming station on a weekend. Some people make start to get some motion sickness from being so close to the screen.

Overall fun.

Posted by binhqx at 7:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 6, 2006

More Textures

Here are some more variations of the rock texture. I used simple seams to split the texture into different shaped blocks.

Posted by binhqx at 6:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 5, 2006

Visitors

Al a.k.a vthornheart and Calli a.k.a Callista are visiting for the week. We are having so much fun, its hard to find the time to blog.

;)

Posted by binhqx at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 4, 2006

Meet Madeline

I would like to introduce Madeline, or Matty as we call her. She is a one year old pup with a lot of energy and bounce. Matty's bread is a bit of a mystery, my best guess is she is a mix of Pomeranian and Welsh Corgi. The puffy tail and fine coat are definitely Pomeranian. I think the tall ears and long nose and coloring are Corgish in style.


Matty is currently fostering with my family. She should really be living with other dogs her age. She loves to play a little rough and the other dogs here are not in to that. She likes to talk(bark) while playing and that makes her a bit loud. She also takes a long time to warm up to new people. This probably has mostly to do with the previous owners that I do not know much about.

Where she will be placed is still a unanswered question. So we will keep looking for a good home, probably one without small children.

Posted by binhqx at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 3, 2006

More texture give aways

I was going to do some more map making when I realized I was still short some textures. So I whipped up some basic concrete and flooring in photoshop. I think they came out so well that I am giving them to public domain so anyone can use them.


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January 2, 2006

3D Game Map Making: Think Convex

This could also be titled: Why is map making for 3D games so hard?

Every time I start up a map editor like QuArK, GtkRadiant, or even Cartography Shop, it feels overly limited compared to other 3D editors. The map is limited to simple geometric shapes that behave strangely if overly manipulated. It has strange terms like brushes, entities and collections. No documentation about the editor ever properly explained why these things are, technically speaking.

I started digging around through doc and found a good explanation of Valve's map format. This gave me a lot of insight as to how the map actually works.

The difference between 3D model editor and a 3D game map editor is: a 3D model editor deals with polygons in 3D space, a 3D game map editor deals with polyhedrons in 3D space.

The big difference between between a polygon and a polyhedron is polyhedrons have volume. They have a internal space that is defined by its faces. A polyhedron can be made up of polygon, but a polygon can not be made of a polyhedron. So any map editor must be limited to only use proper polyhedrons.

All polyhedrons must be convex. This is to simplify the math required to detect collisions between objects. Finding collisions between concave objects is posable, but the algorithm to do so usually involves breaking down the concave objects into convex ones. So if we just start with convex, it saves a lot of needless calculations.

Polyhedrons are sometimes referred to as "brushes" in a editor. I am guessing they are called that because they are the simplest elements, and the map is "painted" applying a "brush" over and over again until the desired geometry forms. Lets take a look at some polyhedrons:

All the "Good" polyhedrons can be created in any map editor. The bad one can not, it is concave. To understand why it can not be created, you need to understand how polyhedron data is stored. In a 3D editor, a polygon is defined by the points at its corners. A polyhedron in a map editor is defined by its faces. Each face is a plane. The edges of the polyhedron are created where the planes intersect with each other. Here are some polyhedron that are defined by their faces:

Notice that the polyhedron only exist within the confines of the planes that define it. Using this method to store geometry data is very efficient math wise. It is also impossible to create concave objects with it.

So how do complex concave object appear in video games? They are all subdivided into multiple simple convex objects. Take a look at how this concave archway is broken down simple convex parts:

So when making maps, you need to gear you mind to break complex object into its simplest convex polyhedrons components. Once you start thinking like that, the entire process will become much more comprehendible.

Posted by binhqx at 5:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 1, 2006

New Year's Resolutions

It is the first of the year, so I thought I would do something a little traditional. These are the current list of New Year's Resolutions for myself:

That is all I can think of right now. I will probably come up with more later.

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