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Thursday, May 29, 2008

Conway's Game of Life REDUX!, Screensavers, and Me...

NOTE as of 06.23.08
The source is now available through this page


I've become obsessed with this stupid Game of Life shite. All my other projects are on hold until I get this out of my system.

So far, I've gotten out a simple, plug-in based .NET version: Yagol.NET.

Now, for your pleasure, it's: The Yagol++ Screensaver!

yagol.screensaver

I added "traces" of where a cell used to be live up to five generations earlier.

The saver can be downloaded here. Now, here's the catch: if you want a link to the source, I'll post it as a comment reply after I've received some comments from you all requesting it. I NEED ATTENTION!

Thanx!

~simon

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Multimedia-based Code Commenting, and Me...

Ok, a former colleague of mine decided to create an extension to Visual Studio to allow audio commenting of code.

Go here to check it out.

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Thursday, May 08, 2008

Buzzwords, Clones, and Me...

Ed had a post about the fluff around simple, common-sense truths from which I must I ask: What might have sparked this commentary?

He answer's this question in part in his own passage: that he seems to be dragged to seminars around buzzwords / buzz-phrases, ergo providing fodder to contemplate over, ergo his posting. On the other hand, it potentially leads to a mind-bending philosophical journey into the nature of clones.

I, like Ed, find those nuggets of "truth" (buried deep, deep within the massive stool-pile which is the self-help / buzzword seminar) both enjoyable as well as potentially helpful (when they happen to synchronize with some conundrum going on in my life at the time). That is, many times these seminars are laden with metaphors and example stories that can be useful. However, a cliche is still a cliche, and for a person not to recognize the cliche, and even go so far as to announce that, upon hearing the cliche for perhaps the thousandth time, they're still mind-boggled by its profundity and freshness, is the mark of that person being a clone.

Clones seem to have the inability to recognize that they are fully embracing known stereotypes. For example, watch any MTV Spring Break. Thousands and thousands of chiseled people, both mentally and physically, distinguishable only by hair color and swim-trunk color. In Oregon, a neighbor native to the region (or "hick", as the classification goes), who'd actually never left the region, had a heavy Southern accent. Probably the most indicative of a clone is a youthful Caucasoid donning oversized denim pants with a crotch-seam around the knees, an oversized T-shirt, and a baseball cap turned to the side. These interesting specimens have a peculiar gait and "anxious-stiffness" along the shoulder region that produces a unique presence combining "menace" and "jackass" together. Also, it seems to affect the speech patterns in such a way as to emulate retardation or at the least half-wittedness. But I digress...

Stereotypes, like cliches or plants, require frequent watering, or they will shrivel up and die. Like cliches, this requirement is met through the combination of its "empirical" reaffirmation, as well as its memetic proliferation to new hosts. Unlike cliches, however, stereotypes reaffirm themselves, whereas cliches are reaffirmed through external circumstance. With this axiom, we can postulate:

The buzzword-based seminar is the King's Feast for the buzzword-based clone. Without buzzword-based seminars, the stereotype alive in the host clone will begin to shrivel and die. The starvation of the clone's donned stereotype leads to increasing stereotype-reaffirmation.

Ed's commentary itself is therefore either the rejoicing of a potential host's confirmation that they are not a buzzword-based clone, or that the said host has allowed the buzzword-based stereotype to shrivel and die.

Fascinating, isn't it?

Appendix:

For examples of clones / wsuGangstas, see this or this (and any related) or this or this or this (excellent specimen photos; not sure about the blog, but...)

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Friday, May 02, 2008

C++, Conway's Game of Life, and Me...

NOTE as of 5.03.08
Update to code. It actually works now. (what do you expect in 30 minutes)

NOTE as of 06.23.08
C++ source is now available through this page

NOTE as of 01.13.2009
ALL NEW C++ Game of Life screensaver, with PONG! Get it (and source) here!

Ok, just trying to get back into C/C++ for work and decided to quick write Conway's Game of Life. I have named it thusly YAGOL (Yet Another Game Of Life).

I so hate C/C++ Win32 programming after working in C#. Been working on it for a few days and nights and had enough. Whipped a YAGOL.NET out in like 30 minutes.

Here's my C# version of YAGOL (Yet Another Game Of Life). I'll be revising it every now and then. It's total shit as of this post, but...

Source included.

Hey, if you decide to make rules or changes, email them here.

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