Bye, Blogger!

Google has decided to shut down new comments and posts for this blog in a few days (these static pages will remain). This is an FTP-based blog, and apparently, the FTP protocol (invented in 1971) is too much for the 20,000 or so google "engineers" to wrap their brains around.

This blog is pretty much inactive anyway, but if I ever want to start blabbering about anything else, I'll post it to my twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/antiquark2

See you there!!

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Bokeh Visualizer

Feel the swirl


Wow, I actually designed a product! I call it Bokeh Visualizer. It lets you simulate that ever-popular lens blur commonly known as bokeh. It has some unique features like:

• • swirly bokeh
• • elliptical bokeh
• • full control over the brightness contour
• • and more!

Download a trial version at: Bokeh Visualizer. The trial version is fully operable, it just nags you a bit. Hope you like it!

AntiQuark photoblog

I think I'll take a swing at photoblogging. Now that it's summer, I'll be spending less time surfing for good links to blog, and more time outdoors, playing with my kids and experiencing the real world.

Plus, photography is one of those hobbies that can make you look very creative, without requiring much thought or effort. Bonus!

Here's the link to AntiQuark::Photography. I'll try to update once a day or so. It's based on the free pixelpost software, but I also added a "zoomout" button for people with lower monitor resolutions.

If you have a subscription service like Bloglines, you can subscribe to the RSS or ATOM feeds, so you don't have to keep checking the page manually.

Mad props to Andrew who showed me the light with his photoblog, PhotonicEye.

Photoblog Awards
If you're not familiar with the phenomenon of photoblogging, check out the Photobloggies to see some people who really know how to take pitchers.

Knuth Article

In his home libarry.

Love at First Byte
Really good article on Knuth that covers pretty much everything.

I've often mused on the idea of following a similar career path as Knuth, and of course ending up with fame and fortune.

Like Knuth, my first step will be to get the highest GPA in my math course at university. Unfortunately, that will involve traveling back in time, and changing my rank from thirtieth to first. (NOTE TO SELF: investigate purchase of time machine on eBay.)

(via j-walk blog.)

TeX Font Samples
Japanese page with a few TeX/LaTeX font examples.

Nefertiti (and Other Beauties)

Nefertiti: Drawing Board Beauty

Nefertiti's chin, mouth, and nose, and the uraeus cobra are placed along the vertical axis of the face. The nostrils are exactly one finger distant from each side of this median line; the outer ends of the eyebrows are three fingers from the median line and the center of each ear is four fingers,

That seems correct. Just take a Nefertiti image, superimpose a regular grid, and you can see that her facial features fall upon gridlines.


And Much More!
Oh the humanity.

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Beauty In Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Hottest Women in Classical Music
I notice that there's a shortage of sackbut babes. The sackbut industry should take notice, and recruit more hot babes before it reaches the point where nobody knows what a sackbut is.

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Exotic Indian Dance in Office 2
(YouTube or GoogleVid)

The beauty of youth.
Technically, it's safe for work. (Technically.)

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Ye Olde Hakka Round-Houses

The less-logical parts of my brain think it would be damn cool to live in a Hakka roundhouse, or tulou.



Clan homes in Fujian
A more technical page with construction details and blueprints and such.

Flickr Tag Search
Flickr has lots of pics tagged as hakka or tulou. If you're really keen, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds (at bottom of flickr page) so you'll be quickly notified if anyone posts more pics.

Hakka architecture
The Wikipedia page.

God's Plan for Acne

I'm related to that? WAAHHHH!

(All via google.)

Harryhausen Archive

The Cyclops!

I remember seeing the 7th voyage on TV when I was about five years old. Without exaggeration, it was an experience that obliterated every preconception I had of the world up to that point. For years afterwards, I wondered what the hell that miraculous movie was, which I didn't even know the title to.

Luckily, Starlog magazine clued me in to Harryhausen in the late 70s/early 80s. Thanks, Starlog!

The Pottery Wizard

A true story of someone who experienced the full hypnotic force of a pottery guru's work...

It happened to the visitor for the first time at a recent Kumano Kuroemon Exhibition. It was as if he was put under a magical spell. His feet felt glued to the ground and he could not move; he could not pull himself away from Kumano's guinomi display no matter how hard he tried.
...
The visitor went home that night only to find himself still unable to break free from Kumano's spell. He looked at Kumano's scary face on the cover of a Toh book and thought what a gentle spirit Kumano is.

(Via Japanese Pottery Information Center: Guidebook.)

Latest Knuth Fascicle

Boolean Evaluation
Knuth's latest chapter from his upcoming sequel to TAOCP.

Hilights:

- Shows how to construct a 7-segment display driver with only 13 logic operations (page 18).

- Shows how to create a tic-tac-toe playing device that uses only 396 gates (page 28).

(By "show" I mean "derive by using dense mathematical terminology.")

Via Knuth News. Original postscript file here. PDF version for the postscript-impaired here.