GetBitmapBits (), Retired

By Shamus Posted Sunday Oct 26, 2008

Filed under: Projects 22 comments

As a follow-up to my earlier post: I replaced the Windows font-drawing code with my own. A bubble which took a third of a second to rebuild will now update so fast that I can’t measure it with the millisecond clock. (It takes “zero” milliseconds.)

I suppose if I really wanted to measure it I could build some gargantuan page-eating bubble, or make ten of them at a time and then divide but… whatever. Problem solved.

Just wanted to share the moment.

Now if only I could get the program to write jokes for me…

 


From The Archives:
 

22 thoughts on “GetBitmapBits (), Retired

  1. vbigiani says:

    You could just train and run a Markov chain on the entire text of a game for comical effect.

  2. Shamus says:

    Heh. Garkov is fun. My fav so far:

    http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/savestrip.cgi?strip=355325

    Nonsense, but the occasional accidental lucidity is hilarious.

  3. Shishberg says:

    A brief plug on the topic of programmatically generated jokes: http://mezzacotta.net

  4. Kimari says:

    … okey, now I’m addicted to that thing. Can you become addicted to a website? I think you can. Bubbles.
    In other news, this one actually makes sense:
    http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/savestrip.cgi?strip=355511

  5. Calli says:

    This one also works, if slightly surreal:
    http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/showstrip.cgi?strip=355680

    Whereas this one is flat-out surreal, but works. It does have a certain bizarre dream-logic to it:
    http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/showstrip.cgi?strip=355537

    If Garkov didn’t repeat the same six strips or so, it’d be even more addicting.

  6. MaxEd says:

    Oh, what is millisecond to programmer?! You can always measure time in ticks (with a little help from PerformanceCounter) and THEN boast about it here!

  7. Tom says:

    Back in the early days of the OS wars, I was a fan of the Atari ST. One of my reasons was that people optimized the OS itself in precisely this way, doubling the responsiveness of the entire system by replacing whole subsystems of the OS with optimized code. Programs like Turbo ST, Quick ST, Warp 9, G-Plus and NVDI were “must have” apps. I miss seeing a little software doubling the speed of screen updates without breaking anything else.

  8. I suspect the Windows API sucks so much because of Microsoft’s symbiotic relationship with the hardware business.

    “Your computer can’t run our Operating System? Buy a new one. We get a new license that way and they get to sell some new hardware. Everybody wins!” Except the consumer. ;-)

  9. SimeSublime says:

    I have a program that writes jokes for me, it’s called ‘Shamus Young’ and can be found at http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/

  10. Moridin says:

    You could always measure it in cycles spent.

  11. Ermel says:

    Re Tom @ 11: Oh yes, those were the days. My favourite moment was when the latest version of NVDI made this famous assembly-coded editor (whose name I forget) look old, by accelerating the whole system such that now all the cleanly written apps (using the proper system calls) scolled faster than did that once famously fast “dirty” editor. Gotcha!

  12. lowlymarine says:

    Another one that works surprisingly well:
    http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/showstrip.cgi?strip=358033

    Maybe Jim Davis’s writing has some hidden genius in it after all.

  13. Merle says:

    @16:

    That’s actually…kind of depressing. Wow.
    I must confess to enjoying “Arbuckle” – simply Garfield strips, redrawn by other artists, with non-human dialogue removed. Gives a much different view of Jon’s world…

  14. UtopiaV1 says:

    This one actually seems to make sense, and keeps in with Garfield’s mean streak and weird psychological makeup…

    http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/savestrip.cgi?strip=358331

    hate to double-post, but >>> http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/savestrip.cgi?strip=358345

  15. Rustybadger says:

    @13: Obviously, as it’s failed the Turing Test on numerous occasions!

  16. Josh Millard says:

    Ha! Glad you’re liking Garkov. It’s pretty wildly uneven, yeah, but there’s nice moments to be found.

    As far as more strips — I’d like to add more, actually. The process for setting them up is a little clunky (aside from a fairly clean markov scratch rewrite up front, almost all of Garkov is kluge-upon-kluge), but one of these days I’ll kill an hour or two and add another dozen or so.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply to Claire Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.