T w e n t y S i d e d
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…
id Software Coding Style
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.
Spider-Man
A game I love. It has a solid main story and a couple of really obnoxious, cringy, incoherent side-plots in it. What happened here?
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
You could just train and run a Markov chain on the entire text of a game for comical effect.
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.
A brief plug on the topic of programmatically generated jokes: http://mezzacotta.net
… 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
Another one that works:
http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/showstrip.cgi?strip=357068
This one contains an important life lesson.
http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/savestrip.cgi?strip=357116
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.
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!
This one made me want to post here…
http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/savestrip.cgi?strip=357246
Here ya go :-P
http://grok-code.com/12/how-to-write-original-jokes-or-have-a-computer-do-it-for-you/
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.
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. ;-)
I have a program that writes jokes for me, it’s called ‘Shamus Young’ and can be found at http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/
You could always measure it in cycles spent.
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!
http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/showstrip.cgi?strip=357924 Oh god, the angst…
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.
@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…
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
I can recommend Garfield minus Garfield
@13: Obviously, as it’s failed the Turing Test on numerous occasions!
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.