Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!

By Shamus Posted Thursday Feb 9, 2006

Filed under: Pictures 5 comments

A few years ago the govt. released a preview of the new $20 bill, and as a joke I made a photoshop of it.


Click for larger view

The whole idea came from this post from James Lileks, made in April of 2003. (Scroll about halfway down) Anyway, today I tried to open up that old photoshop project with a now-newer version of Paint Shop Pro. The program must have some sort of heuristics for detecting U.S. currency, since when I tried to open the file I got a popup:

Note that this project was based on the publicly-available image. One that the Treasury Department made available, or at least permitted, prior to the release of the new bill. But this program decided I was going to start churning out Rumsfield-edition twenties from my Epson printer, and took the law into its own hands. It gave me a firm, “Halt, Villian!” in the form of the above popup. And then, just to make sure I did not get any further, it sacrificed itself in the name of justice by crashing.

Heroic software or rogue vigilante? You decide.

 


 

Terrain, Part 5

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Feb 8, 2006

Filed under: Programming 4 comments

We continue this series where I demonstrate the steps I’m taking to create a program for rendering terrain. For many of you (as if there were many of you, pfft!) some of this will be pretty technical. If nothing else, enjoy the pretty pictures as this thing takes shape.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Terrain, Part 5”

 


 

Knight Rider

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Feb 7, 2006

Filed under: Movies 13 comments

Seeing as how the Dukes of Hazard have made the big screen, I don’t imagine it will be many years before Knight Rider gets a similar treatment. So who would be good to play the main characters?

Michael Knight

Ben Affleck. Affleck and Hasslehof have a lot in common in that neither one has much acting depth, but they have one character that they can play very well. Affleck is likeable and handsome (or so the ladies tell me) and he seems like a good fit. While in real life he seems to be a bad boy, his on-screen persona is of a tough but good-natured hero. That fits this role fairly well.

KITT (voice)

You don’t really need to replace William Daniels. He’s still alive, and I doubt his voice has changed much in the last 20 years. But, in keeping with the spirit of the thing, let’s replace him with Douglas Rain. He’s 78 years old, but he’s still alive and I think he’d be good for the part. What, you don’t recognize his picture? Well, perhaps this one will ring a bell.

KITT (car)

I think it should go without saying that the movie would need to replace the oh-so-80’s Pontiac Trans-Am with something more trendy. I suggest the DODGE Viper GTS. I think the little red lights / scanner thingee could go on the front without ruining the look of the car.

Edward Mulhare

This was the fabulously rich guy who nonetheless rode around in an eighteen wheeler, giving our hero stuff to do each week. For the role of an older dignified Englishman, you can’t go wrong with Michael Caine .

Bonnie Barstow / April Curtis

Despite the fact that this is a show about a man with a rebuilt face that drives around the country fighting crime with a self-aware car that defies the laws of physics, I think the hardest part of the show to believe was the mechanic. We’re talking about a supermodel / covergirl type woman who does her hair, slips on some high-heels, and puts on makeup every moring so she can go to work as a mechanic from the back of an eighteen wheeler. I think we’ll have self-aware cars long before we have any women like that.

For this role I think Jewel Staite is a good fit. You may remember her as Kaylee from Firefly. She’s attractive, but has that down-to-earth quality that makes her a believable mechanic.

 


 

Terrain, Part 4

By Shamus Posted Monday Feb 6, 2006

Filed under: Programming 5 comments

Now that my program has distance-based polygon reduction, I need the terrain to change whenever the user moves around. If they are on the east side of a mountain, the area nearby should be detailed, and everything else should be more simplified. If they move to the west side of the mountain, the detail should appear there instead of on the east side. To set this up, my program comes up with a set of polygons optimized for viewing near a given location.


Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Terrain, Part 4”

 


 

Super Superbowl

By Shamus Posted Sunday Feb 5, 2006

Filed under: Random 13 comments

The atmosphere here is quite frolicsome. We have been galavanting about, giggling and cheering. I’m quite giddy right now, so I hope I haven’t written anything that might sound silly later…

 


 

The Hour Approaches

By Shamus Posted Sunday Feb 5, 2006

Filed under: Random 1 comments

Battle begins soon. The entire D&D group is meeting here today, where we will watch the game while more or less holding our breath for four hours.

They have to win. They just have to.

 


 

Im against it

By Shamus Posted Saturday Feb 4, 2006

Filed under: Pictures 2 comments

A photoshop I did some time ago. I was sorting through some old files and found it. It actually made me laugh when I saw it. I’d expunged the original sign text ages ago, so I don’t know what her message was. I’d give it even money on it being something along the lines of Bush being not entirely dissimilar to the facist german leadership of the early 1940’s. Just a guess.