NEWER POSTS

Postcards from %$&!@!

By Shamus Posted Monday Dec 6, 2010

Filed under: Pictures 223 comments
Postcards from WoW, Part 7Previous Post
Next PostDeck the Dalek

It’s late Saturday night. So late, in fact, that it’s actually early Sunday morning. I’m working on the software I wrote to make Drawn to Knowledge. Also surfing the web and listening to music, as you do. Suddenly I notice these stray red pixels on the screen. Hey! What are those? They’re not really single pixels but bocks of pixels, scattered in repeating patterns across the screen. Is my program malfunctioning or… No, that doesn’t make sense. I’d be seeing it in my program, not the entire display. Ah! More of them! The mouse isn’t moving right!

Crap, looks like reboot time. Ah. Never mind. The computer seems to have shut itself off. Damn it. What did I have open? Did I lose any work? Sighing, I power cycle the computer. The boot screen appears.

The dots are still there.

NOOOOOOOOoooo!

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Postcards from %$&!@!”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Postcards from WoW, Part 7Previous Post
Next PostDeck the Dalek

223 comments

 

Richard Feynman: Science and Chess

By Shamus Posted Sunday Dec 5, 2010

Filed under: Movies 129 comments
Drawn to Knowledge: The InternetPrevious Post
Next PostDrawn to Knowledge: Net Neutrality

Richard Feynman describes scientific inquiry as someone observing a game of chess.


Link (YouTube)

Years ago I was reading A Brief History of Time and I came up with a very similar analogy where I was likening the study of quantum physics to observing a game of billiards. For example, perhaps you can only observe the table between turns, when everything is still. Eventually we’ve come up with a list of rules and observations:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Richard Feynman: Science and Chess”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Drawn to Knowledge: The InternetPrevious Post
Next PostDrawn to Knowledge: Net Neutrality

129 comments

 

Experienced Points: The Future is Still Retail

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 3, 2010

Filed under: Column 147 comments
Stolen Pixels #246: New Vegas, Part 1Previous Post
Next PostShamus Plays WoW #7:
The Cataclysm Begins!

I had some extra hubris this week, so I thought I’d write an article about how a genius rocket scientist and the sixth richest man in the world are both wrong, and I’m right.

To top this, tomorrow I’ll have a critique of quantum mechanical theory, which I think needs some work.

Honestly. Do I have to do everything around here?

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Stolen Pixels #246: New Vegas, Part 1Previous Post
Next PostShamus Plays WoW #7:
The Cataclysm Begins!

147 comments

 

Stolen Pixels #246: New Vegas, Part 1

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 3, 2010

Filed under: Column 34 comments
Shamus Plays WoW, Part 6:
Overwhelmed by KoboldsPrevious Post
Next PostExperienced Points: The Future is Still Retail

I had this idea that I should do a comic about New Vegas and it seemed like a good idea and so I made the comic and then I sent it in and now it’s up and you can totally read it.

Am I the only one who wonders if the “inkblots” test in new Vegas is some sort of strange shout-out to the “inkspots”, who did the music for previous games? Yes? Okay then. It’s just me.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Shamus Plays WoW, Part 6:
Overwhelmed by KoboldsPrevious Post
Next PostExperienced Points: The Future is Still Retail

34 comments

 

Drawn to Knowledge: The Internet

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 3, 2010

Filed under: Movies 131 comments
OK Go - White KnucklesPrevious Post
Next PostRichard Feynman: Science and Chess

“A five-minute, non-technical explanation of where the internet comes from, how it works, and what it has to do with nuclear weapons.”


Link (YouTube)

In an ideal world, I would have posted this a few days ago to assuage our sorrows from lack of Spoiler Warning this week.

This project began last week when my mother asked me about the internet. This is basically the answer I gave her, although I didn’t have a chalkboard on me at the time. It seemed to satisfy her, and I thought others might find it useful or interesting. I know a lot of this stuff will seem remedial to the folks that visit this site, but it’s my hope this will be passed around to those that are a little less tech-savvy. It went over well with my kids, at any rate.

Share and enjoy.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

OK Go - White KnucklesPrevious Post
Next PostRichard Feynman: Science and Chess

131 comments

 

Shamus Plays WoW, Part 6:
Overwhelmed by Kobolds

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 2, 2010

Filed under: Column 88 comments
Stolen Pixels #245: Tycho BrahePrevious Post
Next PostStolen Pixels #246: New Vegas, Part 1

I’ve been forgetting to link to this lately. Here is the entry from last week:

Shamus Plays WoW 5: Another Day, Another Mine

And yesterday:

Shamus Plays WoW 6: Overwhelmed by Kobolds

Next week, Cataclysm launches!

Although…

Am I the only one who is wondering what the selling point of Cataclysm is going to be? I mean, everyone gets the new Azeroth. Everyone gets access to the new class / race combinations. (I think 95% of all players just rolled Human hunters. The other 5% rolled Night Elf mages.) What does the expansion offer, besides the ability to be a Worgen or Goblin. Don’t get me wrong, those are pretty cool. But I don’t know if they’re $40 worth of cool. Especially with so much other new content to explore. Maybe there is other content in the expansion, but Blizzard is doing an uncharacteristically poor job of tantalizing me with them.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Stolen Pixels #245: Tycho BrahePrevious Post
Next PostStolen Pixels #246: New Vegas, Part 1

88 comments

 

Project Hex Part 6 – A Comment on Comments

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Dec 1, 2010

Filed under: Programming 159 comments
Project Hex Part 5 - Growing GrassPrevious Post
Next PostLet's Code Part 3

If you remember from last time, I’ve got a bug in my program. It’s supposed to look at the terrain and determine which way is downhill, and it’s coming up with the wrong answer. Sometimes.

I’m going to post a block of code directly from the project. This is the top of the file called Hex.cpp:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Hex Part 6 – A Comment on Comments”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Project Hex Part 5 - Growing GrassPrevious Post
Next PostLet's Code Part 3

159 comments

 
OLDER POSTS
From The Archives:

D&D Campaign

WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.

 

Seven Springs

The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.

 

Games and the Fear of Death

Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.

 

MMO Population Problems

Computers keep getting more powerful. So why do the population caps for massively multiplayer games stay about the same?

 

Silent Hill Turbo HD II

I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.

 

Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad

It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.

 

Bad and Wrong Music Lessons

A music lesson for people who know nothing about music, from someone who barely knows anything about music.

 

Why The Christmas Shopping Season is Worse Every Year

Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?

 

Stop Asking Me to Play Dark Souls!

An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.

 

What Does a Robot Want?

No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.