Technology

A few times I’ve switched from the default private networking (NAT with port forwarding) to public networking (bridged) in the Vagrantfile.  When switching *back* to private networking, I wasn’t able to SSH back into the machine (i.e, “vagrant up” will time out). Assuming you’re using a Linux Mint guest (or other Debian-based) OS, a fix for this is to open the /etc/network/interfaces file and remove anything in between the #VAGRANT BEGIN and #VAGRANT END section.  Next, run vagrant reload from the host OS to reload the guest with the updated network interface configuration.

This moment has been a long time coming.  The first step I’d taken on this journey, and shown in previous posts, was to create a fractal scene piece-by-piece and then simply paste all the pieces together to create a final image.  The image was zoom-able but did not allow the user to pan in any direction.  I thought a good way to enable panning was to create a tile-based engine.  That is, the scene would be divided up into equal-sized square tiles and if the user panned from the left to the right, tiles to the left of the screen boundary would appear while visible tiles near the boundary to the right would disappear.  That seemed ok, and followed what existing tile-based game engines do (think Metroid or Super Mario Bros).  However with engines like that the tiles used to create the final image already exist.  For fractals, and their infinite nature, that can’t be done. ...

After a lot of refactoring, Frex now has a code base that I can understand the next day. I took the opportunity to install version control on my laptop to save me from any potential “oh f%*k” moments, or at least make them not as bad. I chose subversion for this, and as the repository is located in my dropbox folder, I’m not worried about having to back it up. ...

Back in high school, a friend gave me his book on fractals (thanks Damo!), and I spent hours and hours generating fractals using the bundled ‘fractint’ software. It didn’t matter that I was using a hand-me-down AT PC (everything was ok though, as this was the 8 MHz version!), watching the fractal generate line-by-line was fine by me. Today I found the time and ambition to create for the Android platform a program that generates the Mandelbrot fractal. That’s all this program does (for now). It does it very slowly, with absolutely no bells and whistles. Say hi to “Frex” (“FRactal EXplorer”). ...

Since I’ve been in Australia, I’ve been cruising on the Internet at dial-up speeds. It is so awesome. I love it. In the near future you’ll see the execution of a 56k modem once I ‘get back up to speed’.

Hah! I cracked up laughing when I saw this website. Firstly because the pictured phone is the same damn one as mine that got a ’little’ wet in the clothes wash a while back. Secondly because I failed at step one: Get it out of the water as soon as possible. The plastic covers on cell phones are fairly tight, but water can enter the phone over time. But this time may be quite short - 20 seconds or less. So grab your phone quickly! ...

Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to stuff… like Skype for example. For those of you I know back in Oz, England, wherever you’ve gone, my Skype handle is daecks. So anyway, add me to your contact list! Or, let me know what other VoIP networks you may use. Or, continue thinking “PK, I don’t really want to talk to you…”. This stuff should be all operational within the next few days.

Last week was an up-and-down week. I was doing this new photography stuff and had lots on my mind. I had gotten back from the gym and decided to put a load of washing on. Sitting down to relax I went to check my phone for messages… I couldn’t find it. A bit unusual I thought. I looked everywhere for it. Still nothing. I tried calling the phone using my friend’s mobile and it was going straight to voicemail. “Damn” I thought, “I’ve switched it off”. But then I thought about that some more. I clearly remember NOT turning it off. More thinking. Going to voicemail…. phone must be off… why is phone off?… flat battery… no, it’s fully charged… load of washing… battery dead… load of washing… load of washing… LOAD OF WASHING! ...

I found this cool Flickr app that shows the social relationships between people at Flickr. http://marumushi.com/apps/flickrgraph/ You just plug in the user name and off exploring you go. Mine is “daecks” (without quotes of course) and you’ll see how much of a lamer I am with only 2 contacts (currently, of course!)

Finally stuff seems to be working out, but only after a lot of effort and a few tears here and there (joking about the tears part). I have conquered part of the code and the damn radio seems to be doing what I’m telling it to do! Amazing, yes. God damn engineering is frustrating. I’m also amazed how much taking a step back from the work can be in getting it completed. Example, I was up till midnight trying to get this code working and then I gave up in frustration. I came back this morning and *bam* I instantly saw what was going wrong. ...