Tag Archives: computing

godbox upgrade

Posted on by October 10, 2011
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It’ll be not long and I am back in the game. With ↵DX3 and the other goodies around it is obvious that after more than four and a half years an upgrade of my former ↵godbox has become unavoidable. Today I sprang headfirst into Tom’s Hardware and began doing research on current graphics cards. After a quick e-mail exchange with KerLeone (asking him what hardware he’s currently on) I went on with my research, but then thought: ‘Mine has to be bigger!’ So I skipped my plan to just replace the graphics card. Instead I opted for really upgrading the … Continue reading →

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flowchart shaders

Posted on by July 21, 2011
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Biohazard’s modding tool, the ↑Source Shader Editor, is a ↑WYSIWYG editor, which ‘allows the user to create, compile and implement new ↑shaders easily into a source ↑mod without any preliminary knowledge of HLSL. The shaders are based on nodes which are connected over bridges to finally compose a flowgraph for each, the vertex and pixel shader […].’ It is a fine example of, and argument for the fact that modders not merely tweak games a bit, but sometimes create state-of-the-art tools sliding along the cutting edge of technology. I, and a lot of others, hope that this sooner or later … Continue reading →

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larry cuba

Posted on by July 14, 2011
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Just dug that one up from my bookmarks—back in the 1970s ↑Larry Cuba, then at the ↑Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), made the computer graphics seen during the endbattle against the Deathstar in the original ‘Star Wars’ (Lucas 1977).     When I first saw those animated 3D line-graphics in the cinema in ’77 I was fascinated.     Three years later, at the first computer-christmas, I got a ↑Commodore 64 (C64).     With a freely programmable computer at my hands I set out to recreate those graphics. For a start I was content with the idea of an anmation … Continue reading →

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watson

Posted on by March 1, 2011
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More water on my mills, this time from an Op-Ed out of yesterday’s New York Times on Watson, IBM’s AI which will compete in Jeopardy! on Valentine’s day: It’s remarkable how much of the digital revolution has been driven by games and entertainment. (Powers 2011: WK 10)     The machine’s one great edge: Watson has no idea that he should be panicking. (Powers 2011: WK 10)     This raises the question of whether Watson is really answering questions at all or is just noticing statistical correlations in vast amounts of data. But the mere act of building has … Continue reading →

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elements

Posted on by March 1, 2011
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This site supports a course and a textbook that guide students through the construction of a modern, full-scale computer system (hardware and software) from first principles. In the process, the students practice many major computer science (CS) abstractions studied in typical CS courses and make them concrete through 12 guided implementation projects. The lectures, book chapters and projects are highly modular and one can pursue subsets of them in any order and scope. SCHOCKEN, SHIMON AND NOAM NISAN. 2005. The elements of computing systems: Building a modern computer from first principles. Cambridge: MIT Press. … Continue reading →

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lego antikythera

Posted on by March 1, 2011
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Andrew Carol’s hobby is building complex machines using LEGO [note the design of the site, and where it’s hosted]. After recreating Charles Babbage‘s difference engine, he now did the Antikythera mechanism. Have a look behind the scenes and watch the video at vimeo (in HD there, too), or at YouTube. MARCHANT, JO. 2010. Mechanical inspiration. Nature 468: 496-498. initially via tweet @ jimeh—lsfcil! [btw, congrats for making it to the top 100 in just two months :-] … Continue reading →

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stuxnet

Posted on by March 1, 2011
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There is a brilliant article by Ed Barnes at FoxNews: ‘Mystery surrounds cyber missile that crippled Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.’ When I first read it, at the least when a third into the text, I would have thought it to be fiction, hadn’t I heard about ‘Stuxnet‘ before … and Wikipedia’s entry on it cites all in all 82 sources. It seems to me, that Barnes is a fan of William Gibson’s writing, that’s the one thing. The other thing is, that nobody can deny anymore that we are living in a cyberpunked world. Have two quotes, the first one … Continue reading →

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