Ardor3D/JPL video

Thank you to NASA's JPL who just released a video showing off their use of Ardor3D. Very cool looking stuff and neat to see the 3d tech in an application that has real science potential. :)

Texture Generation

As I mentioned a few days ago on twitter, I took a little time out from regular programming duties to clear my mind. What did I do to relax? Well... I wrote code, of course. :)

Procedurally generated textures and fractals have both interested me for quite some time now. There's a lot of information and inspiration on the web to pull from as well; libraries like libnoise, wikipedia entries on fBm, mandelbrot or voronoi, papers on simplex noise, etc.

Here's a little shot from my work on this. Basically there are 8-10 images, all generated, in a line that you can scroll left and right by moving the mouse. Clicking on an image zooms in.



The whole thing was written modularly as a set of functions that can be snapped together to make more complex patterns. It may become part of Ardor3D in the future if I ever have a chance to clean it all up. :)

Not-so-"Mighty" Mouse

Hey I take care of it... I turn it over and I wipe it's ball with a soft cloth just like they tell you to. (did that sound weird to you too?) But somehow the Mighty Mouse's "scroll ball" is always breaking down on me. This is my second mouse for this iMac and I refuse to get a third. Yes I know that there are sites that show you how to take apart the mouse to clean it, but really now... a mouse that requires "routine maintenance"? What were they thinking?!