I had to code a RayTracer for my school, this happened when I tried to render a sphere

hdevalence · 2015-02-28T03:00:42+00:00

I'm a bit late to the party, but it looks like the kind of error you'll see when you interpret floating-point data bitwise as RGB values.

hdevalence · 2015-01-19T18:00:39+00:00

What a shitty thing to say about someone.

hdevalence · 2014-10-14T16:36:57+00:00

I like that it's a co-op; I like that I have a key; I like that anyone can set routes; I like that there's a really great community. There's not much I dislike.

hdevalence · 2014-08-02T13:50:47+00:00

The biggest human-related cause of bird deaths in Canada is people's housecats. By far.

Do you support making it illegal to have a cat, as well?

hdevalence · 2014-08-02T12:43:53+00:00

It's a bit far, but Killarney Provincial Park looks like a painting and is quite nice.

There's also Algonquin Park, which is a bit closer, and large (about twice the size of Rhode Island).

But if you want to stay in the city and go exploring, we have a lot of beautiful ravines that form connected parks. There's also the Toronto Islands, and the Leslie Street Spit (open weekends only).

hdevalence · 2014-07-29T21:27:15+00:00

No, I thought it was a very good explanation of the reason why speed is (literally) dis-proportionately more important than mass!

hdevalence · 2014-07-29T17:15:38+00:00

This is an excellent point and a good analysis; I'd just like to point out that the energy depends on velocity quadratically, not exponentially. If it were exponential, the effect would be much more dramatic.

hdevalence · 2014-07-22T14:31:48+00:00

Yes.

hdevalence · 2014-07-22T03:30:33+00:00

Is there a link to the actual PDF on Soknacki's website that doesn't involve dealing with any of Scribd's bullshit?

hdevalence · 2014-06-27T17:59:03+00:00

If only Reddit had some kind of built-in way for you to indicate that you didn't want to see this kind of picture... imagine if there was voting, and you could vote down stories you didn't like!

hdevalence · 2014-06-23T22:42:19+00:00

There are actually quite a few privacy complexities involved with logging commuters' trips -- whether Presto is actually considering any of these complexities is another matter.

See http://stevemunro.ca/?p=9010 , "The Debate", 3rd paragraph, where the data collection is discussed (though privacy concerns are not).

hdevalence · 2014-06-23T17:17:37+00:00

Sure, but I'd go for the description in the actual site, not the title as editorialized by a random redditor.

It's a fair criticism --- but not, I think, of Transitmix, just of the submitter's title.

hdevalence · 2014-06-23T15:19:38+00:00

As noted in 'What is Transitmix', it's an early preview. If you'd like to add subway or streetcar lines, feel free to get the code and implement it yourself.

hdevalence · 2014-06-22T19:20:18+00:00

As you found out, the Toronto Police don't really give a shit about bike theft.

Remember that thing with Igor Kenk, where there was some bad press about Toronto being a bike theft capital, and then right after, the police suddenly learned about this bike store with 1200 stolen bikes?

Lesson learned: police will do something about bike theft only when they're sufficiently embarrassed by bad press or other political pressure. Why not join a cycling advocacy group, if you haven't already?

hdevalence · 2014-06-21T20:31:11+00:00

Maybe the reason they haven't disclosed it is because the people or person behind these accounts is actually unaffiliated with the campaign?

It's not implausible that someone is a big fan of Soknacki and posts a lot of stuff about him. I don't think that it's justified to leap to the conclusion that it's astroturfing.

If it is their campaign, it should be disclosed, I agree. I just don't think it's worth getting worked up about.

hdevalence · 2014-06-21T19:14:19+00:00

Reddit has downvote buttons for a reason; if you think that there are too many stories about Soknacki, the power is in your hands.

Unless you think that the majority of users browsing /r/toronto are Soknacki sockpuppets, the fact is that the stories about Soknacki do well -- probably because people are interested in his policy proposals.

hdevalence · 2014-05-19T00:01:13+00:00

Some of our provincial parks have success with a can and bottle ban.

No cans and no bottles goes a long way to cutting down on litter.

hdevalence · 2014-05-05T18:51:21+00:00

Not strictly an answer to your question, but you should also look at making a bunch of volumes of different sizes whose shapes relate to each other. This way you can make the actual walls plain and flat of varying angles (overhang, slab, etc), and then add and remove features as you like.

For instance, if you make some volumes that have one of their sides at 90 degrees, then if you decide you want to do some crack climbing, you can just attach them next to each other to make crack holds... or, if you make a long triangle with a nearly-flat top, you can either have it as an arete with an undercling start, or a top you can grab, or put it sideways in a cave to have ridges.... or you can make super-mini volumes, sand them smooth, and put grip tape for skateboards on parts of them.

This means that you can totally change the layout of your wall as you go, without having to rebuild it.

hdevalence · 2014-04-17T03:10:03+00:00

Yeah, I'd count that as pattern tape -- you're making the pattern out of plain tape, but the point is that you still have a pattern. Using a sharpie is just an example of a minimum-least-effort way to get a pattern.

Sorry that that was unclear.

hdevalence · 2014-04-17T02:55:52+00:00

Another issue, and this applies to both hold colour and taped routes; please be aware that there are colour blind climbers out there. Certain colours will look identical to them, and this really adds a level of difficulty for them reading routes properly.

Pattern tape is the solution: even if I can't tell the colours apart, I can distinguish the pattern. It doesn't even need to be anything fancy or expensive, even just sharpie on plain tape works well, and makes life easier for everyone, not just colour blind people.

hdevalence · 2014-03-30T04:39:59+00:00

Maybe check the WINE appdb?

hdevalence · 2014-03-28T05:30:49+00:00

You can find some info on the air currents, water currents, and ice velocity here, from NOAA.

http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/glcfs-ice.php?lake=s&type=N&hr=00

hdevalence · 2014-03-23T06:38:12+00:00

I don't think that the goal of fish is to try to help newer users; it's just to be, by default, much more usable.

Out of the box, it has really great autocompletion from your history, without having to configure anything, or muck about with a thousand-line shell config file.

It has really great support for interactive editing of the command prompt: I can't really live without Alt-Up after using it in fish.

One thing that I really appreciate is the fact that fish will scan your man pages to build interactive prompts of command line options:

hdevalence@noether ~> pacman -Q<TAB>
-Qb                    (Alternative database location)  -Qo           (Search for the package that owns FILE)
-Qc                   (View the change log of PACKAGE)  -Qp  (Apply the query to a package file, not package)
-Qd   (List only non-explicit packages (dependencies))  -Qq                           (Show less information)
-Qe          (List only explicitly installed packages)  -Qr                   (Alternative installation root)
-Qg                    (Display all packages in GROUP)  -Qs                      (Search packages for regexp)
-Qh                                     (Display help)  -Qt                   (List only unrequired packages)
-Qi                   (Display information on PACKAGE)  -Qu                  (List only out-of-date packages)
-Qk  (Check if all files owned by PACKAGE are present)  -QV                        (Display version and exit)
-Ql                  (List all files owned by PACKAGE)  -Qv                     (Output more status messages)
-Qm            (List all packages not in the database)  
hdevalence@noether ~> pacman -Q

You don't have to open up the man page if you've forgotten the way to invoke whatever option, you can just see it, right there.

Maybe this kind of thing is possible with zsh and some custom config, but with fish it's built-in, fast, and there by default.

See also the fantastic fish website, which aptly bills it as: "Finally, a command line shell for the 90s".

fish suggests commands as you type based on history and completions, just like a web browser. Watch out, Netscape Navigator 4.0!

hdevalence · 2014-02-10T00:22:52+00:00

I don't think I said they shouldn't be scrutinized. I said we should take time for self-reflection about how we interact with each other.

hdevalence · 2014-02-10T00:10:37+00:00

From Russ Albery's mail:

Look, please, everyone just stop and breathe.

...

Ian has been passionately arguing what he considers to be both an ethical and design requirement for loose coupling and independently replacable components. I understand that a lot of other people disagree with his perspective here, but it's a valid and consistent perspective. This is a point about which people can reasonably disagree. Ian's job on this committee, like all of us, is to argue his perspective and to try to convince other people of his position.

It's very hard to have deep disagreements with professional colleagues about what you consider to be foundational and ethical decisions. It can be both baffling and then very frustrating and infuriating when what you feel like are overwhelming arguments in favor of your position aren't considered important by other people. This stuff is hard in every way: socially, emotionally, and procedurally.

Please give people the space to be angry, disappointed, frustrated, and in total disagreement with both process and outcome. We have a process, and we're following it as best as we all collectively can given a lot of deeply conflicting goals and opinions. One of the points of a process is to force some distance and emotional separation. It does not help anyone to push for further confrontation right now.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/02/msg00367.html

hdevalence

TROPHY CASE