Window view drawing

July 12, 2010 By

Here’s another drawing I did:

Window view pencil drawing
[click here for larger image]

This was one of the practice drawings in the book I’m learning pencil drawing from. As you can see, I’m still shaky on the straight lines. But it gave the drawing a raw kind of feel.

I’m also still learning to judge distances and perspective. The original drawing had more of the house outside the window. When I drew mine, the tree on the right cramped up with the upper right window (of the house opposite from where we are), which also cramped up with the tree stump that’s in the middle of the picture.

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The oil spill problem

July 9, 2010 By

Everett Bogue gave a long-term solution to the recent oil spill problem. Stop driving. Your car consumes oil for power, and is the very reason for the need to drill oil. No car means less of a need to drill massive amounts of oil.

I say “less of a need” because there’s public transportation. I’m not sure if we can ever get to the point where there’s no reliance on oil at all. But every little bit helps.

I bring this up because recently I wrote about something similar in my magazine (download the free preview for July 2010).

Ever since I started working for myself, I started walking. A lot. Mainly because I was cutting costs. But also because I get to walk among trees, feel the breeze on my skin, and hear the sound of birds chirping. (There’s also the scorching Singapore sun and wicked withering weather, but I’m ignoring them) Public transport became a luxury for me, but I gained other luxuries.

Somewhere further in the article, I gave a generic solution to empowering you as a consumer.

A company exists because you buy their products and services. You stop buying, and they disappear. You have more power than you think. Vote with your money.

Same with oil. The less you need of it, the fewer companies form to extract it, the less of a need to extract large amounts of it, and the less of a need to create machines to handle large amounts of it (and thus creating a large mess if something goes wrong).

There you have it, something to think about over the weekend. What do you think of the matter? I’d also appreciate it if you can find information comparing public and private transportation with statistics and numbers. This will give an indication of the benefits of forgoing cars and other private vehicles to reduce our oil reliance.

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3D Bézier curve editor

July 8, 2010 By

Timo Suoranta created a 3D Bézier curve editor. As of this writing, the program runs on Windows and requires OpenGL version 3 or later (shaders are involved). Here’s a screenshot:

Bezier curve editor
[click for larger image]

It looks awesome. What, no? Then you have to understand picking. In 2D, any point you click on the screen is exact. The point you click on is the point selected.

In 3D, it’s different. There are an infinite number of planes behind that virtual screen you picked on. Think of looking up at the clouds in the sky. You know the water droplets are scattered sparsely and densely in the sky. You know they are in a 3D space. But you, looking up at the sky, only see one plane, the 2D plane that has the water droplets rendered onto.

In this case, it’s simpler. We are only concerned with the points on the Bézier curve itself. Timo used the closest point to the clicked point on the screen as the chosen point. Basically you “shoot” a ray from the clicked point into the vanishing point in the far distance (far far far distance, as in infinity far). When your ray hits the Bézier curve, that’s the chosen point. You can find out more about the method by searching on the Internet for “3d picking” or something similar.

So how do you edit a point once it’s chosen? Timo solved it by using 3 cones to represent the X, Y and Z axes. Dragging on the cones move the point along the respective direction of the axis. Notice the 3 cones at the right side.

Bezier curve editor with axes
[click for larger image]

I believe most 3D rendering software use something similar to edit points.

Now notice the small details Timo added:

  • The floor is a checker board to illustrate the notion of space
  • The vertical lines drawn from the points on the curve to the checker board to show the spatial relation
  • If you hover over the big blue spheres, the checker board, or the curve itself, they glow pulse-like

Wait, you haven’t downloaded the program? Here’s the link.

Filed Under: Programming Tagged With: , , , , ,

Singularity survey result

July 5, 2010 By

Survey

When I first launched my magazine, I also asked you to help with a survey. (Begged you, implored you desperately to do my survey more accurately. Wait, did I just say that out loud?) Anyway, in the interests of transparency, I thought I’d share some of the insights I gained. I can’t tell you the exact results, because it’s only a small sample size. So the results are heavily skewed, but I’m going to be objective about it. There were 5 questions in total.

1. What is your gender? (based on the sum total of you physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically and other -allies)

Quite self-explanatory. You think the addendum is irrelevant? I thought so too, until I read about how complicated it could be to respectfully ask a person’s gender. At least I didn’t ask you if you have a Y chromosome.

I thought I’d simplify the conditions, and let you decide whether you feel you’re a male or female. Hey, you could be a hermaphrodite, but generally feel that you’re masculine. If the criteria gets too complicated, throw them out and go with your gut feeling.

Oh yeah, they were all men.

2. What is your age?

I had 5 ranges:

  • below 20 years old
  • between 20 and 30 years old
  • between 30 and 40 years old
  • between 40 and 50 years old
  • more than 50 years

The survey participants were aged between 20 and 50 years old. Ok, so Pokemon is definitely out of the question…

3. At what price should the Singularity micro magazine be priced at?

The answer was a unanimous “free”. Quite expected. I’m charging for the magazine not because I want to wheedle you out of your hard earned money, but because I gotta eat.

“Free” was the first option. The second option was “$0 to $5″. I was wondering if the $0 would trigger something. Technically, free and $0 are the same. But do people respond more to the word “free”, or to a numeric value “$0″? Oh well, only if I placed them as two separate options, with the third as “$1 to $5″ will I find out…

4. In which country are you living in now till 1 year in the foreseeable future?

Due to the small sample size, I will not disclose the answer to protect the innocent. Let’s just say they are all different countries. And none of them is Singapore, so yay I love you international readers! (I still love you readers in Singapore. Don’t mind that last sentence)

The question was phrased that way, to take care of travelling and resettling conditions. The point was to understand if it’s useful to do localised articles specific to a country. If I knew where you lived, I could write articles that include examples, events and activities in your country.

5. What do you want to read about in a magazine in the pursuit and application of knowledge? (write as many subjects as you like)

I wanted to know what you’re interested in. The answer surprised me. The consolidated answer is basically “what you write on your blog”. Ohhkkaayyy…

On further analysis, that is correct. The magazine is geared towards promoting polymathy. I write on diverse topics here on the blog (some of them are even interesting). It makes sense. I should’ve asked some other question…

So your wish is my command. I will go source for various fascinating and exciting topics for your reading pleasure.

[image by ragsac]

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I do landscape drawing too

July 3, 2010 By

For whatever reason, I was seized by the urge to try drawing. I was browsing in a Times bookstore, and I happened on this drawing kit. It consisted of a CD of about an hour of an artist teaching you how to draw. There’s also an instruction book for you to follow along. That was interesting.

But I didn’t buy that. After a couple more visits to the bookstore, I finally searched more on learning artwork. And I found a huge thick book by Barrington Barber, called The Complete Book of Drawing (Amazon affiliate link).

The complete book of drawing by Barrington Barber

After some self debating, I decided to buy that book instead. After flipping through a few pages, I sense I’m going on an awesome adventure. And then I went out to buy some minimal art supplies.

Art supplies

I practised on the drawing exercises. It was tough. I had trouble keeping my eye on the tip of the pencil as I drew. Eventually, I felt I could try imitating some of the tough-looking drawings in the book. And this was my landscape drawing:

Landscape pencil drawing
[click for larger picture]

I think I’m better at landscapes.

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