It was in 1994 that Ryan gave me a shareware copy of Doom, the most amazing game, which ended up running at 1 FPS at the lowest resolution on my 386DX/20.

Ten years later, DOOM III is out, which will again run at an unplayable FPS on my slow 1GHz computer and GeForce4-class video card.

I just got hooked up with a gmail account. Awww yeah, that's right.

My nameless shipping company essentially admitted making the mistake of using the wrong person's signature release wavier for my account. However, since the camera was shipped by the factory, the factory gets to submit the claim and pocket any cash insurance. However, the package had "no declared value", so the shipping company cannot cover the value of the package.

Ultimately, the camera company will ship me an identical camera to replace the stolen one in about .... six to eight weeks! They won't give me cash to cover the camera I bought from the same company or even a voucher for another one of their products because as they say, "we only make cameras, not sell them".

Camera theft is a common occurrence among tourists in foreign nations. Care must be taken ensure the camera is carried securely and not left in the open. Some thieves will be brash enough to yank the camera from the hand of an unsuspecting vacationer, in which case is unavoidable, so know the environment before setting up to snap some shots.

However, camera theft before the trip has even started is another matter altogether.

I recently sent my camera back to the factory for repairs. I waited patiently, since inquiring about the camera would not make it come back any faster. Finally, I called the factory.

"Good news!" the man said. "It was delivered on May 19!"

The tone in his voice changed abruptly.

"Wait... did you send this back to the factory again?"

"No...," I replied.

It became clear what had happened. The delivery company, which will remain nameless, did indeed deliver it, two weeks earlier, and I never received it. In other words, my camera was stolen.

Based on information I gathered, the package stolen within the four hours that I was out of my home.

Both the camera company and the delivery company are refusing to take any responsibility. The core problem is that it was delivered without needing my signature, to someone who authorized the delivery with a misspelled version of name. I still have more details to track down but I'm optimistic that it will be in my favor.

In the meantime, I need a camera, now, especially due to several significant events in the near future. I (resentfully) bought a replacement, which will arrive shortly.

Dear Gray and Sharon Davis,

I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your recipe for Lemon Chicken. Now I've made lemon-pepper chicken before, but your simple variation (adding the juice of one orange and browning the chicken) makes a world of difference. The lemon gives a bit of tang, but the orange gives it sweetness. And that sauce! Mashed potatoes (especially when made with rosemary and garlic) have never tasted so good. The sauce even enhances and complements asparagus, like you recommended. Not only that, but it sure is quick and easy to make. Good thing chicken is on sale right now. I'll be eatin' well in the upcoming weeks!

Sincerely,
Alex

P.S. Have you tried Gov. George H. Ryan of Illinois' recipe for pancakes? These turned out light and fluffy. Whether having breakfast or finishing them up for lunch, these taste great! I only question whether this is truely his recipe or is it really one used by his "mansion staff"?

Good software engineering skills are hardly discussed at both the undergrad and grad level in college. There is a specific software enginering class, but these are skills that should always be taught alongside the class material.

As a grader I saw many different versions of the same code to solve a given problem. The range in clarity and quality was amazing. Some looked nearly professional, while many were horible, in the "this actually compiles and runs?!" class. This is true even at the graduate level and needs to be fixed.

Raw technical knowledge is important, but so are skills such as being able to write clear, well-designed code, which help communicate and document what the code does, reduce coding and debugging time, and make the code easier to maintain, extend, and reuse. Of course, good people skills and a positive attitude are some of the non-technical skills which are just as valuable.

However, while good practices can be encouraged, the best way is to actively write programs outside of school. Studying computer science will teach you theory, but it won't teach you how to program.

I really enjoy teaching. It makes me feel great and energized to be able to share things that I really enjoy with others. Some of these things are geeky but the goal is to show the beauty in the material (see: algebra, trig, calculus) or understand why the concepts are so useful. If it weren't for my love of software engineering, I would probably be a math teacher.

My first day as a TA, teaching a computer science theory section, went fairly well.To keep things friendly, I asked people's names as they asked questions.

In the coming weeks I will be covering topics which include analyzing running times of algorithms (how long will it take to finish), studying different sorting algorithms and data structures, and graph algorithms (such as the shortest path between two points).

While I do know the material, teaching it effectively was somewhat of a challenge. Sometimes it's easier and more effective to have one student ask the problem and then ask for suggestions of possible solutions and discuss them. One girl had a very confused look throughout the hour-and-a-half section. I really wanted to be able to clarify the concepts for her and help her understand the material but the fact that I wasn't able to was very frustrating.

While my knowledge of computer science theory is good, my programming skills are excellent. Lab time is fun, since I get to help people solve a variety of practical problems and promote good software engineering practices at the same time. More on that a little bit later.

My kitchen.
Fifteen spoons (10 small, 1 big, 4 long-handled).
Eleven forks (5 small, 6 tiny "pickle forks").
Two knives.

My view.
Rolling hills in front of an orange sky.
An auto body yard across from my window.
Dark sky.
Harsh white security light.
Heaven and hell.

My location.
The ocean's nearby. I could walk there.
Downtown's nearby. I could walk there too.
Such a beautiful location.
Who wants top ramen and water for dinner?*

[*Note: author eats better than that]

Puzzleday at Microsoft: teams of twelve interns from the best schools in the world spend the entire day solving the most fiendishly hard word and logic puzzles.

Let me explain in detail. The puzzles have no directions, so figuring out the goal is the first part of puzzle. Next the actual puzzle has to be solved, except the solution itself became another puzzle! Once that was solved (by using anagrams, whether needed or not), the answer would be a word or a short phrase.

Puzzleday t-shirts were handed out, each with a colorful grid on the back, which in itself was another puzzle. On closer examination we saw that it was a maze, and we solved it, forming an outline that looked like Europe. Well, that wasn't the answer at all. If you squinted, the word "NIGHT" appeared, but that wasn't even the answer. Only when you took the shirt into a dark room did scattered letters appear , which read in order was the solution.

When the initial solutions weren't anagrams, they were encoded in other ways, such as morse code, ascii code, and greek letters, which had to be decoded and rearranged to get the final answer.

As if that wasn't hard enough, there was a metapuzzle to solve. The clues were the answers from all the regular puzzles. After solving the metapuzzle and selecting the right characters, the solution was "BUILDING NINETEEN LOBBY MAGAZINES".

Finally, the team had to search the magazine rack in building 19 to find the prize, a "contract" to be on "The Real World: Microsoft".

These puzzles were so hard that out of a total of 28 teams, only one solved them all. Amazingly, four teams found the contracts. We placed third...from last, but I'm proud to say we solved 11 of the 28 puzzles.

Being a developer is great! I get to use some cool hardware, including prototype and retail Tablet PCs. Since I'm working with the next generation of Windows software (Longhorn), I can't show what's on my monitor, but believe me, its great.

I've spent the last week getting settled into my shared office. Its simple -- just a desk, chair, and a brand new computer (Dual Xeon 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, 120GB hard disk, professional-level ATI graphics card, and a 19-inch monitor) (read: top-of-the-line). There is also free soda and juice down the hall.

I've been to a few meetings with different groups within Tablet. Everyone sits around the table and writes notes on their Tablet PC. Ironically, despite being in the Tablet group, I only have a notepad and pen to take my notes on. However, they're working on getting me one.

Now I know my project and I've been doing a lot of reading and even building software.

But that was yesterday.

Today I built a house. I volunteered with Habitat For Humanity and worked on a 5 house complex. I helped to build the walls and hang sheetrock.

The best thing that I haven't done since living on my own is to have a TV. Since moving in to my place in Redmond, I just go home after work and watch TV all night. However I'll excuse that by saying that the last two quarters I've worked very, very hard and I need some time to just veg as I get settled in.

I just got back from having a steak dinner, courtesy of my rich "Uncle Bill". That's in addition to a huge burger and an ice cream cone bigger than a pint of Ben and Jerry's that I had for lunch today.

With that said, I made it to Redmond! I'm living down the street (literally) from Microsoft in my own one bedroom apartment. It's actually only for a couple of days until my real place is ready, but everything should be the same. Photos at www.fusionindustries.com/alex/microsoft/housing

When I arrived, the light was on and a gift basket was waiting on the table. So, after setting up my computer in the living room, I thought about lighting a fire in the fireplace, but instead I watched a movie on the TV from my selection of a zillion channels.

Unlike software, Microsoft's security is very good and responsive. Not more than 5 minutes after I drove onto the campus and started taking "tourist" pictures, a Microsoft Security truck (http://security/) came by and asked me to stop. The security guard was very nice and almost apologetic about it, but I won't be able to take photos until I start work on Tuesday.

Last night I went to the Guerilla Drive-In. We met up in a field behind SCO (in the town of its namesake -- Santa Cruz) and Tarantella and got ready for the show.

We brought dinner with us -- chips and burritos from Taqueria Vallarta, plus berry smoothies from Costco (down the street).

The guys putting it on really knew what they were doing. Bright orange lights from other buildings were covered with cardboard boxes. The light pole was almost covered, until they dropped the box in a tree. The projector (and Playstation2 and radio broadcasting equipment, complete with surround sound) was set up in the middle of the field, and the screen was the back of a concrete building.

After watching several activist short films (this is Santa Cruz, after all), we watched the main feature: Cool Hand Luke. The film was awesome, the crowd was great, and even though it was cold, we had blankets, so everything was perfect.

Alex	Alex	Lights	Proj	Crowd	Crowd

"Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In is exactly what it sounds like, an outdoor movie theatre that springs up unexpectedly in the middle of fields and industrial wastelands. We're working together to transform our urban environment into the joyful playground it should be."

Right now school has been really time consuming. For most nights over the last two weeks, I've gone to school around 11am and left around midnight. This includes weekends. I've even pulled a near all-nighter and it's all very draining and exhausting.

Having said that, I've accomplished a lot and have some great projects to show off. Now I've got a chance to take a break before the onset of midterms, finals, and final projects.

I really get into the work I do, so the challenge is to do it with moderation so I don't burn out (see: Spark, Flow Visualization with Fur).

Since I've started grad school, people have asked me how it differs from undergrad. It wasn't until I was doing some work in the graphics lab when another student welcomed me into the grad program, saying "It's good to have a new collegue". That is the difference between grad and undergrad -- we're collegues, working separately and together in research and in class.

Undergrad was more about a ton of people in a classroom, hearing some professor lecture on and on. Grad classes are different -- "I expect to learn just as much from you as you do from me," said one professor. "The only difference between you and me [prof] is that I've finished my PhD, but otherwise we're both fairly new to the areas we're researching."

I've been accepted to the graduate program at UC Santa Cruz!

Here's the email I received:

      I am very pleased to inform you that we have decided to recommend you
      for admission in the PhD program of Computer Science at UCSC with full
      financial support that includes a GSR
      (Graduate Student Research Assistantship).

      The final offer letter will arrive to you
      by mid-March. You will then have a couple of weeks
      to decide on the offer.
      

After more than 4 years of redirection, fusion.techcore.com is gone.

Although our site was originally hosted at www.tpi.net/~ryan, fusion.techcore.com became our home for a couple of years. We proudly wrote that address on everything Fusion Industries touched, from demos to business cards and even our sold-out t-shirts.

As much as I liked fusion.techcore.com, we've been very happy (and fortunate) to have fusionindustries.com. Like countless stories out there, I delayed registering it and a week later someone else had registered it. It was some comfort to snag the .net and .org versions, but just not the same. Of course I kept checking back on fi.com, only to find a site with a simple black background and the words "Fusion Industries", written in metallic block letters, but nothing else. After months of envy and agony over that name, it suddenly became available. I registered it immediately, of course, and its still ours today.

What is Fusion Industries? We were initially a demo group and then a game development company for two years, but for now, we're in stasis. College, work, and distance have been the cause. However, I'll continue to maintain and update the site with research I have done, news and photos of gaming and graphics conferences we attend, and other related info.

As of this moment, I'm effectively done with college. In just a few days, I will move out, as will everyone else. It doesn't seem like its over for the year (not that I'm complaining). I'm staying enrolled because I'll be taking a class on Italian over the summer, so I'll officially get my diploma in the fall.

College went by fast. If you're still in it, savor the experience. If you're under a lot of pressure, it's 2am and you have a project due at 8am, then use selective amnesia, but after that, savor the experience (and get some sleep!)

I'm currently doing research on flow visualization using a fur metaphor. nVidia and ATI have been incredibly gracious and generous by donating video cards to aid me in my research.

The following image is a progression of the work I've done over about the last month. The model was generated in 3dStudio, exported using Flexporter, and uses the shell-and-fin approach to simulate hair. (Updated May 21)

I've also been playing around with the nVidia Effects Browser to see what's possible and what's been done. I am absolutely in awe of the power of pixel and vertex shaders after seeing the developer demos. Among other things, the next generation of games are going to look incredible visually. For my work, it means I can quickly visualize the effects of airflow in an unlimited number of ways.

A huge earthquake struck not more than 5 minutes ago (as of writing this)!

I jumped up out of my chair (I was programming, you see) and ran one step in all directions, like a bumblebee trapped in a bottle trying to get out, and finally dove under my bed. This was the strongest quake I've felt since the 1989 earthquake and while it was unexpected (of course) it was really cool. The quake lasted long enough (15 seconds maybe) for me to actually realize what was going on and I watched as my computer case rocked back and forth. Wow!

After the quake was over, I went out into the hall and saw one of the exchange students standing there in a daze.

"What happened?" she asked.
"We just had an earthquake," I replied.
Smiling and giggling, she went back to her room.

Update: It was only a 4.9-magnitude quake, but it felt much stronger for me than the 1989 quake because I'm a lot closer to the epicenter this time. sfgate.com has the story on it.

I spent this past weekend scuba diving at the Channel Islands in Santa Barbara.

For the night dive, a bright "squid light" was hung over the side of the boat so the divers could find the boat from underwater. It was only when I looked over the side of the boat when I realized why it got that name.

A cloud of several hundred silvery squid, each about a foot long, converged and hovered around the light. Not coincidently, three seals appeared farther off from the ship to get the dinner that we had attracted. The squid kept darting back and forth, under the ship, under the light, usually in response to the seals in the area. One brave seal even came right up to the ship and caught one in his teeth. Yes!

We were sitting on our boards in the surf zone, waiting for the next set of waves, when we saw some bottlenosed dolphins about 50 yards away! Some came as close as 30 yards -- close enough so that I could hear the pfff of them blowing air through their blowholes. We probably saw 4 or 5 pods of them, for a total of around 50 dolphins!

Surfing was awesome this morning! From the beach we saw a gray whale in the surf zone, and then when we went out into the water, I caught my first wave! Wow! In addition, the waves were bigger, the water was "warmer", I'm getting better with the surfboard, and seeing the whale really made it a good day.

Although it takes an incredible amount of willpower to wake up at 6am, get into cold wetsuits, then get into the cold water, surfing just got way cooler and more worth the ordeal of getting to the beach.

I've started to get into surfing...

I went with a group down to Cowell's beach (near the Santa Cruz Boardwalk) for my first try. We talked and practiced a little bit on the sand, then paddled out to surf! Despite it being a gorgeous day, the water was incredibly cold (55F or so). However, the wetsuits really helped to keep me warm.

Surfing is really all about paddling. You have to paddle out. You have to paddle around to get the wave. You have to paddle until your speed matches the wave (that's how you catch the wave). You have to paddle back to where the waves are. Finally, you have to paddle to shore.

The upside to all this paddling is it gets you in great shape.

I tried to catch a couple of waves but just failed miserably, mainly because I was exhausted from all the paddling and pushing myself up from the board and couldn't paddle fast enough to match the wave.

Oh well, there's always next week...

A lot has happened over the last few weeks...

As it turns out, my car overheated mainly because my water pump failed spectacularly (the fan axle broke),causing all my coolant to leak out of my car and thus overheat. Fortunately, the head wasn't warped and the head gasket wasn't blown, otherwise that would have been a very expensive (~$1800!) job! Yikes! Fixing the water pump wasn't cheap, but I would have needed to do it anyway (well, in a couple of years that is).

The shop I took it to was so good, helpful, and nice that I'll plug their site: www.DmvClinic.com

I'm thinking about grad school so I took the GRE in Computer Science! The test was fairly brutal but I think I did well. I'll find out how well in about 6 weeks. Six weeks! How long does it take to run a scantron sheet through a machine? Anyway...

I recently finished a project on free-form deformation (of a 3D model). A 3D model is placed in a 3d deformation space, so when the space is distored, the contents (ie the model) is also distorted. The info on the Bicubic Surface Patch gives all the equations and theory needed to create the patch and extend it to a volume.

I've just started working with Visual Studio .NET.

My first impression of the IDE:
Wow! Its really cluttered!

My second impression of the IDE, after cleaning it up:
Wow! Its really cluttered!

Having said that, there are a ton of great new features about the IDE. This includes autosyntax working for #defines, OpenGL, toolbars that are completely tweakable, nice in-IDE help, and smaller executables that are generated from the same exact code (over MSVC6).

My new favorite game: Kung-Fu Chess! (www.kungfuchess.com)

What's up with everything I own overheating??? My first car overheated to the point of repairs costing more than the value of the car. In my computer, my power supply overheated, taking my video card and eventually the processor with it. My current car overheated tonight as I was driving back from the Game Developers Conference. Even as we speak, my car is (quite fortunately) down the street, with light wisps of smoke coming from under my hood (at least I think that's it, after all, it happened around 1:30am and it's dark out). Sigh... I hope its not as serious as my first car -- I kinda like my car and I'm not terribly excited about having to somehow get another car.

Despite the fact that my car is sick, I'm thankful that the car didn't die while I was on Hwy-17 (which is an extremely windy and dangerous road over the Santa Cruz mountains), since the car turned off and the steering wheel locked up when it died.

To add to all this, I'm moving to another place in the same area tomorrow and having my car (in addition to the truck) would have been a big help. Also, I was planning on going to the next SF-Siggraph talk on "The Making of the Time Machine" in San Francisco, but now I'll have to cancel that. The bright side is that the time I would have spent driving can now be spent sleeping, relaxing, or doing anything for my last day of spring break.

Over the last week I've been analyzing the data from a combustion chamber using vtk (the Visualization ToolKit). I used vtk with C++ and tcl (which resembles C++ without any commas, parenthesis, arrows, or dots) to generate the images in the report.

I've posted my report along with some really neat pictures. Enjoy!

Monday I went up to San Francisco to see The Making of Monsters, Inc. - An Evening with PIXAR!

Different aspects of Monsters, Inc were talked about (such as layout, animation, and technical aspects) and afterwards there was a raffle. The most fascinating part was a talk on how they did the hair -- the techniques used, the problems, and different test renders showing off what they did. Absolutely amazing! It was also very inspirational -- I took a bunch of notes and I want write a hair/fur simulator (provided I can find the time!)

Here's Pixar's menthod:

Hair is represented as a uniform B-Spline with 10 CVs. There is a "key hair" per vertex of the subdivision surface, which are then interpolated across the geometry. For example, in Monsters, Inc, Sully had 25,000 key hairs (which were interpolated into 2.3 million hairs). Parameters can be painted on the skin and can be properties such as color, length, thickness, distribution, clumping, opacity, bend, bounce, stiffness, etc. Different layers of hair can co-exist and the hairs can be groomed (such as length, direction, etc). The tips of the hairs can be made to attract and repel other hairs, which can be useful for different effects.

To create a clumping effect (for example as used on the Yeti character), a blocky noise texture map is created for the geometry. For each geometry patch, a single hair is grown in the center to which other hairs converge, thus creating clumps of hair.

Any interactions are tested against the tips of key hairs instead of testing each and every single hair (which would take an incredible amount of time). Collisions with other objects in the scene are usually tested against a sphere or a box placeholder instead of the actual geometry (again, to reduce computation time).

Other random facts:

• The Vault is 5000ft long and 1200ft tall.
• Monstropolis is based on Pittsburgh and the steel industry
• The buildings were designed strong enough to support 2-ton monsters, hence all the iron gridwork.
• There were 50 different treatments on the doors in the vault

A few months ago my computer overheated. My power supply's fan died and took my GeForce DDR with it. Apparently it also took my P3/500 with it as well because it also died a couple of weeks ago. On the upside, I now have a P3/866 that is much faster.

I've had to do a bunch of "forced" upgrades on my computer over the last year. I've gone through 2 motherboards, a power supply, a video card, (which all physically failed) and a hard drive (because I sold it and bought a bigger one). On top of that, I've reinstalled Windows9x/2k countless times. What a pain!

On a completely different note, this weekend I saw Seemen (interactive mechanical + fire art) and then went to the Chinese new year's parade in San Francisco. Way cool!

Over the last few days I've been writing a cloth simulator. With it, I've created a flag that is influenced by gravity and the wind.

How is it done? Let's take a look at what cloth is. Cloth is really a flexible grid of threads that are slightly stretchy. A great way to model this is to treat the cloth as a grid of springs and masses, which allows it to bend and stretch accordingly.

I've been using physics code from Xspringies (similar to Soda Constructor) to help simulate the cloth. Also, to create the interface, I'm using FLTK, which rocks!

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like so far. I created a textured flag that's anchored on a flagpole (the y-axis in this case) and it flaps on the wind pretty convincingly.

I'm taking a class in AI, which is an area that I haven't looked into yet, but is definitely worthwhile to have some understanding. I've spent the last few weeks learning Lisp, since it's a language that is commonly used in the AI community.

Lisp is a very interesting language that consists of manipulating lists (hence the acronym Lisp == List Processing). It also encourages functional programming, which is a style that uses little or no explicit variables and mostly nested function calls.

One may wonder how lists can be used to accomplish anything. Well, consider "list" as a synonym of "array", then it should make more sense (computer memory is essentially one giant linear array of memory; any data structure can be implemented using arrays). Lisp makes it easy to manipulate items in some respects because they are essentially linked-lists and have a ton of supporting functions that are part of the core language.

Right now I'm learning about the A* class of search algorithms. A* is often used in pathfinding for RTS, among other things, so it's been very enlightening and exciting (well, as far as search algorithms go).

I can usually see influences on my programming understanding and style whenever I learn a new language. I've recently done quite a bit of graphics programming using C++ and keep finding myself putting the parens in the wrong places (for example, (if...) instead of if() ).

Link of the day:
Using Gzip to analyze text files

I've started up my own weblog. I'll be posting things here that may not be relevant to Fusion Industries but give some more info on what I've been up to or thinking. This is similar to the Coding News that I used to write a couple of years (and website versions) ago and borrows the look and feel of the main Fusion Industries site (as you can see).

-Alex