Inigo Quilez   ::     ::  
1402 blog posts, written between 2008 and 2016. These are mostly short observations, funny thoughts and word playing. Some are embarrasingly corny, some more deep. I keep it here mostly a little time capsule for myself, organized by month:



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March 2012
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to my dear hardware gpu vendors
2012-03-31
ok, guys. this is actually very simple. there is no way you can fix aliasing in postprocess. and you perfectly know it. so, stop wasting your time inventing new hacky techniques and devoting more shading power to them. please do face the real challenge: use the silicon to implement massive supersampling (we can start with 8x, no need to go the standard 121x of the film industry), and make it transparent to the user. until you have that, stop bothering us. seriously. thanks a lot from the deepest of my heart!


also, remember that TV was 600 px wide and it always looked far more real than any 1920 videogame - it's not about pixel shading power, it's about geometry supersampling.
being productive
2012-03-29
i just discovered while listening to music, that if you shake your head fast enough in front of the speakers, to and away from them, you can totally experience the Doppler effect. aaaand, yes my friends, that's how i spend my time in front of the computer...
and the new word of the week is
2012-03-27
"automathemagically"

that's how certain things happen sometimes!
so now i have to protect YOU from YOURSELVES?
2012-03-25
so, from silent ripping to shameless copying, passing through pretended inspiration or innocent replication, the work i give for free on my website has been reused (i'm avoiding the word plagiarized) quite a few times in many different places and forms.

indeed, i always claimed it was there for free, and the only thing i asked for was some recognition and proper credit. but i never stated it explicitly, as i counted in the fairness of the people, who come to the website to learn or get inspired (education should be for free). but of course we don't all share the same standard of honesty, and despite i regularly found dishonest moves and offensive and actions, it never has bothered me that much.

things are getting much better lately - i believe people start to feel increasingly more exposed when they cheat on my work, so they're changing their attitude, sadly motivated by fear rather than by uprightness. in any case, now i get emails asking me what kind of software license i distribute my work under... since i never explicitly state anything in my site about legal terms cause i felt it was unnecessary, but of course i understand that some people feel insecure about this "code of honor" way of thinking and unspoken rule of fairness that i assume everybody should naturally follow, and that they want to protect themselves against potential problems when they get to use my work/code in an event or product.

so, it seems i'll now have to go through all the crap of licensing literature and shitty open source GPL, BSD, LGPL, CC and MIT fucking terms and learn, take an stupid official decision and publish it crystal clear somewhere in my site, in order to protect them from their own behaviour.

i know, the real world is not a fairy tale. but you know what, sometimes, only sometimes, i wish it was less fucked up and it was a little bit more like one. specially when I have pay the prize - who said i don't have the right to be selfish too?
change of color
2012-03-24
this one always made my cry, "el 7 de septiembre", by the spanish band Mecano (1991). i always thought it was the saddest thing ever. i'm for the first time in my life thinking that, perhaps, it can be read differently.

who would say that
after such a long time
after we broke our bounds
we keep looking forward to our anniversary

the very same tiny table that saw us
holding hand below it
makes sure that small corner
keeps always reserved for us

and despite our story is over
there is somethig alive in this love
and despite we try to blow it
there are flames that not even the sea (can estiguish)

the flowers of may will slowly defeat
to crow's feet
and we will look for each other with our eyes
in case there is something left

the 7th of september
it's our anniversary
and we don't know if we should kiss in the chick or in the lips


in either case, tear!
speed of sound
2012-03-23
- how fast is it?
- i think it's around 340 meters per second
- ... how fast is that?
- well, it's like it takes only 3 miliseconds for you to hear what i'm saying right now, right?
- i... suppose. but i'm still not sure how fast it really is...
- ok, let me put it this way: it's like you fart, but you run away before we can actually hear it.
- got it!
- ¬¬
good night
2012-03-22
can you recommend me some dream for tonight?

¿me puedes recomendar un sueño para esta noche?
forgotten symbols
2012-03-20
i was looking at this hanging lamp and i realized that it was trying to mimic an old candelabra, with it's bulbs faking flames, and attached to white candlesticks with fake melted wax. i thought it was funny that more than almost two centuries after the invention of the light bulb, not only we still keep designing lamps after the ancient way of illuminating houses, perhaps looking for inspiration in shapes or design, but that we actually mimic the full candle thing.

the second thought that crossed my mind was that, in fact, many kids have probably never had to use a candle in their lives, nor seen one other than in birthday cakes, so what does the actual candle-shaped electric lamps look to them? like some arbitrary design? are they conscious about what that shape actually is/was?

the third though went to the smart phone next to me, which is digital and tactile (funny thing that "digital" actually means "with the finger" already in roman languages!), which has this phone symbol to trigger a calls. now, that symbol is designed after the old phone hook device, which most kids today have never seen or heard of. so, how the hell do they understand that that symbol means "call"? it's not by association as the symbol means nothing to them, but memorization, making this symbol pretty arbitrary as a choice for the function it represents.

so, how many other symbols are out there which have meanings i learnt by heart without me ever knowing they actually represent?

six cans, three recipes and one unkown
2012-03-18
here i go today to get my weekly supply of condensed milk. i'm grabbing few other things too, but the main point of coming here is to grab 6 cans of condensed milk. that should suffice for this week.

the shop is the family grocery-and-random-stuff business of this old asian couple. it's right below my apartment and i visit it often. usually the woman tries to initiate a conversation with me, and i always try to do my best to smile and not seem very antisocial. this time, she opens the conversation with something new.

indeed they recently closed the grocery store where i usually do my main shopping. because of that, i buy my condensed milk here now, as she has noticed. so she asks me about what it is for and how i cook it. to her surprise, i explain that i don't use it for anything fancy cooking but first dinner (i usually have two dinners, or three) and that i don't cook it, but drink it directly. i explain the infamous technique of the two holes and the flow of milk (no dirty joke or porn reference intended here). she nods, and then starts talking about the two ways she used to eat it when she was a kid, and how they usually cook it at her home country. so delicious! she takes a break (and gives me one) and finishes putting all the stuff in the bag. but then she goes on explaining how they prepare it in mexico. finally she gives me price of my purchases, and i pay.

if i was a good socially acceptable and grateful person, i'd probably try some of her advices and give her some feedback next week on how good it was cooking it the way she took so much care and time to explain about. but, you know me, i probably won't. or, will i? i always surprise myself!
i was clever enough
2012-03-16
to stop it ontime.

once upon i time i had enough spare time to experiment with "writing" music. lol

these are two songs that i wrote in 1999, 13 years old now.
did you ever meet Joe?
2012-03-16
today i (involuntarily) read a news claiming that "the average person has been in 17 cities during his/her life". i think this sentence, although we all can sense what it really tries to say, is wrong. the sentence should probably have been "people have been in an average of 17 cities during their lives" instead.

of course the thing is that one cannot average people really. you can only average things that can be defined somehow by a number, meaning stuff that you can count or measure. so you can indeed average certain qualities of people, but not people themselves. and even if you defined a person to be a set of qualities, still, how would then the aggregate of the average of the qualities represent the qualities of some sort of average person? i don't think people are linear, nor ergodic.

besides, if your intuition is not that strong with maths anyway, think about it this way: seems tempting to simplify and pretend there exists something like an "average Joe", but, and be honest here, is anybody around you "average" in all ways? did you actually ever meet Joe?
words too can have a backside
2012-03-14
bypass, mass, trespass, pass, bass, grass, surpass, compass, embarrass, class, glass
the boxer
2012-03-12
I'm grocery shopping, I need some stuff. Most people are still working at this time of the day, meaning the supermarket is pretty empty. Indeed it's so silent today that the background music can be actually be heard.

I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told I have squandered my resistance
for a pocket full of mumbles such are promises.
All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.


I know this one very well, I used to "sing" it a lot when I was a boy, and it's recorded in some deep sector of my brain. It brings me so many memories. Memories from different moments of my life, both early childhood and my premature adulthood. In fact, the more I grew, the better I liked and related to this song. Of course, I immediately start singing to it, aloud:


When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy, in the company of strangers,
in the quiet of the railway station running scared.
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go,
looking for the places only they would know.

Lie la lie ...


I'm walking along the corridor with the milk. Seems I'm not alone in this, the woman coming the other way is singing too. We look at each other, smile, and keep singing:


Asking only workman's wages I come looking for a job, but I get no offers.
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there.


It's funny that by the time I sang this for the same time of course I didn't speak a word of English and therefore I had no clue what this meant. But even after I actually learnt some English, it would still take me quite a few years to grasp the real meaning of it - only after having experienced the brutal solitude that brought me into tears and desperate cry and made me stronger I could really understand these lyrics. Anyway, lets keep going and grab the two other couple of things I still need from this supermarket.


And I'm laying out my winter clothes and wishing I was gone, going home,
where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me.
Bleeding me, going home.


Done, time to pay. The cashier looks at me and grins as I sing while waiting for her to pass all the articles through the scanning machine.


In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders of every glove that layed him down or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame "I am leaving, I am leaving", but the fighter still remains.


I leave the supermarket, I walk home, happy to be here. I'am very tempted to call this place home, but even if I couldn't, I'm happy nevertheless.


Lie la lie ...

be bad
2012-03-10
if you don't do anything bad today, at least dream about it
rotonyms
2012-03-08
let's define a rotonym to be a word for which a rotation (or a cyclic shift) of its words produces another legal word. these are a few such rotonym words that i have found in english:




center-recent(shift 2)
exists-sexist(shift 1)
eighth -height(shift 1)
enlist -listen(shift 4)
ética podrida
2012-03-07
a vellll, que me aclare... ¿las pistolas están permitidas, pero no los pezones? ¿comorllll, qué les pasa a éstos? menuda aberración moral.

aparte que, que yo sepa, nadie ha muerto aún de un chorrazo de leche, ¿no?
broken ethics
2012-03-06
so, let me get this right... guns are allowed, but nipples are not? w.t.f. is wrong with you, people? coming from the old continent, this is such a moral aberration.

besides, please let me know when was the last time somebody died from a milk shot
a veteran in the shelf
2012-03-04
there it is, on the shelf of the supermarket, proudly offering its services, the "America's #1 Condom, Trusted for Over 90 Years", literally (picture coming soon).

the preferred condom of america...? 90 years of service....? girl, i am so not wearing that condom.
finally
2012-03-02
it feels good when it rains. it just does.