i remember that back then, before the gps, couples often argued and fought when in the car. one of them was usually reading the (huge paper) map, trying to figure out where they were and which way to go. the other would be failing to follow the other's navigation instructions. "you said 'i think' it's left turn. that's not an instruction!!". "damn i told you clearly to turn left after the second tunnel, you don't know how to freaking count?"

if you are above 30, you have seen this in your own family.

i think the gps have saved so many relationships.

if numbers like 0xA000, 0x3C8/0x3C9, 0xFFA6E, and 0x417 don't mean anything to you, you are not old enough of a gfx programmer.

the fact that i can sit for 20 minutes and fix no less than two web vulnerability issues in our website, given that i am not a software engineer, nor i have a clue about the interwebs, and that i cannot but just copy&paste php, means that the internet technology is, in general, a huge pile of shit. period.

According to https://www.google.com/ads/preferences, I am a 35 to 44 years old woman who likes astronomy, maths and fashion, speaks English and Korean.

Well, I don't speak Korean yet. Otherwise, spot on!

not related to any of the last two posts, i promise, this is the latest mathematcal image. improvised last night, it's a 2D effect really, where a cylindrical projection is used to index a texture several times with different alpha cutoffs in order to create a stacked transparency thing. the usual color and fake lighting tweaking was the most difficult part as usual. since it's a 2D effects, it's really fast, so fast that i could implement some lens defocus.

Realtime animated version, with open code, here: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XdBSzd

There's a TED talk about the need for a new metaphor for sex.

Despite the good of the intentions in it, I cannot but wonder, over and over again, why the heck is there a need for a metaphor in the first place? There's something intellectually unhealthy going on here. People, it is alright to talk about sex. Grow up already!

what are the side effects on men of the birth control pill?

has this experiment ever been conducted?

a heart attack is not an attack really. it's more of a surrender.

Speaking of maths, the mathimage of this week is something mechanical and minimal. Totally improvised during a coding jam session after dinner. Mathematical image, animation and sound.

This is certainly slower than calling sin() and cos() directly in the GPU. But I find this code i wrote for a 6th degree Taylor approximation of sine and cosine pretty cute (from an aesthetical point of view).

vec2 mySinCos( float a )
{
    vec2 y = a + vec2(0.0,0.25);
    
    vec2 s = (fract(1.0*y) - 0.5)*PI;
    vec2 x = (fract(2.0*y) - 0.5)*PI;
    
    return -sign(s) * (1.0-(1.0-(1.0 - x*x/(6.0*5.0))*
                                       x*x/(4.0*3.0))*
                                       x*x/(2.0*1.0));
}

I know there's one too many 1s, and one too many PIs. But that's part of the makeup.

Challenge for Laika: make a stop-motion animation of a character stop-motion-animating a character (fractal realities).

I know the cost is quadratic, and that the level-0 puppet need to be big... But if anyone can do it, that's you!

some habit that has been around for a couple of generations is not a "tradition", my friends. it's just a trend.

Warm summer nights clearly means more smiles, happiness and desire to talk to each other. Tonight more people than usual approached me (for my bike) during my late journey to home after work. One chinese, one korean and one american.

Nice bike! Where are you from? Ah, "pinchos"! 5 years, cool. No salsa dancing? Really, pole dancing? Not sure. In France. Pas tres bien. Driving? Haha, good for you! Not often, once a year. Yeah, k-bbq is better in LA.. Yes, around the corner. 안녕

This was a really fast one. I tried to see what it would feel to make a more or less photoreal picture (for some generous definition of "photorealism") and add something clearly non real to it.

In terms of maths I've been doing this for a long time now, blending shapes, but this was more of a social experiment. Also, there was some attempt to make this image more efficient than the ones I've been doing so far, by using a cosine based noise (which is periodic of course) and doing some inaccurate (but cheap!) shadows.

As usual, the real time animated version, and the code/maths behind it are available online: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4sjXzG

"I have an idea for an app" is a bit like "I have an idea for arranging my collection of StarTreck figurines" - you have no idea how LITTLE interest we have in hearing it. I thought you should know.