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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May 2015
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sorry, but i do
2015-05-31
today i read somewhere "don't judge people by skin color, religion or sexual orientation".

but i cannot completely agree with this.

because religion is something you do choose, to some degree. and if your choice of religion is effectively and negatively affecting other people's lives and freedoms, then i am absolutely going to judge you for your religion.
things with no name
2015-05-29
in this world there are many things with no name.

for example, i just learnt there exists some torus shaped pieces of plastic you can use to hold the duvet/comforter and its cover together. these tiny pieces don't have name (that i know of), and therefore they are unsearchable in amazon or google. yet, they do exist. i am seeing one right now.
soft shadows for spheres
2015-05-27
experiments on analytical soft shadows for spheres (no rays casted). they are not physically correct, but plausible. no square root and no divisions, it's super fast and produces beautiful results. it's based on the closest distance between a line segment and a sphere. maths/code here: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lsSSWV
weirdest weirdness
2015-05-25
i do have a very uneasy feeling when i think of those stores (in some rich neighborhood near you) where people buy birthday cakes for their dogs. birthday cakes, with the name of the dog in it, for their dog.

i really wonder what kind of fantastic twisted fetish this is where owners get excited about this imaginary bidirectional celebration. cause they surely know the dog doesn't care or even know about his birthday, the cake or about nothing.

who's this cake for. do they make it eatable for humans? i really hope so.
"see you soon"
2015-05-23
i stop pedaling. i'm at a corner in financial district, waiting for the traffic light to become red and resume my ride. there's a couple there too. "I'll just take an Uber, don't worry", she says. "are you sure?", he asks. "Yes, don't worry, see you soon". the light goes green and i resume pedaling on my way home. it's friday 8pm, i feel pity for the guy, i have unmistakably witnessed the termination one more failed blind date.
the topology of story
2015-05-21
I feel "Story Tolopology" is something that hasn't been talked about enough yet.

Everybody talks of non-linear stories. But there's many shapes the space of a story could take. "It has to be non-linear" is like saying "I want a not-an-apple". It's too vague.

What shape should we strive for. A tree, with multiple ends? A chain of local bifurcations with common points of consolidation? A combination of those? Also, are cycles allowed or is it a purely directed graph?

As usual, there are trade offs. A tree gives the most freedom but is exponentially expensive to produce and direct. A chain is easier and already used implicitly in pre-production of actual movies, and might be enough to fool the audience into thinking they have a much bigger degree of choice. Cycles are dangerous and break the illusion (remember those multiple-choice adventure books we read when we were kids?)

The topology of the story should be something that requires study and possibly formalization.
deunoptimize
2015-05-19
"deunoptimize": bring efficiency (usually effortlessly) to some (WTF) code/process that should have NEVER been unperformant to begin with
fairy tale villains
2015-05-17
if the villain is a woman, she pursues eternal youth and beauty. if the villain is a man, he seeks world domination and power.

very last century attitude, fairy tale villains. you have to catch up with the times.
i love it when she cries
2015-05-15
i love it when she cries.

she cries often, maybe once a week. when happiness overflows her. or when she's told a sad story. or when something is really beautiful. and when it happens, i find her whimper too adorable and her tears so beautiful. i can't help but love it and love her.
today in the block
2015-05-13
the baritone homeless singing and begging for money, the lady looking at the horizon with high heels and long hair waving to in the hair posing like in a magazine, the french family in their shorts and t-shirt tourist outfit confused because they thought this was California in summer, the old tiny chinese woman bringing two huge grocery bags that are clearly heavier than herself, a local performer with an accent getting in the comedy club to prepare her late night's show.

things i saw today in the Sutter & Powell block on my way home
gifts for men all suck
2015-05-11
there's only one thing more boring than watches, socks, cologne, pens and whisky glasses: beef jerky, bacon, survival knives, beer glasses and caps.
visualizing curvature
2015-05-09
A quick exercise on analytically visualizing the curvature of parametric curves, for the curvature defined as c(f) = | f' x f''| / |f'|^3 where f is the curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curvature): in red high curvature, in green low curvature. Realtime version and source code here: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XlfXR4M)

really
2015-05-07
twins have telepathy, they say. probably as much as any two other people who have lived most of their lives together and gone through the same phases of life at the same time.
she wanders the streets
2015-05-05
unlike some of the other girls in the neighborhood, she hasn't gone through any transition. she looks like a man dressed as a woman.

she must be from the hood because i see here often roaming the blocks delimited by Polk, Larkin, Geary and Clay, any time of the day. she often sits in the doorway in front of my apartment, perhaps that's where she lives. she's clearly not sane. she usually talks or croons while she walks, and her eyes wander all around without any particular focus point. she's very pale and skinny, and has long black hair. she only puts her lipstick in her left side of the face, and she always wears a purse on her arm. in her left arm of course.

the other tranny girls in the hood wear comfy cloths during the day when they go grocery shopping or they walk their puppies and then, a few of them, wear their sexy slutty outfits at night. this one, however, always goes in her comfy pants and shirt, even during her lonely walks in those cold foggy nights that i see her when i come home late after midnight. she's not working the street, she's just there walking with her makeup and purse, whispering to herself. however a lot seems to be going on in her imagination. i wonder what it is. maybe i should ask her
don't count on me
2015-05-03
one of the main reasons, if not _the_ reason, that i don't run half-marathons (anymore) is that these kind of stuff is usually in the mornings.
mindblown
2015-05-01
one more cultural shock: when i hear a politician say "god bless America" it feels like i'd had been listening to a clown.

first, because it's very creepy.

secondly, because no politician would ever be considered trustworthy or competent in Europe if (s)he said such a lunatic thing (you have to go to school and get an education before being entrusted the politics of a country).

if US politicians really have the urge to glorify something, they should say "americans bless america", cause it's their people who make it great.