one of the type of emails i receive frequently is that of an amateur asking for advice. these are a pleasure to respond, except from when their question makes it clear that they are asking for advice on a topic so beyond their reach that they cannot possibly understand how far it actually is from their reach, yet they are confident they can do it. which is as naive as if i myself though i could design a particle accelerator just because i read an article on Wikipedia on the Standard Model and i felt i grasped most of it.

it always amazes me seeing how easy people believe things are. and the tricky part here is letting them know how many decades of work they still have ahead of them in an positive and encouraging way.

first it was "hacker". then it was "generative artist". now it was "creative coder" it seems. so stupid.

as trends go and come it seems people are more interested in labeling themselves and belonging to a group, rather than actually creating anything of value.

two finger scrolling gesture in software applications (when in somebody else's computer) is pretty much like toilet paper rolls (in somebody else's bathroom). they always go in the wrong direction!

Please, remember WebGLSL is not C or even GLSL. In particular, conditional branching does not work the way many people seem to think it works. For example, this

for( int i=0; i<200; i++ )
{
    do_ray_marching_stuff();
    if( foundIntersection )
    {
        doShading();
        return;
    }
}

is not doing what you think. Please replace it by

for( int i=0; i<200; i++ )
{
    do_ray_marching_stuff();
    if( foundIntersection )
        break;
}
doShading();

otherwise you are computing the shading 200 times (in most OS and browsers, as of 2015)

i don't like restaurants with fancy lighting. you know, that "we're going to charge you 30 dollars for the Cesar salad"-kind of fancy lighting

puking after drinking too much is probably the less glamorous thing a person can do.

however, once in the situation, puking late at night from the window of a cab running full speed in the Bay Bridge of San Francisco, is somehow kind of a classy way to do it. somehow. in some way. i think.

mémoires of the past

California is not for humans. it's so dry i don't understand how humans settled here. in fact, given the latest discoveries, i'm starting to think there might be way more water in Mars than in California.

I never get Uber Pool. But today I couldn't ride my bicycle, so I gave it a chance. And on our way one of the other three dudes in the car farted. He farted hard and heavy and dense. The driver opened the windows to save us all. But I'm not taking Uber Pool again. Call me a princess if you want.

I was thinking, the 10000 hours rule is a myth. Or I think it's a misinterpretation of how things work, in my opinion.

It's probably safe to say anybody who's good at something has invested at least 10000 hours in developing the skill. This does not mean that investing 10000 hours will make somebody good. It's a one directional implication, and the arrow is unfortunately not in the direction we'd like it to be.

There are many cases of people who have spent their whole lives doing something (say, 10+ years of professional work, which could easily add up to 15000 hours), and they are still not good at it.

"i'm working on an opensource library" is the programmer's equivalent to the artist's "i'm working on a children's illustration book"

technology doesn't make people less human. technology IS human. it differentiates us from other animals for sure. it's our identity

(the weapons, paints, wheels and clothes are technology too)

we are all striving for equality at home, work and social live. however, for many (americans for example) romance is an exception and the woman is still regarded as a passive player who will not buy the drink, the dinner or the ring.

speaking of what. buying a woman with a ring is very three centuries ago

I really prefer the terminology "sets and characters" rather than "environments and creatures". To me the later presumes a genre. Also, a car is not a creature. But it can be a character, no?

These are some of the security questions I had to choose from when creating an account in an actually pretty serious website. Beware, I'm not making this up, these are totally real.

- what is the name of your high schools star athlete?
- what's sports team do you love to see loose?
- what is the last name of your favorite sports hero?
- what celebrity do you most resemble?

Not only I wouldn't be able to pick one, but they all insult my intelligence. In fact, the offence transcends my own ego, I feel we are all being somehow insulted as society. These are the type of things kids think about when they are twelve. If they are intellectually challenged. And I can tell you this website is not visited by twelve years old dumb kids.

I don't need the questions to be about german philosophers or particle physics. Just something less insulting and more mundane. Like, what country you visited you'd liked the most, what's the color of your preferred sex toy, what's the name of the song you sing the most, what's your favorite ice cream flavor or in which street is your favorite restaurant located, or the name of the school teacher you liked the most, or what's the company with the most insulting online registration process.