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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November 2015
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the colors of FAIL
2015-11-29
in every platform I developed for my flops and 'fail's manifested in a unique color:

Windows 95/98: blue screen of death
OpenGL: black screen of death
Web: white screen of death
sigh
2015-11-27
tired of getting all these useless mails and useless waste, i finally go online and sign up for paperless notifications. of course, 3 days later, i get a mail with a paper notifying me of my decision.
conditioned humor
2015-11-25
if a comedian is latino, black, female or fat their number will be have, invariably, their race, sex or "condition" as central topic, and all political or social commentary will revolve around their own persona. only white male comedians do free surreal humor.

and there's a reason for that.
not what you think
2015-11-23
i see that when people come to the US from Asia they mistakenly think the US represents the western culture and values. well, the US does not represent the western values, but their own weird ones. if you are one of those immigrants, you might be surprised to learn that i as a European immigrant am culturally pretty out of place too! (probably in the other direction, and maybe to some lessen degree than you, but pretty out of place nevertheless)
i'm the chosen one
2015-11-21
i like it when somebody is unable to open the marmalade jar and they ask me to do it and for some reason i do it with little or no effort at all. because then i feel like king Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone - i'm definitely the chosen one.
don't lie
2015-11-19
speaking of weird fruits. butternut squash. i just discovered it exists. i'll call it "the dick fruit". and if you don't think it looks like one, you are just lying.
ultraviolet fruits
2015-11-17
when i was a kid we had banana, apple, pear and orange. plus grapes in winter, and strawberries in summer.

it was pretty much one fruit, one color.

but these days there is a whole spectrum of papayas, korean melons, tangerines, micro bananas, space coconuts, and jurassic cucumbers in the supermarket.

which is fascinating. but to me they don't fall in the "fruit" category as much as in the "thing" category.
what is this?
2015-11-15
when you are riding the bike with no hands in the handle, not even looking forward but to somebody who's passing by with in total relax.

when you throw a basketball from the 3 point line and you immediately know, without no doubt and maximum certainty, that the ball will make it clean to the basket.

when you are skiing backwards in a single leg, and you instinctively do your next change of weight without any effort.

(pick your own favorite sport or instrument)

what is that. what kind of superhuman muscle memory is this that we possess, where is this incredible precision coming from? how come for most of our daily tasks we are not even near to this?
"other" for me, please
2015-11-13
I've been invited to a pompous dinner. I think. They sent me a form with the following list of dietary choices to fill:

[ ] Diabetic
[ ] Gluten Allergy
[ ] Halal
[ ] Kosher
[ ] Lactose Intolerant
[ ] Latex Allergy
[ ] No Red Meat
[ ] Nut Allergy
[ ] Other
[ ] Seafood Allergy
[ ] Shellfish Allergy
[ ] Vegan
[ ] Vegetarian

First, I don't recognize half of those words (I'm not traveled enough). Second, I wasn't expecting this to be the kind of dinner where "latex" shows up in the menu (wait, are we having dinner upstairs Madam S?).

So all I can do really is to mark the [X] in "Other" and use the blank box at the bottom of the form to indicate "RED MEAT PLEASE. Yogurt would be nice too."
failing miserably
2015-11-11
these are four utterly useless nuisances that, incomprehensibly, as a society we are apparently incapable of getting rid of for ever and ever, despite it should be the easiest thing ever:

* the one cent coin
* the freezing cold standards for AC systems in office buildings
* this daylight-saving winter-time depressing-dark afternoons business
* venetian blinds (american blinds)

these seems to me like easy things to avoid, prevent, abandon, discontinue, forbid, suppress, cease, terminate, abolish, eradicate, destroy and exterminate.

just . do . it . somebody please. all of us maybe. for heaven's sake.
2222
2015-11-09
in my experience, it takes 2 days to hack an idea, 2 weeks to prove it works, 2 months to make it production ready, and 2 years to see it succeed.
i know what you did
2015-11-07
you know the impersonal and copy+pasted part of the email comes when, right after the first paragraph, the text suddenly changes font size and color...
88.997%, half bit!
2015-11-05
if the two symbols (say 0 and 1) allowed in a string occur with equal probability (ie, 50%), then you need one bit per symbol to describe the string. now, how biased should the probability be in order to be able to encode the string with half a bit per symbol? i was curious, so i computed it; it seems to be 88.997% (0.88997213556164034 to be more precise)

now, the following natural question is, what's the shape of the graph relating bit rate to symbol probability? i computed it too, and not surprisingly, it looks like this:

mathematical doodle of the week
2015-11-03
Mathematical doodle of last night: another sine/cosine distorted sphere. Or also, an alien. Realtime animated version and code/maths available in your browser as usual: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XtjSDK



relatively universal
2015-11-01
all cultures think their food tastes are universal.

the other day an american was surprised when i told him that i didn't like bacon. he then replied, in an adorable ingenuity, that it must be just me, that everybody everywhere loves bacon.