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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February 2016
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slippers paradise
2016-02-28
okey, where are these slippers. they are not in any of the three only places where they usually hang out - by the bed, under the sofa in the living room or around the desk in the office.

but today they are not there, meaning they no longer exist. they have transitioned to another dimension, to a better world for slippers maybe. a slipper paradise i'm guessing, a place where huge slippers walk around all day wearing little humans beneath.
seeing the bright side
2016-02-26
it's not that sometimes i'm stupid, it's more like i'm just inconsistently smart
be respectful
2016-02-24
please do not "thank god we found a cure to cancer". instead, be respectful to the thousands of scientists who have devoted their lives to its study and remedy and thank them, not a god, for the gift they have given us.

it's time to update our language, because language shapes the way we think and feel
this is how it works
2016-02-22
Wait until the sea level rises and compromises the integrity of the internet wires in New York city used for high frequency trading. Only then global warming will suddenly become something "of maximum priority for this government" and people will "clap clap clap". Same sad story for all other countries.
only in this city
2016-02-20
Only in this city you ask for the keys to the restrooms in a doctor's office and they hand you a set of keys chained to a 3D projection of a Tesseract and some sort of Chen–Gackstatter surface.

awkward moments
2016-02-18
I love talking in public, I enjoy it a lot, even if I know that speaking in my non-native-english language makes me look less eloquent than I would sound otherwise.

However, I am sometimes a bit anxious during the Q&A that usually follows the talk because when somebody takes the mic and asks me something in a thick accent that my non-native-ear cannot decipher then the situation gets awkward and I naturally feel responsible for it. And I know that there's nothing I can do to break though the their accent and that a second attempt on their side to ask the same question won't fix anything at all. It's a really bad place to be.
constructing an irrational from primes
2016-02-15
2.313036736433583... is the irrational number you get by using the primer numbers in its continued fraction expansion.

wasting time after dinner
ugly human psychology
2016-02-13
Is totally sucks.... when you arrive to the airport and you find you have to do one of those huge 2-hours-long-looking zigzagging line for the security check.

But it sucks even more... when you realize it's been 10 minutes you are in it but there's absolutely nobody behind you.

Ugly human psychology
only here
2016-02-11
I had never heard of food allergies until I moved to California. Only here.
not a vacation resort
2016-02-09
if your hotel's breakfast ends at 9:30am, it is not a vacation resort, it's a military camp.
mathematical elephants
2016-02-07
I made a new mathematical image. This time I approximated two elephants with a few spheres and parabolic tubes, and some cosine waves. Ironically, the most expensive parts of the drawing in terms of number of expression evaluations is the background bushes. This has been my most advanced mathematical shape modeling exercise yet. I had a blast doing it, I think I like modeling. Still, most of the detailing work was made for camera, meaning, if you were to look at the elephants from the side they'd look pretty stupidly ugly. Lighting is basic, just the usual key (sun) + fill (sky) + bounce (ground) triplet.

The story is that mommy elephant is teaching the little girl elephant to stay under the shadow of the tree when the sun hits strong in the savannah. I think the image looks kind of cute, for being a mathematical formula that is!

The code and real time render example is here: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dKGWm.

the positive feedback loop of wealth
2016-02-05
when you have money you can pay an accountant that will help you save money by taking advantage of legal maneuvers that only they know. when you have a bit more money, you can pay an accountant that will help you make more money with the more intricate maneuvers. in fact, the more money you have the more savy of the system your accountant will be the more sophisticated and advantageous the maneuvers become, and therefore, the more money you make.

basically, when it comes to wealth there's a reinforcing feedback loop that, as all systems with such a loop, it quickly explodes into its extremes.
blaming
2016-02-03
I think Trump is Obama's fault
visceral hate
2016-02-01
The most hated thing in San Francisco after the Google bus? Comcast.