or maybe something uplifting…

I was looking at the sessions scheduled for the Game Developers Conference and I found one titled Continuous Collision Detection of General Convex Objects Under Translation. The Gilbert-Johnson-Keerthi algorithm (GJK) is used in SOLID. Someone we saw a couple years ago also gave an overview and demos on SOLID. I was impressed then and I’d be willing to see it again. The speaker, Gino van den Bergen, seems to be affiliated with the SOLID project. I haven’t yet used the library myself, but if I have time, I might download the FreeSOLID package from SourceForge and try it out. That’s a lot of time, but maybe. Anyhow, here’s an overview of what I’d expect to do based on the SOLID API Documentation.
Read the rest of “Collision Detection with FreeSOLID and OpenGL, Hypothetically”…

I just read in the Google Blog that they now support another type of search. Use “movie:” before your search to find movies. Of course I had to try out ‘movie: Fresh Prince‘ and of course google figured it out. If you give it a name of a movie that’s playing it offers to find show times for a US zip code. The results, of course, include a link to a google map. It looks nice and clean for now, but they can’t give it away forever. Eventually I expect they’ll throw some ads in there. That’s all right with me as long as the service still moves just as fast.

So without coffee, I find myself drinking having more chocolate these days. I know, chocolate has some caffeine in it too. I’m passing on caffeinated teas, pop and coffee-drinks though.

I ended up only sleeping a few hours last night and figured that some hot chocolate would go a long way to keeping me coherent and mostly lucid. There’s a machine at work that was developed, I think, by the research arm of NASA about eight years ago. It has hot chocolate and a bunch of coffee beverages in it. Well, it can produce the beverages from a spout on command - I can’t say for certain where they originate.

Read the rest of “Me 1, Vending Machines … also 1″…

Early to bed
Early to rise
Makes a man healthy,
Wealthy and wise

Read the rest of “Sleeping Less and Living More”…

Looks like GDC plans are ramping up for others as well. Robin Hunicke’s posted a list of some San Francisco bars on her blog gewgaw. This is the kind of information I need right now. Back on the first trip to San Jose, CitySearch was useful. These days, CitySearch seems to be a hollow shell of its former self.

She’s got the bars listed by area, and so that’s convinced me to once-and-for-all figure out how to navigate the city. I like to do this before a trip so that I can follow directions better and get more out of brochures or ads for places that I see when I’m there. Without knowing that the Embarcadero goes by the Wharf, I won’t be able to use my time nearly as well.
Read the rest of “Finding Your Way In San Francisco”…

I tried not to be fazed by new technology. I have to keep my geek cool attitude in check. But this is the first time I’ve tried out the notebook on the internet at the coffeeshop. I have to say I can definitely see the allure. Very much with the jet-set, like I should be in a commercial somewhere.
Read the rest of “Wireless Blogging”…

Have a look at Google Maps
This is more like it. A map I can really pan. Google really pushes for smooth interaction in the user interface. It looks like they break up the map into many small chunks. I’d guess they send enough area around the actual displayed map to let you start panning then send along more asynchronously as soon as you indicate which direction you want to move. It’s not rocket science, it’s just attention to good user interface design. And the resources to spend time getting it right. Kudos.

Since I happen to need a good map of San Francisco right now, here are a couple things to see in SF:
The Moscone West Convention Center, where GDC 2005 will be hosted in about a month. Can’t wait.

Directions from the Convention Center to Ruby Skye night club - a route that I hope to follow at least once this year. Ruby Skye was a great night club the last couple years that I’ve gone to GDC.

The directions on Google’s map also have a nice design. Clicking on the start or destination in the map or a turn descibed in the directions pops up a callout box. The callout contains a blow-up map so you can see that area in more detail and the callout is placed so that it points to the location on the full map. This is a little like the turn-by-turn directions on yahoo (also helpful) but lets the user choose the important detail they want to see. This is not as useful for printing, but is great for reading the route to understand it.

I realize this is still in beta, but it really raises the bar for interactive web based applications.