Well, I'm done. Total amount of time programming: 20 hours, give or take a couple hours here and there. The last couple hours were spent trying to get gently sloping trunks and branches: it wasn't until later that I remembered that GL_POLYGON mode chokes on concave polygons. So you may notice that the trees actually bulge outward a bit. Besides that, I implemented scaling for leaves and flowers, so that they appear smaller when they're further away. The scaling is actually not what you'd find in reality, but at this point, I'm just read to turn this project in and move on.

I've made the screenshot slightly smaller and reduced the quality to accomodate people on modems.

The larger version is available in all its glory for those will to wait for a longer download.

14 hours of work, and I finally have a forest. Horizontal position is randomized, vertical positions are evenly distributed up and down the hill. The positioning of the trees is an interesting testament to the limitations of the math.h library's rand() function: although the distance is meant to be random, you can clearly see that clumping occurs.

My first forest (warning: huge file - 455Kb) is definitely closer to my final goal, but there are still details that need to be worked out. For example, you might have noticed leaves and flowers don't scale with distance.

I've been working on this project for about 13 hours total now. I just scrapped the last half hour's worth of work: turns out making a forest isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Ah well, I still have tomorrow. Nonetheless, I made progress: the flowers are now a more natural color, and I randomized their appearance so that they don't grow everywhere. A classmate explained to me how randomly inserting new branches can fill out the tree some, so I implemented that and it now looks a lot leafier. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

Well, I've put in about 11 hours of work. The Bezier algorithm I wrote was fairly adaptable, so I applied it to the leaves and also created flowers from yesterday's "carrots". Randomness is back…there are minor variations in the branches, and the leaves also have color variations.

What's next? Well, this series is called "Growing a Forest."

Update, 8 hours of work: Randomness is overrated. I pulled out most of the random variables, and rewrote my code. Not surprisingly, now it's much simpler and my program is finally making something that resembles a tree.

Update, 11:53PM, 10.5 hours of work:: After much wrangling, I figured out how to write a nice little Bezier curve algorithm, and made some hills. Yeah, I know carrots don't grown in trees. That was my first attempt at fruit…I was trying to draw a peach.

Forest update, 7.5 hours of work: introduced randomness, and thus, much ugliness.

Now this is weird. I just found out that one of my group members for my Information technology class—someone I met through Jennie and didn't know before this class—shares the same birthday as me, one year apart. According to the birthday paradox, the odds of anyone in a thirty person class having the same birthday are actually pretty high (about 70%, if I did my math right), but what are the odds they'd end up in the same four-person project group?

He thinks it's a sign that our mutual birthday is destined to be a great day.

This entry is the first in a week-long (or less) series in which I'll track the progress of a project I'm working on for my Computer Graphics class. Everything is created from regular old C programming in a text editor—I won't be using any graphics software like Photoshop (at least, not at this point). This quarter is my first exposure to OpenGL, a library of graphics functions that's used with C. I thought it might be fun to track my development over the next week.

So here's the first screenshot, about four hours after I started working on the project. Pretty impressive, huh? Didn't think so.

Update 09:45 PM : Screenshot taken 5.5 hours after I started working. Getting somewhere. 85% of the grade is meeting the core requirements, the remaining 15% is for your own creative enhancements. I'm already excited about the possibilities.

In response to persistent and popular demand, I'm getting my act together by uploading the dozens of pictures that have been sitting around on my computer and camera. I'll be posting throughout the day (hopefully), so check back for more. Images have not been optimized, so expect to run into some huge file sizes.

Random pictures, including finals week and spring break

Pictures from Grace Alive!'s spring retreat.

Pictures from Grace Alive!'s end-of-quarter Progressive Dinner.

One of my old entries ("nothing bonds you quite like peptides") is getting bombarded by comment spammers hawking prescription drugs. Since that sort of thing REALLY annoys me, and since disabling comments doesn't seem to work, I'm deleting that entry and reposting it here (along with the legitimate comments) for posterity.

Originally posted August 11, 2002

Funky...guestmap entries! Big thanks to donaville, bekah, and mike.


So I've been kind of neglecting this newsfeed...it's ironic that this happens at the time of the year when I have the most free time. I've been fairly busy though...started at my new job, still working at Computer Tutor, and I just started summer school.


Hmm...it's late and I have church tomorrow...I'll finish this entry later...


And here I am, later. I'm taking Bio Sci. 1A for summer school (hence the title of this entry...it's funny...kinda...sorta...okay, maybe not). Looks like I'm gonna have to put in some mad study hours for the class, but I'm kind of excited...I want to see how well I can do if I really push myself in a subject I am inherently not interested in.


10 Big Myths about copyright explained. Fairly self-explanatory title...clears up a lot of issues regarding mp3's and whether or not a site designer really needs to have a copyright notice on their site, from a legal standpoint.


Tav Shande has a cool-looking portfolio site. Very trendy design, but unique content.


Make your own movie at DFILM, and then send it to your friends. Funky. What's up with the 70's era soundtracks though? And why is there a 1 in the logo?


Jessa redesigned twice in the time it took me to notice and post about it. I liked the older design better, since the text is hard to read against the new background, but the colors are nice.


Try this. I dare you.


A Medecine for Apathy: experimental Flash magazine with open source .fla files. Impressive work, and it's all available for you to download and mess around with yourself.


The Ultimate Treehouse. Also useful for scaring off burglars and assaulting heavily fortified targets.

Comments

brian: hours of fun, indeed! :D


glad to know i'm not the only one not that interested in science. i'm taking similar classes this semester.

sar:aliotsy, i'm cracking up over the last step in the 'build your very own powered model aircraft'. you did it, didn't you? ;) i'm going to show my little brother that and force him to do it. i want to see it work! :p

One of the quirky things about my major is that you can make a lab computer draw a laughable picture of a rose, and still get a classmate to say "Wow, that's tight."

Granted, said classmate appreciates the eight hours and dozens of lines of code it took to get that rose to look "right." And I admit that I've never been this proud of an ugly picture since preschool.

Having said that, I still think it's all pretty goofy.

Today I participated in a discussion about information visualization, and then CSS, XML, and XHTML. And the other people were interested in it, too. Like, really interested. And man was I giddy through the whole thing.

So this is what it feels like when doves cry.*

*Simpsons reference, definitely not a Prince reference.

He is Risen!

“…Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.”

Matthew 28:5-6

None but Jesus Christ Conquered Death for Us…

"Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all."

Isaiah 53:4-6

The Silent Suffering Servant…

Because some people who shall remain nameless are inclined to send out search parties if I don't post in a week, I'd just like to check in and report that yes, I am alive, and yes, I am getting enough sleep and, yes, I am eating my veggies.