When I am not vain, I am ...

10 Secrets of Successful Leaders

2011-10-17T23:17:00.000-07:00

Copied from entrepreneur.com for later reading!

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220518

1. Assemble a dedicated team.
Your team needs to be committed to you and the business. Successful entrepreneurs have not only social and selling smarts, but also the know-how to hire effectively, says leadership trainer Harvey Mackay, who wrote Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive (Ivy Books, 1995). “A colossal business idea simply isn't enough. You have to be able to identify, attract and retain talent who can turn your concept into a register-ringing success,” he says.

]When putting your team together, look for people whose values are aligned with the purpose and mission of your company. Suzanne Bates, a Wellesley, Mass.-based leadership consultant and author of Speak Like a CEO (McGraw Hill, 2005), says her team members rallied around each other during the worst part of the recession because they all believed in what they were doing. “Having people on your team who have tenacity and a candid spirit is really important," she says.

2. Overcommunicate.
This one’s a biggie. Even with a staff of only five or 10, it can be tough to know what’s going on with everyone. In an effort to overcommunicate, Bates compiles a weekly news update she calls a Friday Forecast, and emails it to her staff. “My team is always surprised at all the good news I send out each week,” Bates says. “It makes everyone feel like you really have a lot of momentum, even in difficult times.”

3. Don’t assume.
When you run a small business, you might assume your team understands your goals and mission -- and they may. But, everybody needs to be reminded of where the company’s going and what things will look like when you get there. Your employees may ask, “What’s in it for me?” It’s important to paint that picture for your team. Take the time to really understand the people who are helping you build your business.

“Entrepreneurs have the vision, the energy, and they’re out there trying to make it happen. But, so often with their staff, they are assuming too much,” says Beverly Flaxington, founder of The Collaborative, a business-advising company in Medfield, Mass. “It’s almost like they think their enthusiasm by extension will be infectious -- but it’s not. You have to bring people into your world and communicate really proactively.”

4. Be authentic.
Good leaders instill their personality and beliefs into the fabric of their organization, Flaxington says. If you be yourself, and not try to act like someone else, and surround yourself with people who are aligned with your values, your business is more likely to succeed, she says.

“Every business is different and every entrepreneur has her own personality,” Flaxington says. “If you’re authentic, you attract the right people to your organization -- employees and customers.”

5. Know your obstacles.
Most entrepreneurs are optimistic and certain that they’re driving toward their goals. But, Flaxington says, it’s a short-sighted leader who doesn’t take the time to understand his obstacles.

“You need to know what you’re up against and be able to plan around those things,” she says. “It’s folly to think that just because you’ve got this energy and enthusiasm that you’re going to be able to conquer all. It’s much smarter to take a step back and figure out what your obstacles are, so the plan that you’re putting into place takes that into account.”

6. Create a 'team charter.'
Too many new teams race down the road before they even figure out who they are, where they’re going, and what will guide their journey, says Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One-Minute Manager (William Morrow & Co., 1982) and founder of The Ken Blanchard Cos., a workplace- and leadership-training firm. Just calling together a team and giving them a clear charge does not mean the team will succeed.

“It’s important to create a set of agreements that clearly states what the team is to accomplish, why it is important and how the team will work together to achieve the desired results,” says Blanchard, who is based in Escondido, Calif. “The charter provides a record of common agreements and can be modified as the business grows and the team’s needs change.”

7. Believe in your people.
Entrepreneurial leaders must help their people develop confidence, especially during tough times. As Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Leaders are dealers in hope." That confidence comes in part from believing in your team, says Maxwell, who is based in West Palm Beach, Fla. “I think of my people as 10s, I treat them like 10s, and as a result, they try to perform like 10s,” he says. “But believing in people alone isn't enough. You have to help them win.”

8. Dole out credit.
Mackay says a good salesperson knows what the sweetest sound in the world is: The sound of their name on someone else's lips. But too many entrepreneurs think it's either the crinkle of freshly minted currency, or the dull thud of a competitor's body hitting the pavement.

“Many entrepreneurs are too in love with their own ideas and don't know how to distribute credit,” Mackay says. “A good quarterback always gives props to his offensive line.”

9. Keep your team engaged.
Great leaders give their teams challenges and get them excited about them, says leadership expert Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 1989). He pointed to the example of a small pizza shop in a moderate-sized town that was killing a big fast-food chain in sales. The big difference between the chain and the small pizza joint was the leader, he says.

Every week he gathered his teenage employees in a huddle and excitedly asked them: “What can we do this week that we’ve never done before?” The kids loved the challenge. They started texting all their friends whenever a pizza special was on. They took the credit-card machine to the curb so passing motorists could buy pizza right off the street. They loaded up a truck with hot pizzas and sold them at high-school games. The money poured in and the store owner never had problems with employee turnover, says Covey, who is based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

10. Stay calm.
An entrepreneur has to backstop the team from overreacting to short-term situations, says Mackay, who is based in Minneapolis. This is particularly important now, when news of the sour economic environment is everywhere.

“The media has been hanging black crepe paper since 2008,” he says. “But look at all the phenomenal companies and brands that were born in downturns, names like iPod, GE and Federal Express.”

Beautiful Presentation

2011-09-07T18:53:00.000-07:00

I'm a sucker for beautiful presentations. Blame it on being in that company for 4 years.

One of the thing that we use most is stock images and here's a blogpost from someone who'd exhaustively gathered the best and free:

http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/50-sites-to-find-free-stock-images

http://www.powstock.com/

From the lists above, good sites:

http://www.sxc.hu

http://www.morguefile.com

http://freerangestock.com

http://www.everystockphoto.com (searches from a few sites, some may not be free)

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/ - Collection of brands & logos from the world

Engineering to Business

2011-09-04T03:10:00.001-07:00

The things I do in the office these days are not exactly what I thought I'd be doing but still, it's quite refreshing (and draining as well).

I guess that's what career maturing is all about. And inline with that, I find these articles interesting...

On selling

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/03/how-to-sell-your-company/

On negotiating

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/12/osama-bin-laden-stockpickr-and-everything-i-know-about-negotiation/

Priceless pictures from Google Maps...

http://9-eyes.com/

A better visio diagram

2010-11-23T22:12:00.000-08:00

Believe in making the best of anything I do, so I've decided to follow these rules in my visio network diagrams:

Add title block to the network diagrams
Third-party network shapes
Manage network information
Generate custom network reports
Show IP addresses on network diagrams with "Label Shapes"
Link the network diagrams together
Save the network diagrams as web pages for ubiquity's sake

http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/visio-help/7-keys-to-better-visio-network-diagrams-HA001111912.aspx

Stage Backdrop Design

2010-11-23T22:01:00.000-08:00

So before I forget, we needed a backdrop for the stage. So I've amalgamated the poster designs to come up with this. It was a hit!

Tears from the heart

2010-11-05T03:31:00.000-07:00

Today, I received an email for my demoreel. I thought they'd forgotten. Turns out the process took a loooooong time.

But I had a problem. A real big one. I haven't finish my thesis yet. So I did not spend any time at all on my demoreel. And I'd like to graduate. I'd like to graduate first. Oh but I am so close. So close I can taste it. I am so close to my dream.

So I cry. I cried for a lost opportunity. But then I realise... I am employable! Somebody actually didn't think I am all garbage. And I am motivated. I am so motivated now.

Let's go thesis. Allons y!

Final Poster of Year 2010

2010-11-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

I've taken inspiration from these 2 sites:

http://ratemyhagwon.com /2009/05/21/seoul-fashion-report-book-michael-hurt/

http://bloggingprojectrunway.blogspot.com/2009/04/note-from-blayne-wals h.ht ml

And was planning to use images similar to these:

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/115/f/b/Legs_And_The_Pink_Tights_by_bluenote70.jpg

http://buttertoastboutique.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/dscn1162.jpg

But since I've already coloured the cartoons provided by Emily, I've decided to just use those cartoons anyway. And borrowing ideas from the first 2 runway posters, made these 2 for printing:

Design website

2010-10-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

This webbie is an absolute delight! I heart.

http://www.septemberindustry.co.uk/

Found from a new random love : http://www.missmoss.co.za/

Digitizing traditional media

2010-10-27T04:55:00.000-07:00

Well, not really.

But what happened was Emily didn't have enough time to colour her drawings. So she sent me her sketch.

To which I had to digitize in Photoshop (still using CS2) and then add colours.

Here's how: http://www.wikihow.com/Add-Color-to-a-Scanned-Picture-Using-Photoshop

And this is the final result!!

Skin swatches from: http://www.curvemeister.com/tutorials/Video/Using_Pinning_for_Skin_Tones.htm and http://www.curvemeister.com/tutorials/Video/PrepressTargetValuesForSkin.jpg

Scientific Resume

2010-09-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

I know I will have to prepare a scientific resume soon. So here's some really good reference with a good mix of science but not so much that is it a pure scientific resume. Basically people like me, Master level degree but most probably not getting a phD or going into the academic track.

Scientifically based

http://www.nealen.net/prof.htm : What I like about Nealen's page is the publications layout with small graphical examples and the quick pages view on the research papers right beside the abstract.

Graduate Students' CV

http://www.kcc3.com/code.php : Displaying all the projects done as student but not too shabby.
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jingwanl/CV.htm : Clean CV. Very pleasing to read.

Fluid Dynamics - Smoke

2010-09-30T00:39:00.000-07:00

As I'm doing my survey for the dissertation, I've come across some newer papers on this subject that improves the complexity / limitation of some of the popular methods.

Here they are. I will need them when I start my project.

Starting out with Fluid Dynamics

http://www.efluids.com/

PAPERS

Energy-Preserving Integrators for Fluid Animation

http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~keenan/project_epifa.html

Washington Uni: http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/

TUTORIALS

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/fluid-simulation-for-video-games-part-1/

http://ta.twi.tudelft.nl/isnas/report94-24/isrep2.html

WIKIS

CFD : http://www.cfd-online.com/Wiki/Main_Page

FLUID PEOPLE

Bridson - http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rbridson/
Treuille - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~treuille/
Stam - http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~stam/reality/Research/pub.html
Fedkiw - http://physbam.stanford.edu/~fedkiw/
Selle - http://physbam.stanford.edu/~aselle/

Nielsen - http://www.daimi.au.dk/~bang/

APPLICATIONS

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs567/2007sp/a4SmokeControl/index.html : Interactive Smoke Control, java based.

http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Membres/Fabrice.Neyret/Etudiants/sujet3Master2009_10-en.html : Amplifying smoke simulation, C++ & OpenGL - no sample codes.

http://www.win.tue.nl/~alext/COURSES/INFO_VIS/SOFTWARE/smoke.html : Real-time smoke simulation, C/C++ & OpenGL (using FTTW) - sample codes provided.

The Little Grasshopper - graphics programming tips

FANTASTIC SITE WITH FREQUENT PAPERS UPDATE

By Christopher Batty

http://animationphysics.wordpress.com/

The infamous Ke-Sen Huang

http://kesen.realtimerendering.com/

Focused:

Thyson Brochu - interest in fluid dynamics

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~tbrochu/Tyson_Brochu.html

Philip Fu - Prof in NTU, good general links to many important graphics knowledge.

http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/cwfu/

HAPPILY FLUID DYNAMICS DUDES

(Pure Mechanical Engineering Numerical Method, Computer Graphics almost always reduces some terms)

I was reading this forum and thought it is a good one and everyone should read this too:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=287547

Here it is recommended to read: http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/fluent/cfd/intro.pdf

Computational Fluid Dynamics: The Basics with Applications by John David Anderson

Who is Seth Godin?

2010-07-12T05:24:00.000-07:00

Interesting and eloquent. Let me read a little more and figure out for myself.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

STRAT PROGRAMME

2010-07-01T02:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.sedb.com/edb/sg/en_uk/index/why_singapore/Guide_to_Investing_in_Singapore/recruiting_training.html

In case all else fails... Maybe this is another option. Caveat? +2 years in Singapore after training.

Perl: Can reuse these simple perl

2010-06-08T22:24:00.000-07:00

http://accad.osu.edu/~mlewis/Class/Perl/perl.html

Gallifrey Monkey

2010-05-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

"I'm from a different time. Heck, I'm a time lord who'd lost his tardis!"
"You're a Gallifrey monkey, if Gallifrey has monkeys, you're what it would be like."

Bored

2010-04-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

Where are you going?
Nowhere...
You have too much time on your hands, don't you? Just don't buy too much shoes.

Semester 4: Them

2010-04-25T07:29:00.000-07:00

I got Prof Normal as my Literature Review (DR) supervisor. Everyone says he's great and helpful. But he obviously didn't help me. I did pretty much everything on my own. Ah well. And might I add, he's a perfectionist and made me cry (my fault for crying).

Prof L. Wind
He's the big kahuna of our programme. But... He speaks in monotone and with this horrible accent which in my opinion is a cross between spanish and chinese (actually it's just fully chinese but I felt they're some sprinkles of spanish). I spent the whole semester playing with my hair and Robot Girl spent the whole semester sleeping. Really she did. I even took pictures of her sleeping in the class which she'd promptly deleted when she saw.

Gone Mad

2010-04-21T02:57:00.001-07:00

I've suddenly gone mad and decided that I do want to go for a phD.

I guess, it was partly fueled by my crazy PMs, and their illogical requests to work that's all just a waste of time. My time.

I feel... why are they wasting my brain juice and shit like that???
I want out. OUT from this life. From people like this!

Yay! Siggraph

2010-04-20T02:43:00.000-07:00

Accepted into Siggraph SV!!!

Can't wait to meet all the brilliant minds!

Scientific Visualization

2010-04-19T06:04:00.001-07:00

1. What is?

2. Functions of graphics library.

3. Visualization Toolkit (vtk)

4. Data Representation

5. Topological Dimension: http://www.math.okstate.edu/mathdept/dynamics/lecnotes/node36.html

6. Basic Visualization Algorithms

7. Data Interpolation

8. Topological Operations

9. Advanced Visualization Algorithms

10. Modeling Algorithms

11. Image Processing

12. Applications

Gradient-based and quasi-Newton

2010-04-05T01:23:00.001-07:00

http://www.math.cmu.edu/~shlomo/VKI-Lectures/lecture1/node2.html

Bioinformatics - wanna read

2010-04-03T04:17:00.000-07:00

Read this when the sem is over:

http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838t/

MS Word - Different Header and Footer

2010-03-31T19:46:00.000-07:00

I've made some images for the page numbering that I'd like to use for my print design. But just so I don't need to be the only person doing all the art work, I've also used MS Word for consolidation instead of producing the pages in Photoshop or Magiq. Now, don't get me wrong, MS word is my defacto word processor. However, I've never used it to produce any of my print work, so to speak.

So I have a problem, I want to use the page numbering images I've made for the pages. Here's how:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5018106_create-different-headers-word.html

However, at step 13, I've used "Next Page" instead of "Continuous".

Bibtex

2010-03-30T20:20:00.000-07:00

As I am having problem with Memento that Robot Girl gave me, I have to look for alternative for my citations.

So I've found Bibshare via http://www.bibtex.org/Format/, but I have no idea how to use it in the document. I've added the bibtex successfully... now what?

Photoshop - Free downloads

2010-03-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

As I am searching for photoshop templates for print work, I came across this site: http://pewterz.blogspot.com/.

An absolute delight! I can't wait to use some of these beautiful templates!!!

So much templates' out there. Way cool!

What I need is to torn an image. This is the method I will use: http://www.entheosweb.com/photoshop/tornedge.asp

And then the part where I need to hide, I will pixelate it: http://photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/fade-pixels/

Or should I crumple it: http://www.tutorialhero.com/click-4374-crumpled_paper.php

###
I love this pop art background. Lovely!
http://psdesignzone.com/half-tone-pop-dots-effect

Seriously love the polaroid borders!!!
http://www.tutorialallstar.com/photoshop/drawing/recreating-a-polaroid-photograph-in-photoshop/

Skew the image to look polaroid-ish.
http://www.gfxwiz.com/content/how-create-a-polaroid-photo-effect

Nice but unrelated photoshop tutorials on everything and nothing:
http://photoshop-pack.com/category/featured-tutorials/

Creative Resume

2010-03-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

http://resources.savedelete.com/70-most-artistic-and-creative-resumes-of-all-time.html

Some really interesting and creative CVs. I need to revisit them and steal their ideas!

Making life easier when writing engineering paper

2010-03-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

To self:

1. Always write the equations, no matter if it's only the alpha sign in Math Equation (Latex equivalent) so as to save you from more grief later when copying the text for full dissertation.

2. Always keep a good citation method. EndNote doesn't install at all for me, Memento does not work on Word 2003. Need to find an alternative.

3. Write summary at the same time when reading the paper for the 2nd time. First time is for understanding and scribbling.

4. IEEE: Mark equation with (x) right justified. Refer to equation later with "Therefore, (x)..." without using Equation (x) or Eq (x). However, to begin a sentence, we should "Equation x..."

5. IEEE: Annotate tables and figures with "Figure x: bla bla" and "Table x: bla bla". Refer to figure and table with abbreviation "Fig" and "Table". Tables are numbered with Roman numerals.

Infinite: Start early... Who am I kidding? I kick myself every sem. I thought I'd be wiser by now.

Sanyo Xacti

2010-03-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

I've thought about it and I am really liking the Sanyo Xacti.
Especially this model:
http://sanyo.com/xacti/english/products/vpc_cs1/index.html

Then I can do my silly video processing and perhaps play with this method:

Left/Right Brain

2010-03-25T00:24:00.000-07:00

I was reading this article and felt I'm more of a right-brain prone than left-brain. Which I think... Is not a bad thing but I need to improve and be a better person with more left-brain characteristics.

http://painting.about.com/library/blpaint/blrightbraintable.htm

Digital Art - Samurai

2010-03-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

Love it. Click it.

http://www.sessionmagazine.com/49-images-of-samurai-warriors-in-digital-art/

VTK -helpful sites

2010-03-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

I've finished my dreaded vtk medical visualization (geez... I hate it when I start to type american).
Anyways, I've used these sites to help me understand vtk and how to write the report.

http://www.sapne.net/526/proj2.html

http://vis.lbl.gov/Research/ChomboVis99/vtk-initial.html

Tutorial:

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~matt/courses/cs563/talks/vtk/slide1.html

http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~disz/cs-341/colorvis/index.htm

http://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/cs526/final/index.htm

This is my protein which someone says looks like te_t_cles.

Strange Feelings

2010-03-21T04:51:00.000-07:00

I found Yuki Isoya again on youtube and felt strange listening to this particular song, Seed Of Happiness.

So I went through this blog and found that I used to listen to this song on repeat during Y1S1 assignments. Strangely that was only 2 years ago and yet I felt that I was really young then. I've aged exponentially.

Compiling VTK for Visual Studio 2008

2010-02-23T06:36:00.000-08:00

Tried like mad to compile for VS 2008. Followed this link. Works like magic!

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~cwyman/classes/common/howto/winVTK.html

Compiling VTK Using CMake and Visual Studio
Preliminaries:

So you've got the CD/DVD from the back of the book "The Visualization Toolkit" or perhaps you've downloaded VTK directly from the website, but now you've got problems compiling it on your home Windows machine.

Fortunately, if you have the textbook compilation is relatively straightforward.

* Please note, the installer on the CD only installs a binary version of VTK useful only as a Tcl interpreter using the VTK Tcl bindings.
* However, the Windows installer also allows you to install an executable version of CMake, which is required to build the version of VTK necessary for class.
* You can skip the CD's installer entirely, but you will need to download and install CMake yourself. And if you plan to use Tcl, you'll need to download that as well.

Using CMake to Setup a VTK Visual Studio Project:

1. Copy the directory from the CD "VTK\Source\VTK\" to your hard drive.
* I put mine in "C:\VTK\Source\VTK\".
* Note: This directory name should have no spaces or other weird characters in it.
* You may also want to copy "C:\VTK\Source\VTKData\" if you plan to use any example code.
2. Open up CMake. You can do this using either a command line or a nice Windows GUI.
* Open the GUI by running "CMakeSetup.exe" -- for me this is in the directory "C:\Program Files\CMake 2.4\bin\"
3. In the box labeled "Where is the source code:" enter the directory containing the VTK source
* Again, for me this was "C:\VTK\Source\VTK\"
4. In the box labeled "Where to build the binaries:" enter some temporary directory.
* I used "C:\VTK\VTK-win\"
* Again, this directory should have no spaces or other weird characters.
5. Once the values have the directories set appropriately, click on the button labeled "Configure."
* A dialogue will pop up asking for the system you plan to use to compile VTK.
* Select the correct version of Visual Studio.
* In my version of CMake, there was no entry for Visual Studio 2008, so pick the entry for Visual Studio 2005 (which VS 2008 can understand). I expect if you download the latest version of CMake, it will work out-of-the-box with Visual Studio 2008.
* Click OK.
6. CMake will spend quite a bit of time detecting information about your system and configuring the Visual Studio project.
* Wait for a bit. Maybe 2-3 minutes
7. Eventually, configuration will be over and a number of red configuration variables will appear in the box entitled "Cache Values." You may change these, depending what you want to build. There are a few you really should change:
* I would encourage you to set "BUILD_EXAMPLES" to "ON"
* If you use the examples, you should set "VTK_DATA_ROOT" to be the directory where you copied the data from the CD's "VTK\Source\VTKData\" directory. CMake detected a really nasty-looking directory name for this, you may want to clean that up.
* You should set the "CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX" to be the directory you want to contain the headers (.h) and libraries (.lib) you will need to compile your own programs.
o This directory cannot contain spaces or other weird characters.
o NOTE: The default chosen probably will include spaces (i.e., "C:\Program Files\VTK"). Change this!
o Subdirectories entitiled "include" and "lib" will be automatically created.
o I set this to be "C:\VTK\"
8. Once the cached values have been set appropriately, again click on the button labeled "Configure."
* This will only take a moment.
9. Click the button labeled "OK" to finish generating the Visual Studio project.
* This will take maybe 10 seconds, then CMake will exit.

Compiling VTK with Visual Studio:

1. Go to the temporary directory chosen in CMake to build your binaries.
* Again, for me this was "C:\VTK\VTK-win\"
2. Open up the Visual Studio project "ALL_BUILD.vcproj"
* If you use Visual Studio 2008, it will ask you to convert to a VS 2008 project. Click "Next>" then "Next>" then "Finish".
3. At the top of Visual Studio UI, select a "Release" build instead of a "Debug" build (the default).
* Unless, of course, you plan to use the debugger inside internal VTK functions.
4. In the solution explorer, right click on "ALL_BUILD," select the entry in the menu to "Build."
* Wait while Visual Studio compiles.... This will take a little while.
5. The headers (.h) and libraries (.lib) are now compiled, but are located in all sorts of odd directories.
6. In the solution explorer, right click on "INSTALL," select the entry in the menu to "Build."
* All the headers and libraries will be copied to the directory specified in CMake as "CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX."
* The libraries will be in the "lib/" directory and the headers will be in the "include/vtk-5.0/" directory.
7. You are done compiling VTK!

Testing VTK to Double Check Things Worked:

1. Make sure there were no errors reported by Visual Studio when building or installing.
2. Check inside the build path in the directory "bin\Release\" for a number of executables, such as "VTKBenchMark.exe" that you can run to double check things work correctly. Please note most or all of the examples in this directory do not open interactive windows, but rather display a couple images and then quit.
* For me, these test executables are in "C:\VTK\VTK-win\bin\Release\"
3. Check the installed header directory "include\"
* Mine has 1,074 files
4. Check the installed library directory "lib\"
* Mine has 64 files

If you have problems compiling, you can try to use my compiled libraries and headers.
Using VTK in Your Code:

There are two ways to get your code to link to the VTK libraries.

One approach is to continue using CMake. To use CMake, you must create a CMakeList.txt file to be processed while generating a Visual Studio project for your program. To see what a CMakeList.txt looks like, you can take a look at a sample or search for other online CMake documentation.

To link to VTK in a more "usual" Visual Studio fashion, you can:

1. Add the include directory to the "Addional Include Directories".
* This entry is found in: Project Menu -> Properties, then under Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> General.
* My include directory is "C:\VTK\include\vtk-5.0"
2. Add the library directory to the "Additional Library Directories"
* This entry is found in: Project Menu -> Properties, then under Configuration Properties -> Linker -> General.
* My library directory is "C:\VTK\lib"
3. Include all the VTK libraries (.lib) files you use in your program under "Additional Dependencies"
* This entry is found in: Project Menu -> Properties, then under Configuration Properties -> Linker -> Input.
* You'll have to either include all the VTK libraries here or guess which ones you need.
* A good place to start for the basic cone demo is to link to vtkCommon.lib, vtkFiltering.lib, vtkGraphics.lib, vtkRendering.lib, and vtksys.lib.
4. Link to the OpenGL library ("opengl32.lib") also under "Additional Dependencies".

Last Modified: Thursday, February 5, 2009
by Chris Wyman (cwyman@cs.uiowa.edu)

Alphabet Soup

2010-01-18T21:52:00.000-08:00

of titles.

My mum thought I should start to print them in my namecard even though I have one full year to go before graduation.

As for me, one guy from the forum below said it best:
"It took me 5 bloody years to get it so I don't see anything wrong with including it."

http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t62810.html

Make yourself think

2009-11-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

I was just googling "Clockwork Orange" (a movie that I saw as a young lass and was offended and yet mesmerised - the sets and costumes) and came upon this site,

http://projectgroupthink.wordpress.com/

Then I read this about the 10 movies that make you think. I must say, I love it!

These are some of the movies that I had watched, plan to watch again. So enjoy.

http://projectgroupthink.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/10-movies-that-make-you-think/

http://billsmovieemporium.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/review-a-clockwork-orange-1971/

Yay? No?

2009-11-26T22:07:00.000-08:00

Ah-har!

I found this absolutely great site from Today (Singapore's free tabloid, right?) that talks about music and concerts. Yay. And by the way, next year is going to be a great year for concert lovers because a lot of good acts' coming to Singapore.

http://blogs.todayonline.com/poparazzi/

I've got my tickets for Green Day and Muse. Aarrgh. So many concerts, so little money!

Parametric Curves

2009-11-23T18:35:00.001-08:00

Geometric and Parametric Continuity

Geometric Continuity

* G0: curves are joined
* G1: first derivatives are proportional at the join point
The curve tangents thus have the same direction, but not necessarily the same magnitude. i.e., C1'(1) = (a,b,c) and C2'(0) = (k*a, k*b, k*c).
* G2: first and second derivatives are proportional at join point

Parametric Continuity

* C0: curves are joined, There may be a sharp point where they meet.
* C1: first derivatives equal, The curves have identical tangents at the breakpoint. (The tangent is the slope at the breakpoint.) The curves join smoothly. C1 curves also have positional continuity.
* C2: first and second derivatives are equal,
The curves have identical curvature at the breakpoint. (Curvature is defined as the rate of change of the tangents.) Curvature continuity implies both tangential and positional continuity.

If t is taken to be time, this implies that the acceleration is continuous.
* Cn: nth derivatives are equal

Semester 3: Them

2009-11-19T22:56:00.000-08:00

Animation & Simulation
Prof Normal

I guess, he's by far the most normal. Articulate, logical and well behaved. He's not fully research only when he says, "Resolution is just as important to determine the feasibility of the method proposed."
And really smart. He knows sometimes we don't really know what we're saying but he has never tried to embarrass us during our presentations. Cares about teaching, you just can tell. Great prof.
Oh ya, and he wears converse canvas and printed shirts. Score!
I'm hoping to do my dissertation with him.

Game
Prof Huh

Absent-minded. Funny. Knows a lot. He's a tenured professor. Thinks everything is extremely easy. Explains well. But just so busy he becomes forgetful.

GLUI Quick Guide from CodeProject

2009-11-03T06:23:00.000-08:00

If you're unfortunate like me, only able to visualise algorithms with OpenGL, then the next thing to make the application less difficult to use is by defining some GUI.

I found this GLUI guide easy to use and refer to.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/openGL/GLUI_Window_Template.aspx#6-AddGUIControls17

A Few Tips on How to Use PowerPoint for Mathematical Presentations

2009-11-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

I've included this tip from the link at the bottom of the post to help me with the equations in PowerPoint.. This is not my own post.

What These Are About

These tips may help you produce math-heavy PowerPoint presentations more efficiently, and get them to look better. They assume familiarity with the basics of PowerPoint. They do not argue for or against using PowerPoint for your presentations (there are many pros and cons). They were born out of a conversation among graduate students in the MIT theory group sometime in 1999 or 2000, when many of us were discovering PowerPoint and agreed that a page for sharing tips would be useful. Some of them are probably getting out of date as newer versions of PowerPoint come out.

They are maintained by Leonid Reyzin. Please contact me if you have additional tips you think should be included, or if you find something wrong (or no longer applicable).

Machine Independence

One of the biggest headaches with PowerPoint is the difficulty of getting it to look the same on different machines. To that end:

Make sure your file includes fonts. This is accomplished by going to the "File" menu, selecting "Save As," and checking the "Embed TrueType" check box in the dialog box that pops up. Then click "Save." Your file will likely become very large once you do this, and you may need to compress it to get it to fit a single floppy (see also "Miscellaneous PowerPoint Tips," below, for how to deal with large files).
If you use Equation Editor/MathType, you need to embed those fonts, as well. Unfortunately, PowerPoint doesn't know you are using those fonts simply because an equation is embedded (it treats equations as graphics); thus, you need to make sure that at least one character from each font used in your equations appears somewhere (e.g., on a special slide, or as white on white, or just a space) in an ordinary PowerPoint textbox. The fonts you are interested in are MTExtra, Euclid Math One and Euclid Math Two. Then use "Embed TrueType" option described above. (Thanks to Bob Mathews for the tip.)

Making Overlays

Get everything you want onto one slide, and get in its final form. Then split it into overlays as follows: copy it as many times as the number of overlays, and simply "hide" parts on each slide. To hide a part, change its color to white, or cover it up with a white rectangle. Do not delete text, because that will move other text around, and your overlays won't match. Instead, change its color to white.

Typesetting Math

One way to typeset mathematical formulas and symbols in PowerPoint is to use TexPoint add-in. I haven't tried it myself, but have heard good things about it. Just save often, because PowerPoint's tendency to crash apparently only increases when the add-in is used (in particular, when the LaTeX interpreter is closed improperly).

If you prefer to use "straight" PowerPoint, here are some tips.

Getting it to look good
- Italicize only what should be italicized. Generally, this means only Roman and Greek variable names (italicizing uppercase Greek is optional). Be sure to not italicize plus and minus signs, function like log and cos, numerals, parentheses, etc. If in doubt about what should be italicized in a particular formula, typeset it in LaTeX and then mimic LaTeX's output in PowerPoint. To toggle italics, just use Ctrl-i.
- Use Times New Roman or a similar font. Sans serif fonts, such as Helvetica, are not good for math (although they may be good for the rest of your presentation). It's ok to have one font for math and another for the text (the slides class of LaTeX does that, in fact). To change fonts without using the mouse, use Ctrl-Shift-f and arrow keys.
- You can also change fonts and styles by using the "format painter" button: simply get one character to look right, and then use the format painter to copy its format to other similar characters. (Thanks to Shane Scott for this tip.)
- Do not use a hyphen for a minus sign. A much better minus sign is an en-dash. Unfortunately, it is a bit hard to get in PowerPoint. See "Inserting non-standard characters" below.
- When you copy math around, make sure it has the same font size as the surrounding text. PowerPoint will not always automatically get it right.
Inserting non-standard characters.
- To insert Greek letters, simply type the "corresponding" Roman letter (e.g., "a" for alpha, "t" for tau, "q" for theta), and then change its font to Symbol. Same for "sum" and "product" symbols: simply use capital sigma and capital pi.
- Standart Unicode symbols for integrals don't look any good. You may want to use the curve-line tool to make one and then copy it around. (Thanks to Nikola Venkov for this tip.)
- To insert the many special symbols that are available in Microsoft Word (such as en- and em-dashes, ©, etc.), simply open up Microsoft Word, and insert them using the menu "Insert" then "Symbol." The "Special Characters" tab is particularly useful, and contains handy keyboard shortcuts. Once you get it in Microsoft Word, simply select it, copy it, and then paste into your PowerPoint text. Make sure the result has the correct font and size. Then you can copy it around your PowerPoint file whenever you need it.
- More recent versions of PowerPoint have the "Symbol..." item in the "Insert" menu (the corresponding toolbar button is available, as well: see "Miscellaneous PowerPoint tips," below). You can insert characters from various fonts.
- A host of characters is available in the "Character Map" accessory. (Go to the "Start" button, then "Applications," then "Accessories," then "Character Map.") Trying different fonts to find what you need; Symbol font is particularly useful for math. You can select and copy characters, then paste over to PowerPoint. Moreover, if you click on a particular character, you get the "keyboard code" for it displayed at the bottom. Once you learn the keyboard code, you can type it directly in PowerPoint without having to copy and paste. For example, the code for an en-dash (which is good for minus signs) in Times New Roman font is Alt-0150 (hold down Alt, press 0150 on the numeric keypad, then let go of Alt). The code may be different in other fonts.
Subscripts and superscripts
- To make subscripts and superscripts using the menus, select the character you need, then go to "Format" then "Font." Note that you can get double superscripts, subscripts of superscripts, etc., by varying the "offset" amount.
- It is faster to make standard subscripts and superscripts using the keyboard. Ctrl-= toggles the subscript flag, and Ctrl-+ (same as Ctrl-Shift-=) toggles the superscript flag. For example, to get a_ixⁱ, type "a, Ctrl-=, i, Ctrl-=, x, Ctrl-+, i, Ctrl-+" (don't forget to turn on italics at the beginning by "Ctrl-i").
- You can also get buttons for making subscripts and superscripts on your toolbar. See "Miscellaneous PowerPoint Tips" below. Or you can use the format painter: get a single subscript to look right, and then copy its format to other subscripts (see "Getting it to look good" above).
More complex formulas.
- You may avoid using Equation Editor/MathType (see "Machine Independence" above) by utilizing multiple text boxes instead. You can move them around to get them in the right positions. Note that large parentheses, brackets, braces, and other useful shapes are available under "AutoShapes" (most likely on your drawing toolbar). Once you get a formula to look right, group all of its components (see "Drawing" below), so you can easily move it around and copy it.

Drawing

Learn to use "Group," "Ungroup" and "Regroup" in your "Draw" menu (also on your right-click menu). "Regroup" is particularly handy if you need to ungroup to modify something little. You don't have to reselect everything to group it back: simply choose "Regroup."
To select multiple objects, hold down the Shift key as you click on them with the mouse.
It is a pain to select text boxes, because when you click inside them, you get to edit text. If that happens, press "escape," and the text box becomes selected. Alternatively, hold down the Shift key as you click. Conversly, if you've selected a text box and now want to edit its text, press "enter."
It is often easier to nudge objects by selecting them and using arrow keys, rather than by using the mouse.
Connectors (available under "AutoShapes" on your drawing toolbar) are great when drawing graphs, trees, etc. They can be made to stick to an object, so when you move nodes around, edges adhere to them.

Layout and Design Tips

You do not have to be stuck with the standard boring slide style. Play around with it by going to the Edit menu, and selecting Master, then Slide Master.
When giving a talk that will be projected (rather than printed out on transparencies), the color combination that is easiest on the eyes is yellow (or white) on a blue background. (Thanks to Steven Rudich for this tip.)
To make small caps font style (equivalent to LaTeX's \textsc command), type in all uppercase letters. Then select all the letters you actually want to be in small caps (i.e., not the ones you want to actually be uppercase, such as first letters of sentences), and simply make the font about four points smaller. (Thanks to Amit Sahai for this tip.)
To start a new line without starting a new paragraph: press "Shift-Enter."

Miscellaneous PowerPoint Tips

You can customize your toolbars. In particular, it is handy to have buttons for "Format-Subscript," "Format-Superscript," and "Insert-Symbol." Go to the Tools menu, then Customize, then click on the "Commands" tab. Then simply find a command you want by looking at the various categories, and drag it out of the dialog directly onto a toolbar you want. (Thanks to Amit Sahai for this tip.)
If AutoCorrect annoys you (e.g., you have a variable named "i" and don't want PowerPoint to automatically capitalize it every time), check out the menu "Tools" then "AutoCorrect." If it doesn't annoy you but is just occasionally wrong, you can undo what it just corrected by pressing Ctrl-Z or selecting "Undo" in the "Edit" menu.
If you file is too large to fit on a single floppy and you need to take it with you, use the "Pack and Go" command in the File menu. Be sure to check the boxes that "Include linked files" and "Embed TrueType fonts" in the dialog boxes that follow. Prepare a large box of floppies, as PowerPoint manages to only enlarge your file as it "compresses" it. However, the packing and restoration procedure is automated, and beats trying to split the file into multiple chunks yourself. Don't forget to label the floppy disks in numerical order; run the application that is included on the first floppy to restore the file to another computer.

http://www.cs.bu.edu/~reyzin/pptips.html

GLUI with Visual Studio 2008

2009-10-29T10:02:00.001-07:00

You just have to rebuild glui32.lib.

Get the source from:

http://glui.sourceforge.net/

Here's how:

http://vis.eng.uci.edu/~jkimball/eecs205/glui.html

Good resource from CS Dept U of Aukland

2009-10-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/compsci777s2c/resources/

and then some:

This has a plethora of graphics beginners to intermediate

http://www.realtimerendering.com/

Maya: Render from command line

2009-10-18T01:31:00.000-07:00

You know, normally we will render our scenes from:

[Rendering]

Render --> Batch Render.

However that involves opening our maya application overnight.

Here's how to render from command line:

go to the directory where the mb/ma file resides.

render <filename>

That is assuming that you've got all your file properties set correctly for rendering.
Easy eh?

More help here: http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-render-maya-scenes-from-the-command-line-249001/

Maya: Motion along path

2009-10-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

Needed a short animation for motion along path to simulate running across forest.
Ah-har! This helps! Basically motion of camera along a certain path.
Phew! Thanks!

http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/info/maya/manual/UserGuide/Animation/KeyframeMoPath/06_animating_motion_paths.doc2.html

Basic animation how to:
http://www.expertrating.com/courseware/mayacourse/MAYA-Animation-Basics-1.asp

Interesting: Curve equations

2009-10-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/group/goa/mallinnus/curves/curves.html

3D Gamestudio

2009-10-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

Some FAQ:

http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~gregory/teaching/CO42001/0304/faqs.html

Maya 2008 Plugin Development - HOW TO

2009-10-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

http://fabianmejia.blogspot.com/2008/05/maya-2008-plugin-development-part-1.html

Creating mathematical symbols with MS Word

2009-10-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

There are four sections to this document

Before you can use the Equation Editor
(Very) Basic operation of the Equation Editor
Shortcut Keys are your very best friend
Simonds tips on using the equation editor

Before you can use the Equation Editor

The other three sections of this document will work only if the Microsoft Equation Editor has been installed on the machine you are using; the Equation Editor comes with Microsoft Office but is not installed under a standard installation. The computers in the Sylvania CRC and Sylvania math classrooms all have the Equation Editor installed. On your home machine you probably will need to load your Microsoft office CD and do a custom install to install the Equation Editor. (It's easier to do than the phrase "custom install" implies. J ) All of the maneuvers described in this section of the document will need to be done at most once.

After installing the Equation Editor, you also want to customize your toolbar so that the Equation Editor button is easily accessible. (The button is already on the CRC and math classroom machines.)

The menu shown in Figure 1 was opened by selecting Tools - Customize from the toolbar menu across the top of the screen, then selecting the commands file-tab at the top of the dialogue box, then selecting the insert category on the left side of the box, and finally scrolling down on the right-side of the box until the Equation Editor button was in view. Once you have located the Equation Editor button, left-click and drag the button up to your toolbar menu.

Figure 1: Customizing your Toolbar

(Very) Basic operation of the Equation Editor

Once your Equation Editor button is in place, all you need to do to open an Equation Box is left-click that button. Upon your click an Equation Box like that shown in Figure 2 will appear as well as the Equation Editor Menu shown in Figure 3. (As a side note I should mention that the Equation Editor Menu has the unfortunate habit of sometimes opening directly on top of the location at which you are typing. L Should this happen, simply left-click and drag the solid strip across the top of the box until the box is out of the way.)

Figure 2: Equation Box

Figure 3: Equation Editor Menu

The Equation Editor Menu can be used to insert both symbols and templates for complicated mathematical expressions. For example, Figure 4 shows what you click to insert the Pi symbol; Figure 5 shows what to click to insert a fraction template.

Figure 4: Inserting a Pi symbol

Figure 5: Inserting a Fraction Template

Once a template has been inserted into your Equation Box, you need to look and see where inside the template the cursor is flashing. You then go ahead and type the information that goes into that location. To move to the next location in the template you press the Tab key. You also press the Tab key to exit the template. When you are done typing in your expression, you left-click anywhere outside of the Equation Box. If you need to edit an existing Equation Box you simply double-click anywhere over the expression contained within the box.

Shortcut Keys are your very best friend

Mousing all of your math symbols and templates gets real old real fast; thankfully there are shortcut keys that enable you to avoid your mouse in most circumstances. The shortcut keys are found in the Help Menu when you have an Equation Box open. I have copied the most commonly used shortcut keys into figures 6, 7, and 8.	Figure 6: Shortcut Keys for selected Math Templates
Figure 7: Shortcut Keys for after the fact symbol Embellishments	Figure 8: Shortcut keys for selected math symbols

Simonds tips on using the equation editor

Always add a full space before and after an equal sign, before and after a plus or minus sign, after a limit sign or integral sign, and before each limit on a definite integral. A full space is created inside an equation box by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Space Bar.

Always add a half space between a coefficient and a variable and before and after the arrow sign in a limit. A half space is created by pressing Ctrl+Space Bar.

To line up your equal signs (J ) you need to use the format/align option shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Gotta' line up them equal signs!

You can add text inside an Equation box by selecting Style - Text from the toolbar menu. (See Figure 10.)

Figure 10: Adding text inside an Equation Box

Sometimes you might want to insert text along with a multistep simplification or other type process. One way to achieve this is with a matrix. For example, the simplification shown in Figure 11 was typed using a matrix with 7 rows and two columns. The style used in the left column was "Math" while the style used in the right column was "Text." I always insert a blank row between every line to avoid crowding - that's why the matrix had seven rows as opposed to four. The appropriate Menu and Dialogue Box are shown in Figures 12 and 13.

Figure 11: Adding text along with mathematics

Figure 12: The Matrix Menu Bar

Figure 13: The Matrix Dialogue Box

Finally, you will find below is a keystroke guide for creating the expression .

Open an Equation Box
press Ctrl+t, u
type in "lim" (don't type the quotes J )
press Tab
type in "h"
press Ctrl+Space Bar
press Ctrl+k, a
press Ctrl+Space Bar
type in "0"
press Tab
press Ctrl+Shift+Space Bar
press Ctrl+f
press Ctrl+9
type in "3"
press Ctrl+shift+Space Bar
type in "+"
press Ctrl+shift+Space Bar
type in "h"
press Tab
press Ctrl+h
type "2"
press Tab
press Ctrl+Shift+Space Bar
type in "-"
press Ctrl+Shift+Space Bar
type in "9"
press Tab
type in "h"
press Tab
click anywhere outside the Equation Box to close the equation box

Blatantly copied from: http://spot.pcc.edu/~ssimonds/thisandthat/msword.htm

Interesting article

2009-10-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

on computer engineering jobs in animations & CG.

http://www.diversitycareers.com/articles/college/07-sumfall/jm_computergraphics.htm

Some simple OpenGL codes for reuse

2009-09-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

http://math.ucsd.edu/~sbuss/MathCG/OpenGLsoft/

Career in Game Development Industry - How to get a foot in?

2009-09-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a short read on that.

http://www.jenrickblog.co.uk/2009/09/career-development-in-the-video-gaming-sector-what-skills-do-developers-need-to-excel-please-contribute-to-this-research-paper/#more-1552

Another insight from LinkedIn:

From the Art Pipline perspective I'd say the most important skills are zBrush/Mudbox and 3ds Max/Maya. However knowing those programs does not mean a candidate will stand out. They must understand the pipeline and where they fit in. The artist must be capable and willing to learn custom tools outside of their everyday arsenal of off the shelf products. zBrush/Mudbox Artist must be masters of sculpting and then if required retopoing meshes from the ground up. They should not be afraid of mastering the UV procoess using pelt-mapping and 3D painting solutions. Level designers should prove that they can texture and build environments to a certain scale. Character Artists must study and master anatomy. If I'm an environment artist I should want to show a fully realized world that is playable. Tools such as Unreal Engine 3.0 and Cry Engine 2.0 allow for modelers and texture artists to show their assets in a true game environment rather than just showing a turn table with music playing behind it. It's also helpful to understand how to export normal maps and bump maps for games. A healthy understanding of repeating textures and decals is important as well. Environment artists should envision and create massive detailed set pieces with as limited geometry as is possible. Artists should find the most efficient techniques for limiting the amount of polygons in a scene. Character Artists should attempt hair and fur by using opacity mapped textures. These things which are not easily rendered in real-time will stand out to those in the industry.

I hope this is helpful.

Joseph Tresca Sr. Interactive Art Director, 3D Artist, Eyeballistic, Inc.

Animation Paper Reading

2009-09-22T02:34:00.000-07:00

This semester, one of the smaller assignments is a paper reading of any Siggraph worthy animation papers.

I've chosen Treuille's Model Reduction of Fluids. Thing is, I am quite taken with his research and work. But ugh... this is a hard paper. For now... And submission is in 2 weeks' time!

See all his work here:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~treuille/

Nikon manuals for download

2009-09-03T09:12:00.001-07:00

http://web.mit.edu/vap/downloads/manuals/

A graduate school survival guide: "So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.!"

2009-08-13T00:19:00.000-07:00

Brief description

A computer science graduate school survival guide, intended for prospective or novice graduate students. This guide describes what I wish I had known at the start of graduate school but had to learn the hard way instead. It focuses on mental toughness and the skills a graduate student needs. The guide also discusses finding a job after completing the Ph.D. and points to many other related web pages.

"So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.!"

a.k.a.

"Everything I wanted to know about C.S. graduate school
at the beginning but didn't learn until later."

The 4th guide in the Hitchhiker's guide trilogy
(and if that doesn't make sense, you obviously have not read Douglas Adams)

by Ronald T. Azuma

v. 1.08

Original version 1997, last revised January 2003

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html

Date arithmetic with shell or perl

2009-08-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.unix.com/answers-frequently-asked-questions/13785-yesterdays-date-date-arithmetic.html

Windows Movie Maker: Superimpose xml

2009-07-29T02:21:00.000-07:00

Found that superimposing image over video is not so intuitive in Movie Maker. Will try it out tonight!

Here's an example found on: http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=194964&

<title name="PapaJohn Overlay 25" iconid="13">
<param name="InternalName" value="TitleStandard">
<param name="Description" value="Superimpose image 1">
<param name="LogoBitmapFilename" value="Overlay25.png">
<param name="LogoRect" value="0.00 0.00 1.00 1.00">
<paragraph>
<param name="IsOneLine" value="true">
<param name="BoundingRect" value="1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00">
<param name="MaxCharacterCount" value="32">
</paragraph>
</title>
<title name="PapaJohn Overlay 26" iconid="13">
<param name="InternalName" value="TitleStandard">
<param name="Description" value="Superimpose image 2">
<param name="LogoBitmapFilename" value="Overlay26.png">
<param name="LogoRect" value="0.00 0.00 1.00 1.00">
<paragraph>
<param name="IsOneLine" value="true">
<param name="BoundingRect" value="1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00">
<param name="MaxCharacterCount" value="32">
</paragraph>
</title>
<title name="PapaJohn Overlay 27" iconid="13">
<param name="InternalName" value="TitleStandard">
<param name="Description" value="Superimpose image 1">
<param name="LogoBitmapFilename" value="Overlay27.png">
<param name="LogoRect" value="0.00 0.00 1.00 1.00">
<paragraph>
<param name="IsOneLine" value="true">
<param name="BoundingRect" value="1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00">
<param name="MaxCharacterCount" value="32">
</paragraph>
</title>
</titledll>
</titles>
</transitionsandeffects>

Memory Management Programming Guide for Cocoa

2009-07-16T11:34:00.001-07:00

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/MemoryMgmt/index.html

Free fonts

2009-07-14T20:08:00.001-07:00

Some sites for free fonts:

http://www.blambot.com/fonts.shtml

http://www.free-fonts.com/

http://www.fontspace.com/

http://www.dafont.com/

Simple things like find

2009-06-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.softpanorama.org/Tools/Find/find_mini_tutorial.shtml

Unix find is a pretty tricky but very useful utility that can often fool even experienced UNIX professionals with ten on more years of sysadmins work under the belt. It can enhance functionality of those Unix utilities that does not include tree traversal (BTW GNU grep has -r option for this purpose and can be used on its own to perform tree traversal task: grep -r "search string" /tmp.). There are several versions of find with the main two being POSIX find used in Solaris, AIX, etc and GNU find used in linux. GNU find can be installed on Solaris and AIX and it is actually a strong recommendation as there are some differences; moreover gnu find have additional capabilities that are often useful.

But find can do more then a simple tree traversal available with option -r (or -R) in many Unix utilities. Traversal provided by find can have excluded directory tree branches, can select files or directories using regular expressions, can be limited to specific typed of filesystem, etc. This capability is far above and beyond regular tree traversal of Unix utilities so find is a real Unix utility -- a useful enhancer of functionally of other utilities including both utilities that do not have capability to traverse the directory tree and those which have built-in simple recursive tree traversal

The idea behind find is extremely simple: this is a utility for searching files using the directory information and in this sense it is similar to ls. But it is more powerful then ls as it can provide " a ride" for other utilities and has an idiosyncratic mini-language for specifying queries, the language which probably outlived its usefulness but nobody has courage to replace it with a standard scripting language.

For obscure historical reasons find mini-language is completely different from all other UNIX commands: it has full-word options rather than single-letter options. For example, instead of a typical Unix-style option -f to match filenames (like in tar -xvf mytar.tar) find uses option -name. Also path to search can consist of multiple starting points, for example

find /usr /bin /sbin /opt -name sar # here we exclude non-relevant directories

In general you need to specify the set of starting points for a search through the file system first. The first argument starting with "-" is considered to be a start of "find expression". The latter can have side effects if you specified actions in the expression.

It is very important to understand that you can specify more than one directory as a starting point for the search. To look across the /bin and /var/html directory trees for filenames that contain the pattern *.htm*, you can use the following command:

find /usr /var/html -name "*.htm*" -print

Please note that you need quotes for any regex. Otherwise it will be evaluated immediately in the current context by shell.

It is simply impossible to remember all the details of this language unless you construct complex queries each day and that's why this page was created. Along with this page it make sense to consult the list of typical (and not so typical) examples which can be found in in Examples page on this site as well as in the links listed in Webliography. An excellent paper Advanced techniques for using the UNIX find command was written by Bill Zimmerly. I highly recommend to read it and then print and have a reference. Several examples in this tutorial are borrowed from the article.

The full find language is pretty complex and consist of several dozens of different predicates and options. There are two versions of this language: one implemented in POSIX find and the second implemented in GNU find which is a superset of POSIX find. That can make big difference in complex scripts. But for interactive use the differences is minor: only small subset of options is typically used on day-to-day basis by system administrators. Among them:

-name True if pattern matches the current file name. Simple regex (shell regex) may be used. A backslash (\) is used as an escape character within the pattern. The pattern should be escaped or quoted. If you need to include parts of the path in the pattern in GNU find you should use predicate wholename
Use the -iname predicate (GNU find supports it) to run a case-insensitive search, rather than just -name. For example:
```
 $ find . -follow -iname '*.htm' -print0 | xargs -i -0 mv '{}' ~/webhome
```
Usage of -print0 is a simple insurance for the correct processing of files with spaces.
-fstype type True if the filesystem to which the file belongs is of type type. For example on Solaris mounted local filesystems have type ufs (Solaris 10 added zfs). For AIX local filesystem is jfs or jfs2 (journalled file system). If you want to traverse NFS filesystems you can use nfs (network file system). If you want to avoid traversing network and special filesystems you should use predicate local and in certain circumstances mount

"-atime/-ctime/-mtime" [+|-]n
Specify selection of the files based on three Unix timestamps: the last time a files's "access time", "file status" and "modification time".
n is time interval -- an integer with optional sign. It is measured in 24-hour periods (days) or minutes counted from the current moment.

n: If the integer n does not have sign this means exactly n 24-hour periods (days) ago, 0 means today.
+n: if it has plus sing, then it means "more then n 24-hour periods (days) ago", or older then n,
-n: if it has the minus sign, then it means less than n 24-hour periods (days) ago (-n), or younger then n. It's evident that -1, and 0 are the same and both means "today".

Note: If you use parameters with find command in scripts be careful when -mtime parameter is equal zero. Some (earlier) versions of GNU find incorrectly interpret the following expression

find -mtime +0 -mtime -1

which should be equivalent to

find  -mtime -1

but does not produce any files

n: If the integer n does not have sign this means exactly n 24-hour periods (days) ago, 0 means today.
+n: if it has plus sing, then it means "more then n 24-hour periods (days) ago", or older then n,
-n: if it has the minus sign, then it means less than n 24-hour periods (days) ago (-n), or younger then n. It's evident that -1 and 0 are the same and both means "today".
Examples:
- Find everything in your home directory modified in the last 24 hours:
  - find $HOME -mtime -1
- Find everything in your home directory modified in the last seven 24-hour periods (days):
  - find $HOME -mtime -7
- Find everything in your home directory that have NOT been modified in the last year:
  - find $HOME -mtime +365
- To find html files that have been modified in the last seven 24-hour periods (days), I can use -mtime with the argument -7 (include the hyphen):
```
find . -mtime -7 -name "*.html" -print
```
  If you use the number 7 (without a hyphen), find will match only html files that were modified exactly seven 24-hour periods (days) ago:
```
find . -mtime 7 -name "*.html" -print
```
- To find those html files that I haven't touched for at least seven 24-hour periods (days), I use +7:
```
find . -mtime +7 -name "*.html" -print
```

-newer/-anewer/-cnewer baseline_file The time of modification, access time or creation time are compared with the same timestamp in the baseline file. If file is a symbolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in effect, the modification time of the file it points to is always used.
- -newer Modification time is compared with modification time of the basline_file True if file was modified more recently than baseline file.
- -anewer Access time is compared with access time of basline_file . True if file was last accessed more recently than baseline file.
- -cnewer Creation file is compared. For example: find everything in your home that has been modified more recently than "~joeuser/lastbatch.txt ":
  - find $HOME -newer ~joeuser/lastbatch.txt
-local True if the file system type is not a remote file system type. In Solaris those types are defined in the /etc/dfs/fstypes file. nfs is used as the default remote filesystem type if the /etc/dfs/fstypes file is not present. The -local option skips the hierarchy of non-local directories. You can also search without descending more then certain number of levels as explained later or exclude some directories from the search using
-mount Always true. Restricts the search to the file system containing the directory specified. Does not list mount points to other file systems.
-xdev Same as the -mount primary. Always evaluates to the value True. Prevents the find command from traversing a file system different from the one specified by the Path parameter.
-xattr True if the file has extended attributes.
-wholename simple-regex [GNU find only] . File name matches simple regular expression (often called shell patterns). In simple regular expressions the metacharacters '/' and '.' do not exist; so, for example, you can specify:
```
find . -wholename '/lib*'
```
which will print entries from directories /lib64 and /lib. To ignore the directories specified, use option -prune For example, to skip the directory /proc and all files and directories under it (which is important for linux as otherwise errors are produced you can something like this:
```
find . -wholename '/proc' -prune -o -name file_to_be_found   
```
If you administer a lot of linux boxes it is better to create alias
ff:
```
if [[ `uname` == "Linux" ]] ; do

  alias ff='find . -wholename '/proc' -prune -o -name '

else

  ff='find . -name ' # not GNU find does not support -wholename

fi 
```

Other useful options of the find command include:

-regex regex [GNU find only] File name matches regular expression. This is a match on the whole pathname not a filename. Stupidly enough the default regular expressions understood by find are Emacs Regular Expressions, not Perl regular expressions. It is important to note that "-iregex" option provide capability to ignore case.
-perm permissions Locates files with certain permission settings. Often used for finding world-writable files or SUID files. See below
-user Locates files that have specified ownership. Option -nouser locates files without ownership. For such files no user in /etc/passwd corresponds to file's numeric user ID (UID). such files are often created when tar of sip archive is transferred from other server on which the account probably exists under a different UID)
-group Locates files that are owned by specified group. Option -nogroup means that no group corresponds to file's numeric group ID (GID) of the file
-size Locates files with specified size. -size attribute lets you specify how big the files should be to match. You can specify your size in kilobytes and optionally also use + or - to specify size greater than or less than specified argument. For example:
```
find /home -name "*.txt" -size 100k 
```
```
find /home -name "*.txt" -size +100k 
```
```
find /home -name "*.txt" -size -100k 
```
The first brings up files of exactly 100KB, the second only files greater than 100KB, and the last only files less than 100KB.
-ls list current file in `ls -dils' format on standard output.
-type Locates a certain type of file. The most typical options for -type are as following:
- d -Directory
- f - File
- l - Link
For example to find a list of the directories use can use the -type specifier. Here's one example:
```
find . -type d -print
```

Oooooh.... Beautiful....

2009-06-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

I fell into this site by chance: http://kaba.hilvi.org/
And I am ok impressed.

But the links....

cgafaq wiki

The plethora of source codes.... Oh.... I am going to pee in my pants...

http://www.geometrictools.com/index.html

Seriously... I mean pee like a broken damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.

And look at the resources link provided:

http://www.geometrictools.com/Resources/Links.html

OpenGL: glLineWidth

2009-06-02T13:02:00.001-07:00

//set line width
glLineWidth(20.0f);

glBegin(GL_LINES);

//draw vertices
glVertex3f (-10f, -10.0f, -10.0f);
glVertex3f (10f, 10.0f, 10.0f);

....

glEnd();

Note that not all hardware supports a line width of 20. To find out the supported range and line width increments call:

float sizes, increment;

glGetFloatv(GL_LINE_WIDTH_RANGE, sizes)
glGetFloatv(GL_LINE_WIDTH_GRANULARITY, &increment)

Modules selection

2009-06-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've decided. This is the way I am going to pace my modules for Year 2.

Next Sem: Y2 S1
Computer Animation and Simulation
3D Modelling and Reconstruction

Y2 S2
Human Computer Interaction
Scientific Visualization

Y2 S3
Introduction to Games Design
BI6129 Directed Reading

I am actually quite excited for school. Hehe.

YAY! I Passed~~

2009-06-01T07:28:00.000-07:00

You look drunk.
Yes, I am drunk. On happiness.
No, you really look drunk.
Oh yes. I am going to write a one hit wonder. And get so rich on it, I don't need to work. Oh yes... That sounds perfect.
Stop eating the gummy. You're getting a sugar high.

Vista TWEAKS

2009-05-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

Without much emotional attachment, I am now on Vista. The good thing is, most softwares install on this OS. Bad? I am still getting around the flow of it. But gosh... talk about fancifully slow.

So here are some guides on tweaking and optimising which I cannot guarantee works.

At least my batch scripts still works here. Hehe. Cool...

http://www.tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_2.htm

http://www.iamshadowlord.com/2007/06/windows-vista-optimization.html

Getting rid of that annoying activeX popup in Alex, under "Removing the Internet Explorer Toolbar Alert":

http://www.databoysoftware.com/allow.html

Hey, cool lectures on graphics

2009-04-19T08:58:00.001-07:00

http://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse472/index.html

Collision Detection: Frustum Culling

2009-04-19T06:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Frustum_Culling.shtml

VR: Stereoscopic Projection - parallax problems

2009-04-19T03:05:00.000-07:00

On horizontal & vertical parallax.

http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/exhibition/vpac/theory.html

Music to listen to while you're studying

2009-04-12T04:40:00.001-07:00

And perhaps the neighbours are noisy and you needed to cancel them out, or you just don't want to fall asleep.

How to categorise that?
1. Not too slow or soft or soothing that you might fall asleep.
2. Nothing and I mean nothing that can distract you, (so you should not listen to any songs in languages that you understand or can sing along to).

These are the choices given by some people:

1. Brian Eno - Music for Airports

2. Boards of Canada -- > ooh I've been meaning to get their music.

3. Sigur Ros - They make me trip. I can't use this for studying.

4. Chicane - Ooh nice... must get their music.

5. Kaskade - Nice nice... Must get them too!!

6. Cirque du Soleil - oooooo?

Someone suggested these:

Sigur Rós - any of their albums are great, especially their b-sides/EPs
Mogwai
Boards of Canada as mentioned
Haibane Renmei - "Hanenone" - excellent soundtrack to an excellent anime
Any of the Final Fantasy Piano Collections (well, except IV and V, they're pretty unimaginative)
Film scores (particular favorites of mine are "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Hero," "American Beauty," and "Crash")

I must say, Mac users are way cooler.... Their suggestions are good!! http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=249125

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Listen-While-Youre-Studying/lm/CTMB4VPEAPU9

http://www.amazon.com/Trippy-chill-stoner-music/lm/1VQIBDTM9AQMU

My personal all time favourite has to be JAM and Yuki Isoya (solo effort), Shiina Ringo (given to me by accident). When I hear JAM, I just want to start Xcode or pick up my notes.

Animation: Classical Framework

2009-04-12T02:38:00.000-07:00

In the classical animation framework, they're 4 models; 2 stimulus and 2 response.

Stimulus
1. Environment Model: Animation's environment where static and dynamic objects are created. Includes modeling and rendering.

2. Perception Model: Techniques of "perception" by the characters. Information detected by the character's sensory capabilities.
i. zonal approach
ii. sensory approach
iii. synthetic vision approach.

Response
3. Behavioural Model: Behavioural techniques provide the characters with ability to autonomous activity with its own decision. This can either be reactive or driven by internal desire/experiences (not so much Artificial Intelligence, but more Artificial Life....? )
i. Rule-based approach
ii. Network approach
iii. Artificial Intelligence approach
iv. Mathematical approach

4. Motor Model: Movement techniques - to move & animate the characters. Not related to planning of movement, that is done in behavioural model.
i. Basic dynamic approach
ii. Procedural approach

More references:
http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/

Some physics

2009-04-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

Beginner's physics:

http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/index.html

This is good for what I need to know:
http://www.kwon3d.com/theory/rigid.html

Moment of Inertia (good diagram here):
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/inecon.html

Ooooh Maths Cheat Sheet

2009-04-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/cheat_table.aspx

Kinematics

2009-04-07T21:39:00.001-07:00

All about calculating arm: http://www.societyofrobots.com/robot_arm_tutorial.shtml

Trigonometric Identities

2009-03-31T03:07:00.001-07:00

http://www.clarku.edu/~djoyce/trig/identities.html.

for derivatives, look at the Calculus part or the table of derivatives.

Perl perlop

2009-03-31T01:12:00.000-07:00

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html

Sound Effects for free

2009-03-29T07:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/55-great-websites-to-download-free-sound-effects/

Newton's 3 laws

2009-03-28T20:19:00.001-07:00

http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/Class/newtlaws/newtltoc.html

Timestep integration

2009-03-28T01:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.euclideanspace.com/threed/games/options/timestep/index.htm

Very good to get the basics of time step transformation.

A historical timeline for Computer Graphics & Animation

2009-03-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

http://sophia.javeriana.edu.co/~ochavarr/computer_graphics_history/historia/

Matrix Vector hints

2009-03-27T08:31:00.001-07:00

Matric and various vector math hints and tips.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Matrix calculation is by

    [x,y,z] *  M  =>  [x',y',z']

         |x|    |x'|
or    M * |y| => |y'|
         |z|    |z'|

The result is the same in either case. As long as the matrix was created using
row vectors OR column vectors to match!

Which style is used is up to the matrix library version you use.   I prefer
the former, which  The perl Math::MatrixReal library seems to like the later.
Just note the order.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matrix and what the terms actually mean...

From the povray matrix page..
  http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/matrix.htm

Generally a matrix is defined (at least in Povray) as...

             | A.x  A.y  A.z  0 |
             | B.x  B.y  B.z  0 |
             | C.x  C.y  C.z  0 |
             | D.x  D.y  D.z  1 |

This can be thought of a a matrix of four (row) vectors A, B, C, D
where   A = | A.x, A.y, A.z, 0 | etc.  (NB: A.x is the x component of A)

What this matrix does is wrap the 3D space so that the X axis moves (rotates,
scales, shear, etc) to vector A, ditto for Y -> B and Z -> C.  The last vector
D is the new location for the Origin (translate).

As the page above specifies this means that if you create a set of orthogonal
vectors A,B,C general rotations are very easy to do, and goes on to provide a
two part solution to rotating any general vector to any other general vector
(while retaining an general up direction).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Orthogonal Matrices

A matrix is orthogonal if each of the three vectors making up the matrix
are orthogonal. That is they are all perpenducular to each other.

This is true of all rotation matrices (no scaling or shear).

What is interesting is that the inverse of such matrices is also its
transpose. And that matrix in itself is also orthogonal.

This means if we have a rotation matix

             | A.x  A.y  A.z |
             | B.x  B.y  B.z |
             | C.x  C.y  C.z |

To rotate the x,y,z axises to the A,B,C vectors, then it so happens that
the inverse (rotate A,B,C vectors to the x,y,z axises) is the matrixes
transpose (diagonal mirror).

             | A.x  B.x  C.x |
             | A.y  B.y  C.y |
             | A.z  B.z  C.z |

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rotation Matrices are...

   Normilized    or   Each row or column are unit vectors (vector length = 1)
   Orthogonal    or   Dot product of any row to to any other row
                       or column to column    is  0
         EG: All row or column vectors are perpendicular to each other
   Its Inverse is also its Transpose (due to orthogonality)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rotation Matrix about axis (x,y,z) and angle a

Given that   s = sin(a)   c = cos(a)   t = (1 - cos(a))
and   x, y, z  defines the axis you want to rotate around
then, the rotation matrix is...

             | txx+c    txy+sz    txz-sy |
         R = | txy-sz   tyy+c     tyz+sx |
             | txz+sy   tyz-sx    tzz+c  |

For very small angles (and you later occasionally re-normalize)
A technique often used for interactive rotations using a mouse.
Then     s = sin(a) => a   c = cos(a) => 1  t => 0
and thus rotation becomes
                 |  1    za   -ya |
             R = | -za   1     xa |
                 |  ya  -xa    1  |

Given a orthogonal rotation matrix
Then the axis and angle of rotation can be found using...

 cos(a) = (  R[0][0] + R[1][1] + R[2][2] - 1 ) / 2

 axis  =  ( R[1][2]-R[2][1],  R[2][0]-R[0][2],  R[0][1]-R[1][0] ) / 2*sin(a)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Rotatation of  a unit vector V to unit vector W
(rotation in same plain as both vectors - ie: the minimal rotation)

This is complex and difficult if you try to generate it using the
above general axis and angle method.   The following generates it faster
and more simply, without need for sin() and cosin() functions, using the
meaning of the three vectors in a roatation matrix.

To do this requires three steps...

 1/ Matrix to rotate the Vector V onto some arbatary axis (eg: X)
    but such that the vector W also rotates to W' in the XY plan!
 2/ One to rotate about the Z axis so that the rotated vector V'
    (which is now at the X axis) is rotated to W' in that frame work.
 3/ Rotate back to the original axis frame work by using the
    inverse (transpose) of the original rotation.

First Step
 It is easier to calculate the last step and invert the matrix, so...

 We need to find two more unit vectors orthogonal to the original
 vector V.  One of these vectors must be the axis of rotation
 so it can be moved to the Z axis for the second step.

 Find the axis of rotation N
            N = normalised ( V x W )
 And the other orthogonal axis to complete the axis frame work.
            M = N x V     (note M is unit length as N and V are orthoginal)
 alturnativally...
            M = normailzed( V x W x V )

 to rotate the X Y Z axis to this frame work would thus be...
                 | Vx, Vy, Vz |
             Q = | Mx, My, Mz |      (NB: a matrix of row vectors)
                 | Nx, Ny, Nz |
 But for this step we want to do the oppisite!  So inverse the orthogonal
 matrix by transposing (diagonal flip). So the first step is....
             transpose(Q)

Second Step
 The new location of V (or V') which is now the X axis, needs to be rotated
 around Z (now the axis of rotation), to the new location of W or W'

          W' =   W * transpose(Q)

 As the Z axis does not rotate we only need the new location of the Y
 axis in this step to complete this step.

          Y' =  W' Zrotate(90deg)
             =  Z x W'

 The actual rotaton matrix in this axis framework is thus...
              | W'x, W'y, W'z |
          T = | Y'x, Y'y, Y'z |
              | Zx,  Zy,  Zz  |    <- This is just (0, 0, 1)

Third Step
 We just rotate back to the original coordinate system...
 This was the original matrix  Q  calculated in step one.


The completed rotation matrix is thus..

      Rotate_V_to_W =  R  =  transpose(Q) * T * Q


===============================================================================

The following is vector stuff, not matrix...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Distance of a point to a line.

Given line AB,  Point C some distance away.
Minimim distance of C to line (perpendicular to line)

  r =    (AB . AC)  /  |AB|^2

WRONG: that is the distance of C from A in the direction of A to B!
That is length along the line!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/info/graphics/matrix_vector.hints

Some info on Matrix & Quaternion... need to consolidate with the other posts

2009-03-26T02:03:00.001-07:00

http://www.j3d.org/matrix_faq/matrfaq_latest.html

Perl RegEx reference

2009-03-26T00:57:00.001-07:00

Conventions

The following conventions are used in the examples.

   metacharacter(s) ;; the metacharacters column specifies the regex syntax being demonstrated
 =~ m//           ;; indicates a regex match operation in perl  
 =~ s///          ;; indicates a regex substitution operation in perl

Also worth noting is that these regular expressions are all Perl-like syntax. Standard POSIX regular expressions are different.

[edit] Examples

Unless otherwise indicated, the following examples conform to the Perl programming language, release 5.8.8, January 31, 2006. The syntax and conventions used in these examples coincide with that of other programming environments as well (e.g., see Java in a Nutshell - Page 213, Python Scripting for Computational Science - Page 320, Programming PHP - Page 106 ).

Metacharacter(s)	Description	Example Note that all the if statements return a TRUE value
.	Normally matches any character except a newline. Within square brackets the dot is literal.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/...../) { print "$string1 has length >= 5\n"; }
( )	Groups a series of pattern elements to a single element. When you match a pattern within parentheses, you can use any of $1, $2, ... later to refer to the previously matched pattern.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/(H..).(o..)/) { print "We matched '$1' and '$2'\n"; } Output: We matched 'Hel' and 'o W';
+	Matches the preceding pattern element one or more times.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/l+/) { print "There are one or more consecutive letter \"l\"'s in $string1\n"; } Output: There are one or more consecutive letter "l"'s in Hello World
?	Matches the preceding pattern element zero or one times.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/H.?e/) { print "There is an 'H' and a 'e' separated by "; print "0-1 characters (Ex: He Hoe)\n"; }
?	Modifies the *, +, or {M,N}'d regexp that comes before to match as few times as possible.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/(l.+?o)/) { print "The non-greedy match with 'l' followed by one or "; print "more characters is 'llo' rather than 'llo wo'.\n"; }
*	Matches the preceding pattern element zero or more times.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/el*o/) { print "There is an 'e' followed by zero to many "; print "'l' followed by 'o' (eo, elo, ello, elllo)\n"; }
{M,N}	Denotes the minimum M and the maximum N match count.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/l{1,2}/) { print "There exists a substring with at least 1 "; print "and at most 2 l's in $string1\n"; }
[...]	Denotes a set of possible character matches.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/[aeiou]+/) { print "$string1 contains one or more vowels.\n"; }
\|	Separates alternate possibilities.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/(Hello\|Hi\|Pogo)/) { print "At least one of Hello, Hi, or Pogo is "; print "contained in $string1.\n"; }
\b	Matches a word boundary.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/llo\b/) { print "There is a word that ends with 'llo'\n"; } else { print "There are no words that end with 'llo'\n"; }
\w	Matches an alphanumeric character, including "_".	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/\w/) { print "There is at least one alphanumeric "; print "character in $string1 (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _)\n"; }
\W	Matches a non-alphanumeric character, excluding "_".	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/\W/) { print "The space between Hello and "; print "World is not alphanumeric\n"; }
\s	Matches a whitespace character (space, tab, newline, form feed)	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/\s.*\s/) { print "There are TWO whitespace characters, which may"; print " be separated by other characters, in $string1"; }
\S	Matches anything BUT a whitespace.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/\S.*\S/) { print "There are TWO non-whitespace characters, which"; print " may be separated by other characters, in $string1"; }
\d	Matches a digit, same as [0-9].	$string1 = "99 bottles of beer on the wall."; if ($string1 =~ m/(\d+)/) { print "$1 is the first number in '$string1'\n"; } Output: 99 is the first number in '99 bottles of beer on the wall.'
\D	Matches a non-digit.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/\D/) { print "There is at least one character in $string1"; print " that is not a digit.\n"; }
^	Matches the beginning of a line or string.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/^He/) { print "$string1 starts with the characters 'He'\n"; }
$	Matches the end of a line or string.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/rld$/) { print "$string1 is a line or string "; print "that ends with 'rld'\n"; }
\A	Matches the beginning of a string (but not an internal line).	$string1 = "Hello\nWorld\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/\AH/) { print "$string1 is a string "; print "that starts with 'H'\n"; }
\Z	Matches the end of a string (but not an internal line).	$string1 = "Hello\nWorld\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/d\n\Z/) { print "$string1 is a string "; print "that ends with 'd\\n'\n"; }
[^...]	Matches every character except the ones inside brackets.	$string1 = "Hello World\n"; if ($string1 =~ m/[^abc]/) { print "$string1 contains a character other than "; print "a, b, and c\n"; }

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression_examples

Dynamics tutorial

2009-03-24T02:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.tutorvista.com/content/physics/physics-iii/rigid-body/rigid-body-center-mass.php

Physically based animation

2009-03-22T02:46:00.000-07:00

Slides from Cornell:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs567/2007sp/

Which leads to these information:

http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~parent/animation/index1.html

And these Pixar Research papers are great read:

http://www.pixar.com/companyinfo/research/pbm2001/

Free vector images (icons)

2009-03-21T12:41:00.001-07:00

http://www.greepit.com/2009/03/21/45-best-icons-vectors-other-graphics-resources/

Switcheasy - thumbtack size mic

2009-03-21T03:59:00.000-07:00

Perfect!!!!

http://www.macworld.com/article/139477/2009/03/thumbtacksmic.html

Semester 2: Them

2009-03-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

Animation
Prof Q

"How's my english? Ok?"
"A lot of maths har? It's not my fault. It's your fault. You chose engineering."
"Ah-har! Let's prove that! Good!"
"So we've proven that! Great. Good. Hehe. Maths again? Well, it is after all the tradition now."
"If you are going to do research on computer vision, you will definitely hear of this guy... And use his snake method and wavelet form... Clever clever guy." (in awe)

VR
Prof Fox

"I can't help you there if your partner is a virtual partner..." Laughs to himself.
-When I told him I am not sure if my partner still wants me in her team for the paper reading.

"Here let me show you. If you sweep in parallel from x-axis, this polo mint will look like it's colliding with this object. But iterate the sweep through all 3 axis and you will realise it was just visual occlusion... Take polo at own risk. Hehe." Pops a mint.

He does all the yar and says idea as "ide" like a typical german guy.

Common mathematical pdf

2009-03-19T23:44:00.000-07:00

Ha... I was going scanning for k-means algorithm and stumbled on this guy's site.

Very very nice. He's more into data mining so his algorithms' mostly on clustering and search.

http://www.autonlab.org/tutorials/index.html

Also like his humour:

Primary goal in life: Occasion to use the phrase: "Let me through---I'm a Computer Scientist!"

The best way to understand

2009-03-16T10:21:00.001-07:00

... is immersion.

Either by reading or obsessing over it.

Semi-implicit Euler method

2009-03-16T10:09:00.000-07:00

The semi-implicit Euler method produces an approximate discrete solution by iterating

v_{n+1} = v_n + g(t_n, x_n) \, \Delta t \quad

x_{n+1} = x_n + f(t_n, v_{n+1}) \, \Delta t \quad

where Δt is the time step and t_n = t_0 + n\,\Delta t is the time after n steps.

The difference with the standard Euler method is that the semi-implicit Euler method uses vn + 1 in the equation for xn + 1, while the Euler method uses vn.

The semi-implicit Euler is a first-order integrator, just as the standard Euler method. This means that it commits a global error of the order of Δt. However, the semi-implicit Euler method is a symplectic integrator, unlike the standard method. As a consequence, the semi-implicit Euler method almost conserves the energy (when the Hamiltonian is time-independent). Often, the energy increases steadily when the standard Euler method is applied, making it far less accurate.

From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symplectic_Euler_method

3GPP Specifications Numbering

2009-03-16T03:30:00.001-07:00

http://www.3gpp.org/specification-numbering

Quaternion

2009-03-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

Involving 3D rotation.

Beginners start here:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1095.asp

Sony Vegas wins hands down.

2009-03-13T08:58:00.000-07:00

Lovely!

However, I just realised our happy dancing music was quite crap and turns out to be actually creepy. SO I've replace it with:

More on:

http://movie-tv-reviews.blogspot.com/

I love being asian. Look no further than any asian female music and it's all kawaii!!

Sony Vegas vs blender

2009-03-13T05:12:00.000-07:00

Now in my impatient attempt to edit my animation short, I want to use something clever but intuitive (overated word these days).

How I wanted to use blender. I mean wow... blender is opensource and includes non-linear editting? I am impressed... But using it is a bitch! I tried following the instructions below... Too complicated for my brain to adhere.

http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/04/20/video-editing-with-blender/

So gotten a trial of Sony Vegas 7 (unfortunate eh? Since I am still on Windows 2000). Let's see who will win.

Importing AVI to iMovie

2009-03-12T01:09:00.000-07:00

This animation project has given me a thousand and one "a-har" moments, I've stopped being perplexed.

SO how??? Here I am with scene 1 - 5 ready to for audio editing and the idiot just won't add the clips!

Turns out I will need to convert it to an older avi version for iMovie to recognise and import properly... Wokay...

Follow this instructions: http://www.helium.com/items/1255708-how-to-convert-video-for-imovie

Ok, the above doesn't work. And MPG2 video that's muxed will not import into iMovies either. WHaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1372

But I should use expert settings when exporting the movie:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=302197

I've totally given up on using iMovie now....

Creating dust particles?

2009-03-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

Oh... dust particles... how you eluded me....

The steps should be:
Create curve.
Particles --> Create emitter.

Then have fun from there onwards... But oh well...

http://forums.creativecow.net/archivethread/2/761053

http://www.highend3d.com/boards/index.php?showtopic=236247

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-416001.html

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/tutorials/P-maya/T-Maya-Dynamics-Transforming-objects-using-magic-star-dust-particles/ID-119/

This swinburne institution is really something... but the name... aiyo....

3D text in Maya

2009-03-08T01:27:00.001-08:00

We wanted an end credit ala Pixar. 3D words, and our protagonist messing/playing with it.

So we had to import the lettering from either Photoshop or Illustrator. We went with Photoshop as described in the tutorial below:
http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-64.htm

Besides that, we also need to extrude the text. We've used Surfaces: Surfaces--> Loft and Surfaces--> Planar. Then group the each letter together.

However, from the same author, there's another way of doing it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJwNOOmkZuU

Wrestling with Maya

2009-02-28T03:09:00.000-08:00

Ha....

What a load of crap... We jumped in without even knowing how to navigate maya... Haiz...

Anyhow... This is an important discovery for the rigging pipeline:

1. Align:
a. Model (textured)
b. Joints
c. Nurbs circle

How to align? Make sure all the 3 above are at point of origin. Check the attributes (Ctrl+A) on the node. I had to realign the joints manually, then translate the model & circle accordingly. But it was not so hard after realising what to do. It's the "How do I do this" that really wasted a lot of my time.

Then:

Modify-->Center Pivot
Modify-->Freeze Transformation

Constraint!!!

Joints + Circle

Constrain-->Orient
Constrain-->Points

Now follow this process to the T!

ALWAYS SET THE IK FIRST BEFORE binding the skin!

Skin --> Bind Skin --> Smooth Bind

This way, the nurbs circle will create a marionette (? wiki check later) for controlling instead of controlling the individual joints.

Then Paint Yer Skin Weights to the joints........... Grr... I did this so many times I want to cry....

Skin-->Edit Smooth Skin-->Paint Skin Weights

There's an "A-har!" here. Always start from the outermost joint, working your way in... And always toggle hold weight.

On painting weights.
Personally, I like to flood with full black bg, then work in the selected joint area.

After that, check the attributes of the joints. Ctrl+A.
Sometimes, this could be turned off. Right Click to see if it's toggled on. X=On.

The most important thing here for natural looking joint bends is the:
Smooth Skin Parameters!!!!

So take care of that here.

Quick: Maya Tutorial

2009-02-26T01:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.wonderhowto.com/software/autodesk-maya-video/

This really saved me in a lot of ways. Thank you, wonderhowto.

For more than the basics:

http://www.wonderhowto.com/search/maya/by-most-popular/

Windows- Adding new fonts

2009-02-25T20:30:00.000-08:00

In either:

C:/Windows/Fonts

C:/WINNT/Fonts

add your *.tff files here.

Your fonts will be automatically installed.

Oh well... I am so forgetful I need this.

More on this here: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/qt/photoshopfonts.htm

Understanding the basics of Linux routing

2009-02-19T19:37:00.000-08:00

Great article on linux routing for beginners.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1052888.html