Unsticking Stuck LCD Pixels: A Script

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 @ 4:41pm

As I just recently sug­gested I might do, I have made a script for auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­at­ing color cycling ani­ma­tions of arbi­trary sizes and speeds.

The script can be used at: http://blog.gwax.com/files/rgbanim.php

The script accepts the para­me­ters height, width, and delay, so it can also be used in more inter­est­ing ways. Feel free to play around (if you crash it, let me know).

Ex.: http://blog.gwax.com/files/rgbanim.php?width=100&height=100&delay=7

Or, bet­ter still:


 - Width
 - Height
 - Delay

For the curi­ous amongst you, the rel­a­tively sim­ple code follows:

< ?php
if(isset($_GET['delay']) && is_numeric($_GET['delay']))
	$delay = max((int)$_GET['delay'], 1);
else
	$delay = 10;
 
if(isset($_GET['width']) && is_numeric($_GET['width']))
	$width = max(min((int)$_GET['width'], 1920), 1);
else
	$width = 320;
 
if(isset($_GET['height']) && is_numeric($_GET['height']))
	$height = max(min((int)$_GET['height'], 1080), 1);
else
	$height = 240;
 
$out = new Imagick();
$out->newImage($width, $height, '#FF0000', 'gif');
$out->setImageDelay($delay);
$out->newImage($width, $height, '#00FF00', 'gif');
$out->setImageDelay($delay);
$out->newImage($width, $height, '#0000FF', 'gif');
$out->setImageDelay($delay);
 
header('Content-type: image/gif');
echo $out->getImagesBlob();
?>

Posted in progging | 4 Comments »

Unsticking Stuck LCD Pixels (Redux)

Friday, December 4th, 2009 @ 6:20pm

My pre­vi­ous arti­cle on Unsticking Stuck LCD Pixels hav­ing been rather a hit and hav­ing been asked for an alter­nate gif image, I fig­ured I should revisit the topic briefly.

The ani­mated gif images were cre­ated with ImageMagick. Having long since for­got­ten how I did it last time, I reac­quainted myself with ImageMagick and have devel­oped this lit­tle one liner:

convert -delay 20 -loop 0 -size 100x100 xc:#FF0000 xc:#00FF00 xc:#0000FF rgbanim.gif

This com­mand will gen­er­ate an ani­mated gif to use in attempt­ing to fix stuck pix­els. Key para­me­ters are:

Image size can be changed by chang­ing the size para­me­ter.
ex.: -size 640x480

Cycling speed can be var­ied by chang­ing the delay para­me­ter.
ex.: -delay 7

So, if my orig­i­nal images don’t serve your pur­poses, go grab a copy of ImageMagick and make one of your own. (If I feel ambi­tious, I might hack together a script to auto-generate these gif images)

UPDATE: Apparently, I was suf­fi­ciently ambi­tious.

Posted in waksman | No Comments »

The truth about tomorrow

Sunday, September 27th, 2009 @ 5:03pm

Tomorrow has not been yes­ter­day yet for quite some time to be.

Posted in inanity | 1 Comment »

A post-apocalyptic beginning

Friday, September 25th, 2009 @ 7:12pm

I just came up with what I think is a good first line for a book and a not quite so good sec­ond line:

“Our par­ents used to ask each other if they remem­ber where they were when a man first walked on the moon or when the Berlin Wall fell; we used to ask each other where we were when the World Trade Center fell; now, if we can find any­one to ask, we ask where we were when the world ended.”

“I remem­ber where I was when the world ended; I was in a McDonald’s, and I didn’t even like McDonald’s.”

Posted in compositions | No Comments »

Griffon Sketch

Friday, August 21st, 2009 @ 1:39pm

A sketch of a griffin standing in watch over a savanna

A sketch of a grif­fin stand­ing in watch over a savanna

This is fur­ther art sketched on my N810 while idle in life. I’ve always found griffins (which I appar­ently can’t always spell cor­rectly) to be fan­tas­ti­cally cool myth­i­cal beasts, right up there with hydras, I’d say. This image is of a grif­fin up on high observ­ing its savanna hunt­ing grounds. I kind of feel like griffins, were they to exist, would have been native to Africa; you could say that my land­scape in this image has African savanna influ­ences (ish).

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SkyzCastle Sketch

Friday, August 21st, 2009 @ 1:31pm

Sketch of a mountain top castle under siege from flying machines

Sketch of a moun­tain top cas­tle under siege from fly­ing machines

First off, I have to admit that I don’t know why I decided to give this file a file­name of “SkyzCastle” except that it must have seemed appro­pri­ate at the time that I made it. I’m about a month behind on post­ing images so I really can’t say what my moti­va­tions were at the time. This sketch is, I would say, ok at best, but I am try­ing to adopt a pol­icy of post­ing my art here. In case it isn’t clear, this is a cas­tle on a moun­tain top that is under siege/assault from bal­loons and ornithopters.

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Lighthouse Sketch

Friday, August 21st, 2009 @ 1:18pm

Sketch of a landscape with lighthouse made on my N810

Sketch of a land­scape with light­house made on my N810

Another image from the depart­ment of sketches that I’ve made on my N810 while pass­ing time *cough*in meetings*cough*. This, as should likely be obvi­ous, is a sketch of a light­house on a cliff above some rocky waters near some rel­a­tively peace­ful ocean waters. Enjoy.

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Snark Sharking

Thursday, July 30th, 2009 @ 5:22pm

How much snark should a snark shark snark if a snark shark can snark snark?

A snark shark should snark as much snark as a snark shark can snark, if a snark shark can snark snark.

Posted in inanity | 2 Comments »

Further spyjinks

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 @ 2:38pm

I am not cur­rently at lib­erty to dis­cuss where I have been or what I have been doing, which is not meant to imply or sug­gest that where I have been or what I have been doing is of suf­fi­cient impor­tance or note­wor­thi­ness as to war­rant or jus­tify its serv­ing as the topic for a dis­cus­sion were I to be at lib­erty to dis­cuss such mat­ters, which I am not.

Posted in inanity | 2 Comments »

Baldr vs. Watermelon

Monday, July 6th, 2009 @ 7:26pm

We’ve been teach­ing Baldr that destroy­ing water­mel­ons is a good thing. “Why?” you might ask and the answer is clear: because Baldr attack­ing water­mel­ons is awe­some. On account of awe­some­ness and the fact that we actu­ally had two water­mel­ons lying around, there are two sets of water­melon destruc­tion involved. Proof follows.

(Matt helped a lit­tle with the sec­ond watermelon)

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Boat Sketch

Monday, July 6th, 2009 @ 6:42pm

Sketch of a small sailboat made on my N810

Sketch of a small sail­boat made on my N810

This is a small sketch of a per­son sail­ing a small boat that I made on my N810’s touch­screen while pass­ing some time recently. I’m rather pleased by this lit­tle sketch so I thought that I’d toss it up here.

Posted in compositions | 1 Comment »

On airplane bandwidth and latency

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 @ 5:21pm

Having recently used Virgin America to trans­port myself across the coun­try, I was very pleased to have Internet access while I was in the air. This, how­ever, is not the sort of air­plane band­width and latency that I am going to talk about. Instead, I would like to dis­cuss a com­par­i­son between the band­width and latency of typ­i­cal Internet con­nec­tions with those asso­ci­ated with tak­ing a hard drive on an airplane.

Let’s say we com­pare a high speed (15Mbit) DSL con­nec­tion to tak­ing a mod­er­ately large hard drive (500GB) on a plane for data rates between San Francisco and Boston (~7 hours):

Bandwidth:
DSL: 15 Mbit/s
Airplane: {{500 GB} / {7 hr}} * {{1 hr} / {60 min}} * {{1 min} / {60 s}} *{{8000 Mb} / {1 GB}} approx 150 Mbit/s

Latency:
DSL: ~100ms
Airplane: >7 hours

For fun, let’s try some­thing a lit­tle big­ger on both sides: OC-768 vs Boeing 747-400F plane filled with 2TB hard drives.

Bandwidth:
OC-768: 38 Gbit/s
747-400F: {{250,000 lbs} / {7 hr}} * {{2 TB} / {1.7 lbs}} * {{1 hr} / {60 min}} * {{1 min} / {60 s}} *{{8 Tb} / {1 TB}} approx 93 Tbit/s

Latency:
OC-768: <100ms
747-400F: >7 hours

Clearly, hard dri­ves on an air­plane will win in a purely band­width dri­ven appli­ca­tion but air­planes suf­fer from incred­i­bly high latency. You will have to decide which is best choice based on your par­tic­u­lar use scenario.

Posted in computers, intzorweb | No Comments »

Transformers 2: not good but awesomest

Monday, June 29th, 2009 @ 4:00pm

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Transformers 2) is not what one would refer to as a good movie in the sense that Forrest Gump or Seven Samurai might be con­sid­ered good. Transformers 2 is, how­ever, an awe­some movie in the sense that sum­mer block­busters are designed to be awe­some. It’s pretty typ­i­cal to see a movie that’s got crazy effects and action but with a story/plot that mostly exists to give pause and glue to hold things together, which is some­what far­ci­cal, in my opinion.

The log­i­cal con­clu­sion to the trend of sum­mer block­busters is that story/plot isn’t actu­ally that impor­tant and, if done wrong, can really drag a movie down. So, what hap­pens if you reach that log­i­cal con­clu­sion and make a movie that is an open acknowl­edg­ment of the friv­o­lity of plot in sum­mer block­busters? You end up with some­thing that is a gor­geous, shiny, mov­ing piece of art, that pleases your senses but not your intel­lec­tu­al­ism; you end up with some­thing that every tra­di­tional movie-watcher will think is ter­ri­ble as they hunt for plot and a, so to speak, good movie.

This is the case for Transformers 2. Critics, in look­ing for plot and tra­di­tional qual­ity, have failed to see the gor­geous, shiny, sense-satiating, mon­ster of an expe­ri­ence that Transformers 2 is. The crit­ics made a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence with Speed Racer, which was not very com­pelling but nonethe­less exces­sively beautiful.

In addi­tion to the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence that Transformers 2 is, its qual­ity has also inspired, what is prob­a­bly the finest review of any­thing, ever. io9 puts it quite well in their review, Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie, which I com­pletely agree with. Excerpt below:

Transformers: ROTF has mostly got­ten pretty hideous reviews, but that’s because peo­ple don’t under­stand that this isn’t a movie, in the con­ven­tional sense. It’s an assault on the senses, a bar­rage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You pro­ceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair fol­li­cle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan coun­tries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

In short, read this review; ignore the other reviews; go see Transformers 2; get over­stim­u­lated; and enjoy the cul­mi­na­tion of all that is the sum­mer blockbuster.

Posted in movies & tv | No Comments »

[PROTOTYPE]

Monday, June 29th, 2009 @ 3:24pm

At the sug­ges­tion of my good friend Rodin, I grabbed a copy of the game [PROTOTYPE] (which I am going to refer to as “Prototype” because the brack­ets and cap­i­tal­iza­tion are annoy­ing to type) for my Xbox 360. Rodin’s sug­ges­tion was a very good one and so I am pass­ing it on to all of you; Prototype is awe­some, you should go get a copy and start play­ing it.

Discussing the story behind Prototype won’t really give you a sense of why you should be play­ing it so, instead, let me start off by say­ing that it’s a game where you can jump kick heli­copters. Let me say that again, you can jump kick heli­copters; this includes apaches, and you can destroy them by so doing. Other things you can do include con­sum­ing peo­ple for their knowl­edge and pow­ers, shoot­ing spikes through the ground to destroy entire city blocks, or throw­ing tanks at mutated mon­sters. All of this mas­sive destruc­tion and awe­some­ness takes place within the con­text of being able to run up the sides of build­ings so as to jump and glide from one to the next. Your char­ac­ter is truly super­hu­man in a ridicu­lous and com­pletely amoral man­ner; you will con­sume civil­ians just to restore a lit­tle bit of health.

The con­trols are tight, if a lit­tle com­plex, the cam­era is ok, and the game­play is as cathar­tic as video games get. I’ve sunk, and enjoyed, enough hours of Prototype to say that it’s worth the $60 that I paid for it. It doesn’t mat­ter what you’re play­ing these days, you should put it down and go get a copy of Prototype; unless you’re bor­ing, you’ll thank your­self for doing so.

Posted in video games | No Comments »

Oubliette (was Abyss)

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 @ 3:49pm

I recently con­sid­ered the nam­ing of abyss and decided that the word oubli­ette made a bet­ter name. Oubliette is a much more appro­pri­ate descrip­tion in under­stand­ing the theme and pur­pose of the machine as a replace­ment for thevoid.

The name change hap­pened a while ago but I’m bring­ing it up now because oubli­ette is on my mind. Having just pur­chased six Western Digital 1.5TB dri­ves and another SATA con­troller, it is finally time to obso­lete the last rem­nants of thevoid. This actu­ally stirs some amount of sen­ti­men­tal­ity in me but, even though the hard­ware and oper­at­ing sys­tem are no longer that of thevoid, oubli­ette will carry the pur­pose and data for­ward. It is almost as though oubli­ette is my ghola thevoid.

For those with tech­ni­cal inter­est, the dri­ves will be arranged in an mdadm RAID6 array with luks dm-crypt. This should pro­vide me with 6TB, secure stor­age, and two dri­ves worth of failsafe.

Posted in computers | No Comments »

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 @ 4:27pm

Thanks to hunch, I recently dis­cov­ered the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, or just Gurren Lagann, which I have really been enjoying.

Gurren Lagann is, at its heart, a mecha anime and, as any­one who knows my love of Transformers and Battletech will under­stand, that is a plus in my book. The art is great and the bat­tle scenes are just awe­some. On top of that, there are some pretty great char­ac­ters in the show; I am espe­cially fond of Kamina. Also, Gurren Lagann has already run its full 27 episode course, which means that I can watch it and enjoy a degree of com­ple­tion, which is a thing that I really enjoy being able to do.

As far as anime series go, Gurren Lagann is the first one that I’ve seen and really enjoyed since Trigun. I wouldn’t say that Gurren Lagann is not Samurai Champloo cal­iber but it’s cer­tainly worth hunt­ing down and giv­ing a shot.

Posted in movies & tv | 2 Comments »

Sleep and stress: inversely correlated

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 @ 1:10am

I have noticed in my life that there is an inverse rela­tion between the quan­tity of sleep that I get and the degree to which I am expe­ri­enc­ing stress. It is unclear to me in which direc­tion causal­ity lies and it may be noth­ing more than a cor­re­la­tion but I recall times in my past where I went as many as three nights with­out sleep. All but the last of those such times were before I under­stood the sen­sa­tion of stress – such is my dis­con­nect from my emo­tional state.

As I think about it, I am inclined to sus­pect that not sleep­ing is a sort of cop­ing mech­a­nism. In the extreme of those three night vig­ils, I would reach a level of exhaus­tion that was so strong and per­va­sive as to be able to wash over any other stress that I might have been feel­ing. Eventually, I would sleep and the rest would be needed to such a degree as to make every­thing else seem insubstantial.

It seems as though, for quite a long time, I have had to approach my emo­tional state from an indi­rect point of view; suss­ing out how I might be feel­ing by watch­ing my reac­tions and back-tracking to the most appro­pri­ate descrip­tor for my state. This is an arrange­ment that I have come to accept and although it often works well enough, it can be a lit­tle slow as far as pro­cess­ing is concerned.

I’m sure that there exist other thoughts on these mat­ters and things that I might express but, mostly, I am find­ing the issue rather per­ti­nent at this (just after) one in the morn­ing time. I intended to go to sleep a num­ber of hours ago and, at this point, I will not get much sleep, which causes me to sus­pect that I am avoid­ing sleep in some man­ner cor­re­lated to stress. Unsurprisingly, this con­tin­ues to be my stan­dard way of being; such is my life, I guess.

Posted in waksman | No Comments »

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