In an attempt to both do more photomosaics and to post more often, I am going to try to do a different photomosaic every week. Comments will definitely help keep this going, as well as ideas for new cards to do. To avoid slowing my main page (and rss feed) to a crawl, you’ll have to click through to get the mosaic.
This week’s card is a card whose art made me go “whoa” when I first saw it, Mana Cylix.
In a sort of strange twist about metablogging, I started my research blog today. My research blog is going to have an entirely different feel than this blog and will mostly serve to be a journal of all the stuff I’m doing with my research – both for me and my advisor’s benefit. That being said, the discussions there will be at a fairly high level, with the goal being primarily to log my work and my results rather than to explain them. You are, of course, all welcome to read it, and if you have questions, well, I always like discussing my research, but it might be best to ask me in person. When you have lots of time. And a whiteboard.
I finished Colors of Chaos the other day; it’s the third and final book in the Weapons of Chaos trilogy by Robert E. Vardeman, and after it’s all over I have a great appreciation for this series. I very nearly wrote about each book in turn, but decided that it would be best to roll them all into one larger post. Not only because each book is short (about 200 pages), but also because when my choice came down to whether I wanted to read the next book or write about the one I just finished, my choice always ended up being “read the next book”.
That being said, now that I’m done with the series, here’s what I have to say:
Yesterday, I spent a fair amount of time working on my Warhammer army: gluing swords and guns, swapping arms, arranging units, and generally putting my collection of models into a legal army. The upshot of all of this is that, for me at least, I finally feel like my army is coming together, I have a pretty good feel for what I have, and a good idea of what I would like to get. The downside is I’m out of right hands/arms and I still have stuff to do (in particular, that blood claw biker over there missing a right arm).
At any rate, to solidify what I’ve got and what I want to eventually get, here is my annotated army list (full PDF generated by my database to come later).
So, when I haven’t been working on my research, planning my warhammer army, role-playing, reading, eating, or sleeping, I’ve been playing a bit of Tabula Rasa. For those who missed my post over at Geeky Bastards, I tried Tabula Rasa out a few months back to see check out another non-WoW MMO and really see a bit more of what MMOs had to offer. With Tabula Rasa, I was quite impressed. Here’s a quick rundown of why I think I truly enjoyed this game.
I want to put together a collection of 80s epic fantasy videos, right here on my blog. Anyone who wants to should send me their favorite epic music videos – 80s and fantasy not required, but it should be epic sounding with a matching music video. Preferably with sword fighting, high stakes guitar solos, or other over-the-top imagery and sound.
Help me add more to the list!
The Dune Board Game is in many ways a very great game and a very true adaptation of the Dune Universe to a board game. Unfortunately, this game has a few flaws, not the least of which is the combat system, and a notable imbalance in the abilities of the various houses. So, if I’ve already made my mind up about this game, why blog about it? And what’s with that “Redux” that I tagged on the end of the title…
…Well, in talking with Ian over Winter break, we’ve decided to take a crack at reworking some of the mechanics, while trying to keep it as true as possible to the Dune Universe.
I’ve started looking at what I’ll need to do for my Warhammer Table program, but, in the meantime, I thought I would write about another bit of software that will always be a work in progress: my photomosaic program. At present, this program is not yet complete – it lacks any form of interface, which means that anytime I create a new mosaic, I need to recompile.
At any rate, the purpose of this post is to talk about what this program does, and what challenges I am trying to solve. Later, I’ll get into the particular algorithms I used and why.
One of my primary goals with the Warhammer table is ease of use – I want it to be easy to setup and use; otherwise, no one would do either. That being the case, this article will focus on making setup and calibration as easy as possible by sticking to the following goals:
With those restrictions, it is worth noting the primary problems that need to be solved:
I have to admit, I am a bit of a cynic when it comes to photography these days – it seems that everyone with a digital camera thinks that they are a good photographer. So, when I come across someone who has done some really fantastic work, I definitely like to point it out.
I’ve known Peter since we were both students working for the National Snow and Ice Data Center, so I may have a bit of a bias, but his work reminds me a lot of my grandfather’s. Still, Peter has a style all his own, and his talent really shows through. Thanks Peter!