Posted by matijs
05/12/2004 at 12h10
The first time I saw Mulholland Drive, I only saw
the first part. It made sense to me. Then there was a fire in the
theater.
The second time I saw Mulholland Drive, I saw all of it. The first part
still made sense. Then something weird happened, and I was confused during
the rest of the movie.
Last week, I saw the end of Mulholland Drive for the second time, and
this time I understood it. What I had thought was real, was not, and
suddenly it all made sense.
(Salon
made sense of it too. See the movie first, then read that.)
Maybe I should also see Lost Highway again.
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Posted by matijs
25/11/2004 at 23h42
All this time, it turns out, people using IE5.5 (36 so far this month),
and perhaps IE5.0 (44 so far this month), have been unable to read my
website: The left and right sides of the text were simply cut off. I knew
IE6 didn't show the vertical borders, but at least it showed the whole
text.
Somehow, it feels similar to suddenly finding out you've been walking
around all day with mismatched socks, or a torn shirt — assuming
those things weren't part of your fashion statement. It's simply a little
embarrassing. Anyway, it should all look fine now. The vertical borders
even show up in IE6.
Oh, and I'm working on a new layout, so here are samples before and after, just in case the site
looks completely different when you read this.
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meta, web
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Posted by matijs
07/11/2004 at 01h57
I just noticed entry number 13 wasn’t showing. Of course, which other
entry could it be?
The file had the wrong permissions. I fixed it, so you
can go read it now. Scoot. It’s about writing Gimp
plug-ins.
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meta
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Posted by matijs
07/11/2004 at 01h40
While studying linguistics, I often had to put pictures of syntactic
trees in my papers about generative grammar. I made several systems to draw
these automatically. One of these was a LaTeX package called synttree.
I actually uploaded the version from 1998 to CTAN. That version was clumsy, and the code
was hard to read, a result of my struggles with TeX. I have always wanted
to clean the package up, so it would be easier to extend it if needed.
In 2001 or so, I read an article
from TUGboat that showed me how
to write a parser that I could actually understand after I had written it.
So, I wrote the new parser, and sort of bolted it onto the existing drawing
macros.
Two days ago I finally came back to it. Now, I have a new working
version, much more extendable and cleaner, ready to be uploaded to CTAN.
[Update Dec 9, 2004: The
new version can also be found at
CTAN.]
[Update Jun 11, 2005:
Information on downloading and using the package has been moved to the synttree page.]
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software
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Posted by matijs
04/11/2004 at 22h06
I feel a great need to shut out the world beyond my home. Curtains must
now be closed in the evening, whereas before I wanted them open, even while
sleeping. Lights and heating must be on.
I've decided to limit the intake of news to once per day. I get a
newspaper. Reading that should be enough. Anxiously waiting for more news
all throughout the day will do me no good: Events will not unfold faster,
reasons and explanations will not be found earlier, and I will end up
feeling more frustrated, angry and sad.
Luckily tuesday night brought Gillmore Girls, Sex and the City, and the
OC, all in a row, so I could begin to forget that I live in a country where
people are murdered for speaking their mind.
I will now make a nice bowl of decaf latte.
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Posted by matijs
11/10/2004 at 12h40
As I mentioned, installing Bryar was not
completely straightforward. Luckily, it is architected well, so making the
necessary modifications was easy.
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meta, software
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Posted by matijs
11/10/2004 at 12h05
After my image filtering annoyance day, I
spent some more time on the problem, with more positive results.
First, I found out how to do pixel manipulations properly. It needs some
incantations that are not in the man pages, but are in the source to Gimp's
plugins written in C. For the basic framework of a plug-in, see Gimp-Perl's
documentation and examples. For the rest, see below.
First, of course, you have to load the right modules.
use Gimp ":auto";
use Gimp::Fu;
use Gimp::Feature qw(pdl);
use PDL;
Then, the sub that actually does the work should look something like
this:
sub do_something {
my ($img, $dwb) = @_;
my $w = $dwb->width;
my $h = $dwb->height;
my $gdrawable = $dwb->get;
# make sure we can undo in one step.
gimp_image_undo_group_start($img);
# Read values from the source region, and write them to the
# destination region. The destination region has its dirty and shadow
# bits set.
my $src_rgn = $gdrawable->pixel_rgn(0,0,$w,$h,0,0);
my $dst_rgn = $gdrawable->pixel_rgn(0,0,$w,$h,1,1);
# Get pixel data as a 'piddle'
my $rect = $src_rgn->get_rect($some_x,$some_y,$some_w,$some_h);
# Do something with $rect's data.
# Set pixel data
$dst_rgn->set_rect($rect, $some_x, $some_y);
# Magic incantations found in the C destripe plug-in.
$gdrawable->flush();
$dwb->update(0,0,$w,$h);
$dwb->merge_shadow(1);
gimp_displays_flush();
# make sure we can undo in one step.
gimp_image_undo_group_end($img);
();
}
Be sure to read the documentation for the PDL module. It explains how to
manipulate the piddle with the pixel data. It helps to print part of
the piddle now and then, or its dimensions (using the dims function).
Unfortunately, the method I had come up with to destripe my images
didn't exactly work right. So, I went searching again. This time, I found a
page describing an easy destriping method
using the Gimp.
Since the method has several steps, I decided to
automate it with a plug-in. I am
quite happy with the result: It works on the selected layer, even if it's
invisible, it handles errors gracefully, and it only works on the
selection, if one is present.
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software
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Posted by matijs
30/09/2004 at 21h19
Speaking from a pathetically low sample size, I can conclude that all
ASNs go through a comatose period, where the number of users is clearly
larger than the system's implementation can handle. Friendster had it, but
is now fast again, and Orkut, which was fast, now has it.
The thing is, I'm not really that interested in ASNs, because after logging
on, I'm not sure what I should do there, and talking to complete strangers
seems just as awkward as in real life. Given that, I still would like them
to be fast, for when I do get into the spirit of artificially networking
on-line.
At this point, I wrote the following:
The trouble is of course the fact that all these ASNs are server-based,
which makes them vulnerable to comatosity. What we need is a peer-to-peer
ASN. A kind of FOAF on steroids. With a client that spiders your friends'
friend lists (down to a certain level), and constructs your network on your
machine. Your profile is your web page of course. Maybe some new home-page
providers would spring up to provide the home-page-less with their much
needed profile space.
There should be a way to send messages to other people in your network.
Perhaps each member could publish a public key, and you would encrypt your
message with all the public keys along the route to the person you're
trying to contact, and then send it on its way. Each link in your route
would only accept e-mail for this purpose from their direct friends, so a
real chain linking the sender and the receiver would have to exist.
A similar public key system could help with the accessing of profiles
(yes this contradicts the web page idea). Possibly at most friends of
friends would get to see something not completely public.
I think this sounds great. With some more thinking, it should be
possible to create something that actually works, has al the features of
current ASNs that are actually nice, and avoids all
current annoyances.
So, what's wrong with this idea? How can it be abused?
And then, of course, I started looking around on the FOAF site, and
found out that this is, in fact, not a new idea (except
maybe for the public key bits).
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Posted by matijs
20/09/2004 at 20h37
I have just spent most of this day trying to get nice scans of some of my
photographs. And I'm annoyed.
My father found me a working scanner in the trash. Yes, people throw away
perfectly good scanners. And monitors too. I even threw away a perfectly
good computer once. It was hideously old, and someone else found it in the
trash. I know, because it was gone before the garbage truck came. Anyway,
after a while we managed to arrange for the scanner to actually come to my
house, and after fixing an endianness-problem it actually worked. Note that
I consider fixing endianness-problems fun.
So, what is the problem? The scans are overlayed with a wave
pattern of blue and red. It's a pattern that repeats every 16 rows, and
it's perfectly predictable. It's also very hard to filter out using
standard image tools.
I know almost nothing about image filtering, and I know nothing of
scripting either the Gimp, or ImageMagick. So, while trying to
figure out what I had to do to the image to get it right, I was also trying
to figure out how to do whatever I had to do using the underdocumented
scripting features of these fine programs. Let me qualify that: Gimp's
Script-Fu may be well-documented, but I didn't want to combine the two
things I already didn't know with a programming language I didn't know
(i.e., scheme), so I stayed with the Perl version.
So, I spent a day without much progress (well, the colors look better),
and I'm so annoyed, that while writing this, I smeared garlic on my
keyboard.
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Posted by matijs
15/09/2004 at 22h52
I sometimes think of fun things that should be researched. These are typically topics for things like term papers. At least, I think they are.
Usually I forget about them after half a day or so, and then I'm annoyed
that I didn't write this wonderful idea down. These days, I'm trying to
remember to write things down before I forget them.
The first item on my list of things that should be researched that I have
actually remembered long enough to write down is: The history of french fries
and their sauces.
Some background information on this subject: I was having dinner with
some people from different western cultures recently (Dutch, German,
American), and one of the Americans (my stepfather, in fact) wanted ketchup
with his fries. A friendly discussion ensued, as it had previously, where
we Europeans condemned the tendency of these Americans (and, by gross
generalization, all Americans) to put ketchup on everything. It then turned
to the subject of french fries, and who had first thought of — as
the Americans put it — putting mayonnaise instead of ketchup on
their fries. Hence the present research subject.
Of course, you can just google for it, and find this: The Secret
History of French Fries. It still leaves the sauces, though.
On a related note, in discussions there will often be a point where
someone says: We'll look it up, and somehow, the looking-up never
happens, and we forget about the whole discussion. This is of course one
way to end discussions.
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