Little Spikey Land - December 2003

Right so I've only got 2000 words done so far, but at least I have a cute digital camera now:

Also did a bit of (unassesed) work for molecular and quantum computation. Wrote three little (less than 4K) cellular automata applets: Conways Game of Life, Sand Piles and Excitable Lattices. It made me feel a bit better to right some code with (sort of) a purpose.

Edited on: Sunday, December 28, 2003 10:16 PM
posted at 10:14 PM John

Well I thought I'd try out themasking fluid I procured at the weekend. It's handy for covering stuff up, so you can then do backgrounds. It's basically just watered down copydex, so once it's try you can just peel it off the paper.

So here is a little picture of some dancin' loon with loads of splatters in the background. The masking fluid worked pretty well, though I think I missed a copy of spots on the arms.

posted at 2:38 PM John

Duncan asked me what shellac was, as I had mentioned it was in some inks. So now I know. No wonder those inks cost a lot.

Sort of reminds me of bacteriorhodopsin, an apparently very light sensitive substance that is produced by certain halobacteria. It could revolutionise molecular computation, but as of yet we still need the bacteria to make it for us.

posted at 11:54 PM John

Got off to a better start on my report and have now passed 500 words. That's not a lot, but it is still something. Hopefully I'll be inspired by the movies on TV over xmas and get some more done soon.

Also drew a devil girl. She is meant to be looking backwards, but her neck seems not quite right. Still at least now I have a good dark red to use.

posted at 11:39 PM John

Well now that I'm on holiday I'm meant to be very busy writing my MSc project report and so on (I am), but I have been procrastinating slightly so drawn a few more cute girls.

posted at 8:08 PM John

Well now with the release of the latest version of JPL I have finally got restoring from backups implemented. People have been asking me to do it for a while, but it's only recently that I have had the time and a spare Psion to backup, then wipe, then restore.

In principle this was the only thing that MacConnect could do that JPL could not, so although it's not quite equivalent to PsiWin yet JPL is definitely on the way!

posted at 8:04 PM John

Well I had my presentation for my mini-project on Wednesday. I was quite nervous, but it seemed to go fairly well. Anyway, because I used Latex for preparing my slides I was easily able to make a PDF of the slides. The slides are not very informative, as I did not want to end up just reading from them, but they do have some references on them and some pretty graphs too.

posted at 11:29 PM John

Found this handy library, for Python, called Matplotlib. Basically it gives you a set of functions that work in a very similar fashion to Matlab. I've been using it for automatically generating graphs of the data from my simulations:

The library lets you output as png's (handy for viewing) or as ps (postscript - very handy for when I do my report in latex). Haven't messed around with the formatting yet, as can be seen by the fact that the bottom axis is a bit messed up, but at this stage having graphs I can glance at quickly is more useful.

posted at 7:02 PM John

A Brown Skirted Girl.

posted at 12:47 AM John

Well looks like my Uni Website just came online. Not much to look at yet, only a link to the DNA Sim I wrote for Molecular and Quantum Computation.

Hopefully I've have a few more things on it soon. Maybe some results from my mini-project even.

posted at 12:45 AM John

Came accross e-kat and madboy, which is a cute little gif animation.

posted at 9:55 PM John