The lab section is finally finished. There are just two simple java applets currently: a Brownian motion generator and a geometric series visualization idea. Both applications are not very pretty or stable, lots of work to be done.

The Brownian motion applet is probably the most interesting, if you click “reconstruct” it will generate a new motion. Though the stochastic nature is simple (go North, West, East, or South with equal probability) the visualization is organic and appealing.

I’ll be updating the two applets in the near future, and adding links to their source code (GPL licensed).

It seems like the only times that I actually make a blog post, is when I destroy my old website and resurrect one from scratch… which, coincidentally, is exactly what I’ve just done.

Solid Sushi is now powered by Wordpress, a robust open source content management system (CMS) that I’ve used before. Actually, I had used it on Solidsushi, but then I wanted to get back to my programming roots and code everything myself (in PHP and MySQL). That nonsense lasted for a year with only a few lonely posts, so I figured that moving back to a conventional CMS would save me programming time and allow me to focus on the content.

I’ve slowly been moving my “favorite” artwork from the old site, hopefully it will all be present in the next week.

Well, in some sort of spontaneous programming focus, I decided to actually write something outside of my dank office at work. My real interests with mathematics and art is visualizing abstract concepts — whether they be geometric series, or scantily clad women (they’re abstract for me at least).

So, I wrote a simple java applet (ohh the horror of applets!) that cutely visualizes the convergence and divergence of geometric series. It’s all open source under the GPL (not that anyone actually cares enough to reuse the code)…

Geometric Series Convergence Visualization

Writing this little memo entry highlights my need for some sort of tagging system… I’m writing this in hopes of people with this unique annoyance to be transfered here via the google bot….

Ok. So your coding with QT 4 and using dynamic_cast for your implementations of Qt’s widgets… There’s a very good reason for you not to be doing this… There seem to be some unique issues, and besides — QT has it’s own method of casting which does not require RTTI. In the Porting to QT 4 document on Trolltechs website I noticed a little blurb about the special casts available to you in QT. You’re probably thinking “Yea I know about the qobject_cast” from the QObject documentation on QT’s website. Hold on, my friend! QT has more than just one weird cast, there’s:

• T *qobject_cast(QObject *)
• T qgraphicsitem_cast(QGraphicsItem *)
• T qstyleoption_cast(QStyleOption *)
• T qvariant_cast(const QVariant &)
• T qdbus_cast(const QDBusArgument &)

The one that interested me was qgraphicsitem_cast which is needed because QGraphicsItem does not inherit (indirectly or directly) from QObject. Oh yes, and to add to QT’s idiosyncrasies with casting it seems that if (QGraphicsItem*)->isVisible() returns false (the object is invisible), the cast fails for your subclasses… this might just be related to QT 4.3 though. Alright I’m done with my first geek sarcastic post. Hurrah!

Just in time for the new year I’ve made some substantial updates to the website. I got rather tired of the “externals” sections being so isolated, off in its own little page. So, I integrated that information on the main page, directly below the text you’re currently reading. Most noticeable are the del.icio.us links, which I plan to be updating more frequently. Hopefully, this will make up for the lack of textual updates. I do plan, however, to be committed to the Weekly Sketch idea in the upcoming year.

There has been some random artwork added as well, and the artwork section has gotten a revamp. I’ve still got a few things in my sketchbook that I would like to scan given the chance, so more to come. I think the About section needs some tidying and dusting as well…

I’ve got substantial improvements in mind for the next year, hopefully with a focus on mathematical visualization toys. The sole project thus far is the Geometric Series applet I wrote a few months ago, which is not nearly complete. I’ll probably keep posting blurbs about programming situations as well, at least with Qt and java issues. Hopefully, there of use to somebody.