Hacks

Sunday project!

Export a Vox blog to MTIF (Movable Type Import Format), along with some CSS to style it.

Requires Python, httplib2, Feed Parser and Beautiful Soup.

The Biojewellery project takes bone cells from couples and cultures them into rings for each other to wear.

I can’t believe another white person hadn’t already made this.

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the Lego brick. This brings a warm feeling of whimsy and satisfaction, as Lego was such an integral part of my childhood. Many hours were spent constructing and deconstructing, fashioning tiny simulations of complex machines, buildings and living things.

Its core activity can be described as quantizing reality into discrete plastic pieces—a tidy analogue to the digital medium, substituting pixels and vectors for bricks. Unlike pixels, and in the absence of unlimited funding for new bricks, it is also a microcosm of reality: resources are limited. Scarcity is the mother of invention, and to create something new, something must first be destroyed.

Where other toys were quickly forgotten (oh how I wish I’d saved those first-edition Star Wars figurines from the early 80s), and a discovery of computers, software and writing games—I’d never abandon completely the little plastic atoms, occasionally pulling out the bags of bricks, dusting them off and tinkering again.

Yesterday I was reminded of a few pithy truisms about Ye Olde Internets: Never post anything on the internet that you aren’t comfortable with it existing forever. On the internet, copyright is largely irrelevant. APIs and the ecosystem they support provide interesting mechanisms for discovering both new works and infringement.

I’m pretty liberal with usage rights. In general, if someone isn’t deriving income from the reuse of something I’ve created, then I don’t request compensation, only credit. I’ve considered using a blanket Creative Commons license for [most of] my stuff, but haven’t researched it enough to understand all the ramifications. For now, everything is ©, All Rights Reserved. This has proven to work well. I used to create textures for the indie mapping scene. Occasionally I’d get reports from people who’d played a game that reused my textures without credit (or compensation), but in all cases a few phone calls or emails resolved the situation.

Yesterday I saw a Google link to a Flickr DNA page for my photos. From there, I clicked to a related Technorati page with references to my photos. Curious, I dug in a bit more and found these minor references:

• 10000 ft from Mauna Kea
• Did You Knows?
• Mike Cane linking my Oh Noes Foleo picture.

Simple, nothing crazy or too profound, but interesting to see what other people think is interesting.

With a little help from my friends and some Dopplr I hacked out this magic 8-ball in the parlance of HTTP:

Originally posted to shaderlab.com on August1, 2003.

For all you Friendster haters out there.

Another day, another Q3Map2, this time fixing a Really Stupid Bug with _minlight and lightstyle interaction. Thanks PJW!