CGAL documentation March 15, 2008

Wellp… I dunno how or why, but I find myself wanting to rant. I’ll do my best not to, but I’d like to voice something about CGAL (and hopefully later when I have time, I’ll voice my concerns on their mailinglist…). I’m mostly doing this for people who might google this and wonder about it, or just to get some feedback. I’m trying to use the KDS in CGAL, and it’s making me want to cry.

Right now, when I look at the Delaunay Triangulation (the 2d one, that is) kinetic structure, I flat out cannot figure out how they are using edges from either the documentation or the immediate code. This makes the visitors and recent edge goodies a little difficult to harness. Now, right off the bat, I’ll confess I’m not using the library in a normal fashion, but wow. This is weird. I think they are using the edges as STD::Pair objects, storing a Face and an integer for the edge label of that face, thus forming an ‘edge’. I guess?

Well, what I want to do is manipulate the structure and nudge it like any good ol’ KDS, but then as updates occur to the edges, I’m trying to form an RNG (relative neighborhood graph) from the edges and update it as well. But, it doesn’t call for an all out KDS because I’m really only loosely using the RNG and it’s overkill to make it into a KDS. See the problem forming here? I’d really love to just get these “views” or “observations” at the structure of the triangulation from the visitor… but it’s becoming a serious pain. But… they have it… so it SHOULD be usable… right? I mean, I want a DCEL structure, to be honest, but the structure they are using is a little hard to comprehend. Sure, I can generate meshes and such from the KDS, but those will be constantly changing, so the KDS will cause a lot of problems for the simulation’s overhead.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems like the armpit of the KDS right now (accessing the structure on specific events), and so I don’t want to criticize the team behind CGAL or the KDS stuff it has (it’s really cool junk!). You know, it’s probably something obvious that, due to my lack of experience, is going right over my head. But wow… I hope they’ll explain it one day… I’m writing this here and not in the mailinglist since I sort of want to submit a bug-report… but then, I’m pretty sure it’s not worth them changing anything. The ‘weird’ programmer must typically hack and burn his own trail. So I guess I’ll just post this here, and any interested parties can discuss. If I find anyone coming in here trying to use kinetic data structures in CGAL and they find issues with the edges and triangulations and visitors as well, then perhaps I’ll bug the CGAL people… till then, I’ll just post any updates I have on the issue here.

Well, I have to go now. My sister’s stinky chihuahua is groveling at my feet. I need to see what his problem is… or perhaps feed him to the neighbor’s cat. Yes… that’s what I feel like doing now… lemme just get some ketchup (cat’s like condiments… right?) and some tunafish… I’m sure I’ll work something out.

Eclipse disappointment November 29, 2006

Well, wow. I tried showing someone Java with the latest eclipse. We were rather surprised not in its abilities, but a serious fault. I followed the tutorials with her, and while they seemed complete, the projects failed to compile or run. I’m not very experienced with java, so I had no idea what could be going wrong with either the compiler or the code. We tried the tutorials several times and didn’t get any positive results.

Paint Chat review November 13, 2005

Well then… forgive me if I’m wrong about this, but paint chat is only populated by a predominantly anime sketching crowd full of otakus and fan artists.

I want to be perfectly clear: I have nothing against that.

But I also want clear… I’m not exactly interested too much in that. I’ll admit that I do stuff like that, but I was hoping for a few paint chat sessions where people just outright did cartooning and sketching of every sort. I mean, there isn’t just anime to sketch, ya’ll. There is more in this world. It’s fun, I won’t deny it, but I just lost interest and usually ended up sketching my own thing in a little corner. What I’m going to try to do, though, is see if there are any places that just create events… like drawing insects or only hands and feet or planets… where you have a subject on paint chat.

I have to admit that paint chat is like any other chat client, therefore… there’s nothing really organized going on all too often unless you make a lot of friends and meet people who are interested. You just goof off, for the most part. While that’s fine and dandy, I was wanting a little bit more of a challenging atmosphere and more interactive and interesting.

You can do that, of course, but it takes a good deal of effort and really… so far I haven’t found any good way to find out when people are going to be on and are going to set up a paint chat session that’s difficult and teaches you some new sketchwork to use on your own and practice.

All in all, paint chat is plain crack. There’s nothing interesting in how you snort it… you just get addicted and keep going. I know I will. But that said, I won’t ever really put effort in to it because it won’t give me anything back. It’s chit chat. Titter tatter. Banter. Those have both good and bad connotations.

I’ll update this as appropriate and I’ll listen to any comments (assuming I don’t get fifty bajillion). Have fun, ya’ll

~Dude

OH! And another thing… if you want to know where to find paint chat, that’s half of the problem. Finding it. I have trouble still, but try 3dluvr and bellpipi in your google search. Just directly going to those sites doesn’t normally help in finding it, oddly enough. * shrug *

Not probably going to work October 27, 2005

Well, I definitely don’t like the lack of customization. I would hate for any of my writing to contribute to these higher eye-strain sites on the net… nothing personal, and not to say that bright sites are evil and wrong. I just would frown on myself for doing it. My desktop is already bright enough as it is. Bah… I just need to juggle more. That’s all. Oh well… sometime later I’ll figure out how to get wordpress to delete this. I hope… hrm…

 

Edit: Yeah… so I was being too critical. I only just found out how incredibly hard at work wordpress actually is. I’d like to apologize to WordPress and the developer team. They’re doing a lot for bloggers, now that I look at what’s currently (and loosely) on the todo list. 

My review of flock thus far October 25, 2005

Well then… seems like it’s about time I give my preliminary assessment. Although that sounds official, it pretty much is worth dirt. Still, I give it anyways, because you can always scrape a few gems out if you look carefully.

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So, Flock hit me almost instantly as a great answer to people feel like web browsing is too far away from the masses… from communication. People could either chat on the net or browse the net. Now you get a sort of conglomerate… you can easily share bookmarks and blog and flickr as a default. “This is nothing new.” So you say. I’d agree, but the difference is in how it’s packaged and presented so easily… so readily accessible. It’s a powerful combo and for them to do all the hard work to get it together is very nice. There’s lots to add, but that’s nothing too difficult when you think about how much is already in Flock.

Time to try this out… October 25, 2005

Well, I’m a little unhappy that this system doesn’t seem to support a lot of a theme editing (I prefer my sites to be darker and easier on the eyes)… but oh well. Could be worse. If I don’t like it, I can always just ask them wordpress to delete this account. We’ll see.

So, as for other goings about, I need to double check that I can’t change the theme here, then I’ll do some web design (more on that later), then I get to take an exam for my vector calculus class.

Afterwards, I guess later tonight I’ll finish up even more work work work. I guess once I get used to this web blogging I’ll be able to make better posts, but for now, I’m a goin’!