Our group was invited to participate in some competition, I might give it a shot if it can be easily done. Its next Tuesday, and frankly, thats too little time to prepare adequately.
Interesting stuff learned today:
- fractals
- Not that I didn't know about them before, just now I know more about them then before! Prepare for a fractual renderer once the holidays come around!
Fractals apparently stands for fractional dimensional objects, since fractals have an infinite parameter, yet finite area. Snowflakes for example, exhibits fractal properties, and additionally, finite volume.
- chaos
- Ah chaos, what a lovely subject. Apparently any none linear system can be potentially chaotic, since the initial states can not be known to infinite precision, over time, any differences in extrapolation of the system will become exponentially large, until such a point the 2 systems are no longer adequate approximations of each other. Cool stuff :-) Again, expect some code to come out of this knowledge!
- directional derivatives
- This is so cool! Now I know how to find the gradient of a point on a surface in some direction give by a vector u. It might not seem like much, but if one tried to simulate a ball rolling down an uneven surface, it becomes immediately apparent how useful it is! I always wondered how games like ground control find the path of least resistance for units moving over uneven terrain.
- jenny's blog
- Found another blogger in my software tutorial group! jenny's blog is extra cool because uses her own custom template! :-) *waves to jenny*
Now I am going to go and catch a nap, been working on too little sleep lately, and my sense of humor has degraded into such obscurity even I don't get them...
Cheers,
Steve