Spheres drawn in papert

You can now relive the past, for Thomas Edward Figg, or tef as he calls himself on Something Awful, has made a JavaScript-based Logo interpreter. Now you can watch the Koch snowflake, the Hilbert curve or whatever else your mind happens to think up unfold itself before your very eyes — without having to leave your browser window!

So I urge you, click on any of the examples I linked before — or if you’re extremely lazy, click here:

papert - logo in your browser

If you want example code to run, I can suggest checking out the Something Awful thread on papert by the developer himself.

I had begun to write a small description of it myself, but I located this in the source code of the official site, commented out, and after reviewing what I’d written myself, I prefer this, so here it is:

Good Copy Bad Copy explores the state of limbo the world is in when it comes to copyright.

Western media conglomerates and rights owners desire one world order, while ‘pirates’ and cultural movements in the third world invent their own rules. Rules that even the West might have to play along with.

In a Pittsburgh living room, DJ and producer Girl Talk composes catchy pop hits on his laptop. In the span of 30 seconds he samples Elton John, Notorious B.I.G and Destiny’s Child into a new song. But, who owns the music? Who owns the artists? Piracy is booming all over the world - from Nigeria to Brazil, while Hollywood and the record industry fight to stem the tide.

Directors:
Andreas Johnsen
Ralf Christensen
Henrik Moltke

I strongly urge you to click the link and go watch GOOD COPY BAD COPY, as it is very well put together and an excellent documentary overall.

Now, being quite a fan of Firefox, I decided to read through this.

This read will not help you stop fighting with your lover over who’s doing the washing up but there will not be any questions left concerning which is the best web browser in the world. To avoid being accused of subjectivity I will give you some points that NOBODY will be able to argue with because everything in this article will be true and verifiable.

So be it, I thought, I’ll go check out those errors. For these tests, I will be using the latest version of Firefox (3.0.1) and Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13 to compare.

1. The guys talk about standards. Then, why is it that FireFox cannot deal with <div> tags?

   Well, let’s look at the issues he mentions. First up is Superbreak.com, where the footer allegedly is different between IE and Fx.
   

   

   Superbreak on IE

   

   Superbreak on Fx

   So, what difference do I see? Well, I don’t really see much, to be honest. On Firefox there are separators between the links below the copyright message, which obviously is intended behavior, so that would count against IE.
   Upon closer inspection in Firebug, I see that he must be talking about how the top 2/3rds of the short summary text describing Short Break can’t be clicked on.

   

   'footertext' as seen in Firebug

   This makes perfect sense, however, because they decided that, in order to be “search engine friendly“, they wanted to move that blurb up to the top of the source code and use absolute positioning to move it down to where it needs to be displayed. Then, later, when the “footertext” div (which is highlighted in blue on the picture) is drawn, it is drawn on top of the blurb, rendering a large part inaccessible.

   Just because it’s the intended effect of the website coder, doesn’t mean it’s the correct way to render it. I’ll have to deduct points for IE on this one, too.

   The next site mentioned is Squidoo, but I won’t really talk about that, because I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I could create a page just fine in Firefox, and edit it afterward as well. No clue what the problem there’s supposed to be.

2. 2. Captcha – it is a small script webmasters install on their blogs to keep the spamming bastards away. To prove you are human, you are asked to enter the digits displayed on Captcha. Some of these scripts won’t work with FireFox and instead of having a site buzzing with comments, you wonder, hey, where’s everyone gone? Nowhere, they’re hanging around and trying to comment via FireFox and it’s not working. Wanna try? Go to http://www.themallblog.com/ (hey, I just made you popular) and try commenting with a FireFox and then try the same with Internet Explorer. How did you like the difference?

   I just posted a comment without any problems. From Firefox. Bit odd way of not working, what with it working and all. Ah well. Next point.

5. 5. Your personal ambitions. You don’t like Internet Explorer because it comes from Microsoft. You hate Microsoft because it is a brainchild of Bill Gates. You hate Bill Gates because he is more successful than you and he’s filthy rich.

   No. I dislike Internet Explorer because:

   • It doesn’t handle PNG alpha transparency.
   • It doesn’t let me serve my XHTML blog with the correct MIME type.
   • It has 10 outstanding unpatched Secunia security advisories. To compare, Firefox has zero, as does Opera.
   • For some odd reason, it takes seconds from middleclicking on a link till the new tab opens in my IE. In Fx, it opens instantly.
   • If you recall my favicon article, IE doesn’t support data URIs, while just about any other browser does.
   • …

   The list could go on, but I have to stop somewhere and pick a browser, now don’t I?

6. 6. You’re using an illegal piratical copy of Windows, hence you cannot download the latest version of Internet Explorer and you just have to settle for a free browser. It is easier to bury a thing you cannot afford than to work hard in order to afford more. When an owner of a Yugo says Rolls Royce is a shit, it is quite understandable because it makes him feel better… at least for a little while.

   My laptop came with Windows XP Professional, which I am using. That install of Windows XP Professional also came with IE, which I am not using.

   Just because you have to pay more for something doesn’t make it better. If you don’t realize this, I cannot help you. Except by offering you a brand new Wii, shipped to your house (free ship–oh wait, $100 shipping), for $20,000. That’s right, you heard me, $20.000, it’s the unbargain of the century.

7. 7. All rumours that Internet Explorer is being overtaken by FireFox are just a fake. It is still around 58% for IE and 32% for FF.

   32% was in March/April of last year. Right now it’s 52% to IE and 42% to Firefox. Yup, I sure don’t see Firefox gaining ground here.

8. 8. Extra strain on web designers. You will be surprised but the majority of web designers don’t give a fig about the web standards, XHTML, HTML strict, transitional, whatever. In fact, if you look at Google search result pages you will se that many Top10 pages are a mess of a code. If you are a web designer that doesn’t do clean code, you have to walk and extra mile to cater for FireFox users. With Internet Explorer it is simpler – if you have some basic knowledge, you will quickly construct pages without gaps, zaps, flaws and other artefacts. Then you go and view your flawless page on a FireFox and alas, why there’s this gap?

   Yeah, I’m with you on this one. There’s no point in making your pages work for more than half of your readers. They’re using a non IE-browser, so they don’t have any money anyway, according to point 6.

9. 9. Stability. Majority of us still use Windows. Internet Explorer is built specially for Windows and it is fully integrated. When it comes to stability and integrity, Internet Explorer gives you more and crashes less frequently than FireFox.

   I’m really loving the lack of sources, especially for this one. I’m reminded of a playground argument.

   “My browser crashes less than your browser!”
   “Nuh-uhhhh, cause my daddy made mine just for me”
   “Well, my daddy bought mine for ten bajillion dollars, so its better, haaah!”

10. 10. Safety? Oh, give me a break. Even FireFox themselves have said that there was no magic bullet to ensure safety on web. In fact, during the previous years Microsoft has been faced with less number of safety flaws than FireFox. In the end it is not the browser but the anti-virus software that determines whether you are safe on the web or not. It is a good anti-virus package (not free soft) that stops adware, kills hacker attempts and destroys the virus attacks. And it is your common sense that provides an extra safety. Majority of web surfers will click on a button that says: I am the red button, click me to get a virus. It is not my assumption, it is the fact. FireFox will never be safe because it has tens of thousands of add-ons freely distributed and out of control! Many of them are malicious, the rest of them are coded by teenagers and just build up and crash.

    Fact: Neither Opera, Firefox nor Safari have had any extremely critical vulnerabilities from 2003-2008. IE? Well, see for yourself.
    Fact: Firefox blocks a lot of attack and phishing sites with a big red warning that is pretty hard to ignore.
    Fact: Firefox addons are marked as experimental until they have been reviewed by a staff member of addons.mozilla.org. You cannot install experimental addons without registering, logging in, asking to see experimental addons, then agreeing to a safety warning. All other addons can be installed without any problems without an account.
    (Anecdotal) Fact: Firefox 3 hasn’t crashed on me.

Now, since this is all so true and verifiable, please respond to this post with some actual sources behind your statements. Thanks.

Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot is an internationally acknowledged and recognized mathematician. He originated the field of fractal geometry, and showed how fractals occur in many diverse places, both in nature and mathematics.

Dr. Mandebrot published The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1982), recognized by The American Scientist as one of the most influential science books of the 20th Century.

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY was privileged to spend time with Dr. Mandelbrot. He discusses

• How fractal geometry help explain the problems of today
• Examples of fractals in nature and in engineering
• “Mathematical pictures”
• The relationship between fractal geometry and human nature
• The relationship of fractal patterns to human archetypes

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY - Energy, Environment, Cancer Research, Nanotechnology » Fractal Geometry - Mathematics and Nature

Nothing too mathematically complex, but still a nice bit of talk about fractals, their uses and his inspiration.

Favicons in action

Sure, you could trust a host such as TinyPic or ImageShack, but you never really know if they’ll take it down or whatnot.

The solution lies in using so-called “data URIs“. The way this works is, you make an URI that actually contains the data of the image, hence the name.

“Now, how would I go about making such a ‘data URI’, wiseguy?” you might ask. Well, it’s pretty simple, you drop by Sveinbjorn Thordarson’s DataURLMaker (he’s got to be Icelandic — gotta love their names!), upload the icon you picked, and voilá, it gives you…an img tag?

But wait, this image tag isn’t an orginary image tag (image tag?), it stores the image data in the src attribute

<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" width="16" height="16">

So what we do is, we pull this data URI out of the img tag, and put it into a link tag, like we would a normal shortcut icon URL.

<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0 ...etc..."/>

Unlike me, you paste the whole code, of course; I just thought I’d spare you readers having to see that code again.

Moving back to the matter at hand, all that is left is to stuff that link tag into your header — or if you’re a blogger, the header of your template — et voilá, you have yourself a favicon that’s guaranteed to be there whenever your page is.

The icon will then work in most browsers, but sadly not in Internet Explorer 7. Why? Don’t ask. Just don’t. Tends to make your life easier when it comes to IE.

If you want simple proof that it works, well, look at the favicon of this page and the source code just above this paragraph.

If this has piqued your interest in getting a favicon, might I recommend favicon.cc, a Web2.0 favicon maker — which even supports this method!

1. Download jQuery_centerOn.js to the js folder on your site.
2. Add the following code to the <head> of the page you wish to use it on:

   <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jQuery_centerOn.js"/>

3. Use the following command to position the element in question:

   $('#testThing').centerOn(300,200);

   In this example you would center the element with id testThing on the point (300,200).

That’s all there is to it!

1. Fullscreen

   You probably know very well that most video hosts support full-screening videos you’re watching, but are you aware that a few go a bit beyond that? The built-in Flash fullscreen command only lets the window stay fullscreened as long as the window stays in focus — this means that if you have two monitors, you’re forced to not do anything on the other monitor while in fullscreen mode.

   Fret not, however, for a few of the hosts out there have seen that this isn’t too optimal. Here’s how you activate a more permanent fullscreen mode on a few hosts:

   • DailyMotion: Open the video you wish to watch in a window on your other monitor, then click the fullscreen button. The video will automatically fill out the full browser window for you.
   • Viddler: On the old Viddler video player, doubleclicking the fullscreen button, which was in the top right corner of the video, in case you never noticed it, opened up a new fullscreen window. This doesn’t seem to work anymore, but the URL for the window still works: You simply append /fullscreen to the video URL like so: http://www.viddler.com/explore/Sartak/videos/8/fullscreen
2. High quality

   In certain circles, YouTube is slightly infamous for its horrible video quality. What many people don’t know, however, is that it is fairly simple to watch higher quality versions of most videos on there.

   You simply append “&fmt=18″ to the end of the video like so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eoa3PxA_cv4&fmt=18, and voilá, you have a higher quality video to watch (in most cases). Alternatively, if you use Firefox with Greasemonkey, I can highly recommend YouTube High Quality Automatic, which does just what it says in the name.

3. Feeds

   Most big video sites let you follow a RSS feed of certain users’ videos, or maybe even what’s new and rising. On YouTube it’s a bit harder to find than on most other sites, though — provided you’re not familiar with the “Live Bookmarks” feature that comes with modern browsers. It works the same for YouTube as it does for this site, you simply go to the site you wish to follow, then look in the address bar and you should find an orange feed symbol. (In Internet Explorer 7, you look in the tab toolbar.) Clicking on this should open the feed and let you subscribe or whatever you wish.

   If you’re unable to find this, or perhaps don’t have a browser capable of doing this, YouTube has a page about their RSS feeds.

Those are a few small features I think are too overlooked and I use constantly, so enjoy.

I have found it again and will now share with you the site that is popurls.

The concept is simple. Gather data from a ton of big, popular sites and display it on one, big simple page.

That’s it. It’ll be sure to keep you both entertained and informed all day long.

As for me, I don’t have time to blog.

Must… click… links…

Well, here I will teach you how to easily convert your existing videos into ones that’re compact enough to carry around in your pocket — for free!

You have most likely done what I did in the beginning; searched Google for a way to do it and found a bunch of dubious looking applications that may or may not be able to do it, and if they are able, most likely for a small fee.

Well, this solution I have here should work on Windows, Mac, your favorite Linux distribution and more than likely tonnes of other places.

Prerequisites

You’ll need to download a few utilities in order to get this conversion method working.

• Perl interpreter
  I chose to use Perl due to how hackish the script started to feel when I tried to write it as a Windows batch script.
  Download
• ffmpeg
  The be all and end all commandline video conversion tool.
  Download: Windows - Mac - Linux

The Script

You have two options here:

• Right click here, save as MobileVideo.pl
• Open the text editor of your choice, paste the following code:
  

  #!/usr/bin/perl -w
  
  # Script by Sebastian Paaske Tørholm ( mathemaniac.org )
  
  opendir(DIR, ".");
  
  foreach my $file (grep(/.(flv|mpe?g|avi|wmv|mov)$/,readdir(DIR))) {
  	my $output = $file;
  	$output =~ s/.[^.]*$/.mp4/;
  	system("ffmpeg -i \"$file\" -s qcif -ar 48000 \"$output\"");
  	my $rm = ($^O eq "MSWin32") ? 'del' : 'rm';
  		system("$rm \"$file\"");
  }
  
  closedir(DIR);

  and save the file as “MobileVideo.pl”.

Usage

The script usage is very simple, you just copy the files you want converted into the script folder, run the script and it proceeds to convert the files.

Note: It deletes the original files once they’ve been converted! If you do not want this, comment out the last two lines of the foreach.

Final notes

Some cellphones don’t play MP4 files. If yours doesn’t, simply change the line that says

$output =~ s/.[^.]*$/.mp4/;

to

$output =~ s/.[^.]*$/.3gp/;

and you should be able to use the videos.

First a little bit of reviewing of it; the engine is great, no excessive powerups, a great soundtrack. I believe Deceased Crab commented the best about the level design, however.

So, frustrated with the level design, as any sane person would be, I pondered how hard it’d be to make one’s own levels for the game. Not too hard, it turned out. Thusly, I here bring you a guide to make your own levels in Arkanoid DS:

• Obtain a ROM of Arkanoid DS. (why, legally, of course!)
• Download DSLazy.
• Open the ROM in DSLazy and unpack it.
• In the text editor of your choice, open NDS_UNPACK/data/data/DATA01.DAT.
• Scroll down to line 17 and you will see the level data.
  Protip: Make sure you have your tab width set to at least 5 spaces.
• Edit at will. (Guide below)
• Pack the ROM again in DSLazy.
• Enjoy your new levels!

Level data sample

$$ARKANOID$$0%
ZONE@A-1	0	11	120	90	45	0	1	2
		45	10	0	0	0	5	5	E	45•bˆÈ“à‚É10ŒÂ‚̃uƒƒbƒN‚ðÁ‚¹I
0	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K
1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
3	N800	N810	N800	0	N100	N100	N100	0	N800	N810	N800
4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
5	N700	N700	N700	0	N300	N310	N300	0	N200	N200	N200
6	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
7	N400	N410	N400	0	N500	N500	N500	0	N400	N410	N400
8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
9	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
10	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
11	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

What I’ve been able to make out from the data

The format seems to be as follows:

$$ARKANOID$$<level number>%
ZONE@<level name>	<level number>	<level width>	<???>	<???>	<???>	<???>	<???>	<???>
		<quest time limit>	<quest blocks needed to destroy>	<quest blocktype for "destroy all XXX blocks">	<???>	<quest ball launch limit>	<quest point award>	<???>	<???>	<seems to be either the ball launch limit or time limit, whichever is relevant><seemingly garbage>
<level map>

The level map format should be pretty obvious, save for a few details:

Each tile is either a 0 (no brick on it) or a 4 letter code.

The four letter code is composed of a 2-character blocktype prefix and a 2-character properties suffix.

Blocktypes:
N1: White
N2: Orange
N3: Cyan
N4: Green
N5: Red
N6: Blue
N7: Magenta/Purple
N8: Yellow
HW: Silver
GW: Gold

Properties:
The properties are composed of two flags, a powerup flag and a movement flag.

Powerup flags:
0-: Brick drops no powerup
1-: Brick drops a powerup

Movement flags:
-0: No movement
-B: Start moving left and right on impact
-L: Move left and right, starting left
-R: Move left and right, starting right

This means that, for instance, a block with the property flag 1R moves left and right, starting right, and drops a powerup.

Interesting sidenote: It is possible for gold blocks to have item drop flags, and they will in fact drop an item upon each impact.

Final comments
If anyone finds out anything new about this, feel free to inform me. This is just what I managed to gather from an hour or two of messing about, and I would love to have the gaps of my knowledge filled out.