Solipsism Gradient

Yes, I know, it’s been over two weeks. I’ve been holding back some posts I’ve wanted to make, since they demanded preliminary work I couldn’t do at the time… scanning stuff and processing pictures, and so on. Hopefully next week…

Meanwhile, my proposed paper for the 2005 Advanced Developers Hands On Conference has been accepted. ADHOC (formerly famous as MacHack) will happen July 27-31, 2005, in Dearborn MI (near Detroit). A great conference for Mac developers.

Regarding the paper, the working title is: “Out of the Bottle: Beyond the Genie Effect”.

One Cocoa FAQ is how to do the Genie Effect. Unfortunately, the effect itself is done behind the curtain by the Window Manager. We’ll show how to do it in a few easy steps, which will teach you how to:

1) Overlay a transparent window over the screen and draw into it

2) Use OpenGL in that window to move images around

3) Make it appear that your windows are actually doing cool stuff.

Most important, this is the first paper I’ll be doing with a coauthor: Jeff Biggus, the mild-mannered secret identity of HyperJeff (cue applause!). Jeff will be doing the OpenGL part – something about which I know very little right now – and I’ll be doing the graphic interface part. He’ll also attend the conference to present the paper, as I won’t be able to make it this year.

In other news, RBSplitView 1.0.5 is nearly ready for publication. There’s still one feature request and a couple of bugs to take care of, but I hope to have it ready over the weekend. So watch this space…

ADHOC MacHack Cocoa

Well, the whole April Fools shtick has gone a little stale in recent years. The BBC “spaghetti harvest” episode is now 48 years old and still unsurpassed. But for a science fiction fan, this one is very good:

At exactly 1:07 PM GMT on March 31, 2005, noted science fiction author Charles Stross ceased his existence as a baseline human being and entered an unknowable posthuman condition.

…”Charlie was teetering on the precipice of transhumanism for the whole last year,” said his friend and collaborator Cory Doctorow. “His lifestyle and cerebral/neurological capabilities had been ramped up through intensive ideation and selective smart-drug use to an exquisite pitch just short of the Singularity. When he laid his hands on that sweet, sweet hunk of hardware, it provided the critical mass of complexification necessary to tip him over fully into the Extropian ideal condition.”

Thanks to the Boing Boing folks for the link!

Dan W. wrote:

… or belated April Fools joke?

Spam. It’s deleted. All URLs posted by guests are tagged with “nofollow”, so they don’t count for Google ranking…

Posted by Dan W.:
… or belated April Fools joke?