Wednesday, April 21, 2010

High School Yearbook Cover

I took this picture because it's relevant to my job search (cool huh), but it seemed of general interest too, so I posted it.

This is the cover for my senior yearbook in high school, which I designed. It's a Mandelbrot set where the inside is drawn in a way that I don't quite recall, having something to do with where the iteration goes in relation to the origin of the complex plane.

It took days and days to compute this image on the Mac in the yearbook office, and we had to do it in chunks because the whole image was too large to fit in memory.

You can see the seams between the chunks in the green areas - but you're not supposed to. That's caused by floating point error. I was horrified when we put the chunks together in Photoshop and these seams appeared, because (a) the bug was in someone else's fractal software, i.e., hard to fix on short notice, and (b) the deadline was imminent and we didn't have time to re-do the calculations anyway. But the editors liked the seams, and so we shipped it!

Friday, April 16, 2010

Weekend To-Do List

  • Clean out e-mail
  • Clean out Google Reader
  • Clean out bookmarks
  • Go to library
  • Jobs - scan job boards, secret item
  • Mow lawn
  • Fix weed whacker
  • Weed-whack lawn
  • Do some work - attributes plan, outline
  • Do dishes
  • Blog some photos
  • Work in bathroom
  • Some stuff from Remember the Milk lists
  • Relax and do fun things
  • Go to grocery

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Weird Neighborhood House with Creepy Decorations


One of the houses in our neighborhood has a habit of excessive, somewhat creepy inflatable holiday decorations. It's even more creepy when the decrepit, broken-down Christmas decorations aren't removed before the Easter decorations go up (this was taken March 15, so the Easter decorations aren't yet seasonally inappropriate).

Fire Engine Ride


The wife and I went to visit the firefighter's museum in north Minneapolis yesterday, which included a ride in a fire engine! Here's our driver. It was very bouncy.

Terrifying Mutant Carrot Discovered; Wife Claims It's "Normal"

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Weekend To-Do List

  • Figure out trip financials
  • Fix fish scale
  • Blog strange house
  • Blog paint
  • Blog BitPim
  • Blog strange carrot
  • Vacuum, sweep, mop
  • Finalize secret project
  • Work on interview plan and script
  • Clean out e-mail
  • Clean out Google Reader
  • Date night w/ lovely wife
  • Go to firefighter's museum with lovely wife
  • Weigh in on Wikipedia:Research?
  • Do laundry
  • Smear goop on the walls
  • Go to Erin's retirement/going away party
Summary: Wow, I got nearly everything done that I wanted to. I even put in a little time on the interview plan & script, though not enough to check it off.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Jess in a Box

Jess likes boxes, even if they're precariously balanced on other boxes.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Weekend To-Do List

  • Figure out trip financials
  • Fix fish scale
  • Blog strange house
  • Blog paint
  • Blog BitPim
  • Vacuum, sweep, mop
  • Hook up new hard disks
  • Finalize secret project
  • Work on interview plan and script
  • Clean out e-mail
  • Clean out Google Reader
  • Date night with lovely wife
  • Fix bicycle: new sensor cable
  • Fix bicycle: new shifter cable, housing, adjust derailleur
  • Fix bicycle: new brake pads? (not needed yet)
  • Smear goop on bathroom walls