Jay McGavren's Journal

2009-11-14

My Scratch talk at Ignite Phoenix 5...

Huzzah, they posted my Ignite Phoenix presentation on Scratch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSHTLuQqAtE

Couple slips, but I’ll be the main one to notice those. If RubyConf goes this well, I’ll be really happy.

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2009-11-11

ZOMG giant cat!

Gave a talk on Scratch at Ignite Phoenix 5… Well received, and it seemed to spark a lot of interest. (Heard from Brian Carson that his kid downloaded it as soon as he saw the talk on the video stream.)

Jay on Scratch at Ignite Phoenix 5Jay on Scratch at Ignite Phoenix 5Jay on Scratch at Ignite Phoenix 5Jay on Scratch at Ignite Phoenix 5

Photos by Sheila Dee: <div>http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheila_dee/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0</div>

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2009-11-02

Life simulation ideas...

Just watched the Nature episode “Born Wild: The First Days of Life”, and got a dangerously large number of ideas for an artificial life simulation.

Here are (some of) the forces that seem to be in play:

  • Food and energy affect all aspects of birthing strategies. All these make it more likely at least some young will survive, but take energy in return:
    • Producing more than one fetus.
    • Long gestation periods.
    • Making yolk inside eggs.
    • Producing milk.
  • If you're not top of the food chain, your babies need to be born ready to run. A longer gestational period is in order.
  • A baby can be left to fend for itself, if it's born smart enough to find food. This means no milk production or babysitting, but probably also means longer gestation.
  • Birds let the strongest infant feed first - it's most likely to survive. The others get the scraps and if they live too, great. Sometimes the strongest sibling kills the weaker ones. Sometimes the parents themselves do.
  • If the father stays to help, it brings extra food energy into the equation - he feeds the kids or sometimes the mother. Sometimes this means bigger litters, or in the case of emperor penguins, it simply means survival.
  • Sometimes the mother herself is the food energy - one species of spider willingly lets the babies eat her alive.
  • For males, killing the cubs of your rivals is a good way to get their harems ready to mate with you. Of course, you have to prove your genetic superiority by fighting off the father first.
  • Social animals help defend each others' young, IF they're from the same father. Children from other groups get attacked, though.

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2009-10-27

Ruby on Acid: YAML says it all...

00021_random.png

--- !ruby/object:RubyOnAcid::MetaFactory
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    counters:
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    interval: -0.067061319368805
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    interval: 0.0735458771168371
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    repeat_counts:
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    source_factory: !ruby/object:RubyOnAcid::SineFactory
      counters:
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      interval: -0.0763070310680217
    values:
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  :red: &id003 !ruby/object:RubyOnAcid::FlashFactory
    counters:
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    interval: 48.2819400095083
    values:
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  :x: *id001
  :green: &id007 !ruby/object:RubyOnAcid::RepeatFactory
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    repeat_counts:
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    source_factory: !ruby/object:RubyOnAcid::LoopFactory
      counters:
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      interval: -0.0762859071707396
    values:
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factory_pool:
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- *id001
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- *id003
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  counters: {}

  interval: -0.04853454869413
- *id006
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  source_factory: !ruby/object:RubyOnAcid::RandomFactory {}

  values: {}

- *id008
- !ruby/object:RubyOnAcid::ModuloFactory
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  source_factory: !ruby/object:RubyOnAcid::LoopFactory
    counters: {}

    interval: 1.0e-05

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2009-10-27

Hi-res Ruby On Acid wallpapers...

Went back and re-rendered some of my favorites at 1080p resolution (should scale down to widescreen monitors nicely). 007910006901237

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