I need to get some tight C++ file-handling library code to emit something that I can read in a language I'm more experienced in, and I'm at a loss for what the best approach is. I'm currently leaning toward writing a managed wrapper that I can use to call from C#, but that seems ugly and hackish. Is there a better way to do this?
- Mood:
productive - Music:Ayreon - Amazing Flight
07:05 Hour 24 without sleep. IG beta is going well; I am at an undisclosed IHOP waiting for clearance to move forward with my team. #
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter15:00 Need to run a function across a list of data? There's a (map) for that. #tabft #
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter11:10 Sign that brain was not on yesterday: Showing up this AM and needing 30 min to bang out the code that 4 hrs last night got me nowhere on. #
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter09:42 New desk. New cubicle. New job. Time to remember all the little things a fresh Windows install needs before it feels usable. #
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter18:51 How to prepare for day one of a new job: an hour of massage, followed by dinner at a favorite restaurant. I am ready for tomorrow. #
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter15:15 On airplane home. -Finally-; has been a long week and a half. But first... Houston! Can I be home yet? #
18:38 Aaaaaand it's time for hop two - Houston to Seattle. Emerald City, here I come! There's no place like home...? #
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitterMy last day at MS was Friday.
Today, we ran SNAP 5.
More details after I collapse. For the first time in... I-don't-know-how-long, really - I have no obligations to anything. I am free, and proud of what I've accomplished, and utterly exhausted.
Hey, Seattle-area geeks! We're running SNAP 5 this Saturday, from 9 AM to 7 PM, in the general vicinity of Pioneer Square.
In order to pull this event off, we need people to help us staff puzzle sites. If you're available on Saturday to spend the day helping teams get confused by enigmatic puzzles, and generally enjoying a nice day out in the Pioneer Square area, please come help us out! Even if you can only be there for part of the day, we'd love your assistance. Just comment on this post, and we'll arrange a time and place for you to meet us.
Of course, there's a benefit for helping us out. We've got a tasty catered afterparty, and volunteers are invited to join the teams there. So, come spend your day with us! We really, really need the help!
- Mood:
cheerful
So, a friend of mine submitted a small work of fiction to the first issue of a themed 'zine that collects stories and art. The 'zine is entirely published within-theme, which is to say, it doesn't break the conceit that it's a product of an alternate reality at any time. As a conceit of the theme, the stories in it are published pseudonymously. (So, in the alternate-world this 'zine purports to come from, the writers would use pseudonyms, because they wouldn't want to be associated with the text.)
The 'zine solicited a number of submissions from amateur writers, who submitted pieces by an informal process. There were no formal agreements made at any time, and no money changed hands - my friend submitted her piece by email to the editor (a social acquaintance of hers), who said he liked it and it would go in. As far as I know, that was the process involved for everyone.
When the 'zine came out, it was sold at a con - based on the price ($15 for about a hundred 8"x5" pages, B&W, spiral-bound), I'm assuming someone's making some profit on this. Inside, it's about 80% written content, about 5% illustration, and about 15% assorted filler - thematic little items that fill column-space within. The written content is credited pseudonymously, the filler is not credited at all (though I am aware it was produced, mostly in Photoshop, by the editor), and the illustrations are clearly and consistently credited just inside the front cover.
Knowing fandom politics, and the reputation of the artists involved, I'm guessing the artists were paid, in addition to being credited, but I don't know that. Certainly, despite being a mostly-written 'zine, the advertising for it focused heavily on the artists involved in the project.
My friend had assumed (but not verified, and certainly not got in writing, a mistake which she's well-aware of) that written contributors would be credited in much the same fashion as the artists ended up being - a list out of the main flow of the text, indicating the real names behind the pseudonyms used within. When the 'zine came out, she was surprised to find out that there was no credit given. The 'zine lists its website prominently, so she considered that credit might only be on the web - but there was no credit there, either.
She attempted to contact the editor (the person who'd originally accepted her piece) to ask about the credit situation, but he didn't return her emails.
She eventually reached the publisher, who responded that she didn't understand the product, that the anonymity was an essential aspect of the theme, and that if she had wanted credit, she should have submitted her real name as the themed pseudonym for the piece. The publisher also said that she was free to say in her own materials that she was the author of the piece, and that if she wanted to profit from it, she could buy copies at wholesale and re-sell them. (I'll note here that my friend had not directly said she wanted this, except in mentioning that she had submitted her work without being paid, and therefore credit and the associated value to reputation was the only value she was getting.)
She used the argument that, since my friend was the only one to complain about getting credit, she clearly was not suited to work on this sort of project, and would be "better fit as a writer for a different sort of publication."
So, what's the right approach to this situation?
Certainly, my friend will never write for this venue again. But is what this 'zine is doing abusive enough that it's worth the social strain to tell the friends-of-friends that are putting it on that they're violating professional ethics?
For that matter, are they violating professional ethics? It feels pretty damn skeevy to me, but I Am Not A Lawyer, and I Am Not A Writer Either, and I have no idea what's generally considered "OK" in these situations.
Thanks for reading this mess - my friend doesn't know what's appropriate here, and she doesn't know as many folks in the business of writing as I do, so I'm just trying to help where I can.
- Mood:
irritated
Not much text in this post, except by way of explanation.
Randall Munroe did one of his cute math things for Valentine's Day.
( I got inspired. Fractals beyond. )- Mood: accomplished
MS announced substantial layoffs today, and a number of people have been trying to get in touch with me to find out my situation. I'm not in the office to get full details, but as far as my coworkers have informed me:
I'm still employed. My team didn't lose anyone that my immediate co-workers are aware of.
Thanks for your well-wishes - I hope everyone else is weathering these hard economic times as well.
- Mood: calm
- Mood:hopeful
Spent the New Year (as well as a day on either side) sick at home with an obnoxious cold and sore throat. That is all the discussion on the New Year in this post.
This post actually contains a question for anyone with graphics hackery skill. (I'm looking at you, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tcinseattle.) People without that skill can skip down to the pretty YouTube video a little further down, and give it some love. Seriously, you should watch it. You have not seen it before. It is not a rickroll.
Now, the question: I need to - ideally in managed code (that's C# and the rest of the .NET family, for those of you who don't speak Microsoftish) - render and composite video streams on the fly. Multiple video streams. There are caveats, and they're many.
- The video can be in any format I like. Preprocessing is not a problem.
- Similarly, hardware and memory are non-issues. If it can be done at all on anything approaching consumer-grade hardware, that's enough. I expect the solution is going to involve cramming the machine full of RAM to cache a shitload of data. It's the actual implementation of that cache that concerns me.
- Playback must be absolutely smooth and lag-free.
- That smoothness cannot be a result of prebuffering, because I may need to jump to another video stream with no advance warning. This is not a playlist situation; the video stream will not necessarily be the "next" video stream. (Or, if the UI implements it as such, it is likely that we will jump over multiple positions in the playlist, more-or-less at random.)
- We may also need to restart a video at any time.
- Being able to jump backward or forward to a position that's not the start of the video might also be requested, though it hasn't been yet.
- As I mentioned before - smooth and lag-free under all those circumstances is a necessity.
- We also need to be able to compose video streams together, possibly in fancyish ways. (Look at all the blending modes in Photoshop for a start. Also consider using a one-bit video stream as a mask to display another. Ideally, the architecture would allow me to write new ways of composing the video streams.)
- Ideally, if we hand this off to the video card in such a way that we can apply further effects to the composite stream with pixel shaders, that would also make me happy.
Now, with that crazy set of requirements in hand - is this even possible? (I mean, it must be possible, because I've seen something like it done. But is it possible for someone who isn't a master of C and direct access to the video hardware?)
Here's why I'm asking: My younger brother is an animation major. Specifically, his focus is on performance animation, which involves working with animated imagery in real-time contexts. He's come up with a UI design that would allow him to manipulate animated videos in real-time by some effective abstractions that are well-suited to performance. But he can't code the software that would run the processor, and I couldn't find any VJ software that seemed both capable and customizable. (Though, honestly, a pointer to good VJ software would also help - most of what I'm finding looks like it's more suited for dabblers who want to feel cool than for actually controlling the video; I can't help but feel like what I'm finding is not what the pros are using.) In any case, to get an idea of what sort of animation he's talking about, this is his project from earlier in the year. (This was all pre-rendered, by the way - the interactive elements are new. And he's the animator, not one of the dancers, although he was also involved in the choreography.)
Anyhow, any help I can get - or pointers to people who know what they're doing in this space - would be much appreciated!
Here's the first of the puzzles from my puzzle offer earlier this week!
This one is for ladyperegrine, in honor of her love of haiku.
Comments are screened - feel free to post your guesses for the answer!
(For those unfamiliar with this sort of puzzle, the objective is to come up with an unambiguous word or short phrase as the answer. No instructions are given, but hints are often provided.)
You may request a theme for the puzzle, and/or a specified answer (a word or phrase) if you don't mind knowing what it solves to.
- Mood: cheerful
10:42 Grey commute - Winter has assurtedly returned to Seattle. Woman at bus stop has MSN bag with Obama pin over the IM dude's head. Cute. #
13:20 Milestone: I made it almost - but not quite! - ten years with diabetes without ever shooting up with the wrong insulin. Oops! (I'm fine.) #
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter20:14 I didn't realize I was holding my breath till they called it nationally. #
20:15 Of course, now I wait for other important races. Three major state props; an important gubernatorial race, Darcy Burner - it's not over here #
Automatically shipped by LoudTwittermufi from the office as I finished work up.People are cheering and staccato-honking horns through the skyscraper canyons here. We still don't know if it's Gregoire or Rossi yet, and we don't know whether Proposition 8 will destroy marriages to the South. But Obama won, and for a moment we can hope that he's got the power to take this moment and restore our country's dignity.
This means much more than a win for the Ms or the Hawks. Cheering in the streets is not unwarranted.
Yes. We. Did.
- Location:47.6121, -122.3345
- Mood:cheerful
15:36 Costuming asa mad food scientist. Welding goggles, rubber gloves, and an apron/smock with a dish towel and the front end of a burr mixer. #
19:36 Whee, Halloween traffic. Just woke from a 45-minute nap on my 25-minute shuttlebus ride home - and we're still about 10 minutes away. #
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