Parentheticals

I talked with the guys at GitHub, and they were able to tell my why the GitHub page that I tried to post wasn't working. (It was a problem on their end apparently) So, without further ado:  Javascript Mandelbrot Set viewer I am using the HTML 5 Canvas element to draw on, and web-workers to do the actual work. You can download/view the code from here . The page doesn't store state between loads, and I have not made it very fancy, but you can set certain parameters (x, y, z are pretty obvious, m is the max iterations, s is the number of threads, and when g is set to 0 it actually draws the image (otherwise it just politely sits there)) Left clicks redraw the whole image and middle clicks zoom in on the current image center. There are probably huge memory leaks (when I test it I crash chrome about half the time), and it probably is not written very well, but it runs fast, and it was thrown together over the course of a few days. I might clean it up and make it ...

This last week was pretty good. I feel like I understand most of what we are doing at work right now, and I did some pretty fun coding last week. I ordered a deck of Polynesia cards from TheGameCrafter. Hopefully they should arrive soon. Either way, I look forward to seeing how they compare with the other places that I have tried printing through. We opened up the butterkase on Friday. It was a bit of a disappointment The real cheese butterkase is excellent in every way. Our home made butterkase had a good texture, was an excellent melter, and had the same basic flavor as store bought butterkase, but it had a much less complex flavor, and a stronger overall flavor as well. Basically, it seems like we let it age too long, however, it doesn't have as rich a flavor. I grated some of it and rolled it into a bread which was very popular at our family dinner, and I expect that we will still eat it all, it just wasn't everything that I ever hoped for. We made another derby...

We went to the doctors this morning, and got to see some pictures of the baby. The technician says that it is going to be a girl. Looking at the images, I couldn't tell (but that is what they were trained to do, so I will have to trust them.) This weekend we ate two oyster mushrooms from our mushroom log. Alison says that mushrooms do not do much for her, but the flavor of these ones was so good that she liked them a lot. On Saturday we also went to the park and cut some grape vine clippings. We planted some in buckets in our house, and all the rest in the back yard. Hopefully they will grow well. The power company sent some guys out to cut our tree last year, and the tree is obviously dying. It's bark is falling off, and it didn't grow very many leaves last year. I think that we will have to cut off the tall branches, and inoculate the stump with more oyster mushrooms (just to be sure). At least we will then get to eat the tree even if we can'...

I reported a bug in Mozilla Firefox 5 years ago:  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=301888  (Someone else had reported it before me, but I also reported it). I got an email today that said that someone finally posted a fix for it. Too bad I stopped using Firefox years ago as well, or perhaps I would be happy about the fix. A new version of dwarf fortress came out today as well... It is like they are trying to ruin my valentines day by making me play dwarf fortress on it :). A new version of Unnethack came out recently as well, but I haven't played it much. Over the weekend I made some modifications to the Mandelbrot Set Viewer - It now can support Hilbert Set color schemes (as well as any arbitrary color scheme that you want to enter into it one color at a time.) The file that I am going to provide with the executable will be a modified Hilbert color scheme where the first iteration spirals around the outside of the cube (perhaps black, red, ...

Those of you who have been trying to access my website know that it has been down for a few weeks. I am currently working on replacing the hardware for it (I have wanted to upgrade it for a while, and since it is down anyway it seems like a good time to do it). Baby Andrea can now walk most of the length of a room, and she walks of her own accord now (without us coaxing her). She is still kinda wobbly, but she is carrying things and feeling pretty confidant. We had a busy weekend. We went to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, had a primary activity, Alison went to the general Relief Society broadcast, and we had one of those sacrament meetings where the primary all get up and sing (Alison had to help the kids as she is in the presidency). The card game is moving along like usual. It looks like I won't be getting to do any play-testing in the near future, though. Perhaps Ryan will do some for me, though. I also just read Dark Lord of Derkholm. It wa...

Yesterday baby Andrea stood up by her self and took 8 steps four times. She stood up by herself numerous times, and even walked with objects in her hands. It looks to me like she has figured this walking thing out :). I have finished the artwork for the cards, (and re-did it all once). They look pretty good (if I do say so myself.) For those who want to see them, they are posted in picasa. I am hoping to get some more playtesting done soon (but can't really trust that I will be able to do it during general conference cause my parents are out of town, and I don't know what people are planning on doing). Now that the card pictures are completed, I am considering going back to my Mandelbrot set viewer. I will probably begin to code more for it soon. Also, recently we made apricot granola. (We replaced the honey with apricot jelly so that Andrea could eat it.) It ended up being very tasty.

My MSV is now in beta. You can download it here . If you unzip it in Windows 7, it will probably mark all the files as 'from another computer', and will remove lots of functionality. if you right click the zip file, click properties, and then click unblock before you extract it then you will be able to use the data that is in the separate dll files. The card game is half way through its third printing. Now we have point cards marked, military cards worth points, and a couple of other changes. Perhaps this will be the last major test printing. With all of the programming I have been doing I have not made any cheeses this month. Perhaps next month I will. I have also read a book in Fred Sabehagen's Berserker series. I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty good. If all of his books are like this, Perhaps I should pick a few more up. Andrea has been dancing a lot lately. She puts her hands up and shakes them around and bobs her head. If she is standing up she also does ...

It seems like I have been tired this whole week. Perhaps I've got the lurgy. I have done a bit more rewriting of the rules for my card game. Now military can also get you points, and perhaps it will not slow down the game so much. My mandelbrot set viewer is approaching beta. It seems like it will make it this time [crosses fingers]. I am preparing for a RPG play session tomorrow. Hopefuly things move along. Something fun will happen for sure, but until it happens I want to keep it a surprise. I also have been bothering a scam artist from nigeria recently. I figure that the more time I waste of his the fewer people he can scam. (I write him short one sentence emails asking for more info, and to clarify points, and he writes longer emails explaining things). Also, apparently my new code name is Fredric. Also, Baby Andrea has not yet exceeded 2 steps before falling down. Apparently walking is hard.

My new nephew Logan Aaron Plastow was born yesterday. I am thinking of giving Amy some feta as a congratulatory gesture, as pregnant women are not supposed to eat feta. My play-testing party on Saturday was not very well attended, but was very successful. I am changing one of the representatives  doubling the size of 'Deck A', adding basic military units to it, and revamping many of the cards. I am going to try to get another group together to do some more play-testing this Saturday. If you read this before then and are interested, send me an email. I don't really understand why facebook, linkedin, google plus, or any of those sites are necessary... honestly I don't even like them. They send me emails and such about some comment that someone made on someone's picture of something. Perhaps it is because I am introverted? I hesitate to call myself misanthropic, but the inanity of many of the comments made just puts me of...

Wednesday we made a five cheese sausage pizza. three of the cheeses were home made. The feta was especially good on a pizza (which is news to me). I also learned this week that cream of tartar is in fact those crystals that condense into your home made grape juice (and you strain out and throw away). This leads me to wonder if it would be possible to make home made cream of tartar out of them. The card game is moving along nicely. I have been making updates and testing it out with Alison fairly often. I have a game night planned this week, but so far only one  couple has agreed to come to it (So it might be quite interesting). I released another MSV. Now I am down to one thing left to change for sure this time (yeah right). If I do decide it is feature complete it would be a miracle. It does allow for real time updates, julia fractals, and color selection for newton type fractals. Baby Andrea has learned how to drink from a cup, and is trying to figure out using a ...

April 9th 2011, a very good year (almost as old as レヤ  ちゃん ) We just opened the cheese that we made on April 9th. It is the softest hard cheese that we have made yet. It has a good Italian flavor (it is strong enough that you could grate it and put it over pasta, but not so hard that you have to. I am going to try a cheeseburger with it - I think that that will be super tasty). We have not used all of the recent feta yet, so I we are planning a chard casserole tonight to use it up - here's to hoping that the chard is not to bitter (we let it grow pretty big). I have printed up the cards for the card game, and cut them out now. Hopefully I will get to use them soon to test it out :). Also, I am thinking that it will be a Polynesian themed game. If anyone comes up with a good name for it I will reward them with one lb of cheese of their choice (or a half lb of a pre-made hard cheese (so that you can taste it first to see if you like it)). The MSV is mov...

Over the three day weekend, I have play tested the new card game. We rewrote the rules almost entirely, and rewrote most of the cards. The notes that I have posted can be found  here  and  here . You can download a docx file that contains the newest version of the cards in a printable state here  Google Docs fails to render it correctly, so don't print from Google docs. Also, My parmesan cracked since I did not turn it over enough. :( This means that I will have to watch it carefully to make sure that it doesn't develop mold. The other cheeses look good (and I am in fact overdue for opening up a cheese - so perhaps I will report on that soon.) The feta came out pretty good. It has a nice flavor. Only one more change needs to happen for me to declare my MSV to be out of alpha: I have to make real time updates. I have put it off for so long, but I know that the user wants it. :/ We gathered apes over the weekend from an old couple's tree. Amy talked with t...

Apparently the new fuse that I put in to my cheese cooler couldn't handle the hot temperatures recently. It blew out. I am now planning on getting a bigger fuse, and putting the cheese cooler into a better ventilated place. Fortunately, Alison saved all the cheese :). I am also thinking of making a card game. As of yet it is not anywhere near ready for publication, but it seems to be moving along. I keep hitting snags in my MSV. The final alpha release might be farther off that I would hope. I made three cheeses over the past week: parmesan, feta, and ricotta. The ricotta split into three cheeses of its own, cheese with fine herbs, ricotta, and dessert ricotta. I plan on ageing the parmesan 9 months, the feta 30 days, and the ricotta will be eaten on crackers and in ravioli. I also turned an old sock into a new seat cover for my bike. I am riding in style now :) Finally, this Saturday is our next play session of 42 Earths, and this Sunday is Danie...

On Friday we went to the DI and found a wine cooler for $10. It didn't work, but a quick google search revealed that that model of wine cooler has a known issue with a fuse blowing out. We got it to store our cheeses as they age (it can control the temperature pretty exactly, and should not be too expensive to run since it is fairly small). After borrowing Loren's soldering iron I was able to replace the fuse, and for just about $11 we have a working cheese cooler. I also have been working on the MSV fairly heavily recently. I just posted a new version here . The last 42 Earths play session went well (I was hoping to get farther, but they were not quite sure what they wanted to do, so they took a while deciding where to go after the firefight in the train). They ended up going to the government and reporting Diablo's recent activities. They got hired on as information gatherers, and offered equipment and funds to try to figure out what alien information/equipment Di...

We have returned from our trip. It was fun. We arrived Friday night at the cabin and I got to play some bang and star wars epic duels with the guys (and Sheila). Saturday we went hiking up a river and saw some waterfalls (baby Andrea enjoyed playing in the water a lot). Sunday we had a testimony meeting and roasted marshmallows. Monday we came home. Our house was pretty hot when we arrived home, and I smelt something funny. After walking around to try and figure out what it was, I remembered that I had not put the cheeses into the refrigerator (usually we have to house much cooler, so they can age normally, but this was crazy super ageing, and I think that it might have done some damage). I opened up one of them immediately, and it was bad. The other ones do not look bad, and I put them in the fridge. I intend to open them up tonight and see 'what has tobe done'. Hopefully they are still good. We have another play session coming up - I am not quite prepared for it yet. Hopefull...

Mason quit playing our role playing game (not too surprising, but sad nonetheless.) Our third session went well. They went to visit The gang Diablo to try to sell info (in the form of 3d computer models of the interior of the dimension ship) to them. Xander was offered a scientist position at Diablo by Blaire (the representative of Diablo ). Xander stalled for time again, and said that he would think about it, and then come back later. As he walked out, Zhengi noticed that he was being tailed. Quickly Xander was notified via text, and then he tried to lose the gang member by hopping onto a train. Zhengi snuck up behind the gang member, and as they entered the train, he attacked. Talk about a cliff-hanger ;) My MSV is going along nicely. The Atlas is cranking away, and the derivative finding was successful. I now have user input fractals fully available, and I am working on user input Newton fractals next. If that all works out, I will try to figure out a better system for decl...

I just had some wonderful oatmeal bread. It is too bad that _you_ are not lucky enough to be married to someone who is a certified bread genius. (She even has her bread mensa certificate of smartness and everything). Also, the 5 lb cheese has a slightly yeasty smell (and I think that it probably got some yeast growing in it). I waxed it and it balooned the wax with its gas - hopefully it survives. We ate one tiny strawberry from our garden the other day. It was tasty. We also have peas coming up soon. Also, we have recently discovered Colosimo's Bratwurst (which are quite tasty - fairly reminiscent of real German bratwurst). I am working on a MSV Atlas - which is coming along nicely. I might post a new version of the MSV some time soon - I hope to make more headway in the equation parsing and arbitrary fractal calculation before I do, but if the Atlas is a hit locally I could se myself posting it before those other things are done. Finally, we are reading Good Omens - we found it a...