Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Today I have to work on copyright clearances for the BME movie soundtrack… Because it's a low-budget project (although still probably about triple Clerks) I have to convince labels and artists to allow me to use their work for as close to free as possible. I'll mostly be working with indie labels so I hope they appreciate the project and want to be involved…

Other than that I'm going to start encoding the experience engine software. If you've ever wondered how an idiot savant programs (or just want to know what's in the new software), here are my notes for it:

They say that Tesla designed his experiments in his head, and then ran a “simulation” of them. After a week, he'd examine the virtual devices for wear and tear and refine the design. Eventually he'd build them “for real”… I'm not suggesting I'm actually running code in my head, but I do try do that as much as possible. I think that's pretty normal for programmers that were self-evolved or apprenticed rather than, say, going to school (where one is taught more formal testing and proofing techniques).

What's interesting is that (if I'm to believe what I read online) there's a schism between the two schools of thought on software design — one is characterized by the idea that programming is an artform (ie. Bill Joy's concept that code is a form of poetry), and the other characterized by the idea that programming is engineering… What I found additionally interesting is that people who program full time (ie. where it's life-defining rather than “just a job”) tend to be plagued with the same memory disorders that I have — which leads me to wonder if a long period of thinking about code actually alters the structure of the human brain. Logically it should, when you think about how the brain works.

Lew Rockwell of the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute writes of Rumsfeld's recently leaked “what have we gotten ourselves into” memo,

There you have it: a typical government program. Hundreds of billions down the drain, and nothing to show for it but confusion. Imagine a private business admitting that it doesn't know if it is making profits or losses. Imagine blowing through a trillion dollars and not knowing whether you actually accomplished anything at all. That private firm would be doomed, but the warfare state just keeps chugging along.

Click here to read The National Defense Myth. If you're looking for something a little lighter, I found this article about a driver being convicted on the basis of the “black box” in his car (which almost all new cars have). Good reason to gut the computer out of your car, or buy an older car that doesn't have one.

So this morning Ryan had me run a test of some of the commercially available silkscreening software. To sum up my reviews, it's horrible. Just cheap Photoshop actions that can't actually do anything that a reasonably skilled Photoshop user couldn't do anyway. So I dusted off my old prototype screening software and took another look at it.

My software is optimized for one thing: taking full color input images, and producing multi-ink screens for extremely limited amounts of colors, in order to try and create a close representation using as few inks as possible. For example, in the image below, I chose red, white, and a pale blue, and asked it to screen the image onto a black shirt. I've included the screens, as well as the original and output images:

As you can see, some of the tones change very slightly, but on the whole it does a remarkable job. In the sample below, I've screen a different image onto an orange shirt, using white, blue, and black ink only — the software is able to cleanly integrate the shirt's tone into the image.

I have an endless stream of products I really should release commercially… This one just needs some tweaking and an interface and it would be ready to go.

The above software took an afternoon to write. Any reasonably skilled programmer could do the same (I'd never claim to be anything but a “reasonably skilled” programmer… there are certainly hundreds of people on IAM that are better) — it always amazes me what a lack of decent tools there is. I believe that it's due to the larger phenomena of how when people become engaged in a task, they lose the ability to see their goal. Because they see only their task, not their goal, they veer off course and act self-destructively.