Link Roundup
Jun. 28th, 2004 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurFirst, a Geek Link: Inner Product is Jonathan Blow's column in Game Developer magazine, and is really the primary reason I keep reading the magazine at this point. While it's focused on game development, the column wanders far afield from the usual iterations of how to make your rendering a little faster -- this is a man who understands programming deeply, and is more insightful than the average bear.
Anyway, it turns out that he collects the articles on this page, and I commend them highly. Two recent series are particularly interesting even outside the game world. His discussions of Arithmetic Coding and Adaptive Compression provide some fine illustrations of how to compress network traffic far more effectively if you understand the data you're transmitting. And his invented programming language Lerp is an absolute delight for me: an attempt to fuse a rule database smoothly into an imperitive programming language, resulting in one of the most intriguing scripting environments I've seen to date.
The latest interesting books from Project Gutenberg:
The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents, by H. G. Wells, is yet another relatively obscure book from the famous writer. Glancing very briefly at it, it appears to be the earliest story I've seen on the subject of bioterrorism.
The World's Greatest Books, v. XI. This volume is entirely on the subject of ancient and medieval history, so it is chock-full of useful tidbits ranging from Caesar to Gibbon to Holinshed.
While I'm not certain that The Story of Grettir the Strong is period, I'm assuming that anything called an Icelandic Saga probably is. This is an 1869 translation by Magnusson and Morris, and includes a chronology at the front setting the dates of the events described therein. Looks like good fodder for the storytellers...
Anyway, it turns out that he collects the articles on this page, and I commend them highly. Two recent series are particularly interesting even outside the game world. His discussions of Arithmetic Coding and Adaptive Compression provide some fine illustrations of how to compress network traffic far more effectively if you understand the data you're transmitting. And his invented programming language Lerp is an absolute delight for me: an attempt to fuse a rule database smoothly into an imperitive programming language, resulting in one of the most intriguing scripting environments I've seen to date.
The latest interesting books from Project Gutenberg:
The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents, by H. G. Wells, is yet another relatively obscure book from the famous writer. Glancing very briefly at it, it appears to be the earliest story I've seen on the subject of bioterrorism.
The World's Greatest Books, v. XI. This volume is entirely on the subject of ancient and medieval history, so it is chock-full of useful tidbits ranging from Caesar to Gibbon to Holinshed.
While I'm not certain that The Story of Grettir the Strong is period, I'm assuming that anything called an Icelandic Saga probably is. This is an 1869 translation by Magnusson and Morris, and includes a chronology at the front setting the dates of the events described therein. Looks like good fodder for the storytellers...
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-28 04:53 pm (UTC)It most definitely is period, one of the classics. Has the fight with the barrow-wight, and with Glam the ghost. Other things being equal, I wouldn't recommend a Morris translation especially, but it's still a fine story.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-29 08:52 am (UTC)Then it might be time to cancel, as this month was his farewell column. On the other hand, his spot is being taken up by Sean Barrett, who may well have useful things to say.
Lerp
Date: 2004-07-01 01:05 pm (UTC)