Fox News lying through cropping.

Fascinating.

3D Anaglyphs in povray, the way they're supposed to look!

What is a blog but a serial diary of your progress towards a goal? ;-)

3d4 from pterandon on Vimeo.

I had been wondering why the blue component of my attempts at anaglyphs in povray never looked right. I did some more reading on anaglyphs and saw that they are often red-CYAN, not red-BLUE. So with a little programming tweaking, I was able to set it up to be a red-cyan anaglyph. And I think they look great!

Once again, for the best effect, follow through the link to Vimeo to see it full screen.

Improved red-blue 3d anaglyph, one-pass rendering in povray

3d3 from pterandon on Vimeo.

Here is an improved version of the output from my algorithm for making anaglyphs in povray. It is done as a one-pass render, no post-processing required.

[Edit: Note that this still from the timeframe in which I was making red-blue anaglyphs instead of red-cyan. I'm leaving this in the historical record, because perhaps some day someone will want to know what a red-blue anaglyph looks like! ]

Early, faulty versions of a one-pass 3D anaglyphs in povray

Here's my psuedocode for how one can make 3D anaglyphs in povray. Get your red/green glasses and go to the Vimeo site to see it fullscreen! As is the case for most great coding efforts in povray, I couldn't have done it without a pointer from Mike Williams. It requires the Megapov patch of povray.

[Edit: I now realize that these have a mistake in how they are generated. These next few postings are literally red-blue anaglyphs, but most folks have red-cyan glasses. Check later entries of the blog for further improvements.]

3d2 from pterandon on Vimeo.

1 Mei demonstratie in Amsterdam / Demonstration on the first of May held in Amsterdam

1 Mei demonstratie in Amsterdam / Demonstration on the first of May held in Amsterdam
Originally uploaded by Nationaal Archief.

Here's a photo that showed up in the rotation on the Flickr Commons front page. It appears to be a march of some sort of Danish Communist Party. A bunch of comfortable-looking, long-haired youth are marching with hammer and sickle flags.

This photo struck me as being especially tragic. Not that I have sympathy for the communists, but because no one does. Most people would think it an evil thing to have participated in a commie rally in the 1970's. I think that even those with an extremely large, bleeding heart would find it something stupid. My ultimate reaction when seeing this was, "Why couldn't they have expended effort on something that could have lasted?"

Suppose they had a conviction that the poor masses of the earth were mistreated. Perhaps if instead they had spent their youth working in the church for John-Newton-style conversions, doing direct charity, educating workers, or even organizing nonviolent admonition of oppressors-- then history might look back on you and smile. Even if you got the same group among your elder contemporaries upset. But expend your efforts on an extreme political party, and history's reaction will range from hatred to extreme pity.

I am winner!

I am the winner of the January 2009 Round of the TC-RTC Animations competition. You can see all the remaining entries that I beat out by clicking on those links. Oh, um, but wait, I was the only entry :"-)

Interesting ad on climate change

Hansen's faulty 1988 predictions of global warming.

Once again, I was in an online discussion with some conservatives who were upset about their denomination getting involved in the issue of global warming. They pointed out how it had been shown that the models for global warming are faulty. The 1988 models from James Hansen's Senate testimony were unable to predict the warming that occurred, so we really cannot trust the models today. We really cannot re-order our economic life around predictions that have shown themselves to be faulty.

The problem is that this is all based on a lie. I don't know who started it. Many people may have repeated verbatim information that they got second-hand or third-hand because they trusted the philosophical worldview of the people who were pushing the propaganda. What is the lie?

Here is an example. The example cited to me was the written testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee of John Christy on 25 February 2009. In this public document is a graph comparing James Hansen's 1988 predictions against the actual data. Here's a plot:



Note how the plot purports to be from James Hansen in 1988. Note how there are curves for a Scenario A and Scenario B. They are practically on top of each other.

Look at Hansen's actual 1988 data:


See how the portion of the curve from 1990 to 2010 shows a significant variation between Scenario A and Scenario B. Isn't that special? So, the global warming skeptics are running around telling us that the models in the past were completely unreliable, but then make false claims about what the old models were.

So how does the 1988 curve stack up against the actual data? Here's a plot:
(I hope it does not count as bandwidth stealing if I tell you the above figure comes from the Real Climate blog's article, Hansen’s 1988 projections. The Scenario B lines up pretty well.

PHILOSOPHICAL EPILOG:
John Christy's report says,

"We utilize energy from carbon, not because we are bad people, but because it is the affordable foundation on which the profound improvements in our standard of living have been achieved – our progress in health and welfare."

The problem here is with a view of original sin. If we cannot see the possibility that sin creeps into any aspect of our lives, even our energy use, then we've fallen into Antinomianism. The 1960's showed us the societal impacts of sexual libertinism; as we climb up the curves in Hansen's 1988 plots, we'll see the societal impacts of economic libertinism.

Overheard on the soccer field.

"Floyd Patterson may not have been one of boxing's greatest heavyweights. He may have been one of its greatest gentlemen."

I just heard this on the ESPN Classic network program, "Who's Number 1?" That comment is a backdrop to the story I'm about to tell. On the soccer field for a league for 3rd graders, I overheard an exchange between a man and a woman, whom I believe were parents of different children on the same team. I didn't hear what the woman said. But the man replied,

"There is no polite in soccer. In fact, there's no sport where you're supposed to be polite."

If I understand the mentality, it is a very tragic and pitiful one, especially if it motivates how you lead elementary age children in sports programs. I believe it means that in sports, in the real world, you're either "impolite" or you're a sissy. How sad. I immediately thought of the difference between "passive," "aggressive," and "assertive," and wondered what "sportsmanship" meant if you didn't have to be worried about being polite. I later thought about the concept of "honor" and "chivalry" in warfare, where apparently you were able to be very "polite" to persons you were trying to kill. Then when I was flipping channels, I heard the quote above touting gentlemanliness in boxing, of all sports.

The attitude of the man stands in contrast to the reputation and life work of Floyd Patterson. It's more like that of Mike Tyson.

Mechsim patch in povray

The program povray has a patch called MegaPov. It adds some pretty cool features to povray's basic abilities. One of them is the mechsim patch.

I dusted off an old project where I made some giant, rubbery blocks fall on the head of our hero, an object constructed out of povray blobs. It makes for a faily entertaining if not realistic show:


Mind you that the path expects objects to be made in a certain way, an iso, and a blob is not one of them. The fact that it works at all with blobs is pretty cool. But the limitation proves fatal for realism if you try to press it too far.

Here's an attempt to have M.I.M.E. Man punch the blocks out of his way. His arms get caught on the vertices of the falling blocks. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. But perhaps viewers can try out the patch and do some pretty interesting things with more simple geometries. Or if you know a way to code the SDL for the patch to work better, please drop me a note or comment in the blog. thanks.