Platypotamus

I've had a lot of requests from folks to share pictures and info about when I flew on the Eureka zeppelin back in April, and since I don't have my facebook profile anymore, there's been no where for them to see the goods.  So, here comes a big repost about my great adventure.  I'm hiding the post behind a link because it is going to feature a whole bunch of pictures, so you probably don't want to expand this post if you're browsing on your phone.

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Since it generated some interest on Twitter, and since I find it pretty mysterious overall, I thought I'd post some more info on the broken car window that greeted me this morning.  First, some preliminary details:

1. The car was parked down around the corner, because parking is at a premium on my street.
2. I hadn't driven it in a week.
3. I didn't actually notice the broken window until I was already driving and (presumably) a piece of glass falling made enough noise that I turned around to see it.

This is the (slightly later) view that greeted me at that point: 

A couple thoughts immediately struck:

1. WTF
2. Should I pull over, or keep driving?
   1. Eh, keep driving, what's stopping going to do for me?
   2. To clarify, I didn't take the picture until later, when I did stop.
3. Shouldn't that window be the most structurally sound of all non-windshield windows?

Further visual analysis of the image tells us:  well, nothing really.  The window broke inward rather than outward.  That non-window stuff you see is just trash (a cap for some sort of bottled water or something).
Here, let's post another image for no particular reason.

Here you can see the enticing view from the outside.  If this was broken by a potential thief, he didn't want my squeegee.  Actually, he didn't want anything.  Didn't take my stereo or... well, I guess the stereo and squeegee are pretty much it.

This leads to the conclusion that whatever happened was an accident.  I was parked next to a ditch, so the passenger side of my car wasn't really accessible to pedestrians or vehicles.  I didn't see any thing inside of my car that might have broke the window (I was thinking may fireworks, or some other celebratory projectiles from the fourth of July hit the really low probability shot).

The only other option seems to be the old "temperature change window explosion" thing.  This has some merit, as it got up to near 90 yesterday, and had only been in the 60s last time I drove it, so all my windows were sealed.  However, I would imagine the window would explode outward if that was the case.  On the other hand, I'd think this would be the hardest window to break on the car (with the exception of the reinforced windshield), due to the small surface area giving it more stability.   I'm leaving this filed as a mystery for now, unless someone out there has a good theory.  Now to get some estimates on repairs.

There's a good chance if you are at my site today, and you aren't one of my students, that you followed a link from Cory Doctorow's (of Boing Boing) twitter account. Admittedly, you'll find that there's not too much up here interesting to non-students beyond the Title Generator that he linked, as I've use this page primarily for my classes. I do have some projects that will be launched here sooner or later though, so really, you're just ahead of the curve and beating the crowd. Expect a flash game as well as sporadic other updates over the next few months, sooner or later depending on how my schedule changes.

For you RSS feeders, the homework for GAD225 has been updated, and new sample code is posted over at the course's page.

For a couple of different reasons, it became a really good idea to break dungeons apart into regions. So I did.

Building a Bigger Dungeon

The first of those reasons is efficiency. By breaking the dungeon apart into regions, and placing rooms via those regions rather than seeking a great spot in the entire dungeon, it becomes a much more streamlined process. Not pictured here (unfortunately), I've successfully generated dungeons roughly 6 times larger than are supported with the build here on the site. Unfortunately, the process is still really unstable for large dungeon sizes. I've got a couple ideas for ways to fix that, but they're all massive pains, and I've decided to push them back for now as honestly, do I even need dungeons that big... ever? I see little advantage to it, honestly.

On to some better news, however...
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The information is in the link below, but if you're available Tuesday night and have a couple of bucks to spare for admission, this would probably be worth checking out:

Link

I've finally completed a move to my new host and a launch with the new WordPress enabled site.

Students of my current courses should be able to find information discussed in class with the academia section noted to the right.

Further content coming soon, but perhaps not as soon as I would like.

Please let me know if you discover any bugs.