xikka

A collection of the things I have made. Some of them useful, most of them not.

Cloudpierce Spoiler

Saturday, 22nd September 2018 ◆ Who pulls along loom? (5)

Some friends and I are getting together to create a custom Magic: the Gathering set for drafting. We each are taking two weeks to create three booster packs' worth of cards, and on the night of the draft, we'll mix them up and draft with them in the usual fashion.

The set is called "Cloudpierce". It's about a plane in which civilised life is only sustained within cloud piercing towers, outside of which is the domain of savage monsters. The set symbol intends to capture the spirit of the tall towers.

Crypticism

Tuesday, 18th September 2018 ◆ Fox goes wild in ale (8)

I really like the elegance of cryptic crossword clues, and a little hobby of mine is trying to come up with them. I have attempted to devise a relevant clue for each blog post I write; that's what the weird phrase after the date of each post is. The clue aspires to be relevant to the post, so there is an additional hint in the mix, but that shouldn't be necessary for solution.

If you're not familiar with the cryptic clue, the key elements are:

The definition of the answer will be in the clue somewhere (probably at the start or end)

Converging on art

Saturday, 15th September 2018 ◆ King in warship sees art hanging (7)

M4ldonado mentioned to me a process for converging on a target image only by randomly drawing lines on a canvas; you can see a video of his algorithm at work on Goya's haunting "Saturn devouring his son". This sounded really interesting, so I gave it a go myself!

I set up a simple example using Three.js, which I'd been keen to try out anyway. We draw a line of a random colour between two random points, averaging the new colour into whatever was in the texture beforehand. Unless this modification brings us closer to the target image, the change is rejected.

A new look

Thursday, 13th September 2018 ◆ Drank tiswin for some cheap aches (6)

As much as I liked the simplicity of my old site, I have wanted to redesign it for a while. Well, a while has come around and I've settled on a new look. It's still simple, but now I've got a blog! I'm hoping to write posts about the things that interest me, with the vague goal of improving my ability to write clearly. Let's see how this pans out...

Before

After

For templating, I have opted for Haml. I discovered it recently and it really clicked with me. It's clear, readable and looks nothing like JSP. Win, win, win! Even just comparing it to basic HTML, my brain finds Haml much easier to scan.