Frog poem

   |  1 minutes  |  David Parker

Under a rock and hidden deep, There lies a frog, he’s half asleep. He dreams no dreams of kingdoms far, But of being trapped inside a jar.  He tossed and turned throughout the night, Not cold, he shivered from his fright. The jar was sealed, the air was thin, Not much air was there within.  So he gasped and strived for a breath, And bravely waited for his death. [Read More]
Poetry  Poem 

Code snippet test

   |  1 minutes  |  David Parker

If you want to get the first fault tree in my ExampleFaultTrees object, then the following code is for you: var exampleFaultTrees = new ExampleFaultTrees(); topNode = exampleFaultTrees.getFaultTree(0); You first need to instantiate an ExampleFaultTrees object and then you can ask it for the zeroth element in its internal array of fault trees. You can then simply call the topNode’s draw function, giving it the 2d context of the canvas as a parameter to draw to. [Read More]
test  code 

Lost in translation: How to draw a fault tree

   |  1 minutes  |  David Parker

The other day I gave a workshop for the 08240 2d Computer Graphics students in the Computer Science department of the University of Hull. A number of the students were struggling with this aspect of the coursework that they were undertaking. Above is a rough video I put together of the content. I made it using a chemistry beaker holder to hold my webcam pointing down at the surface of my desk. [Read More]
2d Graphics  fault tree  video 

Spooky Elephant releases Heartotron!

   |  1 minutes  |  David Parker

Just a quick note for now to announce the publishing of our game – Heartotron – to the Windows Store. You can preview and install it (for free!) on your Windows 8 device from the following store link: http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/heartotron/569d7e21-6eca-479c-8dfd-03371b5f739e Please give it a go and leave us some feedback or ideas for improvements. We have a planned update for later in the week to add new enemy types so watch this space. [Read More]
Spooky Elephant  Heartotron  Monogame 

Boarding the Android Express

   |  2 minutes  |  David Parker

Today I took possession of my shiny new Samsung Galaxy Note II. My previous daily device was the Samsung Omnia 7 which was one of the debut devices of the Windows Phone 7 range. It was a close run race between the Note II and the flagship Windows Phone 8 device the Nokia Lumia 920. I mentioned before that it was a close race with the Lumia phone. Both are large, flagship devices with the Lumia being widely lauded as having one of the best cameras on a mobile phone, the best in low light. [Read More]
Android  Samsung Galaxy Note II  Windows Phone 

My DIY eGPU Project – Speed boost

   |  1 minutes  |  David Parker

This morning, some lovely person using the handle Burger commented on one of my earlier postssuggesting that if I connect the eGPU setup after boot-up is complete then I should get a significant boost due to PCIe compression. I little bit of Googling reveals a bit more detail here, but it seems that you need to have a ‘modern’ Intel integrated GPU in combination with one of a fairly narrow range of Nvidia kit. [Read More]
eGPU 

My DIY eGPU Project – The Hawk

   |  2 minutes  |  David Parker

Today my new graphics card arrived from eBay. It is a second hand MSI N460GTX Hawkwhich I picked up for a reasonable £79.02 including postage. This puts the running total for the eGPU project (not including bits that I had lying around) at £166.10. So how does it perform? Well you may remember that I previously benchmarkedboth the integrated graphics of my laptop and a borrowed Geforce 9600GT in the eGPU adapter with the eGPU providing a splendid 3 times increase in the 3DMark06 score. [Read More]
eGPU 

My DIY eGPU project – Benchmarking

   |  2 minutes  |  David Parker

Well, I have done a spot of benchmarking. Specifically using 3DMark06 and the Resident Evil 5 benchmarking tool. If you are wondering what I am talking about here is an introductionand a follow-up. I guess a brief recap wouldn’t be out of place. I have a laptop with integrated graphics. This severely limits the games that I can play. This makes me sad. I have read that I can put together an adapter that plugs in to the ExpressCard slot in my laptop that allows me to use a desktop GPU to power the graphics. [Read More]
eGPU 

My DIY eGPU Project – Delivery and Test

   |  3 minutes  |  David Parker

Today (26th) the adapter parts for my eGPU project arrived from Taiwan. I paid for it on the 20th via PayPal and on the 24th the PayPal status was updated to let me know that my purchase had shipped with a DHL tracking number. I am pretty happy with the delivery time. Something that I knew was a possibility, though was still slightly vexing, was an accompanying VAT charge from Customs amounting to £12. [Read More]
eGPU 

(R)evolving Art

   |  2 minutes  |  David Parker

Though I like to think that my software development work shows a little artistry, I am certainly not an artist in the classical sense of the word. However, I have been developing an art project with artist Roberto Bono (Roberto’s website) for the past year or so, and as I have just uploaded a couple of new Roberto works I thought I would share them. The ‘idea’ of the work is that is is comprised of 12 double sided paintings that form the whole. [Read More]
art  Genetic Algorithm  Silverlight