Announcing Fractalmapr

I had the idea for this last October. I tried to create it using a thing called OpenLayers, an opensource "Google Maps-like" system. At the time I didn't realise that it could be done with the actual Google Maps api itself. Long story short, check it out here. The domain name? Well back in 2006 it seemed cool...
What is it?
It's an online Mandelbrot set fractal viewer using the Google Maps API.

Hasn't that been done before?
Not that I'm aware of.

Things to try

• Double click zooming
• Mouse wheel
• Dragging the mini-map
• Dragging the blue square on the mini-map

TODO

• Implement "bookmark/link to this view...
• Better and deeper rendering. I'm using fractint (the finest fractal generator for the Intel 386 running DOS) and an antialias/size reduction method that I prefer not to mention. Hence the tiles are 256 colour gifs. I'm guessing 24 bit colour pngs would be a lot better but I can't find a free renderer that I can use in batch mode. Anyone want to help me with this? I suppose writing my own would be one solution.
• Different palettes
• Other fractals
• Show co-ordinates in some way. A layer?
• Make grey background in map into black somehow
• Start a blog?

Update 8/9/08
I'm letting the domain name expire. The new url is this http://randomibis.com/fractalmapr/.

joanna newsom in a wolf skin

sorry I can't resist arrroooowww

nintendo

Now don't get me wrong I still love my (HD-less) Wii. Here's a little something I'm waiting for. Check out the bee suit! :)
Also if you like video games check out some more trailers from E3 or check out Joystiq's coverage.

Xbox 360 round up

so I have become quite fond of my xbox 360 recently. I am pretty much a HD snob now. gaming in HD is very good. I feel like Nintendo was wrong to leave HD off the wii. my cheap-as-I-can-find 40 inch LCD and my 360 are a match made in heaven. random notes:

• Half Life 2 Orange Box. It's coming soon. HL2 orig plus HL2 ep 1 plus HL2 ep 2. HL2 was beautiful on the Xbox. On the 360 at 720 I expect it to be godly. I will not mind replaying the first half of the game.
• PGR4. I have PGR3 and I wasn't sure that the weather effects and new cities were enough to warrant a purchase. But just now I discover that it will include bikes. Yeow. I can't wait to try the "in-car" camera on a bike. That could be good.
• Viva Pinata. This game is so wonderful. I won't try to explain it here but the game has so much depth you could probably play it for years before doing everything there is to do. This kind of game is like crack for Milly. She's level 64 or so and has master breeder award for most of the lower level animals.
• Table Tennis by Rockstar. I bought this for $20 at EB. It's very cool. The players are very serious looking. They never crack a smile. My nephew age three can kick my butt at this game.
• Kameo by Rare. I got this for free and only just bothered to try it out. It's actually very cool. I've done the first intro level and enjoyed it quite a lot. Possibly not a five star game but I think I'll give it another go.
• Halo 3. September. Enough said.
• Dead or Alive 4 (or whatever number). I'm not really into this. I think it's time for realistic motion capture in fighting games. Marionette legs look stupid.
• Gears of War. I like it a lot but for one reason or another I've only played the first two levels. Will get back to it soon.
• Grand Theft Auto 4. Watch here. This will be amazing.

So all in all it's a good time to own a 360.

a big octosquid scaring some ninjas

click here if you have windows media player. Or read here

important information that i learned from the da vinci code

I just read da vinci code. I'm going to save you the bother of reading it yourself by telling you this important information:

1. Jesus was a great philospher and leader but never claimed to be the Son of God
2. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and got her pregnant. There are decendants of Mary and Jesus alive today
3. Christianity as we know it now was basically invented in 400AD by a roman dude named Constantine who ordered the new Testament to be written, removing lots of stuff about Jesus getting married inventing the Son of God part. He was a pagan himself but saw Christianity as the future of repressing society, collecting money, devaluing women and the pagan "sacred female"
4. The "real" books of the apostles (about 120 of them), Jesus's own writings plus detailed genealogical records of Jesus's decendants, along with a sarcophagus containing Mary's body exists and is kept hidden by a secret society called "Priory of Sion". This is the real Holy Grail.
5. Part of the church subverting paganism involved recasting pagan deities (eg, the goat) into satan and rebadging pagan rituals like easter, christmas, Mary (the catholic Mary), (but we knew this already right?).
6. The "Knights Templar" was a group of Knights who served the Priory of Sion and protected the Grail. One of the popes ordered hundreds of them to be murdered one day on the Friday the 13th (which was the original Friday the 13th).
7. The Priory of Sion exists today and sometimes carry on pagan sexual rites such as in the movie Eyes Wide Shut and it's grand masters have included Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci and other famous dudes
8. Countless references and allusions to Mary and the true Grail story are hidden in art and literature. Also many books have been written on the topic.

Well there might be more but that's the gist of it. Of course it's just a novel but nevertheless interesting stuff. Dan Brown's FAQ. Typical Christian debunking

octosquid

if I had to pick my favourite animal in the world it would be an octopus or a squid. they are awesome cool creatures in fact they can change colours and even their shape. sometimes they can put on light shows way down in the deep ocean. also they can open jars and do other sweet tricks like that. and they can fight sperm whales. usally the whale will win but now and again a collosal squid would surprise a cocky sperm whale who thought he had some easy lunch and end up getting wrestled to the bottom of the ocean and then a giant squid beak stuck through his eye. one more good thing about squids is they have a beak and big eyes and also if you piss them off they will squirt you with ink. Probably they could also take on a whole room of ninjas especially if the room was underwater. in conclusion the best animal of all is the octosquid. It has the powers of both a squid and an octopus and that's why it is the best animal. also camels are pretty cool.

this was funny

Gnome corpse advertisement in WoW by gold farmers. Think of those poor gnomes' families!

and indeed it was good

more iphone fanboyism. actually it's smaller than I thought.

I'm not the only one who liked that song

it's an ad for ebay australia. well done Sally Seltman, I hope you're getting loads of money from this... :)

OmniZero.4 can skip, climb a ladder, and make an omlette?

via robots-dreams.com.

okay well I guess not everyone loves the lolcats

actually I think the moment has passed for me also. but anyhow I wanted to show you some of my favourite photos from our queens birthday weekend trip to Mt Isa. here they are in flickr. or in a flickr slideshow. I added captions so make sure you click the "i" button.

I CAN HAS CHEEZ BURGER

These are called lolcats. They are cats with funny captions. They are popular and very funny. You can get many more here and other places.

gnarls barkley on theremin

Are Theremin's better then they used to be? Via Stereogum.

Creating a Legendary Coat

I enjoyed this post. Make your coat a legendary coat.

fun with google street view

girl with really bad timing. How would you like to have this moment preserved forever in google maps?

bikini girls sunbathing. well it's not much but still more interesting than "guy walks out of strip club" or "guy taking a leak on a telephone pole".

you can go here or here for more but I don't think it's worth the bother really.

Okay one more, it's the google street view team waving for the camera.

Lily Allen

she's pretty much the opposite of girly. here's a video I took at luna park of lily (doing her one of her many ex-girlfriend-from-hell songs): and there's a story you can read in the comments about Lily and a guy from Jet.

Weird girly singer round-up

okay so I have recently learned that Camille is actually quite well known and in fact was in the the Triple J top 100 last year. So I am offering a full refund to all readers of my blog who feel unsatisfied with the freshness of my music related posts. Just present your ticket stub at the desk on the way out.

To make ammends here is my weird girly singer round up.

CocoRosie

I have listened to their new CD. Very cool. Very weird. Could be my new favourite.

Feist

Well the 1,2,3,4 song is super but so far other tracks on her latest album haven't grabbed me much.

New Buffalo

I'm a big fan of her first album, so much so that I made this web site. First impressions of her new album are that it's a little bit dull compared to the first album. Seems to have replaced her samples and loops with boring piano songs. But I will listen some more.

Camille

French. Lost of song writing talent. Very french. Not entirely weird but weird enough. I feel like I might become tired of it some day but not yet.

Francois Breut (curly bit on the c)

French. Favourite of Greenapplecat. Less annoying that Camille. But actually I can't find her album on my usual music sources sites so I can't really say.

Regina Spektor

Zzzz. Well she's nice but I thought the song writing on her album was pretty bland overall.

Cat Power

Nice also. Not as quite bland as Regina. I guess she was cool ('tube "cross bones style") but her album seems too slow and casino lounge bar for my taste.

Missy Higgins

Not really weird or even that girly but she has a new album out and she's a fellow Aussie so I thought I would mention her. I can't listen to Sound of White any more but her new single and video and Missy herself are just so darn likeable.

Bjork (dot dot on the o)

I love Bjork but I her unmelodic wailing is too much for me. Actually I haven't listened to her latest album so I suppose I should give it a try. Maybe she should do an album with Timbaland.

Joanna Newsom

She is weird and girly but so beyond comparison so I don't really want to mention her on this list.

I was going to add a picture or a video for each one but that would be like at least 5 pictures or so come on give me a break.

iphone hype

You can get nicer videos here.

Now don't act all cynical just to be cool. Don't even start with the, "samsung this" or "nokia that". Forget it. iPhone. GREATEST THING EVAR. You know it. Sylar has one already.

But actually, Steve, can we have a iPhone DS emulator? Or at least some kick-ass solitaire. (Mmmm... touch screen cards...) Please?

Google Maps with Street View

Check this out. You can drag the photo left and right to spin around. Click the arrows to move up or down a street. Also try picking up the little yellow man and putting him somewhere else. Look how his legs flap around. I love it. (Via TechCrunch).

I like to think in terms of technology granting me god-like powers. Prior to Google Maps satellite view, only God could see the world from above from any position. Google Earth extends my powers to provide flyovers, terrain, looking towards the horizon etc. Now this street view gives me the following god-like powers:

• look around a city thousands of miles away
• float above traffic on a busy street without danger
• freeze time (Hiro style)
• telescopic vision (try zooming in on the photo view). I can read phone numbers and opening hours on shop doors.

I guess God (and probably Sauron? (and Sylar any day now :)) would be able to achieve these feats with sound and real-time imaging, ie in God's version of Google Earth you can see yourself through the window looking at your computer. That just proves that my Google granted powers are a little behind God's. And that's as it should be, don't you think? Any company that gives me god-like powers for free is okay with me. Their email is pretty good also.