immersionist

2012-03-07

Hello, OpenCV on my phone. Via http://aptogo.co.uk/2011/09/opencv-framework-for-ios/

GLKit is Apple’s new wrapper for OpenGL. It is not OpenGL; it wraps it— it’s something whose whims I have to learn to use OpenGL. It is poorly documented, but even if there was sample code galore I’d have to read it, which is still a total waste of my time.

Let me be clear: even if they had made it simple, which is their exact claim, it would still be a useless waste of my time. Its entire existence is a waste of my time.

Of course, there are many other wrappers— GLUT springs to mind. Why why why not just ship that? It’s 20 goddam functions. Why not just fix bugs? If Apple had just updated GLView (it couldn’t reliably give you the screen resolutions), there would have been no need for GLKit.

But of course, there was never any need for it anyway. It is a DirectX— a non-standard proprietary standard, foisted on the programming community for the sake of making everyone’s code even more tightly tied to Apple products. LIKE OBJECTIVE-C DOESN’T DO THAT ANYWAY. It is a marketing tool, a way of making developers part of the fully-monetized Apple product. Why do they want to do that? So that they can publish statistics about the number of captured developers in their ecosystem in the annual report. It is some Harvard MBA’s justification for a raise. I have to learn GLKit because there’s a dickhead in Silicon Valley who wants a third ski chalet.

Documentation is Silicon Valley PR-douchebag standard— long on how super-hyper-mega awesome the new shit is, short on how to use it, silent on what it does not do and how it’s broken. For instance, there is NOTHING I have found on the whole GODDAM INTERNETS about how to set up an orthogonal view. Do you need a First Responder in your .xib? How should it be connected? Do you need hardware shaders? What does the GLKBaseEffect do, anyway, is it EAGL 2 only?

I’ve spent all day just trying to draw to the screen. Thanks, so much, to the xib editor (they rename it annually; I can’t be bothered. Does it even have a name, now that it’s integrated? No, naming it would imply that it’s not integrated. Let’s delete all the documentation with that name in it, too), I don’t know whether it’s hooked up properly. I don’t even know how many places there are to look.

Mainly, I don’t want to spend any more time researching the bullshit Apple ships to maintain its new/shiny status. I just want my apps to compile and work, the way they did last year, and the year before, and use bog-standard OpenGL, and draw some goddam triangles. I just want to think about OTHER SHIT NOW.

2012-02-03

Books by Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, on Project Gutenberg, here

2012-01-23

Medsitations is on the app store. “Meds” is a game about meditation. There’s a video about it here.

Junkspace is up on the App store! Lynn and I are sending it all around— festivals, galleries. It tracks orbital debris using NORAD’s public database.

Yes: I am the art prof who does rocket science.

Föreningen Visionära Vetenskapsmäns Årliga Kongress 1996, by Samir Belarbi— An innovative LARP, one of the first to blur life and play. Held on an overnight ferry. Everyone played mad scientists and presented plans for world dominion.

2011-04-19

Yay, state’s rights! What could y’all be talking about?

STFU, Alabama.

via grainedit.com

immersionist

2012-03-07

2012-02-21

2012-02-15

2012-02-10

oh my god I hate apple

2012-02-03

2012-01-23

2011-04-19