DNA Lounge: Wherein there are some more construction photos.

11 years ago
The roofers were here today with their tar and their torches. The new dormer for the stairs is now soundproofed and sealed, and the new penetrations for drains and vents are closed up.

And we have a new wall. We have a new wall because when an inspector came out he said, "This existing wall, I don't like it. I don't like it one bit." So now we have a new wall. Hooray.

Of course, the plans already had us building a second wall inside this wall, presumably because our structural engineer didn't much like that wall either, and maybe at this point we don't need that second wall, but it's probably cheaper to just build them both and let left-hand and right-hand continue to not talk to each other than to spend the time to work it out in a saner way. The saner way would involve having the structural engineer change his plans, and then get that change approved, and days would go by, and, oh, fuck it, we'll just build them both.

Remember that scene at the opening of Blade where they're having a rave in the basement and then blood comes pouring out of the sprinkler system? Of course you do, because like me, you have an encyclopedic knowledge of every nightclub scene in every movie ever made. You don't? Must be a professional hazard, then.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure this valve here is where you plug in the blood tanks.

In case that ever became necessary.

I'll just note here that it's less than four months until Halloween.

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Location: 37° 46' 15.63" N, 122° 24' 45.70" W

XScreenSaver 5.18

11 years ago
XScreenSaver 5.18 is out now. A bunch of iOS tweaks, mostly.

I had submitted 5.17 to the app store on June 22, and they only got around to reviewing it today -- July 3, 11 days later. They rejected it because a single one of the ~200 display modes failed to launch.

I just submitted 5.18 to the app store. I guess now I wait another two weeks.

I can tell this is going to go well.

If any of you reading this have influence with the Apple app-review process, it sure would be nice if you could use that influence.

I added a "review note" this time asking them not to be ridiculous, but I doubt they even read those.

With this version, all but three of the savers now work on iOS. The only ones missing are Extrusion (because it uses GLE and GLUT); WebCollage (because it's written in Perl, and thus impossible); and Lockward (because it's all screwed up).

I added a pretty significant optimization to jwzgles.c. When calling glBegin/glEnd, it was translating that to glVertexPointer/glDrawArrays. An optimization that was in there the first time around was that when that was inside of a display list, it was the glVertexPointer/glDrawArrays calls that were recorded in the list, not each call to glVertex3f. But that meant that it was still shipping the vertex array off to the GPU each time the list was played back. I changed it so that, upon reaching glEndList, it gathers up all of the verts, texture coordinates, etc. into a single VBO, ships that off to the GPU once with glBufferData, and on subsequent runs of the display list, refers to that VBO instead. This means display lists are really doing what they were meant to do: saving geometry on the GPU in an easy-to-replay way. A bit of housekeeping overhead aside, this should be as efficient as both A) the way display lists worked in the olden days, and B) what you would get if you rewrote your code and rolled your VBOs by hand.

Funny thing is, it literally came to me in a dream. The night before I had actually said to myself, "there, it's done" and closed Xcode. Then I had a dream where I was actually coding this up, Emacs keystrokes and all. The next night I sat down and, basically, re-typed it.

I don't have coding dreams that often, but when I do they're often like that. My subconscious sends me an email saying, "Hey jerk, go type this."

Previously, previously.

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Current Music: Steed Lord -- 123, If You Want Me ♬

What exactly is Obamacare and what did it change?

11 years ago
CaspianX2:

What people call "Obamacare" is actually the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. However, people were calling it "Obamacare" before everyone even hammered out what it would be. It's a term mostly used by people who don't like the PPACA, and it's become popularized in part because PPACA is a really long and awkward name, even when you turn it into an acronym like that.

Anyway, the PPACA made a bunch of new rules regarding health care, with the purpose of making health care more affordable for everyone. Opponents of the PPACA, on the other hand, feel that the rules it makes take away too many freedoms and force people (both individuals and businesses) to do things they shouldn't have to.

So what does it do? Well, here is everything, in the order of when it goes into effect (because some of it happens later than other parts of it):

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