Updates from my blog and notes.
When they were on the far side of the Moon, what did they see? What did they think? What did they feel? Breathtaking and never before seen sights of our natural satellite, several human spaceflight records, surface features named after loved ones, and a broken toilet were some of the highlights of the Artemis II mission, marking humans return to the Moon in the 21st century. Why there? Why again?…
I think a big reason I became interested in programming and computers in general, is the short feedback loop and lack of real consequences. Did the algorithm crash your computer? No problem, just start again. Need to fix a bug? Rewrite and run the program again. Want to try another solution? You got it. It’s what soft ware was designed to do. The cost of altering it is practically zero. I’ve…
I realized I could use my Grbl laser cutter to produce sounds. G-Code controls two stepper motors, that when spinning at the right speeds, can produce musical notes. The first step was to find the frequency constant for my particular machine. I did this by moving an axis at a set speed and using a spectrum analyzer (in this case the Spectroid app for Android) to find the frequency it produces. I…
What is my truth? It’s probably the question we all make ourselves at some point of our lives. That is, of all the infinite possibilities life has to offer us, where do we fit? Some truths are easy to know. Our name, the place where we live, our family, our clothing size. Others grow and get shaped with time, such as food and music preferences. We move through space and time gives us the tools and…
Langjam Gamejam seemed like a fun challenge. Game development and programming language design? What kind of game and language should I make? The possibilities are endless. My first idea was to make a simple state machine language and write a piece of interactive fiction. The focus would be in the game and storytelling, as the technical aspects of the language wouldn’t be interesting. I thought it…
In October I traveled to Mexico City. Black and white is the only way I could harmonize all of its shapes and colors.
It’s an interesting thought that practically all life on Earth is possible thanks to a giant fusion reactor. Plants convert light from hydrogen fusion into energy to grow, only to eventually be eaten by other life forms. Our solar panels and wind turbines all depend on atomic energy. Even fossil fuels, stored carbon from past life that humans now exploit, had to take in sunlight to grow and…
Telling secrets to yourself seems like a pointless activity. Why would you confess to yourself something you already know? Your secrets are inside your head, yes, but they exist as nebulous, unorganized ideas. In the same way that writing a list of pending tasks helps you clear your mind and structure your thoughts, sharing your secrets with a piece of paper or a text file will help you organize…
For Cutouts , my new interactive graphics project, I used Mithril.js to simplify the task of rendering in the browser the interface of what essentially is a vector graphics editor. I always try to minimize the use of dependencies in my projects, and Mithril offers a lot given how simple it is. A virtual DOM that updates the page in the most efficient manner every time the user interacts with the…
What’s your favorite color? I have never been able to give a definitive answer to that. For a long time it was green, but I wasn’t sure which shade. I wasn’t even certain if it really was my favorite color. Nowadays the answer I give is teal or cyan. It can look like green, but also like blue, depending on the lighting and the other colors surrounding it. I also like yellow because it goes really…
My mother, who is almost two years old now, gave me these lessons the day I left the nest. I still remember her words when I began to flap my wings and fly for the first time. She taught me where to find the sweetest flowers and to avoid cats, to be aware of bees and to twirl in the air. But I think these lessons I’m about to tell you are the ones that have helped me the most. Be light. We can…
When I was a kid I was lucky (and privileged) to have basic music lessons as part of art class. I didn’t become a musician and never learned to play the flute, as I was never able to understand which holes I needed to cover to play the notes I wanted. At least I learned the name of the musical notes. Our professor told us that music was just math. That caught my attention. “Music is math? I’m good…
A month ago I released my first game, Euclid’s Inferno . I’m glad I was able to start from an idea and turn it into an actual playable game on Steam in less than a year. I have read advice telling you not to spend too much time developing your first game, since, well, it is your first game, it won’t be good. Anyway, the game is out, and I am very happy about the final product. It has its flaws,…
When we go to a party or reunion and we have a taste of a delicious dish, it isn’t strange to ask the host for the recipe so we can prepare it at home. Even in an restaurant, where the chef refuses to give us the secret ingredients of their staple dish, we will do everything to replicate those flavors at home, experimenting until getting something that comes close. The recipe is reproducible, the…
Call her Baja California, or just California, but never just Baja . Would you call New York City just “New”? Would you call South Africa just “South”? Baja is an adjective that means “Lower”. But then I get confused with the California I know! Valid point. For clarification you can use: Baja California Mexican California California, Mexico But never just “Baja”. You’re just naming her after her…
Most of the stuff on search engines is AI-generated garbage (specially tutorials) or ads. Occasionally I find someone’s blog, where there’s actually good content, but this is the exception. Nowadays this is the way I discover most new websites: Someone on the internet shares a useful article and I read it. I go to the author’s home page or blog. Visit the links on their posts. Go to step 2. Isn’t…
A playground should: Prioritize play and creativity. Be accessible. The barrier of entry should be as small as possible. Strive to provide immediate feedback. Be intuitive. A powerful playground that’s hard to use is less useful than a simple one whose interface is obvious to the user. Foster experimentation and iterative development. Have no rules. It should have no end goal or “right” way to use…
When I hear other people tell me their stories from five or ten years ago with such detail as if they had lived them yesterday, it makes me realize of my inability to remember the details of things that happened long ago. Sometimes I don’t have anything to say, except for a few stories that I don’t even know are stored in my head until someone mentions something that makes me remember it.…
For the past four months I have been working on a videogame. I’ve been meaning to work on one for a while. I have made a few games in the past, but they were mostly prototypes and nothing too complex. This is the original pitch I sent to a friend: What if Euclid dies and goes to math hell and needs to defeat math demons in order to return to Earth: The game Angles and Demons The idea of a 2D…
North America has been blessed with two total solar eclipses in the span of a decade. The first one has already passed back in 2017, and now everyone is preparing for next year’s. I will be wearing an eye patch. I got this idea from Glenn Scheider’s recount of the 1991 eclipse At contact-2 minus twenty minutes my wife and I each donned eye patches to dark adapt one eye prior to totality. As usual…