Nomic Coding Game
About 30 years ago, I had an idea for a coding game inspired by Nomic. It occurred to me last month that all of the tools I need are readily available now. The post Nomic Coding Game first appeared on nklein software .
nklein software
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Quadratic Number Fields
I want to explore arrangements of balls in n-dimensions. In particular, I am interested in exploring kissing numbers in five or more dimensions. I want to ensure that if I come up with a configuration which improves upon the known lower-bounds that I have a precise specification of where to place the kissing balls. If [ ] The post Quadratic Number Fields first appeared on nklein software .
Ray Tracing Extra-dimensional CSG Objects
This month, I added CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) operators to the ray-tracer that I mentioned in the previous post. I added intersections, complements, and unions. You can find the source code in my weekend-raytracer github repo. The post Ray Tracing Extra-dimensional CSG Objects first appeared on nklein software .
Ray Tracing In One Weekend (in Lisp, and n-dimenions)
Earlier this year, I started working through the online book Ray Tracing In One Weekend (Book 1). I have been following along with it in Common Lisp, and I have been extending it all from 3-dimensional to n-dimensional. I reproduced 4-dimensional versions of all of the book images which you can see on my weekend-raytracer [ ] The post Ray Tracing In One Weekend (in Lisp, and n-dimenions) first…
I Broke It
Unfortunately, I managed to delete my WordPress database at a time when the most recent backup I had was from 11 years ago. So I will hopefully get some newer information uploaded again sometime. But, most of my content is gone. 🙁 Scott Burson pointed out that The Wayback Machine has my content: http://web.archive.org/web/20240901104727/https://nklein.com/ And, [ ] The post I Broke It first…
Lines Are Big Circles
In previous posts here, I described using Clifford algebras for representing points and rotations. I was never very satisfied with this because the translations were still tacked on rather than incorporated in the algebra. To represent geometric objects, you need to track two Clifford multivectors: one for the orientation and another for the offset. About [ ] The post Lines Are Big Circles first…
The Bowling Game Kata in Functional Common Lisp
The Bowling Game Kata in Functional Common Lisp from Patrick Stein on Vimeo. Code Kata are repetitive coding tasks designed to help one internalize certain patterns, methodologies, or tools. In this video, I go through Uncle Bob Martin s The Bowling Game Kata. The Kata exercises test-driven development. Uncle Bob s presentation of the Kata is in [ ] The post The Bowling Game Kata in Functional…
IRC Graphs
For some time, I ve been wanting to find some big data source to dig around in and make plots of. Yesterday, I realized that I have access to #lisp logs from IRC going back several years. The first question that I wanted to look at was: How well does talkativeness on IRC follow a Power [ ] The post IRC Graphs first appeared on nklein software .
Inverse functions with fixed-points
Introduction SICP has a few sections devoted to using a general, damped fixed-point iteration to solve square roots and then nth-roots. The Functional Programming In Scala course that I did on Coursera did the same exercise (at least as far as square roots go). The idea goes like this. Say that I want to find [ ] The post Inverse functions with fixed-points first appeared on nklein software .
Track-Best Library Updated
I updated my track-best library to allow you to keep all of the the things tied for best. The WITH-TRACK-BEST macro now accepts the :KEEP-TIES keyword parameter. Here are some examples of using the :KEEP-TIES option. For all of the examples, we will use the same sequence of TRACK calls: defun track-numbers track [ ] The post Track-Best Library Updated first appeared on nklein software .