Introducing libcontour
The problem of contouring and parametric region partitioning has finally been solved.
victorliu.info
Latest posts
Third impressions on Claude
Well, it's finally happened: my daily work routine revolves around prompting Claude. I can't say that I'm sad about this development actually, even though I dislike the general invasion of AI into all aspects of computing. What I do want to reflect on right now is two things: the nature …
A home computer desk
A take-down computer desk for the upcoming home computer setup.
On celebrating death
Lindsay Graham has died, and I'm celebrating.
Second impressions on Claude
There are imperfections in the facade.
Myths of living a rural life
I had the fortune of "previewing" rural life before actually committing to it by spending almost half my time for two years up in West Point before moving there. Even so, I discovered a number of realities of living in a rural place for which I had incorrect assumptions.
On writing and LLMs
When I was younger I hated writing. I was bad at it in every way: I could not organize my thoughts. I lacked the vocabulary. I had nothing to say. And yet, as of late, I find an urge to write. Not for any particular reason, but it seems like …
A day at the mug bog
Nothing like watching a Jimmy struggling in the mud to make a hard left and having to back up.
First impressions on Claude
Claude is quite stunning.
Oliver the lamp
My dog got a foxtail under his eyelid.
A tale of two printers
Last year, we decided we needed a second printer. Here is an overly dramatized account of what happened.
AI is making me a micromanager
I am a manager. I hate being a manager. Granted, I manage a whopping two people (two and half, if we're being realistic about job tasks), but I still don't enjoy it. I understand it is a necessary evil in a company of size greater than two, and on the …
The inhumanity of the metric system
The metric system is made for computation. I am not a computer.
Email letter to CUSD board and superintendents, 2026-05-28
Update: See below for a summary of responses. To whom it may concern, You heard from me tonight during public comments at the board meeting. I am writing to better understand the process by which the list of improvements to West Point Elementary was assembled, and voice my concerns. For …
A legible home computer
TL;DR: Modern computing sucks. Let's go back to the 90s, but redesign things more sensibly. Many articles have been written on the deplorable state of modern computing and the world in general. The fact that somehow 8 GB of RAM in 2026 is considered "insufficient" is mindboggling, considering I …
First yard mowing of 2026
I mowed the yard today. Well, actually, it was with a weedeater, but the effect is the same. I am writing this note to remember for next year that this is too late by about two weeks. The last rain was about two weeks ago, and that was when the …
Starting again
Redesign of this site, and another attempt to keep up blogging.
Circular arcs 4 - extrema
One basic operation upon shapes is to compute bounding regions. For a shape made up of pieces of simple curves, this amounts to computing directional extrema on the curve. In other words, given a curve and a direction vector \(d\) (without loss of generality we assume it is normalized), determine …
Circular arcs 3 - parameterization
In the last article, we discussed how to compute a point on the arc given a parameter value. In this article, we explore the inverse problem of computing the parameter value given a point (approximately) on the arc. Parameters used for arc evaluation and parameterization. To recap, we obtained the …
Circular arcs 2 - evaluation
Continuing the series on circular arc representations, we next discuss the most fundamental operation of curve representation: evaluation at an arbitrary parameter value. The typically most desirable parameterization is arc length parameterization. We will use instead a parameter \(s\in[0,1]\) that is proportional to the arc length parameterization …
Circular arcs 1 - representation
I have written a short note on circular arcs, but I feel it would be a good idea to revisit much of that material and explain some of the rationale and derivations. We will begin this series with this article on arc representation. The goal is to represent an arc …