This week is pretty busy at work.
I need to prepare a presentation for Friday. In this presentation I'll have to report to the group on current and near future work for my team.

Then I have to dish out some plan for a year-long project. I started today and, well, I didn't even know what software to use ! Eventually I settled for GanttProject as most people seem to dislike MS Project.. but GanttProject does have a few bugs and the features seem to be lacking. It's pretty good, but still.. I would like at least to custom color the background of the columns for example..

Anyhow it's interesting to schedule projects. In this case there is a lot of wild guessing to do. So, I take the outline (divided by year's quarters) from my boss and I progressively add more details in a hierarchical fashion.
Many details will be missing, some things will require more time, some less time but still, if you don't at least try to plan things, they may never get done 8)

Another thing I have to do this week, well for tomorrow, it's a new attempt to study math in our group. It's mostly going to be useful for those that aren't programmers (but certainly also always for programmers as well !) but because it's in Japanese for me it's mostly a Japanese language study.
In fact this time the appointed "teachers" are me and a Japanese colleague. My role for now is to translate the terms in English by tomorrow (almost 1 AM here !) and then work in concert with the coworker to somehow teach math+English+Japanese depending on the individuals 8)

wooooo

A lot goes through my head !
Aha !!!

For example:

Software rendering

Fixed pipeline came to the rescue long ago, then HLSL/Cg shaders came and now I just want to get rid of all that bullshit.
I think Paul Heckbert (poly_scan.c ...yeah !!). Render a polygon, do something per-pixel. Give it to me, stop this "safe family driver" shaders bullshit !

Currently web sucks (you win.. rince !)

It sucks to put anything other than text on the web, it sucks sucks. The next thing would be PowerPoint. You can actually drag and drop a picture into a PowerPoint document... I know Sergey & Larry have something like this cooking up somewhere.. and if they don't then it means they went the way of Microsoft -> rotten, self-overwhelmed by its own identity -> we do this way because we do this way because we do this way...

Mathematics

Something great happened to my group while I was in Arizona.. someone decided to go for math lessons for everyone in the group !!!
I "love" math but I'm not good at it.. we need lots of practice. I got involved with it and we'll be studying linear algebra for the sake of everyone, especially for the artists... but then I want to introduce signal theory -> it's at the base of information theory !!! Signal theory is widely underestimated in computer graphics. It's relegated to chip-making but it should be tought at a higher level (SHRM hinted it, An Efficient Representation for Irradiance Environment Maps finally proved it for me)

My Data

Ultimate goal for the Google Duo and Steve Jobs and some half-assed person that has taken the place of a tired Bill Gates (tired to make money and possibly more interested in World issues.. can't blame him !).
It's complex. Google has the web, but the web sucks (see above). You can upload pictures, but it's a pain in the ass. Apple has MP3 players that are turning into computers (and computer buyers).
Neither the web nor the Apple software are yet a good solution. Data is money: the more you get the more you are afraid to lose. I take a lot of pictures and I constantly worry about downloading and publishing. Where, when and until when ?
Digital cameras are everywhere and so are ex partners. Men more than women take pictures, that's a lot of ex girlfriend pictures. Is that women's next trick ?
It used to be: beg me to stay because I give you sex. Soon it could easily be: beg me to stay because you took to many pictures of me/us to be able to move on without a million new arguments with your possible new gfs.

Digital madness.. a solution to a problem that we created.. is that how machines are going to owe us ? Is that how Sergey&Larry or Steve are going to try to save us (for a price 8) ?
The Databusters, like the GhostBusters... get your data under control.. quite a mission.

But one day I will lose my data.. and I will be very miserable.. and then I may just be very happy 8)

P.S. Japanese language

Fack !!! I should be studying !!!

I've been very busy ! Too busy to update this blog I guess.
On the train to and from work I read papers. Graphics papers mostly, but also stuff like "Factoring Wavelet Transforms into Lifting Steps" (PDF link !) ...mostly reading and going "whaaaa ???!!!"

At work I've been preparing a PowerPoint presentation.. wooo ! I think of Dilbert every time I say that.

At home I've started to work on a new website. Something that more or less I wanted to do for a while, but also something that could be possibly turn into some sort of business... given enough time and effort 8)

Speaking of building sites, I'm currently mostly involved with CSS. I'm slowly trying to tame the beast.. it doesn't feel right to waste so much time tuning borders, frames and colors, while I could be actually writing down the content... but unfortunately I don't have any web designer friend that could help me with this.
In fact most of my friends hardly ever come with any business idea, in fact most people hardly ever come up with any idea and much less invest any actual time trying to put it to work.  read more »