Preparing for my next computer graphics project Animal Farm, I played around with some animations for a walking horse. The animation of the legs is simple based on the sin function of the movement of the horse. With positive sign for the femoral movement and a negative sign for the lower leg movement.

Now I can inherit this functionality for pretty much every animal on the farm.

My goal is to model a short story out of George Orwells Animal Farm. I wanna keep it simple, so I will just put the famous quote "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." and a pig called Napoleon in it. Anyway should be fun.

Labels: coding, Stanford

This weekend our SRC group went camping in Big Basin. Even though hundreds of mosquito's destroyed every fun, I was impressed by those huge trees. Like the one I'm standing in (in) the picture. This monster tree is more than a 100m(!) high. I have never seen something like that in Austria.

Back from hiking, we had just enough time to take a shower before we went on to a party at Lomita. People got dressed really crazy, almost European. It was there, where I first tried, the new famous US party drink, Most. Surely they call it different. But hey I know what it is, it is Austrian! But I undersand, someone can't drink Red Bull all the time :-)

Labels: Stanford

During my computer graphics class at Stanford, I had the chance to model some trees. Studding the standard books of computer graphics I quickly found my way into OpenGL.
Generated using simple recursive algorithms for transformation in OpenGL

void fractal2D(double steps) {
 if(steps > 20) set color brown:
 else set color to a random green;
 drawRectangle(-steps/20,0,steps/20,steps); // 1:20
 glTranslated(0, steps, 0); // move to the top of the rectangle
 if(steps > 2) {
  glPushMatrix();
  glRotatef(-RandInt(90), 0, 0, 1);
  fractal2D(steps/2); // start first branch
  glPopMatrix();
  glRotatef(RandInt(90), 0, 0, 1); 
  fractal2D(steps/1.2); // start secound branch
 }
}

Labels: coding, Stanford

That's me, shot by Hideaki
Today, like most days at Stanford, I start of with an American breakfast. Pancakes and bagels with cream-cheese. Starting at 9, I had Economics, followed by computer graphics. I'm done by 1. When I get to have some coffee and read a bit in The Economist (luckily available on campus). Then I may bike around a bit, till 5. The time for dinner. Nights are filled with homeworks.

Labels: Stanford

With the 4th of July ahead, I thought it is time to watch Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. At first I was surprised that this documentary won the first price in Cannes this year, but now I have to admit, "i'm lovin' it".
Although I can't agree with some of his conclusions. I like the way he leads us, especially Americans themselves, to remember and think about some very important issues.
Going thru numerous points of why the "war-president" is wrong. Moore, at the end, finds a wonderful quote* on what may be the true reason: "It does not matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous."
"A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance, this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or east Asia but to keep the very structure of society in tact" *...George Orwell's 1984

Labels: movies