A Gentleman’s Orthonormal Basis Rotation

So you need to draw curved and bent pipe-tube-things.

You can make a straight section with two rings of points; just orient one ring like so, the other ring like so, and draw triangles between them. For a curve, just string a bunch of short straight pieces together.

Almost but not quite. Why the hell is there that pinched part in the curved pipe?

The problem is that the orientation of the rings is not as simple as “normal to the pipe’s tangent”. But a ring is a circular-symmetrical thing, right, so rotation about the pipe’s tangent shouldn’t really matter. Right?

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Iterating Over a Triangulation in Java

Say you’ve got some points in a plane, and you’re fixin’ to triangulate them. Specifically, you’re going to generate the Delaunay triangulation with an incremental algorithm, and then of course you’re going to want the triangles and/or segments.

Now say you’re doing this in Java, and you’re doing it many times over, and you’re doing it on battery power, so you have to do it efficiently.

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SNES Classic Teardown

If I made a Christmas wish-list, the SNES Classic would be on it.

I finally found one on the store shelf. When I got it home I played me some Star Fox and Super Metroid, and then of course I took the poor thing apart.

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8Bitdo SN30 Teardown and Critique

I’ve waited many years for a console-quality PC gamepad, and finally 8Bitdo may have made it happen. The SN30 and SF30 look a whole lot like SNES controllers, but how much like SNES controllers are they? Are they precise? Are they well-built? Let’s have a look-see.

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Rendering Twisty Thingies

I’ve got a program called Twist Flux. It features an array of twisty, bendy… thingies.

I found a way to render twisty shapes which appear to have volume without going so far as to use 3D models of twisted rods.

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