Posts

Es werden Posts vom August, 2006 angezeigt.

Computational Sciences

Ich habe noch ein für mich interessantes Studium entdeckt: http://www.uni-graz.at/cs/ Manches könnte ich mir von Medizin bzw. Informatik anrechnen lassen, aber es gäbe immer noch viel Neues und Wissenswertes.

Was ist denn an Fernsehen schlecht?!

Mein Kommentar zu http://science.orf.at/science/news/145446 : Ich wundere mich, warum viele Eltern dem Fernsehen gegenüber negativ eingestellt sind. Fernsehen ist doch für das Kind eine sehr effiziente Möglichkeit, viele Dinge über die Welt in kurzer bis kürzester Zeit zu erfahren und optische und akustische Eindrücke zu gewinnen. Freilich haben die Eltern meiner Meinung nach die Pflicht, die Fernsehprogramme sorgfältig auszuwählen, bis das Kind ein entsprechendes Maß an Medienkompetenz erlangt. Aber warum Fernsehen "dumm" machen sollte, ist mir bislang verborgen geblieben. Sicher, seine Freizeit einseitig nur mit Fernsehen zu verbringen, ist für die Gesundheit nicht gut; man muss Bewegung machen, soziale Interaktion erlernen und auch die Kulturtechniken Lesen, Schreiben und Rechnen üben. Aber maßvollen Konsum ausgewählter TV-Programme halte ich für eine gute Sache. Ich glaube, dass das Fernsehen auch einen Beitrag dazu leistet, dass das "Wissen über die Welt" in de

Zeittafel zur Psychologie von Intelligenz, Hochbegabung und Kreativität

In response to long emails with comments on his website, Jürgen vom Scheidt has sent me a copy of his book "Zeittafel zur Psychologie von Intelligenz, Hochbegabung und Kreativität", which is a very interesting chronological listing of things the author considers the fruits of the work of highly intelligent people from the stone age until the present. Yet another one for my list! I still have to wonder where to place it in this list.

Interview with Josef Penninger

Not too fresh, but interesting. I've accidentially found it today (when randomly browsing Wikipedia): http://www.life-science.at/karriere/experten/interview-penninger1.php The most interesting passage is the following one: "life-science.at: Wenn Sie heute zurückblicken, können Sie sagen, dass Sie sich bereits in der Mittelschule von Ihren Mitschülern in irgendeiner Weise abgehoben haben? Prof. Dr. PENNINGER: Ich war kein guter Schüler - in einzelnen Fächern 'ja', die haben mich interessiert und in denen war ich gut - aber nicht in allen. Theoretische Physik und Mathematik haben mir gut gefallen - Einmal wäre ich wegen eines Aufsatzes fast von der Schule geflogen. Mit 17 hatte ich die Idee, ich möchte etwas für die Menschheit tun und habe mich spontan entschlossen, Medizin zu studieren. Ich bin daher nach Innsbruck gegangen. Aber das Studieren, das viele auswendig lernen hat mich nicht ganz befriedigt und viele andere auch nicht.  Ich bin in der Schule und Studienzeit d

Status report

Not much exciting has happened. Just a small update so you know what I've done lately. * Hugi: I've updated the article index at http://www.hugi.scene.org/ . Now it features all German and English issues released thus far. Another nice, not too special goodie will be released in a couple of days. I've also made new screenshots of issues 11 - 30 for pouet (for better consistency, as somebody has added screenshots of issues 1 - 10 showing the background / main menu pics) and posted instructions for the gloperators to "fix me beautifull". Let's see if they'll fix it or if I'll have to remind them again. * Homepage: From time to time I'll add articles which I wrote for various Hugi issues. In the last few days I've added some "scene fiction" and reviews. I've decided not to add all the texts I've planned (some of them were not so interesting IMHO, or were written in collaboration with others with me writing less than half of the a

Gamedev plans

I'd like to develop a turn-based strategy role-playing game. Yesterday I've designed much of the gameplay, including the A.I. behaviour of the non-playable characters. At least I can already say now that the enemy A.I. will be far stronger than in the game which serves as my source of inspiration. I've found some parameters with which the strength of the A.I. can be easily modified so I'll probably offer several levels of difficulty. Maybe I'll also do it like that every enemy character displays a different level of intelligent behaviour. However, implementation is going to be a great problem since I have no experience at graphics programming at all. At the moment I'm not even able to display a bitmap. :-(

Wikipedia

I ask myself: What would the Internet be without Wikipedia? A mess stuffed with information, but without a central place where to find all of it at a pretty high level thanks to open reviewing and editing. Wikipedia has been the greatest innovation since search engines!

Geistige Strömungen in Österreich 1867 - 1918

I've discovered an interesting book in my shelves and am now reading it. It's called "Geistige Strömungen in Österreich 1867 - 1918" (Intellectual Movements in Austria 1867 - 1918). The author is Albert Fuchs and it was first published in 1949. On about 320 pages he describes (classical) liberalism, catholicism, the workers' movement, various social reform movements, German nationalism, idealist philosophy, the influence of psychoanalysis and pacifism.  For the first time in my life I've read about "Volapük", an artifical language. I really wonder if today's Greens somehow relate to the "social reformers" of those days who had similar ideas in some aspects. I've also found an interesting quote about liberalism: "Privateigentum an den Produktionsmitteln scheint ihnen die einzig mögliche Basis der zivilisierten Gesellschaft." In other words: For classical liberals, socialism was barbarism.  By the way, the liberal party was

Coding

I've successfully managed to install SDL on my Visual Studio. After some tweaking the .exe file is 40 kb (debug mode, so I guess it will be even smaller in release mode). This means it will probably be no problem to create a 96k game with this configuration. I guess the first thing I'll code is gonna be "shadeblobs" :-) ((c) by one of our proofreaders) OK, I've managed to reduce the size of my SDL template .exe to 7168 bytes. It's still in debug mode as I get a linker error when trying to build the project in release mode (it says: "msvcrt.lib(MSVCR71.dll) : error LNK2005: _exit bereits in LIBC.lib(crt0dat.obj) definiert" - maybe somebody knows how to fix that?). Anyway, this leaves more than 88 kb for code, gfx and music - that oughtta be enough to make something decent. What a coincidence: CoaXCable has asked me to join his group CoolPHat as a demo/game coder - so maybe he has some ideas about what I could code (i.e. better ideas than I currently h

Personality test

I tried some tests from http://queendom.com/tests/ (I had found the link on DiamonDie's homepage). One of them was the biggest personality test I've ever taken. Here are the "Summary Results": "Based on the Five Factor Model credited to Goldberg, Costa and McRae, the Advanced Multidimensional Personality Matrix (AMPM) is a comprehensive personality assessment designed to provide you with valuable insight into your character, aptitudes, and disposition.  The AMPM is based on the theory that all human personality traits belong to one of five broad dimensions of personality. Below the summary report, you will find a detailed personality report, including an advice section and your scores on the thirty-seven distinct personality traits.  Your Personality Type:  Manager  Your confidence, flexibility, and organizational skills make you the Manager. Your ability to juggle tasks is admirable, and your firm but friendly attitude gains you respect. You love trying out new