SteveStreeting.com

Yes, this is the extra library project I’ve been working on recently:

There are more details in my OGRE Forum post, but I’m pretty sure you can guess what it does I’m pretty pleased with the shots & speed so far, although I’m refining it more all the time. I’m currently in a closed beta phase with a client, so no demos yet.

I’ve written this in partnership with IDV (creators of SpeedTree), who have been very helpful. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on doing this ‘right’, choosing to take the high road of writing a completely native Ogre implementation from scratch rather than adapting the reference application, and I hope that over time, SpeedTree and OgreSpeedTree will become components of choice for those Ogre users who are looking for top-quality foliage rendering.

I’ll have this with me at Siggraph if you want to see it running, just drop me an email at steve at torusknot dot com.

SpeedTree® is a registered trademark of Interactive Data Visualisation, Inc. All rights reserved.

I just got back from my trip to Gotland, I almost didn’t make it back due to delays on the M25 (surprise surprise) making my transfer from Heathrow back to Gatwick rather late, when I didn’t have that much time to spare. I just about made it by sprinting all the way through Gatwick, getting to the gate just as they were about to leave.

It was a good trip despite the travel overhead, I think there’s a good chance we can build an ongoing working relationship and I’ll end up going back again sometime. If all goes well I’ll talk more about it in future posts.

It struck me how much Gotland and Guernsey have in common - we both have about the same populations (despite Gotland being much bigger), and the main town of Visby is about the same size & population as our St Peter Port, although if anything it’s quieter, maybe because there are less cars. We share the same frustrations at having to shuttle through onshore international hubs, and that we one we can get to isn’t necessarily the best one for international connections (London Gatwick for us, Stockholm Arlanda for them), and a culture which is a little different from the ‘mainland’ we have the most direct connection with. Gotland relies most on tourism, and although Guernsey tends to worship the finance sector these days tourism is still very important, so we share experiences such as ‘cruise ship days’, and their harbour is dominated by a marina awash with expensive yachts too. Both our towns are full of history, theirs very medieval, ours more of a mixture from medieval (e.g. our castle), via Victorian and up to the WWII occupation. I was surprised to discover they don’t have an active fishing industry though - I generally assumed fresh local seafood would be a staple in any island community like it is at home. Anyhow, even though the culture & language are very different, there was an odd sense of familiarity about the place…

The hotel I was staying at had no Internet access so I have a bunch of catching up to do again. I’m back for this week, then I’m off again to Siggraph so apologies if I’m rather brief / flighty with my communications. After Siggraph is over I should finally get to settle down for a while again!

Feel free to whistle the very appropriate but highly copyrighted tune that you’re no doubt already thinking of

I’ve wedged another business trip rather hurriedly into my schedule, sandwiched betwixt (oh, you gotta love that word) our recent holiday and my impending departure for Siggraph in about 10 days. It came up at really short notice and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to fit it around my existing commitments, but luckily I was able to organise it to happen over this weekend, which just about worked (although I still have to leave early Friday). This will be my first trip to Sweden, specifically Gotland, so I’m looking forward to it, although my time there will be short and I’ll spend an enormous amount of time in transit. It’s a bit of a tortuous route, requiring 3 flights and a coach in each direction (Guernsey-Gatwick-Heathrow-Stockholm-Gotland), plus a short transfer to Heathrow Terminal 5 on the way out (uh-oh). I can’t really complain though, living on an island myself I know all about having to shuttle through onshore international hubs, you just learn to live with it - but I have it at both ends this time!

Should be good anyway - with luck some business and/or future partnerships will come out of it, but at the very least it should be an interesting trip.

I was playing about with working in Photoshop today because I needed to polish off a logo for the new product I’ve been working on during what time I could find in the last few weeks (which has often been evenings and weekends), and while I was at it I decided to update the Ogre logo a little bit.

Yeah, I know - it’s totally derivative and shamelessly jumping on the ‘wet floor’ bandwagon, but I don’t care; I like it. I thought about putting a shimmery effect on the floor or something but I was already short of time.

I’ll be able to reveal the product I’m talking about soon, the legals have now all been signed so I’m getting ready to go. All I’ll say right now is that it’s a commercial Ogre add-on component which I hope will be quite popular among the higher-end Ogre users. I want to spend a little more time polishing it with my closed beta users before opening it up to a wider audience - the prospect came up on rather short notice so I want to concentrate on the loose ends and make sure the quality is there before unleashing it. I have standards to maintain

I consider LinkedIn to be one of the few genuinely useful things to come out of the whole Web 2.0 gold rush, since it’s a business-oriented, generally ‘fluffless’ site (if I see one more virtual gift or stupid time-wasting Facebook application, I’ll lose all will to live) - as such I actually do use it fairly regularly. I finally got around to creating an OGRE Group - feel free to join if you’re a professional OGRE user / contributor. I use LinkedIn to remind me who I can refer OGRE-related jobs to, so it might be worth your while

I’ve been having a bit of a crappy week, with a particular project taking way longer than I had expected and causing me to explore the darkest crevices of my mind looking for new and creative ways to swear at it, with only mixed success. Cue long hours, too much coffee and Red Bull, and some seriously knotted shoulder muscles. That’s why it was an especially nice surprise this morning to find a box on my doorstep, containing an unexpected gift from a friend & long-time Ogre user in France (tuan kuranes) - a bottle of Champagne and also a bottle of a local speciality, Chartreuse.

I’m not much of a drinks expert, despite this not being the first time I’ve received locally-themed alcohol from people using / benefitting from Ogre, so I looked it up, and it has quite a history - originally developed (or learned / adapted from an earlier alchemical recipe, details are sketchy) in the early 17th century by Carthusian monks as an ‘elixir of long life’ and all-round healing potion.  Even though it’s produced on a larger scale now it’s ingredients are still only known by 2 monks at one time, allegedly. It’s also incredibly alcoholic, at 110 proof (55%) - guaranteed to put hairs on your chest. Or remove the hair from your entire body - it’s probably 50:50.

All in all, very interesting stuff. I immediately thought of Absinthe when I saw it, but it’s mostly the colour and strength that they have in common I think. I’ve tried a little already with some ice as advised, and its very, very unusual. The best way I can describe the taste is if you imagine grazing on the more herbal elements of your spice rack and then gargling with lit paraffin. I’m sure I can taste oregano and thyme in there, as well as the more obvious anise - but there are 130 plants in there somewhere according to the site. It certainly does taste medicinal! It’s a bit much for me undiluted, I’m going to experiment with mixing it later - orange juice and hot chocolate seem to be popular options. It’s apparently good to cook with too, in small doses.

In any case, it’s great to experience unusual local produce like this; I always like to try local food / drink when I’m away on holiday or business, and I’m grateful to Paul for sending a little bit of France my way, brightening my week, and generally spreading the Ogre love. Kudos for picking something as green as the big dude himself, too

We’ve had ‘custom memory allocators’ on our upcoming features list for a while. Last year a student did some work on this during the Summer of Code, but the system ended up being a little too ambitious with its use of templates and got a bit too costly in terms of the template instantiation requirements. Unfortunately the student never returned, so I picked up the baton recently, and I felt it was worth writing about some of the things I’ve done, since most of the C++ allocator discussions on the net are pretty shallow and only deal with the simple cases. This is quite a big and fairly technical discussion, so I’ve placed the bulk of it after the jump to spare those who don’t care about this sort of thing!

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been rather busy these last few weeks which will hopefully go some way to excusing (or at least explaining) my often multi-day absences from the OGRE forums lately. I’ve had an influx of work propositions, on top of the projects I already have running and it’s been a struggle to juggle it all. In a way it’s nice to have to turn down work because I’m not likely to be able to fit it in for a few months, but at the same time, since in the past there have been times where work has been short, it feels so wrong. I’ve thought about subcontracting some of the extra out to other people I know, but came to the realisation that I wouldn’t even have the time to manage that process and give full attention to the projects I’m closely involved with, so in the end have just made some recommendations for other people to contact, and offered to act as a 1-man backup strike team if they get stuck. As well as contract work, I have an OGRE add-on product in the works that I hope to be able to post about in a few weeks.

Personal life has been busy too, my wife just had to go into hospital to have some wisdom teeth removed so she’s been delicate and in need of some looking after. We have a trip to Paris booked for next month and we keep saying we should plan what we’re going to do, but I’m betting we’ll probably just end up winging it I haven’t even sorted out what else I’m doing at Siggraph yet, except for the work assignments I have, really have to put some thought in. I’ve been putting some more time into the revised memory system for OGRE when I can (which isn’t as often as I’d like), I’ll post about that separately.  I’m doing a training presentation to my local developer group later this week to cover a few more advanced aspects of Subversion, so preparing for that has taken a little time. Rock Band is still soaking up what leisure time is left, although even that’s been far more neglected than usual.

So, there you go - a rambling post to explain why you might not have seen much of me lately. I haven’t in fact withdrawn to a mountain retreat to contemplate the deeper mysteries (that’s next month), I’m just a little busy

I’ve only been to Siggraph once before, in 2006 when it was held in Boston. It happened to coincide with a trip I wanted to make to see some friends / clients of mine anyway so it dovetailed in quite well - I also held a Birds of a Feather (BOF) meet-up for the OGRE community while I was there, and it was good to meet a few of our users.

I enjoyed the experience but given my small / micro business status it’s hard to justify the expense to get out there, especially with airline prices seemingly increasing by the second. It’s generally just more cost- and time-effecient to cherry-pick the papers I’m interested in afterwards, unless I have a specific business case to be there in person.

Nevertheless the thing I enjoyed most about it last time was meeting people, so I’m glad to say I’m going again this year, as part of the entourage for a company whose project I’ve been working on quite a lot over the past 6 months. As such I’ll be spending a fair amount of time manning a booth, but there should still be sufficient time to enjoy the event and meet up with people. I haven’t decided whether I want to run an official OGRE BOF this time around, or even if I’ll have time for it - I’m actually thinking an informal meet-up at a bar nearby or something instead might be better. If you’re going too and you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know! This will be my first trip to LA but I’m expecting to have some reliable guides