Starting in the 1920s, auto manufacturers began painting car bodies using a hand-spraying technique to speed up the painting process, and overspray would accumulate in the paint bays. Over time, layer upon colorful layer built up.
The pieces of enamel paint slag were repeatedly hardened in the ovens in which the cars went to cure the paint. Now, they’re often collected, polished, and formed into jewelry. Fordite.com can help you learn more about this fascinating material.
Sea glass is weathered glass found on beaches next to the ocean. The weathering process smooths and frosts the glass.
Here’s a list of where to find some of the best sea glass in the world. One of the best, in my opinion, is Davenport glass.
So far, I’ve found some of here and here on Etsy , but it isn’t cheap.
Ever want to see what assembly code your compiler is really generating?
There are a few reasons to want to know this. Firstly is correctness. Sometimes obscure bugs can crop up when you switch from one compiler to another, from one set of optimization settings to another, from debug to release, or even from one compiler version to another.
The second is optimization. What addressing mode(s) are being used, are there data hazards that are slowing things, are simd instructions being used? Game and high performance compute companies still spend time pulling every cycle they can out of a routine.
It used to be you had to compile and then pull the executable into a debugger and examine the code. Now, there’s an online tool that can quickly do the same. Enter the Godbolt compiler explorer.
It allows you to type in C/C++ code, select from a whole host of compilers, enter custom compiler flags, then show you the generated output.
In the case above, I wanted to verify C/C++ short-circuit comparison behavior of a variable against NULL and then dereference in the same conditional. If the compare against NULL doesn’t execute and exit before the dereference, a NULL pointer exception/segfault will result. According to C/C++ rules, there should be an early out after the comparison against NULL – and sure enough – on line 8 and 9 we see the test and exit.
Anyway – it’s a neat online tool you might give a try to learn more about the assembly your C/C++ code turns into.
There are some off-the-shelf kits out there for building colorful LED cubes, but Mike Caan’s light cube features a whopping 24,576 RGB LEDs across its six 64×64 faces, each capable of displaying animations and videos uploaded from his computer. It also has a gyro and other cool features.
Some of the best music and culture of the decade. Man – the 80’s were awesome. 🙂
I wrote previously about the 1 Euro homes for sale:
Some time has now passed, and interviewers are starting to get the stories from those that gave it a try. The reality is that they have cost much more than $1 – but it has still has worked out great for many that tried it. Worth a listen.
Historic footage from the Apollo Moon landings is not so great. The footage is often grainy, blurry, and in some cases (to conserve film) only 24, 12, 6, or even 1 frame per second.
A photo and film restoration specialist, who goes by the name of DutchSteamMachine, has worked some AI magic to enhance original Apollo film, creating strikingly clear and vivid video clips and images. Read more about the technique here.
Apollo 15’s landing site at Hadley Rille in 60 fps (originally 12 fps)
Apollo 11 First Steps on the moon in 24fps, originally filmed in 12fps.
The Die Hard shop light.
Watch this great video on how the Unreal game engine and a nearly 360 degree LED stage/video wall has transformed how special effects are done for films like The Mandalorian. It’s a complete game changer because it solves almost all the problems relating to green screens and digital effects.
Update: I recently listened to a talk at PAX 2021 that included A J Wedding from Orbital Virtual Studios that worked with Robert Rodriguez on the LED studio setup.
3dSen PC is a special emulator that converts a number of favorite 2D NES games them into 3D and letting you play them in real-time.
Here’s the list of currently supported games. It reminds me a bit of the project by Mausimus to bring 3D to old Sierra games (Police quest, Kings Quest, etc)
Spy Hunter