+
20160912 - The Great MacOS 9
+
+
+This "
An OS 9 odyssey: Why these Mac users won’t abandon 16-year-old software." is an awesome article. OS 9 was the peak of Apple operating systems. Low latency, instant response. If only the industry didn't fabricate internet "standards" complexity at a rate which is impossible to dream of supporting on the older machines.
+
+
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+
20160921 - Parallel Noise Generation
+
+
+Re a related
Twitter Post ...
+
+
+Concerning making tile-able textures for grain or noise, and getting various desired properties.
+My preference is towards algorithms which parallelize trivially.
+
+The
shadertoy referenced in the tweet
+generates a noise pattern,
+by starting out with some poor non-random noise,
+then applying filters (ending with a high-pass) to transform it into something which is pleasing to the eye.
+I'd advise always using the technique I outlined in this
GPUOpen Post
+which remaps the texture to a perfect distribution of values (see the
follow up post as well)
+while maintaining it's original form (this applies to both techniques in this post).
+
+
+A second technique I've leveraged in the past
+is to work with one {x,y} coordinate for a grain position
+distributed in a regular grid array of grains.
+Starting with the perfect honeycomb distribution
+(start from a regular grid position, where every other row is shifted to the left or right, and make the grid have proper aspect ratio for honeycomb),
+
+
+_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x
+x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_
+_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x
+x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_
+_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x
+x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_
+_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x
+x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_
+
+
+Then permuting grain position by some function (which could be a noise function with various distributions based on frequency,
+or perhaps do some kind of clustered rotation of points by nearest cluster, etc).
+This process typically results in undesired look.
+Then applying various passes on the array where the position of each grain is filtered against the positions of the pre-filtered neighbors (only dependent on prior pass).
+The point being to re-shape the array into something which has a more visually pleasing feel.
+The filter can work with a hex neighborhood (neighbors depend on if the pixel is on a even or odd row),
+
+
+_x_x_ ... ab_ ... _ab
+x_x_x ... cde ... cde
+_x_x_ ... ef_ ... _ef
+
+
+Could be something as easy as relaxing the position of the point
+(push the point in the direction towards being equal distance from neighbors, but not so much that one resets to a honeycomb).
+After getting grains distributed as desired, can use for {x,y} coordinates, or transform back into an image of grain (which could be a different resolution image).
+
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+