my big software accomplishment

I set myself – what appeared to be – a very generous deadline about 5 months ago to finish a piece of software I was writing in time to show at a conference. The conference was just last week and so the weeks leading up to it were busy with final touches to the code and its complimentary website.

The website is http://www.me.utexas.edu/~adl/graphsynth/. The software that one can download from that site is entitled GraphSynth and its snapshot is shown here. I believe that the software is quite revolutionary but it will be most inscrutable to many of you. In a previous post, I talked about my interest in mathematical graphs to not only simplify complex things in life but also to design or create new complex things. GraphSynth is designed to do just that. It implements various graph building functions to allow one to make a set of rules to define a creative domain, be it, music, art, engineering design, or architecture.

At any rate, the software is available publicly to anyone interested. There’s quite a bit of theory behind it, and making rules takes time. I have many other things going on in life, and this was quite an enjoyable distraction – back to making music and trying to snag more research money.

Gratuitous Use of Packaging

I know I haven’t written an entry in a while, and this short one really doesn’t satisfy, but here goes.

This is a picture of 3 packages that arrived at our house last week. Each contained exactly one small item (the light green packages). All are from the same company and yet each uses a different packaging material.

Why weren’t they shipped in the same package?

Why were such huge boxes used? All three could have been shipped in the same padded envelope. Technically, we got a good deal on the shipping and handling and the company lost out. But in the end, we all lose. That sounds cheesy, I know, but the point is being environmentally minded might actually be inline with aspects of technological advances and economic improvement in as many cases as it challenges these ideas.