Asymptote – The vector graphics language


Have you ever tried the script-based vector graphics programming language called Asymptote? It’s SUPER high level and if you know what you are doing, you can draw anything from Klein bottles to calendars. This code generates the image above:

import three;
import solids;
size(15cm,15cm);
pen[][] blocks = {{nullpen,  nullpen, orange, orange},
                  {black,    black,   black,  nullpen},
                  {nullpen,  black,   orange, orange},
                  {nullpen,  black,   orange, nullpen}};
for(int i=0; i   for(int j=0; j     draw(shift((-j,0,-i)*1.1)*unitcube, blocks[i][j]);
  }
}

Download Asymptote at SourceForge, http://asymptote.sf.net.

How to get rid of SPAM in your WordPress blog

This is a free and easy one, but maybe not so obvious for the average blogger. Many bloggers think that you have to pay for a web service to get rid of them, but that’s not true.

The idea is to add a CAPTCHA to your blog to prevent SPAM-bots from posting bad entries. A captcha is a small test to make sure that the writer is human, not a computer. It is usually an image with squiggly letters that you have to look at and fill into a box.

To add it to your blog,

  1. go to Plugins > Add new.
  2. Search for “si captcha”.
  3. Install and activate it.

You are basically done here. Bye bye SPAM! If you want to change the captcha settings, go to Plugins > SI Captcha Options.

There are many other Captcha plugins out there, this is just one that I’ve tested and approved.

Diaspora – Facebook killer?

Check out Diaspora, the Open source social network. It’s just in alpha version right now, but I think it’s got big potential. You can even setup an own Diaspora server if you want.

For the non-nerd user, the gain compared to facebook is that the content belongs to you even after you uploaded it. And you share your content with people YOU choose. This is great for the idea of free information. Thumbs up from me.

If diaspora grows big, I will join. I don’t think I will give up Facebook though. Not in a while. Maybe if diaspora starts using the Facebook API for posting things there 🙂

SPAM-bots

I don’t really want to be the guy that just posts random internet lul-imagez all the time, I rather try to make my own things up. But this one was hilarious. I really love xkcd, it’s about a lot of things that’s big in my life.

This one is about spambots. For those who does not know what a captcha is, well it’s those squiggly charactes you have to input before creating a new Google account, for example. It prevents SPAM computer programs (bots) from creating accounts. To create an account, you have to understand the text in the captcha, which is a relatively hard task for a computer.

What? WordPress?

So, I finally got myself a “real” blog instead of coding it from scratch… Why? Well, there are many reasons but the main reasons are lack of time, compatibility, etc. Anyway, I hope you like it and that you will come here from time to time. Nice to have you here by the way!

So, why english? I normally speak swedish, but as I got many friends around the world I thought it might increase the readability among my total group of friends. Let’s just hope my english works out well enough for you.

This site is also supposed to work as a reference for my work. Recently, I started my own company. That was the easiest reason to solve my position. I have a bad habit of coding all the time, mostly web programming and such. Obviously, it implies money, and money implies taxes, and taxes… Are smaller if you have your own company. At least in Sweden.

I’m going to tell you some more later but now it’s time to fix this ugly WordPress theme. See ya.