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Isetan in the evening

Isetan in the evening

Originally uploaded by Silvr

Gary :: Sep.13.2009 :: A thousand words, General, w00t! :: 1 Comment »

An unintuitive lesson in Monte Carlo sampling

I learnt this the hard way today.

To uniformly sample the interior of a given circle, we have to be careful when working in the polar domain; i.e. randomizing an angle and a distance from the center. If the randomized distance is uniformly distributed, the resulting points will be heavily weighted toward the center. It’s only blindingly obvious when you stop to think about it…

If rand() produces a uniformly distributed continuous value [0, 1), then

randAngle = rand() * 2 * PI; randDistance = rand() * radius; randCoordinates = getCartesian(randAngle, randDistance); //THIS IS WRONG!

For anyone who wants to know, using
randDistance = sqrt(rand()) * radius;

fixes this.

Gary :: Feb.11.2009 :: General, w00t! :: No Comments »

Whoaaaaa….

Storm lashes Brisbane in what must be the ultimate sleep-in weather. If you think the first part is bad, wait for the second half.

Gary :: Dec.01.2008 :: A thousand words, All the news that's fit to print, General, w00t! :: No Comments »

F-35B II doing STOVL / VTOL

Oh my god. How much for one of those??? I’ll take two.

Gary :: Oct.14.2008 :: 1337, Tech, w00t! :: No Comments »

Man gets 0wnd by God

This is the kind of news you make up, then have a chuckle about. Only this time it actually happened. Somone on Fark pointed out that God hates Fuqing liars.

Lightning strikes as man takes oath

IN a bizarre incident, a man in eastern China was struck by lightning just as he lifted an iron bar over his head to swear that god would punish him if he had taken money from his friend.

The man, who was identified as Xu, had borrowed 500 yuan (US$73.21) from a close friend surnamed Huang three years ago. Xu, who lived in Fuqing City, Fujian Province, later forgot all about it, according to a news Web portal in Fujian.

But Huang remembered and complained before other friends that Xu had taken money from him.

On Tuesday, Huang took a wooden rod and rushed to Xu’s home asking him to return the money. Xu too confronted Huang with an iron bar and stood his ground.

Huang then told Xu that he should swear before god that he was not in his debt. Xu lifted the iron bar over his head and said if he owed Huang money, the god would punish him. Just then he was struck by lightning.

He was later taken to hospital, and doctors said his injuries were not serious.

Gary :: Aug.30.2008 :: A thousand words, All the news that's fit to print, w00t! :: 1 Comment »

My JDAM is bigger than your JDAM

Hmm. According to Wikipedia Singapore is one of 13 countries on the allowed-to-import-JDAMs whitelist.

i wonder why they don’t show these off during NDP.

Bonus ownage vid:

Gary :: Aug.17.2008 :: 1337, A thousand words, All the news that's fit to print, w00t! :: No Comments »

Portrait of an Unazukin

Portrait of an Unazukin

:)

Gary :: Aug.16.2008 :: General, Photography, w00t! :: No Comments »

Something Awesome This Way Comes - The DTLR

Move over, you Sunday-morning photographers with your pretty DSLRs and gleaming lenses and expensive megapixel collections! This here’s a digital camera for people who know about cameras, and want to look fabulous using one.

The world’s first DTLR: