‼️ = Must read!
🧐 = Interesting, curio.
Coding, languages, computer engineering.
- Gamozo Labs Blog / SushiRoll. ‼️
What a journey this is. It started when I found libcpucycles - timing stuff is HARD, very hard on modern hardware (turbo boost, hyperthreading, heterogeneous cores...) - which linked to the above mentioned blog post - an awesome deep dive into CPU microbenchmarking... and from there looking the other articles -> check this out - fast fuzzing by vectorizing CPU emulation. Basically implementing the same ideas of a GPU to run CPU code in parallel on AVX-512.
- Modding TCC.
This is from the time I was looking to add float4 to TCC, as it is part of my prototyping framework (or rather, one of them) and the only thing I miss with pure C (compared to C++) is the ability to easily write vector expressions (albeit, calling functions is not that bad either). TCC is an amazing piece of software, like everything Fabrice Bellard does (qemu, ffmpeg...) - but, in his typical style, it can be relatively cryptic. FWIW there are other small C compilers that can be easily embedded in projects, none as fast and few as complete and tested as TCC - but that might not matter in practice. this one in particular seems promising.
- A (very comprehensive) list of single-file C++ libs.
Single-file C++ are starting to mostly represent a given kind of bikeshedding, and I understand the appeal, you are working on something self contained you can polish to death, feel happy about. In practice they are not necessarily the best idea, even if they represent a reasonable reaction to overly bloated code and to the idiocy of build systems.
Demoscene corner!.
- Spectrum demos can be nice?
What a world...
- Atlas 64k Graphics Breakdown. 🧐
Breakdown of a very artistic 64k. See also how a 64k is made.
- 4k, c64, line drawing.
Usually when someone in computer graphics says they invented a new, faster way of drawing lines, eyerolls rightfully follow. And this is not really an exception, as it's not really... drawing (correct) lines. But on a c64, it's good enough.
- Atari st 4k. 🧐
At times reminds me of the seminal Paper by Statix... but in 4k... on an Atari...
Shader(toy)s.
- Better bilateral upsampler. ‼️
Bilateral upsampling is... not actually that good. I wrote about a trivial but significative improvement in 2016 on my old blog - this shadertoy shows an even better technique (albeit, more expensive).
- Zavie's list of shadertoy path tracers.
Julien Guertault made this shadertoy playlist. I didn't know shadertoy had playlists! Should start a list/sheet of shadertoys illustrating (well) various computer graphic techniques. ShaderTutorials?
- Restir GI demo & much more. ‼️
In 2d (if restir is still a mystery to you this is a good tutorial... Mathis has a ton of interesting shadertoys implementing state of the art techniques. Recommended. See for example this awesome screen-space GI.
- Astonishing 4k image.
Really nothing to say, amazing.
- Programming contest in shadertoy.
With a bot that evaluates correctness and shader performance...
Retrocomputing (might contain emulation).
- Apple Lisa and GeOS.
Neat restoration of an Apple Lisa - made me think of my own childhood memories of GeOS on the Commodore 64, what a remarkable piece of software. One of my cousins wrote his master's thesis on it.
- A 8 bit Z80 based modular computer.
A 8 bit Z80 based modular computer originally built to run Microsoft BASIC. Not a clone of anything specific, but there are suggestions of the ZX81, UK101, S100, Superboard II and Apple I.
- First cd-rom games.
From the "cd-rom journal'.
- Wipeout - rewritten.
Not reverse-engineered, rewritten from a leak.
- Megatextures on a Nintendo 64? 🧐
Yes, really. project here.
Miscellanea.
- #ai Word Tour: One-dimensional Word Embeddings via the TSP. 🧐
Sometimes simple things are the most fascinating, and that is definitely true of word embeddings, the first step in any textual LLM. If you haven't - see also Visualizing transformers and attention by Grant Sanderson, which shows other fascinating properties of (n-dimensional) embeddings.
- #cgi RenderDotC soft shadows. 🧐
Is this... retro? Is this now... realtime rendering? Whatever it is, it must be one of the first examples of soft-shadows from a single shadowmap. It does not go into the implementation details unfortunately - but it sounds almost like it's doing some sort of marching of the shadowmap. I remember reading this page... as a kid. It took me some time to find it again. I'm still as puzzled as I was then.
- #gadgets Mini trackball kit.
I remember using a trackball... I don't know, 20 years ago? And finding it ok? I've been tempted to try again, also because sometimes my index finger gets fatigued from clicking. Rarely I also get some wrist pain, it's very rare but it makes me even more curious about alternative input methods.
- #gadgets Zeromouse.
Speaking of gadgets and input devices... I tried to get a zeromouse last time they opened the orders, but it was impossible, it immediately ran out. I'm fascinated by small, lightweight, fingertip grip mice. g-wolves makes some you can actually buy (and are as light as the zeromouse!), the WLMouse beast miao looks silly but the specs are great too.