Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

It's World Maths Day today, an in honour of that here's Pi to 1000 digits:

Pi = 3.
1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510
5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679
8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128
4811174502 8410270193 8521105559 6446229489 5493038196
4428810975 6659334461 2847564823 3786783165 2712019091
4564856692 3460348610 4543266482 1339360726 0249141273
7245870066 0631558817 4881520920 9628292540 9171536436
7892590360 0113305305 4882046652 1384146951 9415116094
3305727036 5759591953 0921861173 8193261179 3105118548
0744623799 6274956735 1885752724 8912279381 8301194912
9833673362 4406566430 8602139494 6395224737 1907021798
6094370277 0539217176 2931767523 8467481846 7669405132
0005681271 4526356082 7785771342 7577896091 7363717872
1468440901 2249534301 4654958537 1050792279 6892589235
4201995611 2129021960 8640344181 5981362977 4771309960
5187072113 4999999837 2978049951 0597317328 1609631859
5024459455 3469083026 4252230825 3344685035 2619311881
7101000313 7838752886 5875332083 8142061717 7669147303
5982534904 2875546873 1159562863 8823537875 9375195778
1857780532 1712268066 1300192787 6611195909 2164201989

Doesn't that make you feel better? That was calculated using Stu's QuickPi. If you want more, go to Pi to 1,000,000 places.

Why do I feel that this has been me for far too long? ;_;

Nah, not really. Not really back yet, just at a loose end.

Then again, that's not true either. I've done a comic about Second Life, started to reprint Hypergraphia #4, and should be putting my revised master's proposal together.

So maybe I'll do that instead.

I was hunting around for a replacement organiser program (for Treeline, which I currently use, but find a bit cumbersome) and checking out things like outliners and desktop wikis. Anyway, I came across a self modifying HTML document called TiddlyWiki (and an even "wackier" variant called GTD TiddlyWiki), and that had a macro reference page called Gimcrack'd.

Now check out the welcome page, and the reference to stories underneath. I found this a really cool implementation of Hypertext, and one that isn't exactly HTML style (even though it's all on a web page).

I was reading an Linux magazine just now and they mentioned something called Open Laszlo, which is an open source platform for creating zero-install web applications with the user interface capabilities of desktop client software. Apparently you create code using XML and Javascript, and it compiles into flash binary (.swf) files, which will run on any browser with the current flash plug-in.

Sort of very cool, though yet another bloody syntax to learn to get results.  I always wanted to play around with Flash, but there were always obstacles. Although I really like Fireworks (perfect for adding speech balloons and saving graphics for my web comics), which has a similar interface, whenever I tried using the "official editor" it'd always be slow, clunky, and buggy (some of which might have been due to my old hardware). I downloaded heaps of "free editors" but most seemed to be really primitive, of advertisements for their shareware versions.

I shall have to have a look at some of the project on that list. I've been interested in using flash in web comics pages (mainly, for one particular space battle in on strip) - I've seen this done well in other web comics.

Doing a search just now, I came across the Open Source Flash site, with a huge list of projects! Number one project is probably an Open Source Flash Player, called "Gnash". Gasp - no proprietary software system is safe any more is it?