The GPS post blew me away but this one about watch movements is just so incredible.
Mechanical Watch
321–330 of 425 posts
Re: Mechanical Watch
#322Just imagine the utopia that would emerge if all education were conducted through web-essays like this. Bravo!
I believe that for every Bartosz Ciechanowski (huge kudos and thanks to him!) there are 100 similarly abled people, who can't create essays like this, because they need to do something else to keep the lights on. A collective loss.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
That looks like a fair bit of boilerplate, and a shitty tutorial with comments that mostly just repeat what the code says, but the API doesn't look unusable. https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/glslCanvas/blob/mast... has most of that same boilerplate in a less repulsive form. https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/glslCanvas/blob/mast... has other bits.
Honestly I think your examples are both genuinely less comprehendible to someone without a deep understanding of GL going in than my example. It’s a very bad, non-object oriented API in an object oriented language. It was designed for and by people who know GL in other C like languages, not for people who know JavaScript. It is unlike any other part of the language. The fact that I have to write a shader myself, as a…
I don’t see how someone not understanding GL first can do anything useful with it. Like, what would such people even use it for? If they need a complete solution just use a plugin that displays some rotatable 3D model. But I really don’t see the value of planning for the lowest common denominator in case of a highly specialized domain specific API.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
it depends if you are doing something to get paid, or to last, or to be really good. only in the first case do i ever consider a heap of abstractions
Abstraction is the only thing that makes any of our advancements possible. Not even the simplest of math theses could be proves without a “framework” of relevant lemmas, nor could you write even a single hello world without the layers upon layers of abstractions written carefully over the decades. Sure, there is also bad abstraction, but the problem is the bad part, not the concept itself. Without abstractions you wo…
Well, if the abstractions were peer reviewed and put through the same rigour as mathematical proofs, that's a whole different topic.
The equivalent would be a mathematical services company, who created "free" abstraction packages that required you to rewrite all your math, away from the scientific community standards, to fit their abstractions, and who also made money on consulting and selling books. And the big benefit of it all, is really that they only abstracted away writing summaries of your papers, which is actually the easiest part that is quite irrelevant to your research.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an owner of an SKX who doesn’t know much about watch longevity, how long can I expect it to last? Are there other automatics that will outlast a person’s life? It still blows my mind that you can take the SKX scuba diving, especially when you factor in the price. This may sound cynical but as I get older and see the world becoming more and more digital and connected, I find myself appreciating analog, mechanical t…
Mechanical watches can last a lifetime (or more) if properly maintained and periodically serviced, just like old cars. People all over the world pass down their Rolexes and Omegas, still ticking, to their children and even grandchildren. Patek Philippe is well known for their slogan, "You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation," showing confidence in the longevity of the…
They also cost a ton to service. It's nice if the sentiment of carrying something through the years appeals to you, but the thing that keeps me away from mechanical watches is the service costs compared to the odd battery replacement on a quartz.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#326There are no images, like, why? :(
Your downvotes didn't bring images back on site.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
He does it "the right way™". Use the platform. Don't use any framework or generic library. Go straight to the point and code what you need, when you need it. Don't minify or bundle anything, and let the people who are learning and courious a straightforward way to connect the dots, without forcing them into a github repository with 90% of the code unrelated to the thing and existing just to glue 1000 pieces written b…
I strongly disagree that this is "the right way". I think that the platform provides low level primitives that are _designed_ to have abstractions built upon them. Doing it like this has the potential to be the most performant, but it does so in the same way as writing your programs directly in assembly is potentially performant. I also don't think that the source code is particularly readable for me, and contains lo…
> has the potential to be the most performant
It also has the potential to evolve in the most efficient way.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#328There's something magical about mechanical watches. Maybe it's just knowing that you have this perpetually winding machine on your hand (in the case of "automatic" mechanical watches). Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple Watch. If you want a good mechanical watch that won't break the bank I suggest picking up a Seiko SKX (thoug…
I have a couple of Seiko automatic watches, but I recently picked up an SNK809 as a new daily driver: https://www.benswatchclub.com/blog/seiko-5-military-review. For £120/$130, it's cheap enough to wear every day and it looks great. The amount of mechanical complexity and engineering that goes into it for that price is mind blowing.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#329I was curious how he did those visualizations so I looked at the source code. Turns out he codes everything by hand in WebGL [1]. Absolutely impressive stuff. Source code is non-minified so you can have a look and understand everything as well. [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/js/watch.js
I'm observing that developers these days are quite surprised to see anyone write code for OpenGL / WebGL directly instead of using some layer of abstraction on top, such as Three.js or Unity etc. Few seem to know that OpenGL already is an abstraction of the computing model underneath.
A couple years ago I did some consulting for a company that needed a point cloud rendering engine. Luckily I had one ready to go. I showed them and they liked it and their young devs asked which library I was using. When I told them I used OpenGL they couldn't believe it. To them OpenGL was the "black magic box" and using it akin to having secret conversations with the GPU in some arcane cryptic language.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#330i'm continuously astounded by how accurate the Omega Aqua Terra is. it will be within 90s over a 30 day period after 4 years of daily use with no servicing. the fact that something mechanical and so tiny operating at 3.5hz can do this is mind blowing to me. it has a cool [8800] co-axial escapement: https://www.kapoorwatch.com/blogs/through-the-scope-the-omeg...
Interestingly, I met George Daniels a number of times (creator of the co-axial escapement). He asked me to record a video on my phone of a model he created to illustrate how the escapement works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVhSQ_Azkr8
Not the best video you'll find on it now, but he was a fascinating man.