2.7 million dots
- Find raw data for 2.7 million cities.
- Import it into MySql.
- Generate Pov-ray data to render each city as a tiny red sphere on a large black sphere.
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.
- Stephen Hawking
Alright. I’ve got a few projects in mind, and this stuff is too nerdy for my main blog, so I’ve set this one up to document and experiment. So it may not always look so great.
For one thing, I’ve been wanting to do a full-blown image gallery in ASP.NET with SQL in the background for some time now, partly because I think they are interesting technologies, and partly because I have to do SOMETHING to keep up with my exploding photo collection. As it is, if I take a new picture that I like, and decide it would go nicely in an existing collection that I have on-line, I have to re-generate all the HTML and upload the modified files. It would be SO much better to just upload the picture, add a keyword, and have it automatically start showing any collections that use that keyword.
More recently it occured to me that, since I’m using WordPress heavily anyway, that I should just invest the time necessary to learn enough PHP to implement a gallery within a blog. That’s one thing I’d like to try with his blog.
But only time will tell. After all, my closets, notebooks, and hard-drives are full of projects that started with passion and then quietly died…