Shadowlessness

This is definitely the coolest programming related text I’ve read in a long while: Church Encoding in Python. I even almost understood all of it!
I saw this on the Planet Python feed aggregation(?) (it is the second entry right now) which I got introduced to today.
But seriously, how cool is the CONS construction and number encoding stuff?!

There’s hardly anything sexier than a multicore CPU that I actually know how to program! Better yet, make that a “manycore” CPU.
Dual-core CPUs were cool, and quad-cores even cooler. But they were hardly enough to enable writing real fine-grained parallel programs. Recently Intel released “Core i7″ architecture CPUs, with four cores minimum and they all support HyperThreading, which is at best a hack and not a particularly beautiful one, but it gets the count of available hardware threads to 8, which I’m willing to settle for! (Note that semi-8-core CPUs have been available for some time, but not on desktops, and not in practical price ranges.)
When I think of all the execution units, the 64-bit wide registers, the cache hierarchy… Oooh!

Absolutely no comment!

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Top-posting is, in short, the practice of putting the reply above the original message in electronic communication. Many of my friends top-post, and I believe most of them are a victim of Google’s otherwise close-to-splendid email application “Gmail”.
This is not a criticism you guys. It’s just a joke at your expense!
For more information, guidance and general wisdom, you can read RFC 1855.

That’s my birthday, if you where wondering.
(Just a quick fact: this year, due to incompatibility of Gregorian and Persian leap years, and the relative inaccuracy of the former, my birthday was October 27th.
As a friend mentioned, my 28th birthday was not on the 28th of the month. In fact, as she again noted, the first time my age turned perfect after I knew what it was, I lost my perfect birth day of the month.)
Anyway, last year I found out that my birthday is the same with Bill Gates. This year, I was cursing my bad luck when I stumbled upon the fact that I share this birthday with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Sharing anything with the guy is anything but an honor by default!
Here are some fun facts about my birthday:

1. There are 64 days in a year after October 28th!
2. I have the exact same age (±24 hours) with the Czech football player Milan Baroš. I’ve known this for several years now, but I don’t know how. My best guess is IMDB!
3. John Romero is born on this day. Since we are in the same business (behold the shameless arrogance!) I must include him here. I firmly believe that “id Software” would still be making great games (as opposed to great engines only) if he were still with them. (Incidentally, this is one of the few posters that I’d be willing to hang in my room instead of James Hetfield’s Jolly Roger pose poster.)
4. John Locke died on this day. No, not that John Locke, this John Locke! (Sorry, couldn’t resist a “Lost” reference.)
5. A guy named Landon Curt Noll has this birthday too. I knew him from the IOCCC (he is called chongo over there.) (Warning: if you think you know C, and are not ready for a rude wake up, don’t go there! Here’s the Wikipedia page for a milder kick) but apparently he is quite a diverse person!
   Also, we used the FNV hash function (co-authored by him) in the “Silent2″ project (maybe 10 people in the entire world know what that is!) without me realizing who he was. Alas, I had to abandon that project, which I regret to this day, since the concept and opportunity were both very unique.
6. A whole bunch of other stuff have happened on this day, some of the most famous of which can be viewed on or accessed through the Wikipedia page.

Here are two higher-resolution in-game videos from Soshiant: one (~90MiB) and two (~86MiB).
Here’s another video (~71MiB) showing some characters from concept, through modeling, to animations.

Note that our engine is not even in alpha. There are many bugs present, most of with are level design bugs due to our rush for the exhibition (camera placements and transitions, characters occasionally going through walls, Soshiant’s hand not being aligned with the ledges he is hanging from, etc.) But there are some engine bugs too, like the character’s hair getting stuck in a wall or ground, or the character jumping from one position to another, or the shadows poping here and there. All you see is subject to improvement, change or both.
Also, these videos are compressed with the irreplaceable Xvid codec. The third video, which is the only one with sound, features one of our original sound-tracks, composed and played by our multi-talented concept artist Soheil Danesh.
I would be very happy to hear your feed back on any and every aspect of these videos.