Projects
The following are a list of projects that I work on in my spare time. None have taken off and made me filthy rich, but they have been educational and entertaining.
Multiagent Java Applets
One thing that I discovered during my college years studying computer science is that I am fascinated by artificial intelligence (AI). I took several post-graduate courses in machine learning in college. My multiagent project is a study in how simple virtual creatures can act in complex ways using very simple algorithms. Each agent is a circular entity in a 2-D virtual world with real collision physics. And they all follow some very simple algorithm to determine in which direction and how much they want to accelerate.
Unfortunately, I was unable to actually instill any practical learning algorithms into my little agents. I have not done any work on it since 2002. Even so, they are worth playing around with for a few minutes, and I am open to suggestions for new applets.
Wordpress Plugins
I am consistently amazed at how easily extendable the Wordpress blogging platform is. I’ve written a few plugins and made them available to the public.
Flickr Flash Badge Widget
A widget for displaying a Flickr flash badge on a widget-enabled sidebar.
Revver Wordpress Plugin
The leading plugin for displaying Revver videos in a Wordpress blog post.
Widgetize Anything
Allows you to create sidebar widgets with any PHP code you like without having to know how to make a widget plugin.
Wordpress Countdown Widget
Although not really a Wordpress plugin, with the addition of some javascript to your website, you can have a cool countdown in your sidebar.
One Year Ago Widget
Puts posts from a year ago in your sidebar using the Widgetize Anything plugin and a database query.
YT-Audio: Audio Hosting from YouTube in WordPress
A way to embed an audio player from YouTube into your blog. It works by trimming down YouTube’s standard video player to just show the control bar.
Clippy - The Clothes Pin Stuntman
This is an experiment in creating a viral video, a video that gets passed around the internet from person to person until thousands of people have seen it. Clippy’s success has been somewhat limited. The most common response is, “Oh, that’s kinda cute.” I do plan to make more episodes. It’s just a matter of finding the time and finding a reasonable stunt. I have some ideas.
Cactus Cam
A timelapse video project centered around a cactus.
BITWRATHPLOOB World Tour
A crazy idea to see if we can get people to send a terrifyingly horrible wooden doll around the world.
- 4,238 Views
First of all, I want to say great blog. I would like to ask you a few questions about the “highest rated posts” feature in the sidebar. If you could email me that would be great. –email removed to protect brad–
It’s a combination of WP-PostRatings and my Widgetize Anything plugin. The exact code to get the sidebar widget is in a screenshot on my Widgetize Anything page.
I hope that nobody likes the corrida… How can you fun yourserf seeing a poor animal suffering and dying?
Obviously, either everyone that goes to a bullfight is pure evil, or you don’t fully understand the positive qualities of a bullfight.
Erik:
I was referred to your blog site through another blog site where I posted a comment in efforts to ensure the restoration of The Viking in Chicago. I am a great-grandson of Rasmus and we have a lithograph hanging in the old family home here in MN of The Viking and its crew, along with many old photos taken after the Rasmus Rasmussen family settled on the Dakota prairie, including photos of the family, the frame house, and his grave site. We are also in possession of a couple of books penned by Rasmus. Now that I have visited your site, I will ask my mother, Rasmus’ granddaughter, (daughter of Rev. John M. Rasmussen - Johannes Martin Rasmussen) about the books as I have not looked at them for many years. We also have copies of the immigration documents for when Rasmus family was processed at Ellis Island - many of the children’s names were “Americanized” for the convenience of the immigration officials. My grandfather’s name was changed from Johannes to John, for example. Feel free to contact me. If you would like scanned photos, I can arrange for that. I guess we are some sort of distant cousins! Take care, /s/Mark Anderson
Erik:
There was a recent post on slashdot.org that referred to your multiagent project. Unfortunately, the executable applets seem to be missing from your project page. So, I went looking for the source code. I found the source for the applets and some of the supporting classes on your page. However, the source for the classes in the com.erikrasmussen.ai.multiagent.geometry package are missing. Does this code still exist? Is it available anywhere? Good luck with your wedding. Thanks.
grits
Grits, thanks for your interest. Yes, it does still exist, but I’m not sure where at the moment. As I recall, the geometry package was just fairly simple Point and Vector doubletons with some vector multiplication methods. If you’re really interested in compiling and playing with it, let me know and I’ll try to get some code emailed to you or set up in a public repository.
Erik,
I’m definitely interested in compiling and playing with the multiagent code if/when you find it. I looked at the Java docs for your geometry classes. They don’t look too complicated to reverse engineer. But, if you should find the code, I’m quite willing to be lazy and use what you’ve already written. Thanks.
grits
grits, the vector math is simple. The hard part was the inelastic collisions.
I’ve submitted a request to start a sourceforge project. They say it takes a couple business days. Check back here for updates.
Erik, Great. I’ll watch for the sourceforge project. Thanks. Grits
grits, we’ve got a sourceforge project now. The demos have been moved to here.
I’d like to keep the code in git, but I’m having trouble with the public git repository I created. For now you can download the source in a tar.gz file from sourceforge. The build.xml should work fine.
Thanks for nudging me in this direction.
Erik, I downloaded and built the multiagent project from sourceforge with only one warning. Both javac and javadoc warned about some non-UTF8 characters in the comments on lines 630 - 632 of World.java. The non-UTF8 characters look like a capital A with a tilde (~) on top of it on my screen. As far as I can tell, the non-UTF8 should be blanks. Everything else worked perfectly on the first try and I now have “Friendly Bots” running around my screen. Very nicely done! Thanks for sharing your work. grits
salut erik moi aussi erik et comble ma famille est originaire du danemark et je suis un descendant des rassmussen de viborg.
ravi d’avoir un homonyme dans le monde.
à bientot si tu les souhaite.ma porte est ouverte.ciao