How to destroy an evil presence and live better
Yesterday while I was biking my dog across Cascine park in Florence mumbling about a new product idea, my eyes was attracted by some strange orange points in the autumnal yellow carpets. I got off the bike to have a closer look. WOW! there was thousand of alkekengi fruits on the ground.
Alkekengi (Physalis alkekengi L.) is a plant from the same family of tomatoes, it is invasive and an alien specimen in Italy, it is something negative!
Let me explain how to “eradicate” this evil presence:
1) pick-up some dozens of alkekengi fruits with their orange “lanterns”
2) pop the lanterns and get the balls “naked”, but without removing the ”leaves”
3) prepare a “bain marie” for dark chocolate. If you don’t have the right pot you can stack a metal bowl on a boiling water pot
3) when chocolate melts, start dipping alkekengi balls one at a time.
Use folded leaves for holding them
4) then place the hot ball on a baking paper sheet to let them cooling down
5) in the meanwhile get some hot chilies (I used real small ones that decide to happily colonize a lemon vase), smash them in a mortar and then add them to hot chocolate. Stir to amalgamate.
6) now you are ready for the last chocolate passage.
7) let chocolate solidify and eventually repeat last passage.
The chilled dark chocolate is in perfect balance with the sour flavor of alkekengi.
Now you are ready to destroy this evil presence!
P.S.: I forgot for the rest of the week-end the fu$#£!…. idea on the new product.
Power of chocolate.
Tassellate: playing on CANVAS
I’ve enjoyed so much playing on HTML5 <CANVAS> that now I cannot stop…
Now I’m playing on a component that I’d like to use as replacement for the current “weekly review” game on Licorize. If you are wondering about a “game” on a GTD operation like “weekly review”, have a look at Game mechanics for thinking users article by Pietro Polsinelli.
The goal is to transmit the idea of having something to be “cleared”; a picture covered with black pieces should work fine!
The requirement is that the number of pieces covering the image must be pre-determined.
First of all I need an algorithm to “tassellate” the image with random shaped triangles. Actually the triangles are not overlaying, so I divide recursively the space available.
Go have a simple algorithm, first I split the image in two triangles, then I apply to both the recursive splitting.
A single splitting step:
1) choose a random side
2) find a point (x) on that side, nearly in the middle
3) link the point (x) with the opposite corner and generate two triangles
4) apply splitting on both triangles
here is the code:
Then the recursive function: notice that I have to use a queue to “balance” the recursion on both splitted parts, otherwise I will divide only the first triangle reaching the exit condition (x pieces reaced).
Then I used my simple Stage object to manage canvas interactions (read lenscape a canvas interaction tutorial for details) as click on triangles, mouse over, etc…
I’ve also added a sound on “remove piece” button, but dealing with the <AUDIO> tag is another history…
