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Re: Flogging a dead horse....



On Fri, Apr 04, 2003 at 03:21:22AM -0500, B. Douglas Hilton wrote:
> B. Douglas Hilton wrote:
> >I'd use my http://www.gyrodynamic.net/spacecommander_0.3.3-2.tgz
> >Space Commander program, but it is has languished for a very long
> >time. Poor old program. Nevertheless, if that is what it takes I
> >will ressurect it and hack in Text Elite or something.
> 
> Sorry, broken link. The correct link is:
> 
> http://www.gyrodynamic.net/spacecommander_0.3.2-2.tgz
> 
> I'd Debianize it, except is _way_ pre-Alpha. Its only unique feature
> is that I remapped angles to 0-255 and wrote custom sin / cosine
> functions so that by using overflow of byte variables it would
> turn and spin. In effect, I created my own trigonometry system
> customized for high performance computer calculations.
> 
> ... what does a computer care if you divide 2pi by 360 or 256?

I wouldn't exactly call this unique.  Take, for example, some code I wrote
in 1994/5 as part of a "how small can I make this" fractal morpher:

getcos:         and al,127
                cmp al,64
                jl overtoxlat
                neg al
                add al,128
overtoxlat:     cmp al,32
                jg overtoxlat2
                xlat
                jmp overtocbw
overtoxlat2:    neg al
                add al,64
                xlat
                neg al
overtocbw:      cbw
                ret
 
Costable:       db 127, 127, 127, 127, 126, 124, 122, 121
                db 118, 116, 113, 110, 106, 103,  99,  95
                db  91,  86,  81,  76,  71,  66,  60,  55
                db  49,  43,  37,  31,  25,  19,  13,  6;  0

This treats both input and output as signed fixed-point values, the input
being a fraction of pi, the output a fraction of 1.0.

Anyway, getting sponsored is probably not going to happen if you bombard
-mentors with requests for sponsorship.  It may take a week or two before a
potential sponsor even reads your message.  According to
http://www.internatif.org/bortzmeyer/debian/sponsor/ you're one of about a
gazillion people looking for sponsorship, so just be patient.  Certainly
don't lose hope; you don't need the badge to help out.  There's plenty of
bugs to report/fix, plenty of documentation to write, etc.  And if you don't
get sponsorship soon, then it's possible that what you've packaged doesn't
appeal to those looking to sponsor people, so it may be worth finding
something with wider appeal to package/adopt.

HTH,
Pete (not (yet) a DD)
-- 
Pete Ryland
http://pdr.cx/



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