13°C, rain

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Graphite powder: below is an in-class drawing made to teach the technique ot Year 12 last winder. Finally it’s home and scanned. It’s a technique that I like a lot, it’s quick and can cover very large areas of paper with smooth shading  that has a slight grain like in a photograph.

 

Euros and ID: this is a why question: on Saturday, I bought Euros for next week’s trip to Greece. To pay with a card, they wanted to see my Passport or a driving license (the type with a photo). But why? I don’t need ID to buy anything else with the bank card, even if I spend two or three times as much money- so why?

 

PhysX: a game dynamics accelerator, it’s suggested on the site that the PCI card handles more than real-time dynamics like gravity and collision behaviours. The best bit is it handles particle effects, which may well render fluids as well as the inevitable smoke and explosion sequences. LINK . Itsounds rather like a few years ago when maths co-processors were introduced, they eventually merged into the main cpu. Perhaps the same will happen with dynamics co-processors merging into the graphics cards once they have enough bandwidth. All the titles scheduled to release are kid’s chooters right now, but the benefits are obvious to flight simmers for the futre too.