I've uploaded a video of my "I want a good parallel computer" talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c52ziyKOArc

I also have a half-finished blog post where I intended to go into more detail, but I'm posting this now because I hope it can provoke some interesting discussion. I'll put a little more context here, and I'm also happy to answer questions.

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I'll be presenting our paper on GPU-friendly stroke expansion with @armansito at HPG 2024 today in Denver.

We've put together a landing page that has a 40 second "fast forward video," a link to the paper, and also a fun interactive demo (written in Rust, based on xilem_web).

https://linebender.org/gpu-stroke-expansion-paper/

Today is a good day to go to Quaker meeting. I've had a feeling of things being unmoored, not making much sense. That hasn't changed, only sharpened a bit. I don't have answers, nor will my meeting, but what I will find there is a group of people feeling the same things and wanting to make the world better.

We're not known for our proselytizing, but Quaker meetings are open and welcoming to all who seek. If you've been curious, today might be a good day.

I've just put together a 40 second "fast forward" video for our High Performance Graphics talk later this month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkeqny6zMDM

The animations were all hand-coded in Rust and rendered in Vello in real time. Just a screen record in OBS to add the voiceover, no other editing. This feels like a preview of the potential for this infrastructure to support high-powered creative tools.

@armansito and I have been working for many months on a paper, GPU-Friendly Stroke Expansion. We're pleased to say it's been accepted to HPG 2024, and we'll present it July 26 in Denver.

A revised draft is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00127. There's a lot of stuff in there, both math for the geometry of curves and GPU implementation techniques. We'll have some more material as we get closer to the conference and put together the talk.

I'm taking next week off, and thinking of going to Harbin Hot Springs for a day or two. Last time I went with a Quaker friend. This time, I could go by myself (and the solitude does sound appealing), but I'm also wondering: is there anybody in the Bay Area who might want to go with?

My #rustnl2024 talk, "Xilem: Let's Build High Performance Rust UI" is now published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvfNipIcRiQ

I had a lot of fun in Delft, and many thanks to the conference organizers for making it possible and posting the video.

I'll be giving my talk on Xilem at #rustnl2024 this afternoon (14:40 CEST). It'll be on the conference livestream: https://2024.rustnl.org/live/

There'll be a lot to present. Among other things, we did the 0.1 release of Xilem last night. Things are moving!

I'm on the train to Delft for #rustnl2024 . I still have more work to do on the slides, and am a bit tired from the flight, but I'm sure it's going to be a great experience and I'm looking forward to meeting lots of people.

I was not able to do a lot of implementation work on Xilem because I was trying to meet a paper deadline, but the community has really come together, and I think the demo will be impressive. It's come a long way just in the last couple of weeks.

Another edition of This Month in Xilem: https://linebender.org/blog/tmix-03/

There's a lot of work here that's under the surface: GPU stroke expansion, progress on the Masonry refactor (which, among other things, will enable using the widgets with different language bindings or reactive layers), and font loading.

We're also really looking forward to @rustnl next month. That will be a great place for people interested in Rust UI to come together.

#xilem

A week ago I figured out that the evolute of an Euler spiral (Cesàro equation κ(s) = s) is another simple power law spiral, the Cesàro equation being κ(s) = -1/s³. The writeup is at: https://linebender.org/wiki/curves/euler-spiral-evolute/

None of the math for this was very hard, in fact I can see the result being obtained hundreds of years ago if anyone had bothered to look. A challenge for math enthusiasts: does the result generalize to other spirals with a simple power law?