Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Quaternion

If you haven't noticed, I am up late. I should be working, but I've hit a stumbling point. I'm sure we all remember those points in school when we said, "When am I ever going to use this?" and felt smug and self satisfied about only spending enough time studying to pass the test. Once again, I've been bitten by the shortsightedness of my younger self. Right now, if I could, I'd be beating the 23 year old me about the head and shoulders for not paying better attention in Vector Calculus class. Yeah yeah, I know nobody will ever need this again. That's what I thought and I was right for about 11 years. Now that decision has come back to haunt me. The 3D application that I'm writing is suffering from a gimbal lock problem and the best way to fix it is with some fancy matrix math and Quaternions. Baby Jesus please help me. I can't figure this out for the life of me and I don't know if there is much chance tonight. I am fading fast. The only source of caffeine in the house is a bag of chocolate covered cranberries that I threw in the trash because I couldn't stop eating them. Damn you chocolate covered cranberries and your yummy goodness.

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