Most recent articles by:

Joseph Buskmiller '19

Epic Games Spyware Controversy

On March 13, 2019, redditor u/notte_m_portent made a post about how Epic had been accessing data from other apps without any permission through the Epic Games Store. Specifically, the user noted that Epic had been reading through his digital friendlist from Steam. Within a day, two Epic developers responded to...

When Code is Too Slow

One of the challenges inherent to computer science is balancing the work done by the programmer in writing the code and the work done by the hardware in running the code. For instance, a programmer can write software to find the tenth decimal of pi in a few minutes....

How to Make Friends: Emergent behavior in C++

After I finished my last exam and went home for the break, I was sitting at home in front of my fireplace screensaver in my room, certainly enjoying the freedom, yet knowing something was missing. Suddenly, it hit me. Christmas is a time to be together and enjoy one...

Mrs. Bruce’s Career in Digital Commerce

For many of the Jesuit students interested in computer science, a career in the industry is a very real possibility. Unfortunately, due to the complex and often confidential nature of these jobs, much of our understanding of them is skewed. Some of the most critical areas in computer science...

Taking Notes from Disney’s Principled Shader

This is a render I made after researching Disney's rendering technology. Unlike previous renders I've made, everything in the scene, including lights, the clouds, the ivy, and the glass lantern is drawn by the same shader. This is possible because of incredible work by scientists and artists for decades,...

Computing Without Electricity

People often think of computers as magical boxes that mysteriously format our documents or calculate trigonometric functions. This is not the case. Computers can only follow instructions by taking advantage of the physics of electricity and magnetism. Any task computers perform is physically present on either the hard drive...

Interviewing a Machine Learning Programmer

This is a conversation between me and a machine learning programmer. I find machine learning fascinating, because for the longest time, humans have been the most clever creatures on the planet. It seems we've finally found a suitable partner in computers when it comes to numerical calculations, and machine...

Software Rendering With C++ Part 1

The majority of 3D software out today, from Disney’s modeling tools (Maya) to any popular game engine (Unreal/Unity/Crysis) or engineering CAD (SolidWorks, AutoCAD) use programming libraries that define low-level tasks to simplify and hasten the development workflow. Almost all 3D software can be expected to do low-level tasks such as...

Character Polishing and Animation

Previously, I showcased my working versions of my two characters to see if anyone was interested in the modeling/rigging/skinning workflow, and I saw enough interest to justify another article. I intentionally left out sculpting, complex character design, and animation, which I will cover here. (I will still be exclusively using...