Author: Geeks out of the Box

This is a blog about Simon, a young mathematician and programmer, and his little sister Neva. We write this blog together, share their projects and thoughts on their journey towards self-dicovery. They’re growing up in a supportive non-coercive learning environment. We deeply believe in interest-based, self-paced education and have had to move countries to make this possible as a family. Visit Simon’s website at https://simontiger.com/ We are a family from Amsterdam who moved to Antwerp because homeschooling is illegal in The Netherlands. This blog started as https://antwerpenhomeschooling.wordpress.com in March 2016. Over the years, most of our entries have gravitated towards exploring together with Simon as he has developed an insatiable passion for programming, math and science. His sister Neva is treading on his heals. We changed or name to Geeks of the Box in May 2021.
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Geometry Free Collision Detection. Attractors.

Simon returned to his “old” code (something he wrote about a month ago) and fixed the collision detection in it. He called this “geometry free”collision detection because he doesn’t use any … Continue reading Geometry Free Collision Detection. Attractors.

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Spring Animation Tool (Simon’s own code)

The next exciting step in writing his own code about spring force: Simon actually created an interface to allow anyone to build his own shape made of springs and particles! Simon … Continue reading Spring Animation Tool (Simon’s own code)

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Soft Springs (Simon’s own code)

Simon used Chapter 3 (Oscillation) of Daniel Shiffman’s book The Nature of Code as the theoretical basis for creating his own code. First, he played around with what he calls “soft springs” – … Continue reading Soft Springs (Simon’s own code)

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Oscillation and Drag Force: Spring Project.

Today Simon was watching Daniel Shiffman’s tutorials to learn about drag force and how to apply it when building a spring simulation in p5.js. Simon wrote the formula for drag force … Continue reading Oscillation and Drag Force: Spring Project.

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Microsoft Kinect (v2) in Processing using the Open Kinect for Processing library

Our Kinect adapter has finally arrived! Simon had been waiting for about one and a half months and was extremely hyper to try out the code he had already written … Continue reading Microsoft Kinect (v2) in Processing using the Open Kinect for Processing library

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Path Following (Simon’s own code). Applying restitution.

On Thursday Simon was busy with writing his own code in Java. He called it “Path Following”. The project basically involved simulating different phenomena with a physics particle (having it … Continue reading Path Following (Simon’s own code). Applying restitution.

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Looping through an array lecture

In these videos Simon explains looping through an array and adding while simultaneously removing things from that array. He recorded this presentation while working on an evolution simulation (Evolutionary Steering Behaviors, see … Continue reading Looping through an array lecture

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Simulating Evolution: Evolutionary Steering Behaviors

  On Wednesday Simon went on with playing god (evolution simulation) and translated Daniel Shiffman’s Evolutionary Steering Behaviors Coding Challenge from JavaScript to Java.  The goal of the challenge is to … Continue reading Simulating Evolution: Evolutionary Steering Behaviors

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Autonomous Agents and Genetic Algorithms

Today Simon spent hours watching videos and reading Daniel Shiffman’s book The Nature of Code, concentrating on more complicated matters than ever: autonomous agents and evolution (genetic algorithms). In The … Continue reading Autonomous Agents and Genetic Algorithms