FFN Switcher – Zweites Release
Posted by bietiekay in freies Funknetz, graphics on September 10, 2008
Nach ein paar Wochen ist es nun Zeit für eine weitere Version des FFN Switchers. Dank der mühevollen Tests vieler fleissiger Helfer des Freien Funknetzes gibt es eine bugfreiere Version inklusive neuer GUI.
Den Sourcecode und alles zugehörige gibt es wie immer auf dem Subversion Server.
Download: FFN Switcher Release 3
Source: FFN Switcher Release 3
Building Earth
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, hack-the-planet, rocket-science on September 9, 2008
Steffi and I made our own version of earth some years ago using 3D Studio and NASA Images – we even made an animation. But this guy does a way better job – creating a photorealistic earth:
“For some time now, I’ve been studying how to build Earth in Blender. I’ve read quite a few tutorials, studied NASA’s Blue Marble images, and received critique from other Blender enthusiasts. I now have some satisfactory results, which I’d be happy to share.
I’ve put together a 21-page tutorial which explains how I achieved my Earth renders. I know there are already a lot of Earth tutorials out there – but none that I found helped me get quite the effect that I wanted. My tutorial combines what I gleaned from all the other tutorials, with what I learned on my own through hours of experimenting. I’m sure it’s not perfect – but I think it will be helpful for anyone interested in the subject.
The tutorial focuses on three different models of Earth – a photographic-style Earth, a Blue-Marble-style Earth, and a night Earth. It demonstrates how to render details such as proper specular shading and ray-traced cloud shadows.”
There’s a free pdf tutorial available that shows how to create these 3D renderings with blender.
Source 1: http://chamberlinproductions.110mb.com/mappedearth.html
Source 2: “what’s the size of the earth compared to”
Source 3: http://web.olp.net/wildernesslodge/Earth%20Tutorial.pdf
XAMLpadX – a free and powerful editor for XAML
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, Microsoft on September 9, 2008
A new version of the great XAMLpadX is available. It’s an editor with many features you want to have in Visual Studio and Blend but you don’t get them.
Source: XamlPadX 4.0
Software .NET managed DSP for Audio and …
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, Music on September 8, 2008
As you may or may not know I am working on a gateway tool for citizen band radio. For this tool I was asked if it would be possible to build a tone detection, maybe more, into my software. And on the way of finding out how to accomplish this I stumbles across several very interesting things.
Like this peakmeter control which uses a software digital signal processing or a software dsp library – everything written entirely in managed code (C#) and both open source. Both examples show that you can use digital signal processing for audio and image content… and for more.
The peakmeter control:
“DSP processing is very interesting subject to learn and work with. This block receives digital samples from the source. It approximates the original waveform and finds its peak magnitudes.
Since I would not be able to go in details about how FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) works in this article, I recommend the interested reader to visit some of the links in the reference section to increase his/her knowledge about this process.”
The software DSP library:
“A C# open source library that provides fully featured (1) single and double precision complex number data types, (2) complex number math library, (3) 1D, 2D and 3D complex and real symmetric fast Fourier transforms, and (4) highly accurate statistical routines. The library is optimized for both speed and numerical accuracy. The reason that this library is called a “Digital Signal Processing” library is because complex numbers, FFTs and statistical functions form the basis of any DSP library — although it is the hope that this library will continue to evolve to a more full fledged DSP library.”
Source 1: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/PeakMeterCS.aspx
Source 2: http://www.exocortex.org/dsp/
free graph paper generator…
…if you do have a decent printer and if you haven’t got any graph paper – you could print it yourself.
thx to Kristian.
If you need to edit XML files…
Posted by bietiekay in Development, freies Funknetz, Microsoft, Software on September 3, 2008
…take the XML Notepad.
“Handy features include:
- Tree View synchronized with Node Text View for quick editing of node names and values.
- Incremental search (Ctrl+I) in both tree and text views, so as you type it navigates to matching nodes.
- Cut/copy/paste with full namespace support.
- Drag/drop support for easy manipulation of the tree, even across different instances of XML Notepad and from the file system.
- Infinite undo/redo for all edit operations.
- In place popup multi-line editing of large text node values.
- Configurable fonts and colors via the options dialog.
- Full find/replace dialog with support for regex and XPath.
- Good performance on large XML documents, loading a 3mb document in about one second.
- Instant XML schema validation while you edit with errors and warnings shown in the task list window.
- Intellisense based on expected elements and attributes and enumerated simple type values.
- Support for custom editors for date, dateTime and time datatypes and other types like color.
- Handy nudge tool bar buttons for quick movement of nodes up and down the tree.
- Inplace HTML viewer for processing xml-stylesheet processing instructions.
- Built-in XML Diff tool.
- Support for XInclude
- Dynamic help from XSD annotations.
- Goto definition to navigate includes and XSD schema information. “
you don’t understand what’s been said: download subtitles!
If you are frequently watching foreign language TV Shows you might be interested in subtitles for your TV shows:
“Here you can find subtitles for the most popular TV Shows and TV series. Subtitles are available in multiple languages. All subtitles here are packed with WinZip, you must unpack to use it. To watch DivX/XviD movies with subtitles you first need to install a DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player which is called DirectVobSub.”
Source: http://www.tvsubtitles.net/
What could have been: Full Throttle sequel
AdventureClassicGaming blog has a very cool article about the could-have-been Full Throttle sequel:
![376_9_medium[1]](http://www.schrankmonster.de/content/binary/WindowsLiveWriter/WhatcouldhavebeenFullThrottlesequel_146A8/376_9_medium%5B1%5D_3.jpg)
“Playing Full Throttle is like tasting a rich bowl of roadhouse chili filled to the rim with biker gangs, chick mechanics (covered in engine grease too), and truckers with badass tattoos. An action packed, comical (albeit short), animated graphical adventure set in the backdrop of an apocalyptic future, Full Throttle touches on the subculture of motorcycle gangs and their steel horses. It is also a story about Ben, a renegade biker who lives and dies by his own rules. Ben’s voice (played by the late Roy Conrad) is every bit as gravelly as the Old Mine Road where he does battle. In this alternate world, cars hover, transport trucks are armored, and desolate towns like Melonweed are sinking fast into the sand. It is a land with many strange locales and even stranger inhabitants.”
Source: http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/features/376/
And this Airfoil thing even works with my remote control…
Posted by bietiekay in makes-my-day, Mobile, Music, music-of-the-day on September 1, 2008
… oh even more joy!
Rumor of today: Skymarket is the AppStore for Windows Mobile 7
So..in 2009 Windows Mobile 7 will start and some things point towards an AppStore equivalent called Skymarket for the Microsoft mobile operating system… hmm… Why not… earlier? Like before Apple… way to go Microsoft.
Source: Skymarket @ Computerworld
I finally got my low latency network audio solution
Posted by bietiekay in Apple, hack-the-planet, Internet, Modding, Music, networking, Software on September 1, 2008
In May 2005 I wrote about a wish I had for years:
“As usual I’ve got a very strange wish what nobody else seems to have on this planet. I have several computers of different platforms. And on one of this machines there are speakers attached…I want to have the possibility to output from any of the machines to the speakers. And please loss-less and low latency!”
It took more than 3 years to fulfill this particular wish. But now it’s done. In 2005 I mentioned the Airfoil software that could run on MacOS X and forward sound from almost every application to an AirTunes compatible device. As it turns out Rogue Amoeba did their homework and created a free “Airfoil Speakers” application which can be used on Windows and MacOS X.
So the things are simple: Start the speaker application on a machine that is in the same network/subnet as the Airfoil master. The virtual speaker is then displayed on the master machine and you can assign a sound source from that machine to the speaker. Hmm… Simple Setup sample: One machine is in my kitchen (Windows XP machine) and one machine is on my desk – an iMac. In the kitchen only the speaker application is started and the iMac instantly “sees” the speaker. One click and the sound output of my desk machine is forwarded through the network to the kitchen… Easy and cool. One can think of any other combination of Speaker/Master application – even multiple speakers can be powered by one master…oh joy!
So here is what the master looks like:
and this is what it looks like on a client (speaker):
Source 1: nerd wish of 2005
Source 2: http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/
free eBook galore: Python
Posted by bietiekay in books, Internet, Talks and Slides on August 31, 2008
There are more than 10 free eBooks available about Python:
… like “Dive into Python”:
“This is a fantastic book that is also available in print
other eBooks:
An Introduction to Tkinter
How to think like a Computer Scientist
The Standard Python Library
Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
The Django Book
The Pylons Book
Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Python
Building Skills in Python
Building Skills in OO Design
Source 1: Dive into Python
Source 2: An Introduction to Tkinter
Source 3: How to think like a Computer Scientist
Source 4: The Standard Python Library
Source 5: Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
Source 6: The Django Book
Source 7: The Pylons Book
Source 8: Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Python
Source 9: Building Skills in Python
Source 10: Building Skills in OO Design
It’s dead, Jim
Once again one of my hard disks died today. It refuses to get formated and reports bad blocks… It’s one of my backup drives which is normally stored in a locker and powered on only once every while.
Now it’s dead … I need to order a new one… damn.
free eBook: Data Structures and Algorithms
Posted by bietiekay in books, Development, Internet, Talks and Slides on August 29, 2008
“This book written by Granville Barnett and Luca Del Tongo is part of an effort to provide all developers with a core understanding of algorithms that operate on various common, and uncommon data structures.
Data Structures and Algorithms: Annotated Reference with Examples is completely free!”
The first draft is available now – and it’s 97 pages.
Source: http://dotnetslackers.com/projects/Data-Structures-And-Algorithms/
“Unix is a user hostile operating system”
I found the almost complete “Computer Chronicles” recordings on archive.org – and boy this is fun!
I picked some episodes and found very interesting things – like this particular episode from 1985. It’s about Unix and obviously one of the presenters has his very own opinion about Unix.
Source: Computer Chronicles 1985 “Unix”
Spacetime Math tools
If you searching a tool for Windows, Linux, OSX and your windows mobile device…you may want to take a look at this:
“SpaceTime 3.0 by SpaceTime Mathematics is a revolution in mathematics software with 2D, 3D, and time graphing with MobileCAS® for algebra and calculus. With features only available in Mathematica and MATLAB, SpaceTime is the most powerful cross-platform mathematics software ever developed for computers and mobile devices.“
Source: http://www.spacetime.us/
turn new pictures into old ones…the Bakumatsu picture generator
“Bakumatsu were the final years of the Edo period in Japan. It was a turning point in Japanese history as it was the end of the period of isolation in Japan. The feudal way of governing was coming to an end, and the start of the Meiji government, which would later take Japan to the world power status.”
This is a very cool picture effect free to use which turns this:
into this:
Source: http://labs.wanokoto.jp/olds
das FeM Blog fest in Skripte-Hand
Posted by bietiekay in FeM, hack-the-planet, Riot on August 26, 2008
Offenbar spielt da gerade ein von mir nicht zu verantwortendes Skript verrückt – Schrankmonster wird zur Zeit nämlich 1:1 schamlos kopiert 
Ich freue mich natürlich darüber und habe direkt mal die Google FeedAds eingeschaltet…
P.S.: Bitte bau noch einer von den Blog Administratoren dass die Umlaute richtig übernommen werden – so ist das ja alles nur halb so hübsch.
Source: http://blog.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/
Rechte-Kleinstaaterei
Da surfe ich hier und da mal herum – schaue mir ein paar Internetseiten über Bamberg an und da werde ich Zeuge einer ganz seltsamen Darbietung.
Bislang wusste ich dass Verbreitungsrechte im Internet auf Länder vergeben werden können – also dass man beispielsweise einen Webseiten Inhalt oder Livestream nur innerhalb der USA abrufen kann.
Nun scheint diese Art der Gängelung auch innerhalb von einzelnen Staaten Mode zu werden. Offenbar kann man in Deutschland nämlich die Rechte nur für ein bestimmtes Bundesland erwerben… Leute Leute wo wird das noch hinführen?
Source: http://www.bamberg-guide.de/bamberg/magazin/artikel.php?id=20080809201222
futuristic user interfaces…
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, Research on August 26, 2008
This is a very impressive overview of new user interface ideas. It’s a fact that we need new userinterfaces for all kinds of use cases – and as it turns out there are unbelievable cool things going on in the UI research.
“Good user interfaces are crucial for good user experience. It doesn’t matter how good a technology is — if we, designers, don’t manage to make user interface as intuitive and attractive as possible, the technology will hardly reach a breakthrough. To gain the interest in a new product or technology, users need to understand its advantages or find themselves impressed or involved.
And here is where creative ideas and unusual interface approaches become important. Innovative doesn’t mean usable and usable hardly means innovative. As usual, it’s necessary to find an optimal trade-off. And some user interfaces manage to achieve just that.”
Source: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/17/10-futuristic-user-interfaces/
.NET Reflector update
Posted by bietiekay in Development, Software on August 25, 2008
“Red Gate has recently acquired .NET Reflector. We will continue to maintain a free version for the benefit of the community.”
how to create your own photosynth
Photosynth is publicly available and it’s time to give it a try and play with the technology. Before starting you should be aware of some facts about the public photosynth technology-preview:
- all synths are uploaded and only available online (broadband needed)
- all synths are public, everyone can access them
- the synther tool runs only on Windows
- you’ll need a Live ID
When everything is checked you can go and upload up to 20 Gbytes of image data – my test synth takes up 200 Mbytes of the available space – so you have plenty of space to play with.
To start just install the photosynth application to view – and click “create” on the website. After the obligatory login you immediately can upload your pictures. Give it a name, ssome tags and a license and select your pictures.
Your pictures should show the same scene from different perspectives – photosynth is all about matching perspectives. After clicking on “Synth” the process starts.
And after a surprisingly short period of time your synth is done. Click on “View Synth” and you’re taken back to the website and you can browse your synth. That’s it – easy!
Source 1: my first photosynth
Source 2: Photosynth is open for the public
Source 3: create a synth
Fixing the bad bad mouse acceleration in Mac OS X
Posted by bietiekay in Apple, hack-the-planet, Hardware, Software on August 24, 2008
I finally found a fix for the unspeakable mouse acceleration problem I have with MacOS X. It’s just a fact that Apple seems to have no idea how to do the mouse handling. Some people say it’s the mouse acceleration curve that apple got wrong:
“As wonderful as Mac OS X is, it has a grave defect that can have an immediate adverse impact on the computer’s usability: the way it translates mouse motion into pointer movement. For many users, moving the mouse feels unnatural because of the peculiar way that Mac OS X performs that translation. In industry parlance, the translation is called the “mouse acceleration curve.” What is a mouse acceleration curve, and how is its implementation problematic under Mac OS X?”
It’s a problem I can live with but I am not happy. With Panther and Tiger I had a solution called MacMiceCommand. But with Leopard this solution stopped working and until I found this:
“This is a GUI version of Richard Bentley’s MouseFix. (i)MouseFix is a very simple program that will allow you to regain control of the mouse acceleration in Mac OS X. Both this web page and the program copies large parts from MouseFix because he says: “feel free to take the code and wrap a nice interface round it. Be nice and make it free for everyone to use though ”"
Source 1: mouse acceleration explained
Source 2: http://www.lavacat.com/iMouseFix/
unboxing surface tables…
These guys got lucky and got themselves two Surface tables:
“Yesterday, we (Amnesia) took delivery of Australia’s first two Microsoft Surface tables. We believe they were the first units to ship outside the US. Not often you get your hands on something no one else has seen, so we thought we’d share the grand opening of the boxes…”
Source: AmnesiaBlog
Lebkuchen
Okay. Offensichtlich ist bald Weihnachten denn wie ich eben lesen musste gibt es wohl schon Lebkuchen zu kaufen… so langsam aber sicher verliere ich komplett den Bezug zu Weihnachten überhaupt.
Twitter
- Ich hab’s doch gesagt!16/05/2013 19:13
- just ordered two more RaspberryPi B with Cameras… #shutupandtakemymoney16/05/2013 19:34
- "…new Raspberry Pi camera module, which will be available from RS Components later in May." Bring it on! #Raspberrypi #shutupandtakemymoney12/05/2013 16:24
- Rakuten Storefront - jede Technologie ist nur so gut wie ihre Dokumentation #rakuten
http://t.co/j7yVCfD7iR11/05/2013 15:01 - Rakuten Expo coming up
http://t.co/FlVjw7ehBc11/05/2013 08:32
- Ich hab’s doch gesagt!
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