Weblog.
Jerome's rants, daily, weekly so much to rant about...
Accelerometer Mania.
(06-12-07)
Been a little while since I posted anything, so here is a little update. The N95 seems to have gone accelerometer crazy, ever since Nokia released the Accelerometer Plugin Package. To check it out in action here are some vids. First the Moving Ball demo app thats released with full source code. And second big kudos to Samir for his really awesome apps, see RotateMe and Nokmote. I just had to join in the fun, and now a new project has been added to my Graphics section, MoveIt!.
Mobile Phones.
(15-08-07)
I'm a bit of a sucker when it comes to gadgets. Been a proud owner of the N95 for a few months now. Sure the battery sucks, but this is a hell-of-a phone. The feature list is endless, 5 MPixel CMOS camera with autofocus, which is pretty good but like all CMOS sensors sucks in the dark when compared to CCDs. It has a OMAP 2420 microprocessor, which is good :), as you get a PowerVR MBX, meaning hardware acceleration for OpenGL ES (3D graphics). It also supports WIFI so you can break free from those money making mobile networks. And it has integrated GPS, so you can find out your position on this planet we call Earth.
My favorite applications so far are;
Truphone, allows you to make free internet calls over WIFI.
SHOZU, allows you to add GPS coordinates to pictures (geotagging) and upload to Flickr all from the phone.
Widsets, just a glorified RSS news reader
Windows Live Messenger, allows you to synch your inbox and chat with all your contacts.
Orb, allows you to run a server on your home PC, and stream over WIFI all you videos/music/pics to your phone. Really makes the N95 the ultimate portable media player, especially as you can connect this phone to your TV. This is particularly usefull when you have over 1TB of TV series/movies :).
And of course anything OpenGL ES related. Check these games out, rollingball, DRC and here is a simple 3d rotating cube I compiled from the symbian SDK (requires self-signing). Not too impressed with the Symbian SDK so far, but it might grow on me.
Optical Illusions.
(05-08-07)
I just love optical illusions. Shows you how our little visual system can get tricked, into seeing things which aren't there. More interestingly is all the tricks the brain uses to help us see things. A great collection of illusions can be found here. Fabulous website. Also big kudos to this site, The guy who runs it is a legend, check out some of his demonstrations. Some of my favorite optical illusions can be found here, here and here.
Ferrofluids.
(20-07-07)
Another cool class of fluids which I must try and make/play with at some point are ferrofluids. Here is a great arty-farty vid of them in action. Another cool project is this one where the guy made a display out of them. And a cheap recipe to make them can be found here.
Stereo Screens.
(15-07-07)
Saw one of these in action today, boy was I impressed.
Basically it's a stereo display based on 2 LCDs. Must say, to date, this has been the best stereo system I have ever seen. Looking at the hardware, there really doesnt seem to be much to it. Two LCDs which you can pick up for dirt cheap and a bit of teleprompter glass. Then the graphic card driver does the rest. Really good forum here for DIY stereo.
New site is up.
(03-07-07)
Finally, after many months, I got the new design up for my website. Still need to find a good system for my web photo gallery. Kinda used to using JAlbum as it's scriptable, so you can customize it to your site style. But this requires all pages to be created offline, bit old fashioned really. Starting to appreciate the power of PHP + SQL, but my hosting package doesnt support them. So the hunt continues...
