I just added a project that I had recently been working on to my site. It’s called “VisualODF”. If you want the introduction, go here: VisualODF Introduction. If you’d like to see the documentation directly, click this link: VisualODF Documentation.What exactly is this thing? Without repeating the introduction, it is a framework (bunch of classes, really, but I like to throw that word in) written in C++ that form the basis of an application for detecting objects from video streams in the context of a UAV mounted camera. It does everything but the detection part: opening video streams, playing them, capturing frames, sending them to a video display and custom image processing algorithm, display of processed video frame, and display of obstacles on a TCAS-II type display as well as other custom widgets.

It uses QT4, ffmpeg, and SDL to accomplish this. Probably the most useful bits of the classes are the TCAS display itself, the widget plugins (TCAS widget, the so-called “pieDisplay” widget, and a video display widget), and the video-related classes. All of the classes use QT.

The idea behind this was that it would allow a student to actually work on the detection algorithm part of the application, rather than trying to figure out how to open a video stream and grab frames from it or how to convert YUV to RGB.

Hopefully a student somewhere will end up using this for something useful!

I was in the local Wal-mart some time ago and I ran across a linux branded laundry detergent (as seen in this picture).

I didn’t know Linus was a player in the laundry world! In any case, he’s gotta be making money off of the use of his trademark… I mean, I don’t get the connection, but if you can sucessfully sell cow manure and call it “Microsoft Windows” for some extra play money, then kudos to you! (That might not be a bad idea, since the mental connection is already there)

It might not be ready for the desktop, but you can certainly wash your clothes with it.

I just got a new mobile phone recently, really just because I wanted to switch to a different provider that claimed to have coverage in Alaska, Pakistan, and Greenlend (my planned destinations over the next few months). So I decided to upgrade my organization ability(or start getting organized is more like it) and got a Pocket PC based phone (similar to the MDA Smartphone in the US, I think). It’s based on the HTC-Wizard design that is branded by various companies, and it’s a nifty little phone, with good battery life and runs all my favorite Nintendo ROMS without problems. Oh, and I can call people too.

Anyway, I realized that – since I now have a WiFi capable phone – I might be able to attach a US number to my phone using a VoIP service. That’s right: I could have my German number, as well as a US number, and be doubly reachable!

So here is my thoughts on what you get when you install Skype on your HTC Wizard device, and also about a different service called “Woize” that offers a similar service.

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I ran across an interesting site today called meebo. Ok, maybe I’m the last person in the world to have found this site, but what it does is enable you to use your instant messengers (AOL, Yahoo!, ICQ, MSN, etc) from inside a web page (I guess it’s using AJAX and some other goodies to accomplish this). What does it mean? It means that if you’re in a place with a serious firewall keeping you from chatting it up with your friends, you’re in good shape if you can just get to this page with your web browser. And it just works (plus the interface is rather nice).

So, if you’re in need of a web-based instant messaging client, check out www.meebo.com.

I’ve been really happy since I switched to Gentoo. I have a rock-stable 64-bit platform with the latest builds of the software I want. It’s quite easy to maintain, and installing it can be a learning experience.

Every once in a while I run across strange fiddly things that I have to do to get things to work right, and Mathematica 5.0 is one of them. While the newer Mathematica versions will likely install fine from what I’ve read, version 5.0 doesn’t seem to want to run after being installed. The solution to get it working is quite simple, though.

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I didn’t know this until just recently, but a version of Trolltech’s QT for Windows exists without having to purchase a license. After doing programming with KDE and QT in a Linux environment and now switching back to working with Windows, I’ve often thought about how nice it would be to use QT under Windows – but I’ve always thought that you have to buy it. While buying it is not a bad idea, if you’re doing something as a hobby or don’t intend to sell your idea it’s probably not an option. Using QT can enable you to easily write cross-platform applications that will work in at least Linux and Windows, and probably other Unices and OSX as well.

One place to find the GPL’d version of QT for Windows is at the Vienna University of Technology. There are probably other places that host it as well. The executable pretty much does everything automatically, and the “INSTALL” file will get you going in no-time. You’ll be using Trolltech’s “Designer” with your C++ IDE (I am using VC++ 6) for writing applications in minutes!

I also was able to easily get the QWT plotting widgets to compile and integrated with QT designer, which means that I should be able to compile code with QT depends in Linux and on my Windows install (in VMWare, that is). Neat!

This is probably silly to do on the eve of the release of Mandrake 10.1, but there are some things that really get my goat when using version 10.0. I’ve been using it as my main desktop since it was released, so I’ve got a pretty good impression of what it is like. Read on if you’re interested in using it but haven’t tried it yet, or if you want to hear about some of the negative points of using Mandrake. I’m sure that most distributions have thier good and bad points – I won’t discuss the good (since I wouldn’t be using it if I didn’t like the good parts), just the bad!

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I was looking around for a way to clone one hard drive to another, and I ran across an interesting utility called PartImage. Originally, I tried to image one 100GB drive to another using a normal dd command, like so:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

I let that run for about 20 hours and it still wasn’t done! Partimage seemed like a better choice since it only copies the existing data on the drive, and not all of the empty space too. But better, yet, you can get a whole rescue CD that has a PartitionMagic clone included!

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If you’ve had a problem with getting VMWare to run with Mandrake 10.0 (and possibly newer versions), here is a quick guide to getting it working. Read the rest of this entry »

Every once in a while, I find some software that I really think is useful, and that other people could use if they knew it existed. Lately I was looking around and stumbled on a couple of data visualization packages (for Linux, both FREE), both of which seem to be pretty cool, and a freeware SSH program for Windows. Read on to get more info on all of them…

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