The process itself is very simple as it involves simply flipping the webcam’s lens and adjusting the slide-holder at the right point of focus.

You can read more about it at Michael’s blog: http://bbkay025.xanga.com/722254080/item/?ref=nf

A brief recap of my wonderful CNY break.

• Re-learned how to play mahjong (Thanks Apple for the cheat-sheet with most of the basic rules)
• Went to Che Kung temple buy a windmill (that should keep my academic progress at its current level), burn some incense and tap three times on the war drums. Hopefully Che Kung will be kind enough to guide me in this battlefield of a PhD and teaching duties.
• Family time with “my” Hong Kong family. It’s always great to feel accepted by them and share some good time together.
  I also had sushi-tea with Apple and Jennifer. Fun times, as always.
• Nearly froze to death, with temperatures ranging from 6′c to 26′c in a 3-day interval.

Seeedstudio is a company based in Shenzhen, China. For those who do not know, Shenzhen is the city making the border between Hong Kong and China. It is a very fast-growing city where buildings seem to pop-out like mushrooms.
They are a group of electronics enthusiasts that share their manufacturing resources through their online shop (the depot) and  promote global open source electronics projects.

Simply reading at the description of the company and their ideals, I got seduced. Open Source is very dear to me as I advocate the use of Open Source applications and most of my day-to-day use of computing takes advantage of Open Source technologies. My PhD project is extensively based on a home-made cluster of debian-based machines and most of my programming based on open SDKs.

One of the other very positive aspects of this company is the fact that they are just across the border. Shipping is cheap, fast and if I wanted I could actually go to the shop myself. ( I just so happen to have had dinner a couple of blocks from their offices last weekend)

They also produce some custom-made boards and arduino clones. I have ordered some Seeeduinos and will try and make a writeup about them when they finally get here, within the next week.

Edit: Stuff ordered on Monday, Shipping done on Wednesday evening, Received this morning at 10am. Added some pics:

SeeduinoV2.12

Seeeduino purchases

Seeeduino purchases

TiltSwitch, RangeSensor, MotionSensor

I have been using SVN for the past 3 years during my undergraduate life, but I think I should also have a look at the other options.

I run an various number of platforms for day to day tasks. All of them have the good points and drawbacks for each action I like to perform, but this is not the topic of this post. As a reference point only, I need to make sure I can use my content versioning system on Linux, Windows 7 and Mac OSx.

Clients i use currently:

• Mac: commandline git
• Linux: commandline git
• Windows: msysgit (gui)

I have had a little help trough google to setup my GIT repo. The gist of it being:

• setup WEBDAV server
• install GIT on server
• create repo in WEBDAV folder

     1:  git repo-config --global user.name "YOURNAME"

     2:  git repo-config --global user.email YOUREMAIL@DOMAIN.TLD

     3:  git --bare init-db

     4:  git repo-config remotes.origin.url http://URL.TO/WEBDAVFOLDER/

     5:  git update-server-info

• keep fingers crossed until your first push to the repo works

I don’t have much more for the moment. I have setup all my repos using the msysgit gui so no crazy commandline fun…

I’ll try and post later with the results of my trials with GIT

A few links:

http://versioncontrolblog.com/comparison/Bazaar/CVS/Git/Mercurial/Subversion/index.html

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/871/why-is-git-better-than-subversion

http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/

This is a short now, but if you know me you know all the rest.

http://www.zeuveuveu.net/blog/

As some of you, or all of you, may know. I have been studying in Hong Kong at the School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong since 2006. I studied the BScCm programme. A pioneer in its genre at the time since it combines core courses in creative media and computer science. We have an equal balance between the two subjects and for the creative media courses we have adapted them to be more suitable for more technically inclined people. This does not though mean that we have no creativity and no skills in design and aesthetics.

Over the past year I have been blessed with many opportunities. The first one, chronologically, was the chance to be sponsored to go to the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz Autria. This was sponsored by Cyberport. I was then offered a place as a part-time Research Assistant for Professor Liu until december. In the mean time I got the opportunity to show my BTMS at Cyberport and the Delay No Mall. After Xmas and a scholarship from the school covering my last year of studies, I got offered a place as a part-time student helper, which meant that I got the opportunity to help out Koala with her Installation Class. My role being to cover the dreaded “Menu 5″ of Isadora. The Calculations Menu…….

After that was a succession of roles as a student assistant and research assistant for Professor Liu. I work on improvements of the BTMS with two other students: Kenny and Michael. Really good guys.

So, what come with all this work ? well… decent grades actually…. They are as follows:

Programme: Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Creative Media

Course Code   Course Title                                            Credits   Grade      Remarks
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

INSTITUTION CREDIT

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Semester A 2006/07
CS2114        Computer Organization for Media                            4      C+
CS2331        Problem Solving & Programming                              3      A-
SM1007        Visual Thinking and Design                                 3      A
SM1012        Creative Writing                                           3      B+
SM1014        Sound Basics and Design                                    3      A-
Earned Hours:  16.00           GPA Hours:  16.00           Points:  53.30             GPA:   3.33

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Semester B 2006/07
CCIV0202      Chinese Civilisation in English II                         3      P
CS2333        Object-Oriented Programming for Media                      3      A
CS3270        Fundamentals of Computer Networks and the Internet         3      A
CS3278        Fundamentals of Internet Programming                       3      A+
SM1008        Art of the Moving Image                                    3      A
SM1016        Moving Image Workshop                                      3      B+
          Dean's List
Earned Hours:  18.00           GPA Hours:  15.00           Points:  58.80             GPA:   3.92

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summer 2007
SA2943        Critical and Creative Thinking                             3      A-
SS2611        Movies and Psychology                                      3      A-
Earned Hours:   6.00           GPA Hours:   6.00           Points:  22.20             GPA:   3.70

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Semester A 2007/08
CS2303        Data Structures for Media                                  3      A-
CS3342        Software Design                                            3      B+
CS3483        Multimodal Interface Design                                3      B
CTL2996       Basic Cantonese I                                          3      A-
SM2701        Theories of Interactivity                                  3      A-
SM3120        Game Level Design                                          3      B+
Earned Hours:  18.00           GPA Hours:  18.00           Points:  62.10             GPA:   3.45

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Semester B 2007/08
CS3343        Software Engineering Practice                              3      A-
CS3402        Database Systems                                           3      B+
CS4182        Computer Graphics                                          3      B-
EN2861        Spanish 1                                                  3      A
SM1011        Introduction to Contemporary Art                           3      A-
SM2601        Introduction to Narrative Techniques                       3      A-
Earned Hours:  18.00           GPA Hours:  18.00           Points:  63.30             GPA:   3.51

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summer 2008
EN2862        Spanish 2                                                  3      A-
Earned Hours:   3.00           GPA Hours:   3.00           Points:  11.10             GPA:   3.70

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Semester A 2008/09
CCIV0201      Chinese Civilisation in English I                          3      P
CS3103        Operating Systems                                          3      B-
CS3201        Computer Networks                                          3      B+
SM2251        Multimedia Performance                                     3      A
SM4601        Final Year Project (BSCCM)                                 6      IP
Earned Hours:  12.00           GPA Hours:   9.00           Points:  30.00             GPA:   3.33

The student is in possession of the result of IELTS taken on 15 November 2008 under the
University Grants Committee's Common English Proficiency Assessment Scheme.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Semester B 2008/09
EN2863        Spanish 3                                                  3      B+
SM2258        Creative Electronics Workshop                              3      A+
SM2607        Games/Interactivity Fundamentals                           3      A-
SM4601        Final Year Project (BSCCM)                                 6      A          Include
Earned Hours:  15.00           GPA Hours:  15.00           Points:  57.90             GPA:   3.86

********************************************* Total ************************************************
                         Earned Hrs           GPA Hrs            Points               GPA
Total Institution            106.00            100.00            358.70               3.58
Total Transfer                 0.00              0.00              0.00               0.00
Overall                      106.00            100.00            358.70               3.58
*********************************** End of Online Grade Display ************************************

http://www.architecturalreviewawards.com/ARAwards2006/winning%20entries/mafoombeyHC.htm

http://www.rodedev.com/tutorials/gamephysics/

http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2007/08/16/throw-a-ball-with-a-sling-physics-flash-tutorial-part-2-by-kevin-ward/

http://www.webdesign.org/web/flash-&-swish/flash-tutorials/flash-physics-study.6014.html

http://search.atomz.com/search?sp_a=sp040c2f00&sp_f=iso-8859-1&sp_q=physics

http://www.kirupa.com/developer/as3/physics_bounce_effect_pg2.htm

The reason why synergy is important to me is because when I work at home (read at student residences) my desk is quite small and I like to use several computers and monitors at the same time. It helps me multitask and use multiple OSs without having to either multi-boot or run many VMs on a single computer.

My room workspace is composed as follows:

• 1 Mac Mini G4, first gen. connected via DVI to a 15″ LCD monitor. It runs Mac OS X
• 1 Home computer that serves a multi-purpose server and development machine runing Ubuntu Linux. Connected via DVI to a 21″ DELL LCD monitor and dual-mon via VGA to the same SONY as the Mac Mini
• 1 HP notebook given by my mom Xmas of 2008 running Windows 7  beta. It is usually connected in dual-mon to the DELL 21″.

My studies are in computer science and creative media. Sometimes  I need to run a specific os for development or work but I might prefer another one for image editing or word processing. This mainly depends on what software I have installed and also the power of the computers since the “youngest” computer I got is already 3 years old but would perform already a lot faster than the other two for resource intensive tasks.

As you can see I have 2 monitors that have both of their inputs being used. by the press of a button i can switch between OSs displayed ona given mon but i cannot switch the keyboard and mouse as easily. Synergy was the perfect tool for me… and still is.

Apparently the only thing I had to do was to run it as an Administrator and not try  to run it as a service. I can now happily use 1 keyboard and mouse for the three computers.

You can get synergy here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergy2/