Category: confessions of a pixel pusher

software: finishing it. starting it

communication confessions of a pixel pusher history technology

Kyle Wilson wrote an interesting essay about finishing software back in August.

I am wondering why so much great software does not even get started: Since a long time I am using an EVDO modem to connect to the internet. The upside is, that I have Internet wherever I go. If there is the slightest hint of civilisation I can connect to the internet. Which is great. The hardware is smart enough not only to move bits around it also knows where it is. GPS is a rather elaborate system with satelites floating around the planet and all. It is a big commotion, and it works. Just, that the software to connect to that part of the device does not exist on a Mac. With the right amount of documentation a programmer that has done something similar before would only need a few days to program this. And they sold thousands and thousands of these the device. The benefit for my computer to know where exactly I am would be huge. Since I am also connected to the internet a website could replace a 300 US$ GPS device. Still nobody has done it.

The other day I learned that Los Angeles is not storing the traffic data it automatically collects. It is allot of work, and certainly was not cheap, to put all those sensors in place. The data flows to the right places. And then gets simply not archived.

In both cases the effort to add the extra functionality would be ridicolously small compared to the potential gain. In both cases it might never happen: There is no driving force behind it. Nobody is making a living from something similar enough to jump on these opportunities. Even though ideas might be clear and simple, they might never happen, no matter how good they are, as long there is not a similar enterprise already happening. This theory has a sad other side as well: If there is already some kind of business going in certain way, then all sorts of similar activities will be spawned. No matter if they make any sense (Sony’s Mp3 players) or if they are valid for society ( Arms dealer, Mafia, Spam).

callwave and EVDO

confessions of a pixel pusher marketing misc technology

Callwave and EVDO are certainly my best technological friends: Getting of a plane, in the hotel room, there would be an ethernet, but why bother? EVDO works. Even here. Then there is a voicemail from somebody that called while I was on the plane. The automatic transrcipt gives me an idea, the company that called shows up, and best of all, all those call back numbers are transrcibed right there. If the iPhone could maybe read a phone number with it’s camera and then dial it, we would be in good shape.

scanimate

confessions of a pixel pusher history media technology

I have no idea how I came about to find this site devoted to the Scanimate System. I did order both DVDs and am very happy to have done so: They give a very interesting peek into the technology, art etc of those times. Who knew that I would find out eventually how all those apparently not hand drawn animations I saw on Sesame Street were done.

the worst thing I have seen in a while

art confessions of a pixel pusher history misc

Lot’s of blog rave about thiscomputer animation right now.

I think it is horrible. Smetana is easy to abuse and misunderstand. Dragging Fallingwater into this is just horrible. The first couple of seconds of this Quicktime from hell are nice enough. Although the font choice and especially the animated glow should have been a clear sign of trouble. Fallingwater is one of the more important things that have been made in the last century. Seing it disolved to death is pure horror. The tasteless low point was certainly the eschereseque pan away from that mirror ball.

Not much more to say than this

convert: Non-conforming drawing primitive definition `image’.

confessions of a pixel pusher internet

ImageMagick is a nice collection of image manipulation routines. It’s free, and somehow it should be. It’s powerful, but also works and fails in miracolous ways. It just wasted twenty minutes. My Minutes. It would have taken the person writing the code probably 2 to make the error message a little bit more meaningful. To cut to the chase: When ImageMagick tells you:

convert: Non-conforming drawing primitive definition `image'.

then it’s probably only telling you that it can not open the image you like to draw. In plain command line that would be:

convert -size 700x500 xc:black -draw 'image Over 0,0 400,300 directory/image.jpg' output.jpg

This will fail. It turns out that ImageMagick needs to have a local file NOT with a path component. To sucessfully do what you wanted to do you would have to:

cd directory ; convert -size 700x500 xc:black -draw 'image Over 0,0 400,300 image.jpg' ../output.jpg ; cd ..

Possible, sure. But a hint like “can not open file directory/image.jpg” would have been nice. The best would be path support as suspected. It works everywhere else.

Of course it turned out that this is supposed to be a feature. In the end things start to work when you quote the filename, like in:


convert -size 700x500 xc:black -draw 'image Over 0,0 400,300 "directory/image.jpg"' output.jpg

Otherwise a filename like 123_3x4.jpg would also get you in trouble.

I thought this day would never come

confessions of a pixel pusher history technology

NAB 2006 Red announced a new camera, and I wrote that it would never be a reality. Well, not quiet that, but I thought it would not go anywhere. I was wrong. Cameras up to serial number 25 have been shipped and there are an amazing number of orders. Fxguide has anice article about the delivery of Red Camera #22.

I find it very impressive that a couple of dedicated people were able to pull this off. The deadlines announced during the launch of the brand did slip. But keeping those would have been a miracle. It seems that the way RED handled the delay and other modification to their initial plans was what saved the day. People are still happy and excited about the device.

Now comes the interesting part: How will the images intergrate. How much of difference does the real life existence of the RED camera actually make.

Of course I can not resist to follow a failed prophecy with another one: It’s not gonna change that much. It’s not only the camera that makes a movie a movie.

Interdubs iPhone mode

confessions of a pixel pusher interdubs

Interdubs will detect iPhones now and serve a specific navigation mode that looks, feels and works very much like the phone itself. It was actually kind of fun to code content for one specific device. It’s nice to know that things will look excatly the same for everybody. There are upsides to closed platforms. The number of hits on interdubs from iPhones made the work that went into this worthwhile. The nice thing is that this feature becomes available and automatically for every Interdubs customer. All that has changed in Interdubs on the surface is a button to turn iPhone detection off. Not sure why, but easier to allow that option then to worry about it.

NetApp and it’s disapointing financial results

confessions of a pixel pusher technology

Doing technology for a while in the entertainment industry it is almost comical to have a peak into the world of more IT oriented IT once in a while.

I love how fancy quotes like:


"We're getting much more aggressive about reclaiming allocated but unused capacity,"

probably translate into somebody finding the ‘-r’ option of the rm command.
About the only command you should not try in the OS terminal though. Please.

quarter billion

confessions of a pixel pusher technology

and a headline nobody would have expected fifteen years ago.

apple laptop displays

Apple confessions of a pixel pusher technology

A brief history of Laptop displays leading up to a close look at the current LED backlit Laptop displays. Interesting how the real story with Apple technology will be happily revealed once there is a happy ending to it. With AAPL @ 131 -and that might be a bargain- it does not seem that the people in Cupertino need allot of help in spinning news the right way. But old habbits die hard. I don’t think that the good people at Rob Galbraith are specifically behaving like this. I think it is a general pattern. One that I am certainly part of. Selfishly I really wanted to continue to have pretty laptops that run unix and applications. And I will continue to buy them. Just that I run out of relatives to give the hand me downs to.