Posts Tagged ‘software’
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011
I just found out last night that my camera (Canon EOS 1000d) has a AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing) feature 
with AEB the camera takes 3 pictures instead of one, where one is underexposed and the other overexposed.
You can then join these pictures to create a HDR (High Dynamic Range) image using special software (I’m using Photomatix Pro 4) or photoshop.
With 3 picture with different exposures, you don’t loose details that you would normally loose by taking just 1 normal picture. I took a test picture outside my window:
With this exposure that captures the neighbors house fine the detail of the sky, the patio roof and my SHRUBBERIES are lost 
Combining 3 pictures however brings out these details:
I know the HDR effect on this image is a bit overdone :p
The downside is that you must keep the camera relatively steady, so a tripod is very useful. Think I’ll try and take a few real pictures soon, not just boring pictures out the dirty window =)
Here is a picture I took around midnight, looking for the lunar eclipse (which was too low, only about 5 degrees above horizon, so it was blocked by a stupid mountain)
Tags: Auto Exposure Bracketing, camera, canon, canon eos, exposures, high dynamic range, lunar eclipse, overexposed, Photomatix, photoshop, software, tripod
Posted in General, photography | No Comments »
Monday, November 22nd, 2010
Again, I tried to get my tickets for SDCC, but the server was taken down after 2 hours of fail (much like on November 1st.)
This is because the people responsible for this are a bunch of morons who are unable to handle a simple problem.
The problem:
you have tens of thousands of people trying to use a web server at a single moment.
This is not really a new problem, and unless your web application is utterly retarded, getting a webserver to handle 5000+ requests per second is no problem even on a single quad-core server. Getting a virtual server (cloud computing) that could take tons more would be dirt cheap since it would only be needed for a short while (1 day).
The solution:
It would be relatively simple to fix this, Just open the site to registrations. Let users enter Name and email address. Then send them a confirmation. Don’t do any of the “heavy” back-end stuff like charging credit cards which can take some time. Then when everyone have registered, just e-mail them (in the order in which they registered) a link to a page where they can pay for the ticket and enter all the details (address, etc..). That way the initial flood of requests can be dealt with very efficiently and the stuff that takes longer time can be spread out over several days/weeks.
Now maybe the existing registration software they chose this time does not support this, but jeez.. Letting people enter their info and connect this to a payment is not fraking brain surgery. Any programmer could do this in 1-3 days without a problem.
Or if you insist upon using a heavier system, at least use some sort of load balancing.. Let the main server accept connections, organize them in a queue and then gradually transfer the users to the server that actually handles registrations. I’m completely baffled that a huge event like SDCC is unable to find someone who is able to do such a simple task in this day and age.
The conclusion:
Someone stupid took on the job of handling the registrations (epicreg.com) when they clearly had no way of handling that many requests, and there is no excuse cause they know what happened on November 1st. What does it all mean in the end, nothing. What are we going to do? boycott Comic Con? yeah right… I’m pretty sure SDCC could get away with literally crapping on the visitors, without having problems selling all the tickets.
Tags: brain surgery, comic con, fail, load balancing, moron, programmer, registration software, retarded, sdcc, server, software, virtual server, web application, webserver
Posted in Computers, General | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
Up until recently I’ve been using ToDoList (read my previous post about it) to keep track of all tasks that needs to be done for the Trekwar project.
Don’t get me wrong, ToDoList is very nice, except there are a few drawbacks that made me go look for a replacement.
- It’s Windows only, so using it from linux would be cumbersome
- It’s not online, so I have to sync the file between different computers
- It’s hard to share the list, or make it public (there is html report, but the output is not very nice, and you’ll have to generate the file + upload it) which is a hassle.
- It’s hard to use this to get a good view of what is needed for a specific release (like to view every task that is needed for alpha, beta or release)
JIRA
I’ve used JIRA a bit at my real job, and it’s pretty good. It’s online, and I installed it on my server to give it a try. I quickly had to abandon that idea seeing that JIRA is extremely bloated.. It uses like 600 MB of ram just starting up, no idea what it uses the memory for, it’s not doing anything remotely fancy that would require that amount of memory.
So I decided to run it from my desktop computer, now I get the same problems as with ToDoList with having to sync files between computers, and difficulty making the task list public. Also the interface itself is pretty bloated and slow, even tough it has pretty nice views for planning and when doing the tasks.
Toodledo
In trying once more to find the perfect tool for managing the tasks of my scrum like development, I tried out Toodledo. I found out about it because minecraft (awesome game BTW) also uses Toodledo as a public task list. Which is good as it lets people following projects get a sense of how much work/time is needed until the next milestone.
Toodledo is a online to do list, and it works very nicely for scrum development. It’s quick and easy without all the bloat of JIRA and gives you pretty much the same information.
It’s very easy to add tasks (subtasks require a pro account which is 15$ per year, well worth the money), and you can create context’s like “alpha”, “beta”, “release”, etc.. and add folders/tags which can be anything. There are lots of different views, I mostly use the main view which has all the tasks grouped by context and sorted by priority. There is also a view for seeing all the tasks in a particular context (like alpha) and the estimated time for all the tasks. (currently 94 hours of work needed before Trekwar can go into alpha).
My only problem with Toodledo is that subtasks don’t show up in the public view, but it should be implemented shortly. Another great thing about Toodledo is the forum, which is frequently visited by the staff/developers.
So if you’re looking for a good way to organize your project, I can definitely recommend Toodledo, and you can try it for free at their website.
For an example you can look at the Trekwar Todo list
Tags: Abstractspoon, development, game, great software, Jira, milestone, minecraft, planning, programming, project, scrum, scrum development, software, task, task list, todolist, Toodledo, track, trekwar
Posted in Computers, General, programming | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
Seeing that I got nothing better to do, I finished up a half done project of mine the other day.
I wrote this program mostly just because I was messing around with different pathing/filling algorithms and the Java PixelGrabber class.
The program lets you color different motives (animals, people, vehicles, etc..) and I’ve probably spent more time coloring dogs and bunnies than actual programming
Download Kolor with Kribsy
Kribsy BTW is a poorly drawn imaginary bunny with self esteem issues and a knack for painting stuff
Tags: algorithm, coloring, java, kids, Kribsy, paint, painting, pixelgrabber class, program, programming, software
Posted in Computers, Games, General | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
I’ve always been a big fan of particle physics and astronomy. So when CERN fired up their massive particle accelerator to 50% today (7 TeV PER PARTICLE! which is kinda sick), that was definitely a 9.98 out of 10 on the awesome scale
Hopefully some preliminary results can be released this summer
One thing that really surprised me was the funky graphics produced:
And the fact that they use VLC, the best video playback software ever made
Tags: astronomy, cern, graph, particle, particle accelerator, particle physics, physics, software, TeV, video playback software, vlc
Posted in General, Science | No Comments »
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
I enjoy the occasional editing and creation of videos. Recently I’ve been making a cinema commercial for the WSPA organization here in Trondheim (“Dyrebeskyttelsen”), but choosing the right video editing software is not trivial. For me it needed to have good tools for panning, zooming, cropping, masking and support lots of video tracks. Also the ability to work with HD, color correction, text effects, exporting to a sensible video format is a must. I tried out 4 different video editing software products and wrote a small review of them:
Sony Vegas
I really like Sony Vegas, but it’s limit of 4 video tracks is extremely annoying! I could get an unlimited number of tracks if I could afford 700$ for the Professional edition, however as my video editing is mostly on a hobby basis that’s not an option.
I think the 4 track limit is moronic, you just need to have 2 videos + some text and a picture and you’re maxed out.. There are ways around this by rendering your 4 tracks into a movie, then importing that movie in a new project but then it’s a nightmare to change stuff which you do all the time while editing. Great software, but way to expensive for 4+ tracks.
Pinnacle Studio Ultimate
So I decided to try another piece of software, Pinnacle studio ultimate, a hefty 1.9 gig download for the trial version. This proved to be the biggest disappointment since Star Trek 11. First of all the software is overly simplistic and lacks lots of features found in Vegas, it is cumbersome (does not allow for fast cross-fading video/audio and other neat functions like Vegas does). But the worst part.. It’s limited to 3 (THREE) video tracks? WTF? I could not uninstall it fast enough, and now my computer feels kinda dirty..
Adobe Premiere / Premiere Elements
Wow, it’s even more expensive than Sony Vegas Professional, 800$ And the fact that their webpage is a mess and I have to register for a trial means I won’t even bother testing it. However! at the time of writing this I see there is also a “Premiere Elements” that according to Wikipedia allows for unlimited tracks for 100$ so I had to give it a try.
1.2 gb download, but it went very fast, installing took a while and required a reboot.. The program itself was not very intuitive and the trial made a HUGE ugly watermark on all the videos AND all images in that video. It was also horribly slow, background rendering running for like a minute with just a background image in one track and a moving image on the other track. The program also locked up twice in the hour I was testing it.. Not impressed.
Cyberlink PowerDirector 8
Another more reasonably priced piece of software (70-100$) which is supposed to be able to handle 16 tracks, and I honestly can’t see myself having more than 16 objects visible at the same time any time soon, so I guess I’ll have to try this one as well. The trial version was on a slow server so took a long time to download the software despite it’s small 235 MB size.
I did however not get to try this software for reasons stated below.
Magix Movie Edit Pro
Unlike the other 3 products mentioned, I hadn’t heard of this one until recently. The trial version was only around 200 MB compared to Premiere and Pinnacle which were 1,2 and 1,9 GB. But the websites promise of unlimited tracks and a fairly low price of 90$ made me check this one out. Like powerDirector it was on a slow server, and took a while to download.
Fast simple install, and user interface is nice and simple. Using keyframes to do changes/motion/scaling, etc.. was very nicely done and easy to use, and the program was a pleasure to work with. My only complaint is that the preview of the video has very bad framerate (maybe it’s just because of my semi transparent video over an image), do detecting subtle changes in the video while editing could be extremely hard.
Conclusion
After being forced to abandon Sony Vegas I found that the best program for me (behaved most like Vegas, lots of functions and lots of tracks) was without a doubt Magix Movie Edit Pro, it’s a very nice piece of software which I will be buying before the trial is up. It’s stupid that when you buy the downloaded version you miss out on getting Vasco De Gama bundled with it, but that I can live without.
Tags: adobe premiere, cinema, cyberlink, dyrebeskyttelsen, great software, magix, magix movie edit pro, move editor pro, movie, movie edit pro, movie editing, number of tracks, pinnacle, pinnacle studio, pinnacle studio ultimate, powerdirector 8, Premiere, premiere elements, price, program, review, software, sony, sony vegas, track, trial version, video, video editing, video editing software, video tracks, WSPA
Posted in Computers, General | 5 Comments »
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
Who can’t remember that godawful piece of crap video format/player called Real Player?
Seeing that format and player failed miserably, RealNetworks inc had to invent another way to push crappy malware infested junk on people, and voila: RealArcade is born.
RealArcade.com is a site which has lots of small games you can buy and download (It’s a really crappy version of Steam).
Here are the effects that have manifested themselves so far while trying to install a Demo of tropix 2:
- It first nags you to install a browser toolbar (always a good indicator of crappy unprofessional software)
- You get to select a install directory, but it places a xml file in the parent directory just for fun
- It installs lots of files directly on your C: drive (RealArcade.exe, lots of DRM crap, and some directories).
- Uninstalling does NOT remove all the files this shitty software leaves around your computer
- It seems to mess with the Windows firewall, which now tries to block everything (including Firefox).
So my advice to anyone who is contemplating getting a real arcade account or downloading anything from it:
DON’T!
Tags: computer, crappy, demo, firefox, game, malware, real arcade, real player, realarcade, RealNetworks, realnetworks inc, small games, software, steam, toolbar, tropix, tropix 2, Uninstalling
Posted in Computers, Games, General | No Comments »
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Until quite recently I had lots of the stuff I need to do in a simple text file, but I tried out like 5-8 Task list, todo lists, project management applications and stuff like that. Until I finally found the thing I was looking for.
ToDoList is a brilliant program, with ALL the futures I wanted and then some.
What I was looking for was a nice tree-based task manager where each task could have a cost (time), and a progress indicator. Also storing notes is a must. The software also have lots of other features (allocating tasks to users, task statuses, categories, start and due dates, recurrence, etc…
I simply use it as a tree to keep track of tasks I need to do for a given project. Here is a screenshot of the application where I’ve added lots of task for the Trekwar2 game. I think this application is a GREAT tool for programmers, unfortunately it is only available for windows.
You can download the program for free from abstractspoon.com
Tags: open source, programming, review, screenshot, software, task list, todolist, trekwar, windows
Posted in Computers, General, programming | No Comments »
Monday, October 20th, 2008
I’ve been trying out Mozy for backup for a while (the free version limited to 2GB of storage).
I recently upgraded to the mozyhome edition, it’s only 5$ each month for unlimited storage, but only for ONE computer.. And since I’m cheap and there is no Linux client, I just mirror the things from the server I have to back up in a directory on my windows PC (SVN repository, postgres database, web server config/logs/etc).
Uploading the initial data (22 GB) took around 3 days, but the incremental backups are much quicker.
I like that Mozy stores several versions of the file, so I can roll back to a specific date. They only save the different snapshots of files for a month, but for the important stuff I have SVN which lets me do unlimited rollbacks anyway.
update April 27th 2009
I recently managed to corrupt a 30 MB file and had to restore it. unlike the upload of the data, restoring it (downloading) was extremely fast, got around 6 MB/s download speed
update April June 6th 2011
Mozy stopped with the unlimited plans, making me get a 125gb plan at twice of what I paid before. So obviously I’m switching to CrashPlan when my mozy account expires. The Crashplan client is much better (allows it to also back up to a local drive, or at a friends computer), and they offer unlimited upload at the same price as mozy 50 GB.. They also have a family option that includes up to 10 computers. It also seems like you can install mozy on both your stationary computer and laptop, and have the laptop backup stuff to your stationary computer, which then backs up to the crashplan servers. Also Crashplan supports linux
Tags: backup, crashplan, database, linux, log, mozy, postgresql, rollback, server, snapshot, software, svn, technology
Posted in Computers, General | 2 Comments »
Saturday, September 27th, 2008
I tried out a couple of programs for managing your DVD collection lately. The choice fell on eXtreme Movie Manager. Adding movies and tv shows by importing from IMDB worked nicely.
I really like the tv series part, where I can list all the tv series I have, order by rating, etc..
You can also export your collection to a html page like this
or to a simple list.
Tags: dvd, extreme movie manager, html, imdb, movie, software, tv, webpage
Posted in General, Movies and TV | No Comments »
