Extreme working
- vs2k5;
- c++;
- opencv;
- ocropus.
Y2K might have been made up by the media, but there is another very real limit in computer software: the 32-bit integers that represent most numbers max out at 4,294,967,295. (See this chart for reference)
We never fathomed Tumblr would come close to 4 billion posts, so, unfortunately, our…
LOL, that was awesome! A really fun way of expressing a problem and solving it!
But I have to confess I was kind of concerned, until now there was no explicit info about the servers accepting UNICODE GET requests : /
Right?
I hope this don’t end up with some security flaws, as an HTTP GET REQUEST string for DoS or even more. Anyway, there is a long time I’m not working with security, so I can’t really know if there is any real risk ; P
Simply beautiful.
SPARK video.
SPARK
The Loreisle project is being developed by Henry Braun, Marcelo Paravisi, Rafael Rodrigues and me. A couple of days ago Henry Braun, who is an experienced IRRlicht programmer, presented to me the Spark’s particle engine. What can I say… it’s really impressive!
It’s already connected to IRRlicht by a set of easy to use classes and it has a great performance! We have already started using it for the gore and the magic effects, and it’s proving to be really stable and customizable. I’m posting the official video on the next post.
I’m happy to say that the game project has evolved quite a lot this last week. The mage and archer classes have their gameplay ready, the camera is tuned and the board state machine is over and tested! But, I will not post a new video for now, we are planning to wait a little bit and create a cool video, different from those default developer videos I always record, LOL.
Effective C++ (the book)
Even that Scott Meyers says:
“But wait. How can I know this stuff? If support for exceptions is a relatively recent addition to most compilers (it is), and if different compilers implement their support in different ways (they do), how can I say that a program’s size will generally grow by about 5-10%, its speed will decrease by a similar amount, and it may run orders of magnitude slower if lots of exceptions are thrown?
The answer is frightening: a little rumor and a handful of benchmarks (see Item 23). The fact is that most people — including most compiler vendors — have little experience with exceptions, so though we know there are costs associated with them, it is difficult to predict those costs accurately.”
I’m still avoiding c++ exceptions at all cost! LOL. Well, I’m not really kidding, I know that exceptions are really important for final releases, but as I’m normally focusing on real-time applications I prefer to test values inside the function and if possible, even deactivate the c++ exceptions in the compiler! I’m also a big fan of the fast floating point model and the __fastcall calling convention.
But well, the true is that each project has its rules and needs :)
I’m starting to hate containers…
I guess everyone notice I’m working as a freelancer now, well… kind of. I have a main job, but the contract has no obligations to be presented at the office more than two days each week, this give me enough freedom to keep up the computer games projects and accept every challenge that has a nice tradeoff between payment and work time (Unfortunately, I have no infinite time).
One of these challenges is the recognition of containers id. Well, I’m not telling anything about my contractor, but I’m telling you I’m really starting to hate containers! LOL. I have no idea why making containers with so much different colors! And why the identification text does change colors as well! Whyyy!!!?? Well, at least I thank the Computer God’s that the fonts are equal!
And why having all those curves? LOL. It’s like the containers is telling you: “Want to try to scan me with a single camera?? No way!”
I’m creating multiple algorithms using OpenCV to get hit hate over 97%. And I’m really mad with those containers that decide to write the identification text horizontally.
Anyway, this is only the first part of this job, after it comes to an ORC Server that will get the ASCII text from the parsed images. But I can’t really complain, I have the freedom to choose which camera will the installed at the place and this challenge is proving to be really fun to code ; )
webOS
Hewlett-Packard has released a fantastic SDK for the palm’s platform. The installation is really straight forward: just install Java, Virtualbox 4.0 (for emulating the palm over windows) and the HP webOS SDK. The IDE is clean and easy to use, created by a combination of Eclipse, the Palm webOS SDK software and the Aptana plug-In! The documentation is also easy to access and contains a lot of code snippets (I love them)! Really, big win for HP!
But what I really (REALLY) enjoyed was the Ares tool! You can easily prototype something on the fly using your browser and send it with the java applet directly to your emulated palm device! Totally awesome : )
“If you press the play button on the Java applet inside the browser (mine is Firefox) the application is compiled and loaded on the emulated device (running over Oracle Virtual Box)”
Of course, nothing is perfect. I haven’t found a pattern to create the widgets components and access the palm’s features. You end up with different ways to instantiate the components and use them, what can be a little confusing at the start. And the emulated palm has no camera support! That was a big deal, I’m just developing the basic client/server core and leaving the application camera features for the next weeks, when our employer will ship us some palms to continue our work.
While developing with mobiles for my new work, I used my free time to help my friends on the development of a game (Loreisle). We are still testing the gameplay to be sure the game is fun, but I couldn’t hang without posting a video ; P
I hope you enjoy!
Saint Patrick’s Day
Mulligan, the right place for the right day.
