Reverting back to XBMC Eden

Been having loads of problems with the new XBMC 'Frodo' 12.1 release. So much so that I finally had to give up and revert back to 'Eden'. I don't understand how the so-called 'upgraded' version has so many bugs.

The main issues I experienced are:

1) the skipping of whole series when scanning that the previous version used to find
2) only finding the name and not the episode descriptions that the previous version used to find
3) crazy looooong delays before showing the thumbnails for each film and/or episode you hover over.

In the end this just makes it impractical to use.

Luckily there are still copies of the old XMBC available (click here for Windows and here for Mac)

Seriously hoping these bugs will be sorted out soon as I really like the simpler interface.

Dev meeting gone wrong

Made this with my Ipad :)

Application Craft and Unity

I've lately had a a lot of requests from clients who want to see 'real 3D' in their apps. To me, this means a FPS controller where they can walk through a real-time rendered scene without any stutter or waiting for anything to render and above all, it must look very very good.

This presents problems if you are using HTML5/JS/Cordova since IOS does not support WebGL (well, technically Safari does, but it is disabled up to the current version of IOS6).

Enter Unity3D.

I decided to investigate the possibility of using Application Craft to build an app, then linking it to a native Unity3D project.

Now this is not something anybody has done before, so I am (yet again) heading head-first into completely unknown territory here. I know that IOS jails apps, so one can't launch another, but there *is* an exception few people consider when they attempt something like this.

Ever opened a CAD drawing or a PDF on your Ipad? How come those apps launch? That was what tickled my imagination and I did some research on the topic. Apparently you *can* launch a different app after all, comms between your app and the other one seems to be a problem though.

You can pass stuff through, since it is URL based, but passing things back might (I am still looking into this) be an issue. The idea seems to be that you invent your own URL type, i.e. pic://whatever and register pic:// as handled by application X, which is your unity client. The nice thing about this is that you can then pass GET params like normal pic://some.3d.scene.rendering.app?manufacturerID=someID.

My idea is to:

1) Create a decent world in unity (well, this would actually be done by our 3D girl, Riana) - DONE
2) Hook up the FBX scene to our existing product catalogue with C# or JS by downloading in real-time options for textures and presenting the user with an interface to select them - DONE
3) Applying the selected texture to an object in the scene in a way that makes sense (no stretching etc atm it is still stretching the entire texture over the whole object)
4) And letting the controlling Application Craft app know what the user selected (the difficult, if not impossible bit).

I would also like to eventually enable the user to swap out certain objects in the scene (can already do this, but the sizing/textures of the models throw everything out) that are pre-sized and will fit into a specific spot in realtime. But for now, textures will suffice and they are working.

Needless to say this is not an easy project.

I am bargaining on a bit of help from the friendly AC staff :), but I will have to get it done one way or another if I want to deliver what my customers need.

My next step is to create a PhotoSwiper in AC with a bunch of photos and whatever photo you choose acts as the texture for a spinning cube in the Unity app.

If that works one-way comms is solved, then I just need to look into returning selected values.

Clearing Varnish cache on Ubuntu

varnishadm -T 127.0.0.1:6082 -S /etc/varnish/secret ban.url .

Another mouse down the drain

Bought a wireless mouse from CNA less than two months ago and besides the fact that it burned through 4x AA Duracells in that time, it has now completely stopped working. Will see what their return policy is when I take it back today. As with most companies in SA I presume this is going to be a bit of a battle again.

Configuring R1Soft CDP client on Debian/Ubuntu

If you need to quickly set up a server to be backed up by Idera CDP3 - here's a quick rundown of exactly what you need to do. Run everything as root or use sudo.

Add the Idera repo:
echo deb http://repo.r1soft.com/apt stable main >> /etc/apt/sources.list
Get the key:
wget http://repo.r1soft.com/r1soft.asc
Add the key:
apt-key add r1soft.asc
Update from the new sources:
apt-get update
Install the new enterprise client:
apt-get install r1soft-cdp-enterprise-agent
Test connectivity to server:
r1soft-setup --test-connection
Install kernel headers:
apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
Get the module:
r1soft-setup --get-module
Add the server key:
r1soft-setup --get-key [Server_URL]
Restart the client:
/etc/init.d/cdp-agent restart

Handy unix find command

find / \( -perm -4000 -fprintf /root/suid.txt '%#m %u %p\n' \) , \
\( -size +100M -fprintf /root/big.txt '%-10s %p\n' \)

Runs through whole filesystem, finding all large files and all suid files - and listing them in two files called /root/suid.txt and /root/big.txt. Very handy.

Some interesting comments about the Afrikaner people

"Give me 20 divisions American soldiers and I will breach Europe. Give me 15 consisting of Englishmen, and I will advance to the borders of Berlin. Give me two divisions of those marvellous fighting Boers (Meaning Farmer, originating from the Boer War) and I will remove Germany from the face of the earth."
Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, Commander of the Allied forces during WWII.

"The Americans fight for a free world, the English mostly for honour and glory and medals, the French and Canadians decide too late that they have to participate. The Italians are too scared to fight; the Russians have no choice. The Germans for the Fatherland. The Boers? Those sons of bitches fight for the hell of it."
American General, George "Guts and Glory" Patton

"Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots, who gave up their name and left their country forever at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon the face of the earth. Take these formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances in which no weakling could survive; place them so that they acquire skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman and the rider. Then, finally, put a fine temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in one individual and you have the modern Boer."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Google Day South Africa

I was fortunate enough to get invited to the Google Day today at the V&A Waterfront (g|south africa).

I loved the touch tables, one of the Googlers recommended that I build my own out of a normal table and a touch-screen TV. Interesting idea.

Here's our new site running on the table:

The most impressive of all the demos I've seen today was the Chrome Web Lab experiment where you can have your photo taken with your webcam and a robot in London draws your face in sand and sends a video back to you. If you would like to try it for yourself head on over to Chrome Web Lab for this and other interesting experiments.

Skyrim done by Peter Hollens & Lindsey Stirling

This is absolutely mind blowing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSLPH9d-jsI

Application Craft interview/case study

The guys from Application Craft did a short interview with me about my work on their platform and did a case study on our company as well.

Check it out here - (click on 'Read the case study' under NDTec for the PDF).

I must say that this platform is maturing rapidly. I would not be surprised if it becomes the premier HTML5 cross-platform RAD app tool on the web.

They've been working so hard to please every single request from every single possible customer and they did it all long before they even started charging.

I respect that - I am not affiliated with the company in any way, so what I post here is just my honest opinion as a developer that's been using this platform for more than a year now. I am promoting them because I honestly believe that this company is breaking new ground in the industry. Most important of all, they're going about it the right way.

You want to make cross-platform apps? Forget about the rest and go AC.

So-verby lapa in Dwarskersbos burns down

Just heard that the So-Verby Lapa in Dwarskersbos burnt to the ground last night.

Very sad news indeed, spent many a good afternoon/evening there!

Will update as I hear more news.

Bihari Indian restaurant

We popped in here on the off chance they have smoking section. WOW, were we pleasantly surprised. Service is excellent, toilets are like nothing you've ever seen before (I promise - never had an 'enema' digital option on the toilet LOL) and prices are reasonable.

Can recommend the place, it is right next to the Southern Sun Newlands hotel. Ask the manager how to make a proper curry and he will not only explain to you in detail, but also give you directions to the places where you pick up the spices.

WHY? It was made here?

Map of the whole internet Pt2

Well, in my neverending search for a proper map of the whole internet - DIGG just published one - here it is: Kinda sad eh? Well I like the bit about the whole internet failing to respond :) I *thought* our network problems at work had some far-reaching implications but did not expect this. Next time I will be ready. ;-)

Captain Picard inside Ripple Emulator

Just noticed this when I was debugging an app with Chrome using the Ripple Emulator:



Somebody on the dev team is a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan! :)

Samsung NX-200

The other day we went to a Samsung expo at the CTICC here in Cape Town and I won a Samsung NX-200 camera during a presentation about lighting. I am really impressed by the photo quality - this was one of the first I took of one of our dogs, Odin:



I just normally set everything to auto, press the button and let the camera do the work of figuring it all out. This was the first time I actually tried adjusting all the settings manually and, for a first time, I think the end result is quite good. It helps that Odin is really photogenic as well :)

Dark shadows

I am really looking forward to seeing this! After all it features the holy trinity (Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and of course Helena Bonham-Carter). :)

Dark Shadows Trailer

ExcelWithBusiness App Course from Groupon rip-off

So, I received a Groupon offer in my inbox last week which looked interesting. An online moble app design course from ExcelWithBusiness for about R500 supposedly worth R3570.05.

I signed up and logged into the online system tonight and finished it in less than an hour. If you're serious about app development this is not for you.

It had a few interesting tips, but altogether the whole course consisted of 18 modules (sounds impressive, I know) which then turned out to be just a 2 or 3 page PDF that you had to read each. Afterwards you complete a test (of 40 multiple choice questions) which is ridiculously easy and has more questions about average sales figures for apps etc. than anything else.

I am disappointed - I expected more (and I wasn't expecting much at all, considering the price). I would NOT recommend this - keep your money and rather buy a decent book on mobile app development.

EDIT: I neglected to mention that you also get access to the source code of a well-known app, but since it wasn't yet available I can't really comment on it. I will report back when they release it.

Aussie Ladette to Lady

I've been watching this show recently - very interesting.

The basic premise is that a group of wild, unmannered young girls from Australia (the 'Ladettes') is sent to a prim and proper English finishing school called 'Eggleston Hall'.

Here they are taught how to behave like proper ladies (high tea, going on hunts, baking, social skills etc.) Their progress is tracked on a week by week basis and every week the one that performs the worst gets sent home. I can recommend it!

I see on Wikipedia that there is also a British version out (the original series) which was quite successful.