I am moving my syndication feed (RSS and Atom) over to FeedBurner. I thought this might migrate existing readers automatically, but it failed for Google Reader at least (sigh) so I have changed it back for the next day or so. The FeedBurner feed is alive and kicking, but it is not the default that Blogger gives out for now.
Point your reader at http://feeds.feedburner.com/RupertRawnsley.
Remember: There is no charge for awesomeness.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Screenwipe: Writers' Special
I always enjoy Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, but episode 3 of the current series was a complete delight.
It brought together some of the best writers in British television and brought out some brilliant insights. If you love TV or writing or both, it is a must see.
But why can we only watch the latest episode from the BBC? They have never brought out a DVD so it can't hurt their future revenue. If only there was somewhere else we could get it from? *cough*
It brought together some of the best writers in British television and brought out some brilliant insights. If you love TV or writing or both, it is a must see.
But why can we only watch the latest episode from the BBC? They have never brought out a DVD so it can't hurt their future revenue. If only there was somewhere else we could get it from? *cough*
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Silent Films with Live Accompaniment in Cardiff
On this Saturday (20th December 2008) at 19:30, Andrew Wilson-Dickson will be showing some of his favorite silent films and playing along on the piano. It takes place at Canton Uniting Church (on the corner of Cowbridge Road East and Theobald Road).
Admission is free, but there is a charity collection at the end for the Treganna Family Centre, which is a very worthy cause.
This was fantastic fun last year; Andrew is an incredible pianist and showed some wonderful films. He forgot to bring his music, but made the whole thing up as he went along, very much in the style of the silent era. Not to be missed!
Admission is free, but there is a charity collection at the end for the Treganna Family Centre, which is a very worthy cause.
This was fantastic fun last year; Andrew is an incredible pianist and showed some wonderful films. He forgot to bring his music, but made the whole thing up as he went along, very much in the style of the silent era. Not to be missed!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
DigiBlue and the Indeo Codec
My son's school have been using the DigiBlue video system to make short stop-motion animations. The results have been wonderful, but there was a problem when we tried to take his creation home. The film plays fine on the school computer using Windows Media Player, but fails to work at home using the same program. What's occurring?
A quick look at the file using GSpot (bad name) shows the video is encoded with Indeo version 5, an ancient codec from before the dawn of time (1992). The current owners, Ligos Corporation, will sell you a decoder for $15 called "Indeo XP", but no open source decoders exist for versions 4 and 5. There do appear to be many free sources for this codec on the internet, but some may be more legitimate than others.
The legitimate installer doesn't work out of the box with Windows Vista either, but this thread includes a command you have to run to force it to register.
A creative and free solution to this problem is to upload the video to YouTube, which has decoders for all known video formats. It is likely that you will want to share your child's creations anyway with adoring grandparents etc...
Being huge Ray Harryhausen fans, my son and I are keen to do some stop motion at home, probably using an old web cam and some free software. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
A quick look at the file using GSpot (bad name) shows the video is encoded with Indeo version 5, an ancient codec from before the dawn of time (1992). The current owners, Ligos Corporation, will sell you a decoder for $15 called "Indeo XP", but no open source decoders exist for versions 4 and 5. There do appear to be many free sources for this codec on the internet, but some may be more legitimate than others.
The legitimate installer doesn't work out of the box with Windows Vista either, but this thread includes a command you have to run to force it to register.
A creative and free solution to this problem is to upload the video to YouTube, which has decoders for all known video formats. It is likely that you will want to share your child's creations anyway with adoring grandparents etc...
Being huge Ray Harryhausen fans, my son and I are keen to do some stop motion at home, probably using an old web cam and some free software. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
I've finally signed up to Twitter to see what the fuss was about. I have resisted until now because I am allergic to the whole "status update" thing, which seems to be Twitters raison d'être.
http://twitter.com/rupertrawnsley
So far I like it. It is a handy way to quickly poll your chums for information and it is a useful way to share information without blogging it or circulating an email (push is soooo 20th century).
I am slightly disturbed by the mechanism though: 140 chars (20 less than an SMS) of plain text and nothing else. They almost left SMS out of the GSM standard because they thought it would never catch on, they certainly didn't expect people to sent them to one another, but in Twitter we have a system barely more sophisticated than Telex being run on computers immeasurably superior to those of the Apollo program. This is a not a product concept I would have seen any future in, and yes it doesn't make Twitter any money (yet), but I like it, and so do many other people.
It is very similar to the iPhone debate that rages in our office. Most of us have them and love them dearly, but the conversation invariably centers on the things we don't like: battery life, failed phone calls, lost contacts, buggy email client, miss timed appointments, timezone support, etc... This is exactly the list of things I would have put on the whiteboard as "must haves" if I were handed the task of making the next generation mobile device. Yet the large amount of hate is outweighed by an even larger amount of love (see The Internet for details).
In summary, two hugely successful products that I really like that I would never have bet on. This is unlike successful products that I don't like, which I can write off as "appealing to the uneducated masses". My consumer product radar appears fundamentally broken.
http://twitter.com/rupertrawnsley
So far I like it. It is a handy way to quickly poll your chums for information and it is a useful way to share information without blogging it or circulating an email (push is soooo 20th century).
I am slightly disturbed by the mechanism though: 140 chars (20 less than an SMS) of plain text and nothing else. They almost left SMS out of the GSM standard because they thought it would never catch on, they certainly didn't expect people to sent them to one another, but in Twitter we have a system barely more sophisticated than Telex being run on computers immeasurably superior to those of the Apollo program. This is a not a product concept I would have seen any future in, and yes it doesn't make Twitter any money (yet), but I like it, and so do many other people.
It is very similar to the iPhone debate that rages in our office. Most of us have them and love them dearly, but the conversation invariably centers on the things we don't like: battery life, failed phone calls, lost contacts, buggy email client, miss timed appointments, timezone support, etc... This is exactly the list of things I would have put on the whiteboard as "must haves" if I were handed the task of making the next generation mobile device. Yet the large amount of hate is outweighed by an even larger amount of love (see The Internet for details).
In summary, two hugely successful products that I really like that I would never have bet on. This is unlike successful products that I don't like, which I can write off as "appealing to the uneducated masses". My consumer product radar appears fundamentally broken.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
.debris by .theprodukkt
.theprodukkt is a project dedicated to generative computer graphics - procedural generation of textures and models. I recently became aware of their FPS demo .kkrieger, which is an astonishing 96K . For my more technically challenged readers I should point out this is incredibly small, the (already compressed) JPEG thumbnail images below are about 13KB each.
Their latest demo .debris is slightly bigger at 177K (think 14 thumbnails) and is non-playable, but is absolutely spectacular. It marries a fascinating technology with great artistic flair.
Prepare to be amazed!
Their latest demo .debris is slightly bigger at 177K (think 14 thumbnails) and is non-playable, but is absolutely spectacular. It marries a fascinating technology with great artistic flair.
Prepare to be amazed!
Optimizing Car Design Using Genetic Algorithms
Cool demonstration of an evolving solution to the problem of car design. Presented with a random terrain profile, find the car that is best suited to tackle it. Run it for long enough and it comes up with the Prius :-)
No great leap forward for optimization theory, but a nice graphical introduction.
No great leap forward for optimization theory, but a nice graphical introduction.
Monday, December 01, 2008
SEHException and HRESULT
I write programs for Windows using a mix of managed and unmanaged code. The interface between the two is uncomfortable and problematic for so many reasons it deserves its own blog.
When an unmanaged exception occurs and crosses back to the managed world, the CLR will try and map it to something .NET has an exception for (OutOfMemoryException, NullReferenceException, etc...). Anything it cannot translate ends up as an SEHException. The only clue you have to go on at that point is the enigmatic HRESULT (the ErrorCode property of the exception). FormatMessage and some elbow grease may help you turn the number into something readable, but otherwise you are at the mercy of the internet:
If you are not using StackTrace, you should be, right now, seriously stop reading this and add it right now, when it saves your job add comments and send money ;-)
When an unmanaged exception occurs and crosses back to the managed world, the CLR will try and map it to something .NET has an exception for (OutOfMemoryException, NullReferenceException, etc...). Anything it cannot translate ends up as an SEHException. The only clue you have to go on at that point is the enigmatic HRESULT (the ErrorCode property of the exception). FormatMessage and some elbow grease may help you turn the number into something readable, but otherwise you are at the mercy of the internet:
- MSDN: Interpreting HRESULT Values
- MSDN Err.exe (a HRESULT lookup tool) via Aaron Stebner's WebLog
If you are not using StackTrace, you should be, right now, seriously stop reading this and add it right now, when it saves your job add comments and send money ;-)
A Taxonomy of Bugs
There is a whole taxonomy of bugs that I only just found courtesy of Steve Hawley.
How did I not know about this? The term Heisenbug is two decades old!
I particular like Schroedinbug: "A schroedinbug is a bug that manifests only after someone reading source code or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have worked in the first place, at which point the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed." - very Douglas Adams.
How did I not know about this? The term Heisenbug is two decades old!
I particular like Schroedinbug: "A schroedinbug is a bug that manifests only after someone reading source code or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have worked in the first place, at which point the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed." - very Douglas Adams.
Brunel Audio Slideshow
A beautiful set of pictures taken using period techniques of Brunel's legacy around the country. The audio commentary is by the photographer David White.
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