Well, I finally got around to edit last weeks outdoor shoot in the backyard. I used strobes on some of the shots, played around with my new/old Lensbaby Composer and my Zeiss Jena 135mm Sonnar lens….

Next in the queue were the shots from the Toronto Flickr meetup group. The meeting was happening (I guess the spring/summer approach must have ended most peoples hibernation) and the back room at the Imperial Library Pub was packed….

And last but not least was todays Toronto Strobist Meeting at the Leslie-Cummer Skatepark. The shoot went really well and thanks to the high speed sync I got from my D70S body I walked away with a bunch of nice pics….

This week marks N.E.R.D.logger’s 2nd birthday — and we couldn’t be happier about that. It has been a great year for N.E.R.D. with lots of encouraging feedback. We launched on the 24th May 2007 and have seen the site grow, and grow, and grow… Not only in terms of features but members/subscribers aswell. A big thank you to all the community. Your support is really appreciated.

I was looking for a fast small (read: mini-ITX) mobo that had enough power to drive 1080P monitor/panel and I came across Zotac IonITX-A-U board. According to manufacturer’s website:

The mini-ITX form factor ZOTAC® ION combines a high-performance NVIDIA® ION graphics processor with a power-efficient Intel® Atom processor for the ultimate eco-friendly platform that has no troubles handling regular web browsing, e-mail, & productivity and HD video playback tasks.

NVIDIA® PureVideo HD technology harnesses the power of the ION’s 16 high-speed stream processors for high-definition Blu-ray playback capabilities. PureVideo HD technology decodes HD video formats and enhances standard-definition videos with the ION GPU for flawless HD and superior SD video playback.

Sounds and looks very nice and capable. I guess I’d have to pick one up and give it a whirl. Here are the quick tech specs:

• Onboard Video: GeForce 9400M
• Onboard Audio: 5.1
• Model: IONITX-A
• CPU Socket: 441-ball
• FSB: 533 MHz
• Dimensions: 6.7″ x 6.7″
• Chipset: MCP7A-ION
• Memory Type: DDR2 667/800
• Package Contents: 3 SATA cable 1 SATA power cable 1 WiFi antenna 1 WiFi bracket
• Memory Slots: 2×240pin
• SATA: 3 + 1 eSATA
• PCI Express x1: 1 (mini)
• Form Factor: Mini ITX
• Video Ports: D-Sub + DVI + HDMI
• USB: 10 (6 on back panel, 4 via pin header)
• Power Connector: 24 Pin – 90 Watt PSU included
• PS/2: 1
• RAID: 0/1/0+1

mini-itx.com has a nice review and sells the board aswell.

The USB-powered Beagle Board is a low-cost, fan-less single board computer utilizing Texas Instruments’ OMAP3530 application processor that unleashes laptop-like performance and expansion without the bulk, expense, or noise of typical desktop machines.

Beagle Board is based on an OMAP3530 application processor featuring an ARM® Cortex™-A8 running at up to 600MHz and delivering over 1,200 Dhrystone MIPS of performance via superscalar operation with highly accurate branch prediction and 256KB of L2 cache. Focal to Beagle Board experience is the high-speed USB 2.0 on-the-go (OTG) port that can be utilized to provide power to the board or to deliver highly flexible expansion. Standard PC peripherals can be connected to Beagle Board using the USB with a mini-A to standard-A cable adapter, DVI-D using an HDMI to DVI-D adapter, or through the MMC/SD/SDIO connector enabling a complete desktop experience. The picture below should give you a good idea of it’s size beside the tiny Pico Projector.

Hardware Specifications are as follows:

• OMAP3530 applications processor featuring the ARM® Cortex™-A8
• 128MB low-power DDR RAM
• 256MB NAND flash
• USB 2.0 high-speed on-the-go port
• DVI-D output
• NTSC/PAL TV via S-Video output
• 6-in-one 8-bit MMC+/SD/SDIO connection
• Stereo audio in/output
• JTAG header
• I2S, I2S, SPI, MMC/SD expansion header
• Power via USB or alternate jack

Looks very nice and complete, a good alternative to Gumstix Avero stuff we covered earlier . And did I mention it’s only $149. Perfect for your next project.

Not too sure, but the Zoom OMAP34x-II Mobile Development Platform looks too “finished/flashy” to be a Mobile Development Platform (MDP). I guess time will tell……For now we can all drool over the pics….and btw, if you have $1150, you can beat the crowd and own one today.

Out of the box features of the Zoom OMAP34x-II MDP :

• 4.1″ WVGA multi-touch display with a QWERTY keypad in a landscape, handheld form factor
• High performance OMAP3430 applications processor that supports up to 720p HD video encode/decode
• Support for popular leading mobile operating systems, including Android Mobile Platform, Linux, LiMo, Symbian OS and Microsoft(r) Windows(r) Mobile
• Wireless connectivity technology from TI, including WiLinkTM 6.0 (WL1271), a single chip with Wi-Fi(r), Bluetooth(r) and FM functionality; and NaviLinkTM GPS functionality
• 8-megapixel camera sensor
• Optional 3G modem solution, as well as flexibility to support any third party modem through an extension card
• An optional DLP Pico projection module will be available, taking mobile content from “tiny screen” viewing to a shareable “big screen” format

• Resolution: 0.17-inch HVGA (320×480 device creating a 640×480 projection)
• Brightness: 7 lumens
• Contrast ratio: 1000:1
• Throw ratio: 1.89
• Processor: MSP430 microcontroller with download port
• Light source: Solid-state 3 LED
• Video input: DVI-D 888RGB, VGA 60 Hz
• Dimensions: 44.8 x 67.4 x 14.2 mm3

Wow, this little guy is cool. Check out Surveyor Corporation’s Open Source Wireless Mobile Robot . Very neat little package for just $475. While there, you might also want to check out YARB 1.0 (Yet Another Robotic Blimp) robot, also pretty neat. Here is a bit of a description according to their site:

Designed for research, education, and exploration, Surveyor’s SRV-1 internet-controlled robot integrates a 1000MIPS 500MHz Analog Devices Blackfin BF537 processor, a digital video camera with resolution from 160×128 to 1280×1024 pixels, laser pointer ranging, and WLAN 802.11b/g networking on a quad-motor tracked mobile robotic base.

Operating as a remotely-controlled webcam or a self-navigating autonomous robot, the SRV-1 can run onboard interpreted C programs or user-modified firmware, or be remotely managed from a Windows, Mac OS/X or Linux base station with Python or Java-based console software. The Java-based console software includes a built-in web server to monitor and control the SRV-1 via a web browser from anywhere in the world, as well as archive video feeds on demand or on a scheduled basis. Additional software support for the SRV-1 is also available by way of Microsoft Robotics Studio, Cyberbotic’s Webots, and RoboRealm machine vision software.

Features

• Open Source design with full access to source code (GPL) and schematics
• Robot is fully programmable for autonomous operation
• Extensive software support through 3rd party applications
• Teleoperate mode to drive robot around via console software or remotely via web browser
• Host software has built-in web server and video archiving
• Robot can run programs written in interpreted C and stored in onboard Flash
• Wireless remote control or viewing up to 100m indoors and 1000m outdoors (line of sight)
• Robot can be controlled from a terminal/console for easy testing
• Linux 2.6 support as well as “bare metal” programming with GNU bfin-elf-gcc

Hardware

• Processor: 1000mips 500MHz Analog Devices Blackfin BF537, 32MB SDRAM, 4MB Flash, JTAG
• Camera: Omnivision OV9655 1.3 megapixel 160×128 to 1280×1024 resolution
• Robot Radio: Lantronix Matchport 802.11b/g WiFi
• Range: 100m indoors, 1000m line-of-site
• Sensors: 2 laser pointers for ranging
• Drive: Tank-style treads with differential drive via four precision DC gearmotors (100:1 gear reduction)
• Speed: 20cm – 40cm per second (approx 1 foot/sec or .5 mile/hour)
• Chassis: Machined Aluminum
• Dimensions: 120mm long x 100mm wide x 80mm tall (5″ x 4″ x 3″)
• Weight: 360gm (12oz)
• Power: 7.4V 2000mAH Li-poly battery pack – 4+ hours per charge
• Charger: 100-240VAC 50/60Hz (US plug)

Software

• Robot Firmware: easily updated, written in C language under GPL Open Source, compiled with GNU bfin-elf-gcc and bfin-uclinux-gcc toolchains
• Onboard User Programming: interpreter for C language with special robot-specific commands are provided for running user programs from onboard Flash memory
• Development Tools: GNU toolchains via http://blackfin.uclinux.org
• Console Software: Java based application, runs on Windows, MAC, Linux. WebcamSat web server module built into console software, allows multiple simultaneous remote viewers via Internet
• Robot Control Protocol: Published here. Easily used from other applications
• Third-party Software Support:
• RoboRealm – http://www.roborealm.com/help/Surveyor_SRV1.php – The SRV-1 can now be directly controlled from RoboRealm, a very popular Windows-based machine vision software package for robots. The RoboRealm extensions for SRV-1 allow creation of scripts that combine image processing on live video feeds from the robot, e.g. color filtering, blob detection/tracking, edge detection/outlining and feature extraction, with decision processing and robot motion control, making it easy to create behaviors such as object location and tracking, obstacle avoidance, motion detection, notification, etc, with a web interface, and control can be scripted from C/C++, Python, Java, C#, Lisp, Visual Basic, WScript and COM through the RoboRealm API.
• Microsoft Robotics Studio – http://www.surveyor.com/MSRS.html – Drivers for the SRV-1 in Microsoft Robotics Studio are now available. MSRS is a Windows-based environment for academic, hobbyist and commercial developers to create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware. Key features and benefits include: end-to-end robotics development platform, lightweight services-oriented runtime, and a scalable / extensible platform.

Yeah, now I know what I’ll be doing with my next 500 bucks .

 Yep, you can do it now…..The open source hacker community GizmoForYou is shipping a Linux hardware/software kit for building a modular touchscreen smartphone. Using the OMAP35x-based Gumstix Overo Earth single-board computer (SBC), the Flow phone offers numerous customization modules including GPS, 3.5G cellular, Bluetooth, WiFi, and a camera. At around $1300 for the complete kitchen sink version, it’s not exactly cheap, but since they offer multiple choices for each component, you can pick and choose what you like to have inside your smartphone. Really neat stuff.

For those of you who are not tuned into Gumstix, the Overo line is a new line of Computer-on-Module devices designed by Gumstix based on TI’s OMAP Processor. Overo Earth comes with  the following specs:

Processor: OMAP 3503 Application Processor with ARM Cortex-A8 CPU
Clock(MHz): 600 MHz
Performance: Up to 1200 Dhrystone MIPS
Memory: 256MB RAM , 256MB Flash
Features:

• Pin-out compatible with future OMAP 35x-based Overo motherboards
• on-board microSD card slot
• I2C, PWM lines (6), A/D (6), 1-wire, UART, SPI, Camera in, Extra MMC lines.
• Headset, Microphone, backup battery,
• USB OTG signals, USB HS Host

Connections:

• (2) 70-pin AVX connectors
• (1) 27-pin flex ribbon connector

Size: 17mm x 58mm x 4.2mm (0.67 in. x 2.28 in. 0.16 in.)
Expansion: Expansion boards for Overo motherboards. Or, custom design from open specifications.

The core of the Flow phone is the Flow motherboard, which is designed to integrate the separately available Overo Earth module. You can also use the more expensive Overo Water, Air or Fire modules. Other modules attach to the motherboard, including a 3.7-inch 640 x 480 Sharp LS037V7DW01 touchscreen LCD and Flow Sharp LCD module.

Connectivity modules include GPS, USB, and a choice between a plain GSM cellular module and a HSDPA-ready 3.5G/GPS/GSM/GPRS module. (WiFi and Bluetooth are already supplied by the Overo SBC.) Additional options include a 1GB MicroSD card, camera, power supply, battery, and enclosure, with various options available on several of the modules. Flow motherboard features include:

• 2 x 70 pin connectors for the Overo module from Gumstix
• 80-pin connector for the GSM, GPS, and 3G modules
• Stereo amplifiers
• 2 x speakers and GSM audio amplifier for speakers
• Microphone and GSM preamp for Mic
• PIC16LF877A UI Init (with Bootloader preloaded)
• 2 x general-purpose buttons linked to the UI Unit
• Orientation sensor
• Light sensor
• Level translation for GSM serial connections
• 3G USB HS power supply
• Luxeon 1W LED for the camera flash features
• Dual SIM/MicroSD slot (experimental)
• Camera connector and camera power management
• Power management circuits fully controllable by the UI unit
• Additional pins for connecting external power sources
• Dimensions — 3.0 x 2.6 inches (76 x 65mm)
• Operating system — Linux

GizmoForYou does not say much about software, but there are a growing number of Linux development platforms supporting the Overo Earth and OMAP35x platforms, and according to a project member, the group is working on an Android implementation.

This is something that people who deal with OSX and Linux come across everyday. Yes you can format your USB stick or removable HD using FAT32. The problem is that FAT32 does not support large sized files which can cause problems. So how do you solve this…..Easy. Attach the Journalized HFS+ disk to your MAC and startup disk utility. Inside disk utility find the disk in question and click on the partition(s) while holding down the “ALT” key. Keep holding the key down and go to the File menu and choose “Disable Journaling” (command-J). Eject the disk, move it over to your linux machine and hook it up. Linux can now read and write to the disk. Once you’re done, move the disk back to the apple machine and after selecting it in disk utility click on “Enable Journaling” button. Done.

This one is simple…..to set up CalDAV support for Google Calendar in Mozilla Sunbird, follow these steps:

1. Open the Sunbird application (or under Thunderbird with Lightning Add-on) and select File >New Calendar.
2. Select On the Network and click Next.
3. Select the CalDAV format option.
4. In the Location field, enter https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/username@gmail.com/events and click Next.
5. Enter a name and select a color for your calendar.
6. In the pop-up screen, enter the following information:
   Username: This is the complete email address you use with Google Calendar (ie: username@gmail.com). If you’re using Google Apps, be sure to enter your Google Apps email address.
   Password: This is the password you use to sign in to Google Calendar
7. Click OK.

Your Google Calendar will now appear in the Calendar tab of Mozilla Sunbird, and Sunbird will sync any changes to and from Google Calendar. If you’ve imported your calendar from iCal or another app make sure you go to Edit>Preferences and check off “Show missed alarms” under Alarms tab. Otherwise you’ll be prompted to snooze or dismiss all your old events everytime you start the application.

Yep, It works I just transfered all my calendar appointments from local iCal calendar to Google calendar in one easy step. First you need to go into iCal and export your current calendar. If you’re starting fresh with google calendar you don’t need to do this.

To set up CalDAV support for Google Calendar in Apple’s iCal, follow these steps:

1. Open Apple iCal, go to Preferences and then the Accounts tab.
2. Click on the + button to add an account.
3. Under Account Information, enter your Google Account username and password (make sure username does NOT have @gmail.com added).
4. Under Server Options, add the following URL:https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/YOUREMAIL@DOMAIN.COM/user (replace ‘youremail’ with your Google Account username and domain.com is usually gmail.com unless you’ve got google apps setup.
5. Click Add.

Under the Delegation tab, select the calendars you’d like to add to iCal by checking the boxes next to them. You may need to hit refresh to get the latest list of calendars.

This used to be a pain in the butt. Lots of manual apt-get lines and config edits to get it to work. Weŕe talking about installing the LAMP stack onto a preexisting Ubuntu Desktop Edition installation. I used to do this backwards in the old days by installing the Server edition first (with LAMP) and then getting the graphical desktop goodies installed on top of that. That method still works, but I found out that LAMP stack install on a Desktop edition is a simple one command affair. As of the 7.04 release, the Ubuntu base system includes Tasksel. You can install LAMP using tasksel.
sudo tasksel install lamp-server

I came across this problem this morning, while writing the newly downloaded moblin USB image file. The concept is straight forward, plugin a 1GB+ USB stick into a functioning Linux or Windows box, make sure the stick is not mounted and use dd to write the disk image to the stick. Under OSX however the instructions for unmounting are slightly different, so here are the quick steps:

1. Download the desired .img file
2. Open a Terminal (under Utilities)
3. Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices
4. Insert your flash media
5. Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)
6. Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2)
7. Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/diskN bs=1m (replace /path/to/downloaded.img with the path where the image file is located.
8. Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes

That should do it…..

Heard of Moblin yet….Intel’s foray into designing a Linux distro. Moblin is an open source project focused on building a Linux-based platform optimized for the next generation of mobile devices including Netbooks, Mobile Internet Devices, and In-vehicle infotainment systems. I came across the promo video below and I have to say I’m impressed. I’m downloading the beta image file right now to give it a try on my brand new Aspire One D150. More to come soon…..

I came across The Basics’ “With this ship” video this morning and  I figured I had to share it. Great music and a fantastic video created by Aussie director and animator Matt Arnold.

I ran into this a couple of weeks ago and it’s been driving me bonkers. I finally figured out what’s wrong. I was just trying to get my feet wet using the Sun Grid Engine and figured I follow their instruction page and try out the example shell script and submit it using “qsub” command. I was doing this on the frontend machine that’s been configured properly as a ROCKS cluster frontend. This was not working and the error I kept getting was “Unable to run job: denied: host “name_of_computer” is no submit host. Exiting.”

After googling around for a couple of days I found the answer (atleast the answer in my case). Issuing the following command solved my problem:

qconf -as frontend-name

Apparently the SGE roll does not setup the frontend node as a “submit host” during install. After this (the above command) everything seems to work properly. Now I can do “qstat -f” and “qsub”.

One of the first things you hear a new mac/osx user complain about is the odd way the green “zoom” button works on the upper left hand of windows on Macs. The button behaves differently depending on the app – Finder and Safari sizes to best fit, iTunes’ zoom button switches between the mini player and the normal window, Mail goes full screen. Often times, the behavior differs from one app to another and many Mac users find this behavior inconsistent, unpredictable and disorienting to use.

RightZoom provides a quick and easy solution for the zoom button’s inconsistent behavior. It enables you to make the zoom button maximize the window to full screen when you click the green orb.

By default, RightZoom makes a number of apps blow full screen when hitting the green orb. You can add or remove specific apps if you wish on this white list. But upon a fresh install, here is the list of apps that work with RightZoom :

• Finder
• Safari
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Pages
• Numbers
• Keynote

You can also blacklist applications you don’t want to change this behavior for (like iTunes). RightZoom is free and distributed by BlazingTools Software .

Lost a couple of files today by mistake (that’s what I get for using Synergy keyboard/mouse sharing application to run in windows)…..anyways, after a bit of googling I came across a very nice and simple recovery tool….Recuva. This one even recovers stuff that’s been deleted from the Recycle Bin (which was my case/mistake). Nice….and did I mention free .

So what happens when an artist combines a 3D gaming engine, the power of blender and processing and a dash of human powered mechanical abomination? Bince McKelvie describes his project:

Lb to Sf via bike is an interactive installation/game that documents a bike trip my friend and I took from long beach to san francisco. The user rides a stationary bike through a the 3d world by pedaling forward and steering with the bike handle bars. The world consists of three mini games and a huge chunk of the california coast. I am going to be releasing a version that is playable on a computer without the hardware soon. It is made with the blender game engine, a bit of processing, a wii controller and the makingthings board.

Great video showing a bizarre and novel way of creating a gesture based interface. You literally touch nothing….Air…..and the interface does the rest. Pretty interesting project. According to Justin Schunick of the team at Northeastern University, the interface uses an array of copper electrodes to sense a certain change in the electric field created by the device. The black material covering the electrodes shows how the interface can be hidden beneath surfaces to create a completely invisible interface. It is simple black felt you can buy at any fabric store. The total cost of this prototype was around $60.00 USD.

They created custom software to communicate with the microcontroller running the show with C++. This enables the use of the device as a new type of XYZ computer mouse. Think nintendo wii controller without the controller — or minority report without the gloves. This can potentially be revolutionary as far as HCI goes.

Came across this video today and my first thought was…..magic??….Hmmm…..gotta be a video editing trickbut once I watched it for the fourth time it slowly started to click. This is by far the most innovative use of AR I’ve seen…..It’s fascinating…..It’s Magic . Watch Marco Tempest do his thing in this video….be warned though…you might have to watch it a couple of times…..it’s addictive. Lots of behind the scenes pictures here.