Wikipedia has a problem. The number of active volunteers has been slowly decreasing for a couple of years. There are several reasons for this, and one of them is that it has become more difficult to edit Wikipedia. When you click the “Edit” button on some page, one expects to see an interface like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Exactly the same appearance as when viewing the page, only now with a cursor and controls to edit the text and insert links and media. However, the opposite is true: you see a huge text box containing something that looks like a programming language.
When I started blogging, I was afraid this would happen: that I would stop after a few posts. I try to only blog when I’d like to present something. However, the moment has come to write again: this time I’d like to show you some photographs taken with a Canon A-1, an old analog camera.
Last time I talked about my photoframe and room control setup. It was a laptop modification, and some hacking around in cheap remote controlled switches and simple scripts. I rebuilt most of the system now: a silent PC with normal screen serves the photos, it can control the lights and devices using a commercial product, there are cameras in the room and on the street, it’s all being shown and controlled by a slick webinterface, and my grandparents are quite happy with my old photoframe in their living room. :-)
In 2007 I decided it would be cool to build a digital photo frame, out of a broken laptop. I bought the laptop from a friend of mine, as it was pretty old and useless, considering the keyboard didn’t work. With some help of my grandpa and his tools, I built it. Later, I added speech recognition and control of the lights in my room.
Most of the original source code is lost, and the system doesn’t work well anymore, so I’m redesigning it. In a few months you can expect another blog post on this, but I thought a writeup of the old design would be nice.
On the last day of the school year it is common practice in the Netherlands that the building is transformed by the graduate students. There is a theme that has been kept secret for months, and an afternoon show to amuse the fellow students and teachers, usually with some pranks on the latter.
In the last few years I’ve competed in a few algorithmic programming contests, which are great fun! Sometimes performing well, sometimes screwing up, it’s always a great learning experience, and you meet people who are really, really good.
Right now I’m with some guys in a house in Putten, working on the CodeCup, so this is a nice time to take a break and write down what I think are cool contests, and what makes each contest unique.
Stichting SCN is a really cool non-profit organization I want to tell you about.
Like some of you, I was the kind of kid who dismantled every device I could get my hands on, trying to figure out how those worked. I read encyclopedias, books on computers and electronics, wrote simple Visual Basic programs and was very lucky because I got a LEGO Mindstorms set for my 10th birthday.
You probably know balloon art: done by magicians or clowns, on the street or at children’s parties. Some german guys have taken it to the next level. They thought visualizing the structure of complex molecules would be an excellent job for the famous balloon.
One of the coolest projects I have worked on resulted in the turning of heads when biking through the city, and was also a great challenge as it involves some tricky hardware and software. The result was pretty darn amazing though.
Posterous is a pretty good idea. You just send an e-mail with your blog text, some photos, video and sound, and they’ll automatically make a nice blog for you, all for free. The photo gallery is also pretty nice.
They even upload your photos to Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, etc., and put your video on Youtube and other video services. They also send notifications on Twitter, and other microblogging sites, and even on social network sites and other blogs. They have an extended list of all the sites they support auto-posting to.
However, the limitations of Posterous quickly became obvious to me. No options whatsoever to customize the design and the media options are pretty limited.
