Improved Seam Carving for Video Retargeting

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For I have officially dropped you.

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You have to have all other functions defined before the main function? WTF? srsly? lamesauce!

My first graphics assignment (and first program in C++) is going to blow. Hello sharp learning curve!

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This $200 Samsung 920NW 19″ Widescreen monitor looks mighty tempting. I think a second monitor for my desktop is a definite investment in my near future, especially a widescreen version. After spending 3 months working at Southdata, Inc. doing web programming work, I can now really see why you would want 2 or even 3 monitors. For me, I would have Visual Studio with my programming code up on one screen and a browser (IE/FF) open on the other screen to see what the immediate results looked like. Or for Googling problems, or running SQL queries on a database, or checking email, etc. etc. It just makes sense!

I’ve also become a new fan of higher resolutions. High resolutions = more space for my code. However, I do wish Visual Studio would support dual monitors. Ultramon does a great job stretching things across two screens, but I wish I could have two tabs of code open inside of one instance of Visual Studio.

On a similar note: desktop backgrounds! You can find some awesome video game backgrounds here: http://desktopgaming.com/ These are in-game screenshots pieced together to make neat backgrounds to show off to your friends. For instance, take a look at Super Mario Brothers 1-1.

Another great resource is this blog post by Jeff Atwood.

And if you are curious, my current desktop background is Royal Abandon by vissroid. I absolutely love space-themed backgrounds. You can easily find some great pieces of work at Solar Voyager, but you have to hunt them down inside of their forums and galleries.

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The programmer for the photo uploader at Facebook needs to get sacked. Actually, I think he was already sacked because that Java uploader hasn’t changed in years.

So after two days of my photos failing to upload, I found an alternative solution. Bloom. It is a Windows/MacOS/Linux desktop program that lets you easily drag and drop pictures into it and then allows you to upload those pictures to your Facebook account. Simple. And it works.

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The hard drive in the laptop has died on me. All I get out of it is some lovely clunking noises.

I’m debating whether it is even worth the $100+ I’ve seen so far in replacing the 60 gig hard drive that was in it. I could spend that $100 on a 500-750 gig hard drive instead, or anything for that matter. Shoot, I saw another Averatec 3200 on ebay for $250.

Bummer.

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“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
–Randy Pausch

If you don’t know who he is, then be sure to watch his Last Lecture. He was a very well known Computer Science professor at CMU who helped teach kids to program (with a focus on graphics/world environments).

He died of pancreatic cancer. You can read a rather detailed article about him here.

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I had wrote about this before, but I had issues hunting down my blog entry.

This wiki article shows different ways to hook up your Samsung SCH-U420 to your computer in order to copy mp3s to it. You can then use these mp3s as your ringtones. So it is as “free” as your mp3s are. Additionally you can download/upload images to and from your phone so you can get all of your pictures off of it for free.

But if you need help finding some good ringtones, my brother just pointed this site out to me yesterday: audiko. Basically you upload mp3s and then it lets you cut them up into the short segment you want. Or you can just use the segments anyone else has made. The legality of this is probably iffy, but hey, the website is located in Ukraine…

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As I’ve seen a couple of my CS friends show off their Software Engineering Lab projects to me, I came up with a quasi-decent idea: a “memory” drum game that involves the Wiimote. By “memory” I mean “I play a rhythm and you repeat it.”

So, how could it work for the disabled? Well, it primarily would be an audio program. You hear the rhythm, and then you repeat what you hear. No visual required. BUT, the program could display the rhythm for those that can see (music staff and notes), to help teach them how to read music. Does this give those with sight an advantage? Maybe, depending on their music reading skill level. However, you must remember, it will teach them to read actual music better. There could also be an option (different play mode?) to disable visual display of a music staff and notes to provide non-advantageous play.

How does the Wii-mote fit in? Imagine using it as a drum stick, with each down-stroke registering as a “hit” in the program. The player will want to try and accurately repeat the rhythm played to them. To adjust for skill/delay/etc. there could be an option to change the “error” value between hits. For example, if the rhythm is two beats, then the player would want to copy the rhythm by hitting with the same time delay between the two beats plus or minus the “error” value which could adapt for player skill or other delays. If at all possible, two Wii-motes would make the experience awesome.

So at the basic level we have a program that gives the user a rhythm, the user repeats it with a (or two) Wii-mote(s), and would then be given points on how accurate their repetition was.

At a more advanced level, we could have a user repeat beats that go with or come from a (real) song in order to recognize real patterns.

Possibilities expand rapidly from there. We could go to such delights as altering how one is “drumming” by making the Wii-motes behave more like a drum kit. For example you could press and hold the B (trigger) to switch from hitting a snare drum to hitting a hi-hat and then (while still holding B) pressing the A button to “open” the hi-hat. Maybe even directional drumming to hit other objects part of the “kit” (i.e. straight = snare, left = hi-hat, right= tom-toms), but that would probably at the least require using the IR of the Wii-mote and I am unsure how resourceful current Wii-mote APIs are.

If anything, I’d be completely happy flailing a Wii-mote or two around and getting lots of drum noises.

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Facebook has apparently just recently introduced a “chat” feature. Re-inventing the wheel now, aren’t we? Because of these re-inventions there are programs like Digsby to keep each of these under the same hood. Having 5 programs open at once to contact people across 5 networks becomes a hassle. So with every “improvement” of Facebook I keep wondering how many more things Facebook is going to do for me.

There is an old programmer saying: Do one thing and do it well. You don’t want a swiss knife class/program. You want it to do one thing, and do it very, very well. Facebook is turning into a swiss knife. I just can’t wait for the cork screw update!

But I will admit that the Lexicon is pretty cool. You can see specific trends occuring during the year, month, day, etc. “hangover” and “party” produces an interesting trend.

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