http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/viewer.html

Sometime last week Radiohead released their music video – house of cards – which is a radical video in a long time.

Since I do not embed youtube videos on my blog, here’s the youtube link.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ]

The video is significant if you are a radiohead fan and/or an opensource/tech freak. Much is argued if the video is significant to the lyrics but that is more a subject of context rather than significance. Significance is subjective. It is out of context yes, but it is significant.

Radiohead has also shared their code, making this an important time for indie and DIY artists to explore opensource computing. [http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/]

I have had some hands-on experience which I am about to describe- by no means am I a JAVA/OpenGL/graphics person. I am sure there would be others who could do a better job at this.

Grab processing, Untar, Install [linux] *

Download the radiohead processing source code and CSV values. The processing source code is what we will examine and add some of our own stuff. The CSV values are 3D axis values and a fourth number representing intensity. You would have one CSV file per frame and so you’d have about 30/50/60 frames per second rapidly displaying changes in the co-ordinates and intensities.

You would have an idea now, how this video was created. Instead of cameras they use, a scanning system which captures 3D surface geometries at a high FPS along with the surface texture information which is aligned together with the former [now you have a very different kind of capture instead of live video], and a laser system that uses multiple lasers rapidly throwing their beams around the surroundings and calculating the time required for them to reflect back. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes. All these numbers are then input to a data visualization program such as processing.

Start up processing, and open the FaceAnimationViewer.pde . You must also copy all the CSV files into the directory named data for the FaceAnimationViewer app

Now all you’d do is modify some code and hit the play button. Simple as that. If you hit play now- without any modifications, you ll see a static image of Thom Yorke

Try changing some code.

In the draw function, line 53 [ scale(2); ] would represent your image size. Change that to scale(1);

Uncomment line 56

rotateY(frameCounter/50.0f);

Hit play . Sweet.

To up the ante, lets apply a perspective transformation and allow our mouse to rotate Thom’s head. You should remember a perspective transformation if you can remember this image from your college courses of graphics/3d modelling etc. Basically objects closer to you appear larger and objects farther from you appear smaller. Hence you would define a lot of parameters like a vanashing point, a field of view [FOV], your distance from the object etc. As you move across or around the object in a 360° plane the object will transform itself making you look really smart that you just did this – but its really just the math.

The ‘field of view’ parameter will work similar to the scale function to us. Near and far are really the default values which I am using [cameraZ in the code]

I wouldn’t dive into the details of how these functions work, you must really explore it yourself if you’d like to. I dont think you’d need to know much except some high school trigonometry and some graphics. You can find most of the library functions at processing’s website.

Before you start, you could help yourself by commenting out some code to make sure you know your perspective logic is working. I commented out lines 51, 53, 56. Heres what my code looks like now

void draw(){
// We'll use a black background
background(0);
// The data has 0,0,0 at the center and we want to draw that point at the center of our screen
// We will keep this to make sure we start at the center as well
translate(width/2, height/2);
// Lets adjust our center slightly
// translate(-150,-150);
// Lets draw things bigger- We will achieve that by modifying the field of view [FOV]
//scale(1);
// This would be a way to rotate over time- We will rotate Thom using our mouse
//rotateY(frameCounter/50.0f);
// This would use the mouse's horizontal location to adjust the rotation- Not this
//rotateY(mouseX/150.0);

Once you have that done, add the below code- make sure this stuff is done before loading the array with the frame data.

//start at the center
translate(width/2, height/2);

//A larger scale is achieved by a larger denominator.
float fov = PI/4.0;
float cameraZ=((height) / tan(PI*60.0/360.0));
float aspect = float(width)/float(height);

perspective(fov, aspect, cameraZ/10.0, cameraZ*10.0);

//rotateX(mouseX/float(width)*PI*2);
//rotateY(mouseY/float(height)*PI*2);

Thom stays static now, like before.

To notice the perspective changes uncomment the rotateX call. Now you can rotate Thom on the X axis. Play around with the denominator- more specifically if you up the denominator you rotate Thom on a larger angle per unit of width Try values like PI/2, PI/6, PI/4 , PI instead of PI*2. Nothing happens on the Y axis

Comment out the rotateX call and uncomment the rotateY call. Ditto effect on the Y axis

Now uncomment both those rotate calls. Careful now- Thom’s head is sensitive.

There you are. Thats all there is to it.

[* I hit an error initially when I tried compiling the code. Processing/JAVA complained that there is not enough memory on the heap. You might want to change this in the Preferences and up your mems a bit]

Richard Jones has written a python application called Gmailfs which essentially uses the FUSE userland filesystem utilities to allow you mount your gmail space onto your disk.

On debian based systems, you can get this up quickly.

apt-get install gmailfs

apt-get install python-clientcookie

Then either add it to fstab or go ahead and mount it

mount -t gmailfs /usr/local/bin/gmailfs.py /path/of/mount/point -o username=gmailuser,password=gmailpass,fsname=gfs1test

Before you go ahead and use it, notice that you can stat the mounted drive

df -h

You will get your gmailfs details, if there was no problem with your mount operation and the installation.

Try transferring a file or two to the mounted gmail filesystem. If you open up your gmail account using a browser or mail client you’ll notice mails to yourself. Meta-data information is stored in the subject lines and files are usually stored as attachments- the default block size is 5K and if your files are larger they are attached in consecutive emails. The block size can be changed in a conf file [maybe its /etc/gmailfs/gmailfs.conf]

Although I am still puzzled why metadata is spread into more than a single mail. As the picture shows – a single file split in two emails and 4 metadata “files”.

If you do go ahead and try to copy a movie or multiple files, you will either face errors after a point -i have not figured out what point yet- and coincidentally gmail will get angry.

You may also not be able to access your files and repeatedly get ‘no space left on the device’ errors even though you know that there is plenty.

The fact that you mount your drive with your username and password in plain-text and no encryption or secure connection is scary – but you do have options to use an SSL connection by modifying the conf file.

I find this an ideal solution if you have something like the OpenMoko’s Neo Freerunner and you’d like to save files but you either run out of space or you dont decide to buy any.

http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk154.ogg

A particular interesting part is how the HAMMER Filesystem syncs to the disk and maintains a history of the syncs- one of the motives could be backing up the disk.

It got me thinking if this is similar or better than Apples Time Machine. Discussions are welcome

http://genmapp.org/gsoc/mentors_by_category.htm

A programmer started to cuss
Because getting to sleep was a fuss
As he lay there in bed
Looping ’round in his head
was: while(!asleep()) sheep++;

Proctor: I beg your pardon?

Student: Sir, I request that you bring me Cakes and Ale.

Proctor: Sorry, no.

Student: Sir, I really must insist. I request and require that you bring me Cakes and Ale.

At this point, the student produced a copy of the four hundred year old Laws of Cambridge, written in Latin and still nominally in effect, and pointed to the section which read (rough translation from the Latin):

“Gentlemen sitting examinations may request and require Cakes and Ale”.

Pepsi and hamburgers were judged the modern equivalent, and the student sat there, writing his examination and happily slurping away. Three weeks later the student was fined five pounds for not wearing a sword to the examination.

Get the tar , extract and launch. This is only a pre-release although. But works fine.

The installation is not too complex- just get it and install it on your boxes- http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads 

As far as I remember all I did- for the current version was install “Guest Additions” which you will find in the Devices Menu once you have powered up a guest. It was a bit difficult getting usb cameras working- you ll have to fool around a bit.

In previous versions (<= 1.4) it was difficult starting up seamless desktops and sharing etc- seamless desktops had to be started up with an rdp connection – 1.5 is better and faster. You wont notice a glitch!

Some shots:

[The XP taskbar sits neatly over the gnome panel- although i think this still requires more improvement. It would be better to have the Windows programs docked into the gnome-bar itself. Like the Macs do virtualization]

Skype, uses a hierarchical  supernode based P2P network. This is similar to KaZaA – in fact it is believed that both Skype and KaZaA were the brainchild of the same group. Anyways Supernodes in Skype maintain the overlay while ordinary nodes are below it and larger in number. The Supernode themselves are peers who communicate but have a better infrastructure in place which lets them infact help the ordinary nodes communicate.

Supernodes , I presume are selected if they are not behind a NAT, and they have some decent bandwidth. So basically if your box is not behind the NAT and you have a decent 4-6 Mb/s connection- well then in a matter of a few minutes you are a skype supernode.

And believe me this gives you better performance. So now- forward your ports!- simple as that!

“Invalid archive. Archive must contain a directory with the screenlet’s name” must be wondering WTF?

Seems like a bug to me but the fix is easy.

1. Extract the Screenlet

2. Move the extracted directory to $HOME/.screenlets or /usr/local/share/screenlets

3. At your terminal execute the screenlet python script by hand. for eg:

$python Gmail/GmailScreenlet.py

This should now fire up the screenlet.

Hit Ctrl+C to end the screenlet. And now the screenlet should be there in your Screenlet Manager where you can start it as always

Sometimes the Script would not start- in this case you would need to recompile the script with some minor changes.

Probably now you could work with your compiz widget plugin.

All this jazz…well…its actually quite annoying-more on that later